Poética de La Nostalgia

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euripides and the poetics of nostalgia
Branded by critics from Aristophanes to Nietzsche as sophistic, icono-

clastic, and sensationalistic, Euripides has long been held responsible for
the demise of Greek tragedy. Despite this reputation, his drama has a fun-
damentally conservative character. It conveys nostalgia for an idealized
age that still respected the gods and traditional codes of conduct. Using
deconstructionist and feminist theory, this book investigates the theme
of the lost voice of truth and justice in four Euripidean tragedies. The
plays’ unstable mix of longing for a transcendent voice of truth and skep-
ticism not only epitomizes the discursive practice of Euripides’ era but
also speaks to our postmodern condition. The book sheds new light on
the source of the playwright’s tragic power and enduring appeal, revealing
the surprising relevance of his works for our own day.
Gary S. Meltzer was Assistant Professor of Classics and Humanities at

George Washington University and Associate Professor of Classics at
Eckerd College, where he held an endowed chair. Currently teaching
humanities at Villanova University, he has contributed to Classical Anti-
quity, Transactions of the American Philological Association, Helios, Classical and
Modern Literature, and Text and Presentation.
EURIPIDES AND THE
POETICS OF NOSTALGIA
GARY S. MELTZER
cambridge university press
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Cambridge University Press

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© Gary S. Meltzer 2006
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guarantee that any content on such websites is, or will remain, accurate or appropriate.
To my beloved Jill, Emily, and Rebecca
v
CONTENTS
Acknowledgments page ix
Note on the Use of Greek xi
Introduction 1
1. The “Just Voice” and “Word of Truth”: Divine

Revelation or Mythopoetic Construct? 33
2. The “Just Voice” as Paradigmatic Metaphor

in the Hippolytus 71
3. The Body’s Cry for Justice in the Hecuba 104
4. The Voice of Apollo and the “Empire of Signs”

in the Ion 146
5. Where Is the Glory of Troy? Heroic Fame in the Helen 188
Epilogue 223
Works Cited 229
General Index 241
Greek Citation Index 256
English Citation Index 260
vii
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
This book was written during the enjoyable years I spent teaching at
Eckerd College, a lively, friendly, and intellectually engaged campus. I
owe a debt of gratitude to Dean Lloyd Chapin, who approved grants
that supported my research and took an active and informed interest
in my work. I am pleased to think that this book will be displayed in
his office alongside those written by other Eckerd authors. Among my
colleagues at the College I would like to thank Jewel Spears Brooker,
Howard Carter, and Carolyn Johnston for the confidence they placed
in my scholarly endeavors.
I am grateful to Eckerd College for granting me a hexennial leave
that allowed me to complete a draft of the entire manuscript. I was
fortunate to have spent two months of my leave as a visiting scholar at
the American Academy in Rome, a wonderful setting for research. As
I brought the manuscript through its final phase, the Core Human-
ities program at Villanova University provided me a stimulating and
congenial place to teach and discuss matters of common interest.
I would like to thank many others who helped bring this book to
fruition, including friends and colleagues who encouraged and inspired
me in its early stages: Curtis Breight, Lillian Doherty, Carol Gould,
Jim Lesher, and Tara Wallace. I benefited from helpful comments and
bibliographic suggestions offered by Karen Bassi, Tim Beal, David
Corey, Elizabeth Fisher, Jim Goetsch, Valerie Lester, Nancy Rabi-
nowitz, Elizabeth Scharffenberger, David Schindler, Froma Zeitlin,
and John Ziolkowski. I also benefited from the sharp-eyed editorial and
technical assistance offered by Susan Barnes, Natalie Bicknell, Brian
ix
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Bowles, Tristan Bradshaw, Kate Mertes, Shana Meyer, Bill Stoddard,

and Theresa Walker.
Tom Davidson, Cliff Roti, and the anonymous readers for Cam-
bridge University Press and several journals gave detailed criticism
for which I am most grateful. I am grateful as well for permission
to reprint articles, in revised and expanded form, that have been
published previously. The original version of Chapter 2 appeared as
“The ‘Just Voice’ as Paradigmatic Metaphor in Euripides’ Hippolytus,”
Helios 23.2 (1996): 173–90. Chapter 5 originally appeared as “‘Where
Is the Glory of Troy?’ Kleos in Euripides’ Helen,” Classical Antiquity
13.2 (1994): 234–55 (Copyright 1994 by the Regents of the University
of California). An early, condensed version of Chapter 3 appeared as
“The Body’s Cry for Justice in Euripides’ Hecuba,” Text and Presentation:
Journal of the Comparative Drama Conference 21 (2001): 1–12. Small por-
tions of the introduction and epilogue appeared in “The Importance
of Debate in Euripides – and of Debating Euripides,” in Approaches
to Teaching the Dramas of Euripides, edited by Robin Mitchell-Boyask
(New York: The Modern Language Association of America, 2002),
pp. 103–11.
I owe special thanks to Beatrice Rehl, my editor at Cambridge
University Press, and Mary Paden, the project manager, for providing
indispensable help and guidance. I am also fortunate to have had the
unstinting support of my wife Jill and children Emily and Rebecca
for my research and writing. Finally, I would like to acknowledge a
debt of gratitude to the late John Herington, mentor and friend, for
instilling in me an appreciation for the scholarly ideal of “getting it
right.” I am grateful to all who helped me achieve this ideal, and I
take responsibility for any areas where I may have fallen short of it.
x
NOTE ON THE USE OF GREEK
To help specialists, scholars, and those with some knowledge of Greek

follow my argument, the original Greek text of important quotations
that are translated in the body of the book will appear in the footnotes.
(The line numbers of these Greek quotations do not always correspond
exactly with the line numbers of the English translations used, due to
the exigencies of translation.) I also provide English transliterations of
key Greek terms and phrases in both the footnotes and the body of
the book.
xi
INTRODUCTION
R eviled by critics from Aristophanes to Nietzsche as sophistic,

iconoclastic, and sensationalistic, Euripides has long been held
responsible for the decline of Greek tragedy – and, to some degree,
of Athenian culture. Yet the author of such wrenching and disturbing
plays as the Medea and the Bacchae has a fundamentally conservative
side: his drama conveys longing for an idealized, pre-sophistic age that
still respected the gods and traditional codes of right conduct. The
Euripidean nostalgia for a lost voice of transcendent truth that would
speak clearly to all, combined with his proclivity for skeptical anal-
ysis, epitomizes the discursive practice of his era, as exemplified by
Thucydidean history, Aristophanic comedy, and Platonic philosophy.
In fact, this book grounds its interpretation of the plays in key pas-
sages from the “scientific” historian Thucydides, who also expresses
yearning for a bygone “simplicity” or “singleness of heart.”1 But the
unstable mix of nostalgia and skepticism gives particular power and
pathos to Euripidean tragedy, which consistently calls attention to the
unbridgeable distance between a mythical past and the playwright’s
own world. The fact that Euripides explicitly addresses this distance
in his drama also sets him apart from his fellow tragedians, helping
explain Aristotle’s assessment of him as “the most tragic of the tragic
poets” (Aristotle, Poetics 1453a29–30; my translation).
1
For example, in his History of the Peloponnesian War Thucydides laments the disappearance
of the “simple way of looking at things [ ],” which he regards as the “mark
of a noble nature” (3.83.1). The English translation of Thucydides is by Rex Warner:
Thucydides: History of the Peloponnesian War (New York: Penguin, 1954). The Greek comes
from Thucydides, Historiae, ed. Henry Stuart Jones. 2 vols. Rpt. 1979–1980 (Oxford:
Clarendon Press, 1942).
1
EURIPIDES AND THE POETICS OF NOSTALGIA
The combination of romantic longing for a simple, clear voice of

truth with cynicism and scientific detachment speaks to our own post-
modern condition. As in late-fifth-century b.c. Athens, a defining
historical moment for Western culture, contemporary society faces a
crisis of values, voice, and meaning in a period of social decline, radi-
cal change, and war. Indeed, Euripidean tragedy poses questions that
still preoccupy us: Is there a higher power, a transcendent being or
principle of truth and justice? If so, what is the capability of language
to represent this power or principle? What are the strengths and lim-
itations of debate and reasoned analysis in reaching truth and justice?
In an increasingly fragmented and relativistic world, if belief in such
powers or principles is not shared by all, on what objective standard
can we ground any moral appeal?
This book investigates the way these questions are asked and
answered by four plays that span the three decades or so in which
Euripides’ extant dramas were produced (438–405 b.c.).2 The para-
doxical answer given by the plays illuminates the postmodern response
to the problem of the lost voice of truth and justice.
∗ ∗ ∗
Polyneices. The word of truth is single and plain,
and justice doesn’t need shifting, intricate interpretations,
since it makes its own case. But the unjust argument,
since it is sick and deficient, needs clever medicine.
..............
Eteocles. If the beautiful and the wise were the same for all,
men would not have the two-sided strife of debate.
But nothing is like or equal among men
except names – and names are not facts.
(469–72; 499–502; my translation)3
2
Although Euripides first competed in the Athenian tragic festival, the City Dionysia, in
455 b.c., his first extant drama, the Alcestis, wasn’t produced until almost twenty years
later (438 b.c.); the last was the Bacchae (405 b.c.), staged after the playwright’s death in
407/406 b.c.
3
The Greek text for the Phoenician Women passages runs as follows:

,

!"#$
2
INTRODUCTION
The debate over the kingship of Thebes in the Phoenician Women

crystallizes the conflicting perspectives of nostalgia and cynical detach-
ment in Euripidean drama. The debate stems from a controversy
between two brothers over which one of them should rule following
the demise of their father, Oedipus the king. After Eteocles violates
the oath he has sworn to share rule jointly with his brother, Polynei-
ces gathers allies from neighboring towns and stands ready to invade
Thebes to reclaim rule.4
Polyneices bases his claim for justice on the fact that his brother
violated his sworn oath. Later on in his speech, Polyneices asserts that
the same gods who uphold the sanctity of oaths uphold the justice
of his claim to kingship (491–3); his “word of truth” (469), based as
it is on divine sanction, conveys its meaning univocally and clearly,
without slippage, distortion, or artifice. Indeed, the word (as signifier)
is completely and immediately transparent to the meaning (signified)
of which it is the vehicle. In Polyneices’ view, this word “makes its
own case” (more literally, “has a due measure or fitness”) without the
need for “shifting, intricate interpretations” – that is to say, its meaning
is so self-evident and authoritative as to be irrefutable. His “word of
truth” is, therefore, an autonomous, divinely authorized medium.
Polyneices’ assertion of belief in a simple “word of truth” harks
back to an earlier age in which meaning was supposedly univocal and
authorized by the gods. At the end of his speech, Polyneices contrasts
the simple, clear “facts” of his position with the “twists of argument”
of those who would oppose it (494–5). His assertion that his “word
%&" & "'$

'%
() * + "# (). (469–72)
..............
, -(
(' .,
/ 0
"1 "$
2 3 4( 5",

6 7'($ "% ( '. (499–502)
Unless otherwise noted (as here), all translations of Euripides will come from Euripi-
des 1–5 in The Complete Greek Tragedies, ed. David Grene and Richmond Lattimore
(Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1955–9). The Greek text of the Phoenissae is drawn
from Euripidis Fabulae, vol. 3, ed. Gilbert Murray. Rpt. 1975 (Oxford: Clarendon Press,
1909).
4
Aeschylus treats this fraternal conflict in his Seven against Thebes, and Sophocles dramatizes
its aftermath in his Antigone.
3
of truth” (muthos tês alêtheias, 469) is universally recognized (495) rests

on his claim of divine authority for it. For him, a “word” (or “story,”
because the Greek muthos indicates both) sanctioned by the gods is, like
the myths of old, a vehicle of truth that transcends politics, rhetoric,
and history.
In Polyneices’ view, Eteocles’ “unjust argument,” lacking the divine
authority of the “word of truth,” must rely on sophistic distinctions
and elaborations – on “shifting, intricate interpretations” – to mask its
inherent weakness. According to Polyneices, Eteocles’ “unjust argu-
ment” needs “clever medicine” (pharmakôn . . . sophôn, 472) to make
its case – a clear allusion to the art of rhetoric that the sophists – the
itinerant lawyers, speechwriters, and public-relations men of Euripi-
des’ day – would teach to anyone willing to pay. The opposing voices
or arguments alluded to by Polyneices specifically recall the teachings
of the sophist Protagoras, who reportedly claimed that “there are two
contradictory arguments about everything”5 and boasted that he could
“make the weaker argument the stronger.”6
In referring to his brother’s “unjust argument” (adikos logos, 471),
Polyneices associates it directly with the Protagorean “weaker” (or
“worse” or “unjust”) argument of Euripides’ own era. Eteocles
responds to his brother’s charge of using the “clever medicine” of
sophistry by throwing the word for “clever” back at him, using it
in the sense of “wise”: “If the beautiful and the wise [sophon, 499]
were the same for all, / men would not have the two-sided strife
of debate.” Eteocles’ reply not only dramatizes the difference he has
with his brother but also illustrates the very point he is making: the
brothers themselves cannot agree on the meaning of the word sophos.
What might be hair-splitting cleverness for Polyneices is wisdom for
Eteocles.
5
Robin Waterfield, trans., The First Philosophers: The Presocratics and the Sophists (Oxford:
Oxford University Press, 2000), p. 211.
6
W. K. C. Guthrie, The Sophists (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1971), p. 182.
For a positive interpretation of Protagoras’ boast, see Edward Schiappa, Protagoras and
Logos: A Study in Greek Philosophy and Rhetoric. Studies in Rhetoric/Communication, ed.
Thomas W. Benson (Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 1991), pp. 110–
11, who points out that the “weaker” cause need not carry pejorative connotations:
Protagoras might be claiming to be able to help the weaker but just cause prevail over
the stronger but unjust one.
4
INTRODUCTION
Eteocles then gives the theoretical underpinning for his own claim
to justice by arguing that “nothing is like or equal among men / except
names – and names are not facts.” In rebutting Polyneices’ claim that
the “facts” of the case are plain to all, Eteocles draws a sophistic dis-
tinction between “facts” and “names.”7 The so-called facts trumpeted
by Polyneices are not grounded in reality; they are merely “names”
or words (signifiers) whose meaning (signified) differs for different
people. Far from being self-evident, the meaning of such terms as the
“beautiful” and the “wise” (or the “true” and the “just”) is subject to
dispute.
The debate between brothers, therefore, reveals several layers of
conflict; they disagree not only about the meaning of individual words
but also about the very possibility of arriving at clear, shared mean-
ings for words. Underlying these differences is a disagreement about
how language works and how meaning is made. Whereas Polynei-
ces assumes that the gods both define and dispense truth and justice,
Eteocles claims that meaning is constructed by human beings in the
political arena, through the “two-sided strife” of argument, debate,
philosophical discussion, and so on.8 Eteocles maintains, therefore, that
the so-called word of truth merely conveys his brother’s self-interest,
which is no more transcendent than his own position. For Eteocles,
language is an instrument that is inextricably linked to politics and
history.
The clash between the single, clear “word of truth” and the “two-
sided strife of debate” enacts the central agon of Euripidean drama: the
controversy over the phonocentric tradition that dominates the history
of Western philosophy from Plato to Saussure, according to Jacques
Derrida. This tradition is grounded in a “metaphysics of presence,”
which Derrida defines as a “system in which the central signified, the
7
Gorgias makes this distinction the third tenet of his treatise On Nature (or On What Is
Not): “The spoken word is our means of communication, but the spoken word is not
the same as substantial things and things with being. Therefore, it is not the case that
we communicate things with being to our neighbours; what we communicate is the
spoken word, which is different from these entities.” Translated by Waterfield, The First
Philosophers, p. 235.
8
The Greek phrase I translate as “the two-sided strife of debate” (
. . . ", 500)
is ambiguous, referring not just to debate but to any form of verbal contention.
5
original or transcendental signified, is . . . absolutely present outside a

system of differences.”9 In explaining the assumptions underlying this
belief, Derrida argues that “the thought of being, as the thought of
this transcendental signified, is manifested above all in the voice,” and
refers to the “absolute proximity of voice and being, of voice and the
meaning of being, of voice and the ideality of meaning.”10
The phonocentric tradition therefore privileges the spoken over the
written word, assuming that voice “is the signifying substance given
to consciousness” or “is consciousness itself.”11 Voice is deemed to be
capable of fully and immediately conveying not only presence but also
meaning (the “signified”), which transcends or effaces the word (the
“signifier”). It is as if the inner will of the divinely privileged speaker,
fully embodied in his spoken word, gains access to the realm of Being
itself, achieving a mythical harmony between inner and outer, signified
and signifier, self and other. Such a voice or discourse has no need for
any external sign or embellishment to convey its meaning, because it
“makes its own case,” as Polyneices puts it.
By contrast, Polyneices regards “shifting, intricate interpretations”
as a weak substitute for the self-evident, self-present “voice of truth.”
The same opposition Polyneices draws between living, healthy speech
and a misleading, deficient, but clever imitation of it is also found in
Plato’s dialogue Phaedrus, which Derrida extensively analyzes in an
early essay.12 In the dialogue, Socrates argues that writing, far from
providing “a recipe [pharmakon, 274e6] for memory and wisdom,”
produces “forgetfulness” in those employing it, because they rely on
“external marks” instead of their own memory to help them remember
(275a).13 Since writing is a mere imitation of the “living speech” that
9
Jacques Derrida, Writing and Difference, trans. Alan Bass (Chicago: University of Chicago
Press, 1978), p. 280. In this passage Derrida is actually defining this metaphysics by its
opposite, so I have removed the term “never” from his formulation.
10
Jacques Derrida, Of Grammatology, trans. Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak (Baltimore: Johns
Hopkins University Press, 1976), pp. 20, 12.
11
Jacques Derrida, Positions, trans. and ed. Alan Bass (Chicago: University of Chicago
Press, 1981), p. 22.
12
See Jacques Derrida, “The Pharmacy of Plato,” in Dissemination, trans. Barbara Johnson
(Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1981).
13
Unless otherwise noted, translations of Plato come from Edith Hamilton and Huntington
Cairns, eds., The Collected Dialogues of Plato: Including the Letters. Bollingen Series 71
6
INTRODUCTION
cannot answer questions on its own (275d; 276a), exponents of writing

will gain not wisdom “but only its semblance” (275a).
In referring to writing as a “recipe” for forgetfulness, Plato uses
the same word (pharmakon) as Polyneices does when he speaks of his
brother’s “clever medicine” of sophistry – literally, “medicine” that is
added onto a sick or deficient logos or “argument.” Derrida uses the
term “supplement” – a sign that “is added, occurs as a surplus”14 –
to describe the function of the pharmakon in Plato’s dialogue. In the
phonocentric view, writing – or other additions or “supplements” to
the voice, such as the “clever medicine” of sophistry and rhetoric –
initiates a “process of redoubling” that necessarily defers, distorts, and
disperses meaning, presence, and truth.15 In Derridean terms, the play
of linguistic substitutions “permitted by the lack or absence of a center
or origin” is called the “movement of supplementarity,” because “it
comes to perform a vicarious function, to supplement a lack on the
part of the signified.”16
If Polyneices’ “word of truth” evinces the “metaphysics of pres-
ence,” Eteocles’ denial of the possibility of a shared, transcendent
meaning of “truth” or “justice” amounts to a critique of this meta-
physics. For Eteocles, because language is merely conventional, it nec-
essarily lacks any stable, authoritative center of meaning; the lack of
such a center permits the proliferation of competing signs, resulting in
an irresolvable “two-sided strife of debate.” Eteocles is in effect con-
ducting a deconstruction of his brother’s “metaphysics of presence”:
his denial of identity between signifier and signified, his insistence
on linguistic instability, is closely related to the Derridean concept of
“difference.”17 In Eteocles’ view, the potential of language to serve as
(Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1961). The Greek text is Plato, Opera, vol. 2,
ed. John Burnet. Rpt. 1941 (Oxford, Clarendon Press, 1901).
14
Jacques Derrida, Writing and Difference, p. 289.
15
Jacques Derrida, Dissemination, pp. 109–10.
16
Jacques Derrida, Writing and Difference, p. 289.
17
For Derrida’s definition of the “metaphysics of presence” as the “exigent, powerful,
systematic, and irrepressible desire” for a “meaning . . . thinkable and possible outside of
all signifiers,” see Jacques Derrida, Of Grammatology, pp. 49, 73. Elsewhere, in Writing
and Difference, p. 279, Derrida argues that this metaphysics involves “the determination
of Being as presence in all senses of this word. It could be shown that all the names related
to fundamentals, to principles, or to the center have always designated an invariable
7
a bridge for understanding, to provide identity (as a “like” or “equal”

element), only emphasizes the inherent disjunction between signifier
and signified. The different meanings of the words “beautiful” and
“wise” that emerge in the brothers’ dialogue become emblematic of
“difference” in this wider sense. According to Eteocles, the very use
of language throws men into the realm, not of fixed, simple meaning,
but of “shifting, intricate interpretations” and the “two-sided strife of
debate.”
Whereas Polyneices offers a holistic view of the cosmos, one in
which human beings are capable of deriving clear, univocal meanings
and values from higher powers, Eteocles posits a dualistic world in
which the divine (or the transcendent) and the human, subject and
object, signifier and signified, are irremediably divided.18 The contro-
versy between brothers is mirrored in Euripides’ contemporary society,
riven as it was by a semiotic, intellectual, and political crisis – a crisis
that amounted to ancient Athenian “culture wars.” Euripides boldly
transforms the Mycenaean tale of the warring sons of Oedipus into
the warring “schools” of thought of his own age: Polyneices repre-
sents the old world of myth and song (muthos), centering on gods and
heroes, whereas Eteocles becomes a spokesman for the new human-
centered world of logic, rhetoric, and analysis (logos). The challenge to
the mythic worldview that arose in late-fifth-century Athens caused a
controversy that reverberates throughout Euripidean drama.19
presence . . .” “Difference” as used by Derrida means the dispersal, deferral, and absence,
which, as the necessary conditions of both meaning and presence, negate the possibility
of any originary meaning or presence. For a fuller discussion of this broader concept of
differance, versus Saussure’s “difference,” see Of Grammatology, pp. 62–5.
18
On the movement from mythical to early logical thought, see Marcel Detienne, The
Masters of Truth in Archaic Greece, trans. Janet Lloyd (New York: Zone Books, 1996),
pp. 125–6: “Man no longer lived in an ambivalent world in which ‘contraries’ were
complementary and oppositions were ambiguous. He was now cast into a dualist world
with clear-cut oppositions.” Although I think Detienne somewhat overstates the case
for this historical shift, his analysis captures well the brothers’ diametrically opposed
positions.
19
In “Die Sinnekrise bei Euripides,” in Tradition und Geist: Gesammelte Essays zur Dichtung,
ed. Carl Becker (Gottingen: Vandenhoeck and Ruprecht, 1960), Karl Reinhardt argues
that the crisis of meaning dramatized in Euripides reflects the sophistic revolution of his
period.
8
INTRODUCTION
As Athens began to evolve from a “song culture” into a “book

culture” and literacy became more widespread, skepticism grew about
voices and signs whose veracity had been widely accepted because
it was guaranteed by the gods.20 The attacks on traditional wisdom
made by the pre-Socratic philosophers and sophists heightened the
growing skepticism in the fifth century b.c., as did the questioning
of old aristocratic truths in the democratic polis. The Peloponnesian
War (431–404 b.c.) further eroded ethical and social norms formerly
validated by the gods, prompting further redefinition or dismantling of
old concepts of truth and justice, at least among the intellectual elite.
Yet there was no sharp break in ancient Athens between an illiterate
“song culture” and a literate “book culture,” no radical dichotomy
between a holistic world of myth and a dualistic world of logic and
analysis. Euripides exaggerates the opposing positions taken by Polyne-
ices and Eteocles for dramatic effect. Polyneices’ concept of a simple
logos that conveys transcendent truth does not reflect the complexity
and ambiguity of divine pronouncements and signs as they are gener-
ally represented in archaic Greek culture. Interpreting the will of the
gods as it was expressed in oracles, omens, and other signs was typically
a vexed and contentious matter, subject to both personal and political
agendas, as many examples from Greek literature and history reveal.21
The transition from song to book, from myth to logic, occurred
gradually: the growth of literacy, the rise of prose, and the flowering of
philosophy in the late fifth and early fourth centuries in Athens did not
result in widespread loss of belief in the old gods or the disappearance
20
For this shift, see two books by Eric A. Havelock: The Literate Revolution in Greece and Its
Cultural Consequences (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1982) and Preface to Plato
(Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1963). I borrow the terms “song culture”
and “book culture” from John Herington, Poetry into Drama: Early Tragedy and the Greek
Poetic Tradition (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1985), pp. 3–4.
21
Two examples will suffice. In the Iliad Hector rebukes Poulydamas for interpreting a
bird-sign as a warning to the Trojans not to press their attack against the Greek ships
(12.231–50); Hector’s interpretation is later proven to be tragically wrong. In Herodotus’
Histories, the Athenians ask for a second oracular response from the Delphic priestess
when the first seems to foretell doom for their city-state at the hands of the Persians.
A controversy erupts over the proper interpretation of this second oracle (the famous
“wooden wall” oracle). After a vigorous debate, Themistocles’ interpretation finally
prevails (7.139–44).
9
of their worship. Rather, an interpenetration of worldviews must have

occurred, in a way analogous, perhaps, to the transition between the
“book culture” and the information age that is currently developing
(albeit much more rapidly) in Western society.22 The proliferating use
of computers and the Internet in our own day has not yet produced
the much-prophesied death of the book any more than the ascendant
“book culture” produced the death of the “song culture” in ancient
Greece.
Nevertheless, many Athenian citizens, including leading intellec-
tuals, writers, and politicians, put growing faith in the power of new
hermeneutic practices, such as political debate, philosophical dialectic,
historical analysis, and the sophistic “double arguments.” The expo-
nents of these new practices sought to attain the truth – if not abso-
lute truth, at least truth in a relative or pragmatic sense – through
deliberation and rational argumentation.23 In the Funeral Oration, for
example, Pericles voices great confidence in the ability of the Athe-
nian democracy to strike a proper balance between deliberation and
action: “We Athenians, in our own persons, take our decisions on
policy or submit them to proper discussions, for we do not think
there is an incompatibility between words and deeds; the worst thing
is to rush into action before the consequences have been properly
22
Eric Havelock’s notion that a “literate revolution” occurred in fifth-century Greece,
although provocative, has been criticized not only for relying too heavily on an over-
simplified concept of literacy but also for creating a false dichotomy between orality and
literacy. See Andrew Ford, “From Letters to Literature: Reading the ‘Song Culture’ in
Classical Greece,” in Harvey Yunis, ed., Written Texts and the Rise of Literate Culture in
Ancient Greece (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003), pp. 16, 21.
For a criticism of Havelock’s view, expressed in The Literate Revolution in Greece, that
writing initiated a revolutionary advance in abstract or rational thought in fifth-century
Athens, see Deborah Tarn Steiner, The Tyrant’s Writ: Myths and Images of Writing in
Ancient Greece (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1994). Steiner argues that “writ-
ing is not a discovery that inevitably heralds in a new rational, skeptical, and objective
approach,” asserting that in the earliest references to writing in the literary and archaeo-
logical record, it retains the enigmatic character and ritualistic powers of nonalphabetic
signs (p. 5).
23
Waterfield, The First Philosophers, p. 285, sees an “undeniable” influence of Protagoras
on the anonymous sophistic treatise called Double Arguments (or Contrasting Arguments).
But he finds “truer repositories of his influence” in the debates dramatized in Euripides
and reported in Thucydides (p. 285, n. 2). In “The First Humanists,” Proceedings of the
Classical Association 65 (1988): 19, W. K. C. Guthrie asserts that Protagoras replaced the
criterion of truth with “a pragmatic one of advantage and disadvantage.”
10
INTRODUCTION
debated” (Thucydides, History 2.40).24 Yet in spite of this confidence

among the elite, most Athenians doubtless distrusted the intellectual
revolution and the challenge it posed to received truths.25 This tension
between the security of traditional beliefs and the newfound freedom
to challenge them is reflected in the debate between Euripides’ feuding
brothers.
Critics from ancient to contemporary times have generally consid-
ered Euripides a partisan of the intellectual revolution, and the fact
that his drama incorporates features of the new world of thought
so extensively seems to support this view. The locus classicus for the
presentation of Euripides as an archetypal sophist and radical demo-
crat is Aristophanes’ Frogs, a comedy in which characters representing
Aeschylus and Euripides compete for recognition as poet laureate of
the underworld. There, Euripides boasts that he taught the Athenians
to question and criticize everything:
I taught them all these knowing ways

By chopping logic in my plays,
And making all my speakers try
To reason out the How and Why.
So now the people trace the springs,
The sources and the roots of things. . . . (971–6)26
24
For a discussion of some of the difficulties interpreting Thucydidean speeches, which
the author himself acknowledges are not a verbatim account but an attempt to capture
the gist of what the original speakers said (1.22.1), see Harvey Yunis, “Writing for
Reading: Thucydides, Plato, and the Emergence of the Critical Reader,” in Harvey
Yunis, ed., Written Texts and the Rise of Literate Culture, pp. 201–4.
25
E. R. Dodds, The Greeks and the Irrational (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1951),
p. 189, cites the prosecutions of impiety that took place about 432 b.c. as evidence of
the strong Athenian backlash against the enlightenment.
26
8 %9 " / :( ,(%(#, /
%( *; < 8 < /
; (8=, >( ? / . ; 8 . . . (Frogs 971–5). Both Greek and
English versions of Aristophanes’ play are taken from Benjamin Bickley Rogers, trans.,
Aristophanes, In Three Volumes, vol. 2: The Peace, The Birds, The Frogs. The Loeb Classical
Library, ed. G. P. Goold. Rpt. 1979 (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1979).
Aristophanes’ caricature of Euripides doubtless plays on prevailing negative stereotypes
about the playwright, who, with only five first prizes in the tragic competition, was rela-
tively unpopular during his lifetime. Aristophanes’ description of him as a logic-chopper
who employs “twists / And turns, and pleas and counterpleas” ()
%) ;

%() ; ("), 775; cf. ("8 957) recalls Polyneices’ reference to Eteocles’
“shifting, intricate interpretations” (
. . . !"#, 470).
11
A little earlier in the play, Euripides vaunts his ability to pick apart
his verses (860–4), a penchant that will come to be associated with
the Athenian theatergoers’ love of the subtleties of book-learning
(1109–14). Aeschylus, by contrast, represents the simple martial values
of the generation of Athenians who defeated the Persians at the Battle
of Marathon in 490 b.c. One detects in this contrast between the two
playwrights a nostalgia for a simpler, more virtuous age, one more
given to action than to ruminating and questioning.27
Euripides’ sustained, self-conscious examination of myth, of
rhetoric, and even of drama itself does distinguish him from his pre-
decessors and contributes to his widespread reputation as an icono-
clast.28 This reputation is evident at the very beginning of the contest
in the Frogs, when Euripides insists on praying to “private gods” of his
own (891), a reference to the skepticism about the nature and exis-
tence of the gods that pervades Euripidean drama. Elsewhere in the
play Aeschylus condemns Euripides not only for courting popularity
with lowlifes (771–6) but also for inspiring the citizens with a love of
debate and haranguing (1069–73). Euripides counters by boasting that
he is “democratic” (952) for giving significant parts to such female
27
Aristophanes’ portrait of an effete book culture, though exaggerated for comic effect,
does reflect a historical development that occurred in fifth-century Athens. The greater
availability of texts in the classical period shifted the focus from poetry’s role in cultivating
virtue to a focus on its aesthetic and formal qualities, according to Ford, “From Letters
to Literature,” pp. 19–20. For the view that “. . . Euripidean tragedy is not just a new
kind of writing, but reflects a new kind of reading,” see Ruth Scodel, “Euripides and
Apatê,” in Cabinet of the Muses, ed. M. Griffith and D. J. Mastronarde (Atlanta: Scholars
Press, 1990), p. 85.
28
G. M. A. Grube, The Drama of Euripides (London: Methuen, 1941), describes Euripides
as “the poet of a new age” who “shocked his contemporaries profoundly” (p. 6) and
as “a rebel and an innovator” (p. 26). Cf. similar descriptions of the playwright by
Werner Jaeger, Paideia: The Ideals of Greek Culture, trans. Gilbert Highet, vol. 1 (New
York: Oxford University Press, 1939), p. 352; T. B. L. Webster, “Euripides: Traditionalist
and Innovator,” The Poetic Tradition: Essays on Greek, Latin, and English Poetry, ed. Don
Cameron Allen and Henry T. Rowell. The Percy Graeme Turnbull Memorial Lectures on
Poetry (Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1968), p. 39; and Stephen G.
Daitz, “Concepts of Freedom and Slavery in Euripides’ Hecuba,” Hermes 99 (1971):
226. For more recent examples, see Simon Goldhill, Reading Greek Tragedy (Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 1986), p. 161, and D. J. Conacher, Euripides and the Sophists:
Some Dramatic Treatments of Philosophical Ideas (London: Duckworth, 1998), p. 9.
12
INTRODUCTION
characters as mistresses, slaves, maidens, and nurses, who previously

lacked them (948–50).
The radical implications of this questioning of received truths
become clear in Eteocles’ speech. In rebutting his brother’s claim to
possess the “word of truth,” Eteocles implies that no voice (or sign or
symbol) is necessarily privileged over another, because all signs (includ-
ing language) are conventional, made by human beings, not inherent
in the natural order of things, made by gods. He suggests that, if all
signs are “created equal,” so to speak, by human agents, no argument
can be demonstrably superior to another.
Eteocles’ challenge to received truth could be seen as liberating.
After all, Polyneices’ assertion of the inherent justice of his position
strikes a smug tone, and his view of the truth, based as it is in a rigid
set of hierarchies, has an elitist ring. Eteocles’ notion that no one party
has a stranglehold on the truth could be taken as a defense of the spirit
of open debate and free inquiry espoused by the democratic polis. In
the archaic age the gods purportedly dispensed the gift of eloquence to
kings and aristocrats,29 and the rights of the lower classes to speak out
were almost nonexistent prior to the sixth century b.c. But the consti-
tutional reforms of Cleisthenes, which “created the most democratic
state the Greek world had ever seen,” helped break up the power of the
upper classes, as did the sophists’ willingness to teach anyone the skill
of rhetoric so important in the young democracy.30 In addition, the
sophistic claim to be able to teach virtue challenged the assumption of
the archaic age that virtue belonged to the highborn alone.31 Sophistic
distinctions such as the one drawn by Eteocles between “names” and
“facts” were not mere intellectual exercises but had strong political
implications: “The debate on education is to be seen as part of the
29
Detienne, The Masters of Truth, p. 66; also see Friedrich Solmsen, “The ‘Gift’ of Speech
in Homer and Hesiod,” Transactions of the American Philological Association 85 (1954): 4–5.
30
Josiah Ober, Mass and Elite in Democratic Athens (Princeton: Princeton University Press,
1989), p. 69. Ober argues that before the reforms of Solon in 594 b.c., the status of the
lower classes was equivalent to that of “foreign-born slaves” and that the poor “had no
forum for political action” (p. 60). My claim about the impact of the sophists must be
qualified by the fact that they generally charged fees for their teachings.
31
Goldhill, Reading Greek Tragedy, pp. 238–9.
13
political struggles in society as to who should have access not simply

to knowledge but to status and power.”32
Other Euripidean characters use the same distinction between
“names” and “facts” to question the aristocratic equation of high birth
with noble character. One even finds slaves using this distinction to
argue that they are slaves in name, but not in fact.33 Traditional truths
and hierarchies – the “natural” superiority of gods over men, nobles
over commoners, men over women, free citizens over slaves – come
under similar scrutiny in Euripidean drama, which presents a whole
series of cowardly heroes, bold women, and noble slaves.
However, the questioning of traditional truths and representation of
marginalized groups in Euripidean drama does not necessarily mean
that the playwright himself advocated radical views. Playwrights in any
age use the prevailing “new” or unorthodox thoughts in their drama
not only to engage but also to challenge their audiences.34 Attributing
the views expressed by a playwright’s characters to the playwright him-
self, or assuming that those views epitomize the meaning of a complex
and often contradictory body of work, is an egregious example of the
biographical fallacy.35
Critics from ancient to modern times have often confused the issue.
Neither the use of sophistic techniques and concepts in the plays nor
32
Ibid., p. 239.
33
See, for example, the servant in the Helen who says, “. . . I do not have the name of
liberty / but have the heart.” . . . *
:", / 8 (730–1).
The old man in the Ion expresses a similar sentiment: “. . . A slave bears only this /
Disgrace: the name. In every other way / An honest slave is equal to the free.” @ %#"
:
( ,(: 8", / $ &
# ) *
8" / 3

, 2( *(
/ < (854–6). In the fourth century b.c. Aristotle conveys the
conventional view that some people are suited to be slaves by nature (Politics 1254a15–17).
See Aristotle, In Twenty-Three Volumes, vol. 21: Politics, trans. H. Rackham. The Loeb
Classical Library. Rpt. 1990 (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1932).
34
Grube, The Drama of Euripides, p. 30, asserts that all three of the great tragic playwrights
“consciously desired to convey a message to their contemporaries.”
35
Conacher, Euripides and the Sophists, p. 12, rightly points out that the playwright’s dra-
matic exploitation of sophistic material does not mean that he himself advocated such
views. Mary R. Lefkowitz, “‘Impiety’ and ‘Atheism’ in Euripides’ Dramas,” Classical
Quarterly n. s. 39.1 (1989): 72, makes a similar point about Euripides’ supposed skep-
ticism and disbelief in the gods. For a discussion of the ancient biographical traditions
that impute those views to Euripides, see another article by Lefkowitz, “Was Euripides
an Atheist?” Studi Italiani di Filologia Classica, 3d series no. 5 (1987): 149–66.
14
INTRODUCTION
the skeptical comments certain characters make about the gods nec-
essarily mean that the plays themselves promote iconoclastic views.36
Indeed, the use of the new modes of thought obscures a fundamental
conservatism lying at the heart of Euripidean drama.
Although the stereotyping of Euripides as a radical innovator contin-
ues to strongly influence modern studies,37 a small but growing group
of contemporary critics does detect a conservative bent in his body of
work. Allan rightly criticizes the scholarly tendency to follow Aristo-
phanes’ lead in branding Euripides as a corrupt sophist. He argues
instead that “. . . Euripides, like Thucydides, is in fact morally conser-
vative in an important respect; that is, his works presuppose morality
not amorality.” The playwright’s “readiness even to challenge the new
thinking itself” is part of this conservatism.38
Lefkowitz also finds a conservative strain in Euripides, arguing that
his drama inculcates a traditional “lesson,” one conveyed by other
religious rituals as well: “. . . to do honour to the gods, and, in the
36
For a survey of the critical tendency to assume that Euripides’ plays subvert or challenge
traditional religious views, see Lefkowitz, “‘Impiety’ and ‘Atheism’ in Euripides’ Dra-
mas,” p. 71, n. 4. For a debunking of the stereotype of the sophists themselves as a group
of radical freethinkers, see William Allan, “Euripides and the Sophists: Society and the
Theatre of War,” in Martin Cropp, Kevin Lee, and David Sansone, eds., Euripides and
Tragic Theatre in the Late Fifth Century. Illinois Classical Studies 24–5 (Champaign: Stipes
Publishing, 2000), pp. 148–9.
37
Zeitlin refers to the common critical perception of Euripidean drama as “[i]ronic, deca-
dent, ‘modern,’ even ‘post-modern’” in “The Closet of Masks: Role-Playing and Myth-
Making in the Orestes of Euripides,” Ramus 9.1 (1980): 51. A great many studies done
within the past few decades share this perception. See, for example, R. P. Winnington-
Ingram, “Euripides: Poiêtês Sophos,” Arethusa 2.2 (1969): 127–42; Helene Foley, Ritual
Irony: Poetry and Sacrifice in Euripides (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1985); Jacqueline
de Romilly, La Modernité d’Euripide (Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1986); Ann
Norris Michelini, Euripides and the Tragic Tradition (Madison: University of Wisconsin
Press, 1987); and Charles Segal, Euripides and the Poetics of Sorrow: Art, Gender, and Com-
memoration in Alcestis, Hippolytus, and Hecuba (Durham and London: Duke University
Press, 1993).
For a sense of the controversy that Euripides still generates, in spite of the prevailing
view of him as a radical innovator, see Ann Michelini, “Euripides: Conformist, Deviant,
Neo-Conservative?” Arion 5.1 (1997): 208–22.
38
Allan, “Euripides and the Sophists,” p. 155, n. 38. Similarly nuanced in its approach is
Foley’s discussion of the “increasingly futile” appeals to traditional morality in Euripidean
drama and the susceptibility of these appeals to “sophistic challenge.” See Helene P. Foley,
Female Acts in Greek Tragedy. Martin Classical Lectures (Princeton: Princeton University
Press, 2001), pp. 290–1.
15
process, to remind men of their mortal limitations.” The drama does

so, in part, by showing the triumph of the gods over those mortals who
would question or defy them. Lefkowitz points out that the characters
who deny the existence of the gods “do so out of desperation.”39
Kovacs criticizes the tendency of modern scholars of Euripides
to assume that the poet is “skeptical and anti-traditionalist,” arguing
instead that his drama is informed by traditional heroic themes. He
further maintains that the criticism of the gods voiced by Euripidean
characters serves “to draw out the popular view of the gods to its logical
and discreditable conclusion.”40 If Euripidean drama transmits a sense
of the exhilarating freedom ushered in by the intellectual revolution,
it conveys even more strongly a sense of anxiety brought about by the
dislodging of traditional beliefs.
Eteocles illustrates the potential for duplicity offered by the new
modes of thought. Later on in his speech, it becomes clear that
he is cynically manipulating the sophistic distinction between names
and facts to serve his own self-interest. Because the “good” (or the
“beautiful”) differs for different people, Eteocles can argue tyranny
is a good (chrêston, 507) that it would be “cowardice” to abandon
(509); moreover, he concludes that the pursuit of power is the “best”
(or “most beautiful”) pursuit for him: “If one must do a wrong, it’s
best [kalliston, 525] to do it / pursuing power – otherwise, let’s have
39
Lefkowitz, “‘Impiety’ and ‘Atheism’ in Euripides’ Dramas,” pp. 75, 72. Lefkowitz’s
article serves as a healthy corrective to stereotypical views about the radical nature of
Euripidean drama. But it is difficult to draw a univocal moral from plays with such
poignant depiction of human suffering at the hands of the gods, who are criticized so
pointedly.
40
David Kovacs, The Heroic Muse: Studies in the Hippolytus and Hecuba of Euripides
(Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1987), ix–x, 118. Notable among the small
number of studies predating Kovacs’ that detect a conservative ethos in Euripides are
those of Arrowsmith, Pucci, and Whitman. In Four Plays by Aristophanes: The Clouds,
The Birds, Lysistrata, The Frogs (New York: New American Library, 1984), trans. William
Arrowsmith et al., p. 161, Arrowsmith sees in the drama of both Aeschylus and Euripides
a conservative “attempt to harmonize mythology and morality.” In The Violence of Pity
in Euripides’ Medea (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1980), Pietro Pucci detects in the
play (and in Euripidean drama generally) a conservative impulse to restore a lost sense of
mastery and presence. In Euripides and the Full Circle of Myth (Cambridge, MA: Harvard
University Press, 1974), Cedric H. Whitman likewise finds in Euripides an attempt to
recreate a lost wholeness.
16
INTRODUCTION
virtue” (524–5).41 Here the brazen redefinition of value terms reflects

a dangerous abuse of sophistic argumentation, one with destructive
consequences for the Athenian democracy that will be discussed by
Thucydides. Obedience to the time-honored laws of the gods, with
the codes of speech and conduct that they enforced, would seem to
offer a more reliable and just guide to human conduct than Eteocles’
clever logic-chopping.
The use – or abuse – of the new modes of thought raised disturb-
ing questions, questions that were far from being merely academic.
About a half-dozen years before the Phoenician Women was produced
(ca. 409 b.c.), the Athenians used arguments similar to Eteocles’ to jus-
tify a brutal exercise in power politics. Thucydides’ Melian Dialogue
(416/415 b.c.) reports the Athenians’ attempt to rationalize their brutal
reduction of Melos, a Spartan colony that had sought to remain neutral
in the Peloponnesian War. Just as Eteocles claims that tyranny is a good
(507) that it would be cowardly to give up, so the Athenians rationalize
their conduct as serving “the good of [their] own empire” (5.91). Act-
ing otherwise would, they claim, be seen by their allies as “a sign of
weakness in us” (5.95). At the beginning of the war, Pericles voices
a less stark but equally self-interested justification of the Athenian
empire, which he compares to a “tyranny” that must be defended in
order to preserve Athens’ “imperial dignity” (2.63).
The issues raised in the debate between brothers in the Phoeni-
cian Women resonate throughout the text of Thucydides. We can read
Euripides’ portrayal of the feuding brothers as a comment not only on
the universal horror of war but also on what Grube calls the “fratri-
cidal conflict” of the Peloponnesian War.42 At the time the play was
produced, that war had already been raging for more than twenty
years, and Athenian reversals in the years preceding the staging of the
play, particularly the disastrous outcome of the Sicilian Expedition (413
b.c.), paved the way for an oligarchic coup in Athens in 411 b.c.43
41
4 " %&" "A, " 8" / #
( ,
(5 "1.
(Phoenician Women, 524–5)
42
Grube, The Drama of Euripides, p. 9.
43
Foley, Female Acts, p. 291, sees in the play’s concern with the abuse of power a reflection
of its immediate historical context: “Phoenissae was produced in circa 409, shortly after
17
The brothers’ failure to resolve their conflict peacefully and their

attempt to rationalize their refusal to compromise seem to confirm
Thucydides’ judgment that human passions are ungovernable (3.84).
Polyneices’ claim to have exclusive possession of the “word of truth”
exemplifies an unwillingness to critically examine one’s own position –
a theme that pervades both Euripidean drama and Thucydidean his-
tory. Indeed, subsequent events will prove Polyneices to be as arrogant
and rigid as Eteocles; Antigone’s judgment that Polyneices “followed
[his] quarreling name” (1494)44 makes an ironic comment on the
“word of truth” to which Polyneices appealed: his own name, which
in Greek roughly translates as “much quarreling,” turns out to reveal
a truth about his character that he does not perhaps acknowledge.
Antigone sees both of her brothers as fulfilling “the venging power”
of the curse placed on them by their father, Oedipus (1555–8). Thus,
in the end, despite its ironic twists, the play confirms the traditional
power of divinely sanctioned speech.
Euripidean drama challenges the growing faith in the new modes of
thought by depicting their failure, contingency, or abuse and asking:
When human self-interest reigns in place of the old gods and traditional
codes of conduct, where can one appeal in the face of injustice? If
people no longer believe that truth and justice are defined by the gods
but depend instead on subjective definitions that vary from individual
to individual, what common ground remains for settling disputes,
trusting one another’s word, and distinguishing right from wrong?
Where is the clear voice of truth or justice in a world that now puts its
faith not in a divine or prophetic voice but in a problematic exchange
of voices in which the worse cause can triumph over the better? At
a historical moment when moral virtues seem to be defined by the
interests of the Athenian empire, Euripidean characters, both male and
female, express longing for (or confidence in) a voice that serves as a
transparent medium of truth and justice. Such expressions of longing
occur at pivotal moments in Euripidean drama, combining pathos and
irony with trenchant rhetorical analysis.
the oligarchic revolution of 411 in which the disrespect of the oligarchs for traditional
nomoi and their perversion of public power for private ends were notorious.”
44
" * 1$ (Phoenician Women 1494). So runs Antigone’s direct address to her
brother.
18
INTRODUCTION
The expression of nostalgia, a word whose root meaning in Greek

is “a painful yearning for a return home,” may take several forms in
the plays. A character may explicitly refer to a prior context or period
that is idealized in contrast with his or her present circumstances. The
Medea furnishes an example of this explicit form of nostalgia. Betrayed
by her husband Jason, who broke the oath he swore to her (492–5),
Medea laments the lack of a god-given touchstone that would help her
distinguish truth from lies (516–19). The nostalgia may also be implicit,
as it is in the Hecuba, when the protagonist wishes that the limbs of
her body could take voice to successfully supplicate her captor – an
indirect reference to the loss of the respect traditionally accorded the
suppliant (836–45).
Paradoxically, an implicit form of nostalgia also underlies cer-
tain utopian wishes in Euripidean drama.45 Refusing to believe his
son’s sworn denial that he has raped his wife, Theseus yearns for a
“sure token” of judging people’s hearts and distinguishing truth from
falsehood; he expresses the wish that people had a second, “just voice”
that would refute their ordinary, deceptive voice (Hippolytus 925–31;
my translation). All of these characters long for a means of detecting
or overcoming duplicity in an age that no longer offers a divinely
sanctioned voice or sign of truth and justice.46
Another form of nostalgia expresses itself as a yearning for home
that may or may not be fulfilled. Successful homecomings serve as a
structural element of the plot in many of the plays produced in the
last decade or so of Euripides’ career.47 Examples of this plot pattern
include Iphigenia in Tauris (ca. 415–13 b.c.) and Helen (412 b.c.), whose
heroines escape from barbarian captors with the help of close relatives
and return home to Greece. (A variation on the pattern is provided by
45
Friedrich Solmsen, Intellectual Experiments of the Greek Enlightenment (Princeton: Prince-
ton University Press, 1975), p. 76, asserts that utopian yearnings are a characteristic
feature of the Greek enlightenment.
46
In his wish Theseus in effect transfers to human discourse the revelatory power tradition-
ally attributed to divine speech. All three of these examples of nostalgia in characters’
speeches will subsequently be analyzed in greater detail. For another instance of the
yearning for a clear means of judging human character, see Euripides’ Electra 373–9.
47
For a study of these plays, which typically feature intricate plots and narrow escapes
from disaster, see Anne Pippin Burnett, Catastrophe Survived: Euripides’ Plays of Mixed
Reversal (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1971).
19
the Ion, which portrays Ion’s reunion with his long-lost mother, but not
a return home from abroad.) Read against the historical background
of a vicious civil war, these plots suggest a desire to restore the former
glory of an Athens victorious over the mighty Persians, united with
other Greek city-states against a barbarian foe.
The tragedies of Euripides present a particular problem of generic
classification for the modern reader, because the structure and tone of
their plots vary so widely. The extent to which the protagonists succeed
in fulfilling their nostalgic yearning accounts for much of the striking
contrast presented by the dramas under study. Far from realizing his
wish for a voice that could transcend duplicity, Theseus commits a
catastrophic error in judgment by unjustly condemning his son in the
Hippolytus (428 b.c.); by contrast, the heroine of the Helen (412 b.c.)
realizes her longing to restore her reputation and reunite with her
husband, accounting for the play’s happy ending. The denouement of
both dramas may well reflect the historical context in which they were
produced. Theseus’ error echoes the fear of betrayal and lack of trust,
even among family members, so prevalent in the Peloponnesian War,
whereas Helen’s rescue represents an escapist retreat from the painful
realities of that war.
Whether it finds expression as a resonant motif in individual
speeches, as an element of the plot, or as a pervasive mood, nostalgia
provides an important thematic and dramatic focus in the four plays
under study in this book. Although the yearning for a return home
(nostos) serves as an important structural element in the two later plays,
the Ion and the Helen, it also serves as a central, organizing theme in the
two earlier ones, the Hippolytus and the Hecuba. The nostos plot pat-
tern and the yearnings that accompany it appear in most of Euripides’
extant dramas.48
One may well ask why Euripidean characters would turn to the
mythic gods in their longing for a “just voice” and “word of truth.”
48
In “Fantasies of Return in Greek Tragedy and Culture” (Ph.D. diss., University
of California at Berkeley, 2005), Tyson Hausdoerffer suggests that the Andromache
(ca. 424 b.c.), in which Neoptolemus returns home, but as a corpse, presents a bitterly
ironic variation on the nostos plot (pp. 189–92). Hausdoerffer points out the presence of
the theme of return and nostos subplot in a range of other extant dramas of Euripides,
including Hecuba, Trojan Women, Alcestis, Hippolytus, Electra, and Orestes – not to mention
many of the fragmentary plays (pp. 68–9).
20
INTRODUCTION
Homer, Hesiod, and other early Greek poets present gods who are
often cruel, violent, petty, and deceptive. Indeed, the corpus of Euripi-
des contains many sharp condemnations of the arbitrary, cruel nature
of divine justice. However, the plays also dramatize the real dangers
posed by the loss of traditional beliefs – a fact that has not been properly
appreciated. Polyneices’ self-evident “word of truth” evokes an ideal-
ized “metaphysics of presence” that provided a strong ethical frame-
work for the denizens of a culture that, even in Euripides’ day, still
called on the gods “to witness and defend all sworn transactions” such
as oaths and entreaties.49 Although the intellectual elite may have ques-
tioned the existence of the gods, most Athenians continued to believe
in them and in their ability to transmit their will to mortals through a
voice or other sign.
A passage from the Apology of Xenophon, an author born about a
half century later than Euripides, illustrates that these beliefs persisted
into the fourth century b.c. Accused of impiety, Socrates denies that he
worships strange new gods of his own instead of the gods worshipped in
the city-state. He maintains that the voice of his guardian spirit, which
he alone can hear, is just another example of a religious phenomenon
widely familiar to his culture:
As for introducing ‘new divinities,’ how could I be guilty of that merely in

asserting that a voice of God is made manifest to me indicating my duty?
Surely those who take their omens from the cries of birds and the utterances
of men form their judgments on ‘voices.’ Will any one dispute either that
thunder utters its ‘voice’ or that it is an omen of the greatest moment? Does
not the very priestess who sits on the tripod at Delphi divulge the god’s will
through a ‘voice’? But more than that, in regard to God’s foreknowledge of
the future and his forewarning thereof to whomsoever he will, these are the
same terms, I assert, that all men use, and this is their belief. (12.1–13.4)50
49
Deborah Boedeker, “Euripides’ Medea and the Vanity of BCDCE,” Classical Philology
86 (1991): 97.
50
# % 6 ' ) 0 *%9 ,(8"
8% 2 6
(( 2 "6 ; ; %&" F '%% ,) ; F A "1
"1 A ". 5"& 3
8G H 6 H 6
8%( ,(A" I; J 3 K * " F8" ; 6 <
& "& %%8
;
& 8 ; "8 % 8

; "( 5:
, ; , >( " *%1 , L # ;

8%( ; M( (Xenophon, Apology 12.1–13.4). Both the English and the
21
We see Polyneices appealing to divinely sanctioned forms of speech

several times in the course of Euripides’ drama. First, he calls the gods
to witness that his brother initiated the conflict (433–4) and broke his
sworn oath to give up power (481–3). Next, he claims that he fulfilled
his part of the agreement out of fear of the “curses with which once
our father cursed us” (475). Finally, he invokes the gods to support his
claim for justice and his demand for retribution:
I call the gods to witness
I have done all in justice, now most unjustly
I am robbed of my fatherland, an offense to heaven. (491–3)
Polyneices’ “word of truth” reflects the power of divinely sanctioned

speech in the “song culture,” a culture that related the capacity for
truth-telling to the power of memory: the word for “truth” used by
Polyneices (alêtheia) literally means “absence of forgetfulness.”51 For
Detienne, such speech could include not only oaths and curses but
also the proclamations of “masters of truth” such as the king, poet,
and diviner – privileged speakers whose words inevitably “intermeshed
with the language of actions,” accomplishing their ends without the
need for logical persuasion.52
Greek versions of Xenophon’s Apology come from Xenophon, Anabasis Books IV–VII;
Symposium and Apology, trans. O. J. Todd, vol. 3 of 3. Loeb Classical Library, ed. T. E.
Page. Rpt. 1961 (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1922).
51
Detienne, The Masters of Truth, p. 39, speaks of this as the “true, deep meaning” of poetic
truth in the archaic age. For a critique of Detienne’s views on the connection between
truth and memory, see Louise H. Pratt, Lying and Poetry from Homer to Pindar: Falsehood
and Deception in Archaic Greek Poetics, Michigan Monographs in Classical Antiquity (Ann
Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1993), pp. 17–22. Pratt cites examples from archaic
poetry in which “the presence of memory may be entirely irrelevant to the speaking
of alêtheia” (p. 18), insofar as alêtheia “excludes not only forgetfulness but also inven-
tion, falsehood, fiction, intentional omission, insincerity, equivocation – anything that
might prevent the hearer’s perceiving accurately the subject matter under discussion . . .”
(p. 21).
The connection between truth and memory is nonetheless relevant to Polyneices’
claim to possess a divinely sanctioned “word of truth,” since his claim is based on the
gods having witnessed the history of his quarrel with his brother.
52
Detienne, The Masters of Truth, pp. 67, 70. For an examination of the connection Deti-
enne and other critics draw between archaic poets and truth telling, see Pratt, Lying and
Poetry. Pratt argues that archaic Greek poetry shows too much appreciation for artful
lying and inventive deception to support the claim that poetry and truth are inextricably
22
INTRODUCTION
Although certainly not rational or logical in a modern sense, Greek

mythology does display a certain logic in that it offers a comprehen-
sive explanation of the workings of the cosmos. The Stoic philosophers
considered the poetry of Homer and Hesiod to be “like clearing houses
of ancient, pre-philosophical wisdom.”53 After all, one could be rea-
sonably sure about how to win the gods’ favor, avoid their wrath, and
appease them with sacrifices and prayers. People could count on the
gods to protect certain principles of justice and truth. Zeus himself
guaranteed the sanctity of oaths, protected the rights of suppliants,
and enforced the law of hospitality; he also punished unwarranted acts
of aggression among men.54 For his part, Apollo foretold the future
for those who could interpret his oracles accurately, and the Muses
guaranteed the truthfulness of the poems sung by poets.
Nor was mythology at a loss to account for the extraordinary and
the irrational. Archaic poetry and society held the gods responsible for
everything from storms and eclipses in nature to illnesses and catastro-
phes that befell people, as well as to strong passions they experienced
and remarkable deeds they achieved. This way of thinking had a cer-
tain logic, too, inasmuch as the gods themselves were often arbitrary
and unpredictable. The gods could well decide to bless a man with
good fortune, but they could equally well decide to strike him down
for no apparent reason.
This is not to say that the gods necessarily spoke or communicated
truthfully, simply, or clearly to mortals; Polyneices’ reference cannot be
interpreted literally. The mythological worldview not only explained
irrational phenomena but also embraced logically inconsistent and
even contradictory perspectives. Like all the other gifts of the gods to
humanity, the divine “word of truth” in Greek mythology is always
linked. Detienne’s claims for the efficacious powers of “magicoreligious speech” (p. 70)
seem somewhat overstated as well. But the contrast he draws between the mythic and
sophistic views of language and truth evinces well the collision of worlds that Euripides
dramatizes so effectively.
53
Keimpe Algra et al., eds., The Cambridge History of Hellenistic Philosophy (Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press), p. 222.
54
Cf. Hugh Lloyd-Jones, The Justice of Zeus (Berkeley: University of California Press,
1971), p. 8.
23
potentially double.55 Even though the gods knew the reality behind
appearances and could choose to share this knowledge with privileged
mortals, either directly or indirectly, the “truth” they dispensed always
had the potential of slipping into falsehood. As Detienne points out,
truth and falsehood were not polar opposites in archaic Greek thought
but were complementary.56 Perhaps the most famous example of this
doubleness is Apollo’s oracle, which always accurately foretold the
future, but only if an interpreter could correctly decipher its riddling,
ambiguous language.
The mythic tradition offers us many other examples besides Apollo’s
oracle to illustrate the duplicitous or misleading nature of divine speech
and signs. One could cite the false dream sent by Zeus to Agamemnon
in Homer’s Iliad (2.1–36); the voice of Hesiod’s Muses, who “know
how to speak many falsehoods that resemble the truth”57 (perhaps the
prototype of the sophistic boast of being able to make the worse cause
appear to be the better); and the ever-present possibility of misreading
or failing to heed divine signs, oracles, and omens in epic and tragedy.
Furthermore, the gods often disguised themselves to test, trap, seduce,
or destroy mortals.58
55
The “two urns,” the one of blessings, the other of evils, from which Zeus dispenses
“gifts” to people is a case in point (see the parable told by Achilles in the Iliad 24.525–33).
56
For Detienne, The Masters of Truth, pp. 132–3, Polyneices’ notion that the truth is clear
and self-consistent reflects not mythological thought but an early stage of philosoph-
ical thought that defines truth in a more abstract and logical way. In fact, Detienne
argues that Polyneices’ concept resembles the views of the pre-Socratic philosopher
Parmenides and a certain “philosophicoreligious” sect of sixth-century b.c. thinkers.
Detienne’s argument is cogent if Polyneices’ concept is considered in the abstract, out
of its dramatic context. But, considered within that context, Polyneices’ “word of truth”
serves metaphorically to reflect a mythological worldview in which traditional forms of
speech such as oaths still held currency.
57
Hesiod, Theogony 27. The fuller context of the quotation reads: “We know how to
speak many falsehoods that resemble the truth, but we also know how to utter the truth,
when we wish” (my translation). The entire Greek quotation runs as follows: “4
=:
&
8% *:( , / 4 , N’ *8
,
8 %":((”
(Theogony 27–8).
58
One thinks, for example, of the myths in which Zeus appears to Europa, Leda, and
Danaë in disguise; one also thinks of Homer. Athena’s deception of Hector is a climactic
moment in the Iliad (22.226–305), and at the beginning of the Odyssey the same goddess
visits Odysseus’ estate disguised as a mortal (1.96–324). Cf. the description, also in the
24
INTRODUCTION
The archaic Greek portrayal of the gods as duplicitous, contentious,

and arbitrary still contained an ethical, logical dimension, in that the
gods sanctioned certain norms of speech and behavior and exacted
punishment for violations of these norms. By the same token, the
poetry of Homer and other epic poets also offered moral instruction
by providing examples of noble conduct for both men and women to
emulate. Archaic Greek literature represents the voice of the gods
as capable of conveying transcendent truth and justice to chosen
recipients, whether through divinely sponsored oracles, judgments, or
poetry. These recipients of divine inspiration had no need to parse or
analyze the voice or signs of the gods, but knew how to interpret them
spontaneously and intuitively. As Socrates said in the Apology, poets,
prophets, seers, and others seized by divine inspiration are unable to
give a rational account of whatever activity they engage in during that
state (21e3–22c8).
The “intricate interpretations” referred to by Polyneices originate
in the arts of rhetoric and criticism developed in the fifth century
b.c. Before the age of the sophists, skillful speakers had no need to
study these arts, because they were thought to have received the gift
of eloquence from the gods.59 For their part, soothsayers, prophets, and
diviners needed no instruction in the art of reading bird signs, omens,
and oracles, and it was the Muses’ gift of memory, not historical study,
that allowed the epic poet to sing truthfully of the heroic past. Greek
tragedy itself is the final flourishing of a “song culture” in which the
poetic voice could still evoke presence and the living word of divine
truth – a truth that is passed on through “the living memories and
speech of its members.”60 A metaphysical scheme that privileged the
divine “word of truth,” however inconsistent and arbitrary it might
appear, nonetheless provided an ethical foundation and stable social
hierarchy for the denizens of the “song culture.”
Odyssey, of the gods who visit cities in disguise in order to see which men are law-abiding
and which are not (17.483–7).
59
George Kennedy, The Art of Persuasion in Greece (Princeton: Princeton University Press,
1963), p. 36.
60
Jennifer Wise, Dionysus Writes: The Invention of Theatre in Ancient Greece (Ithaca: Cornell
University Press, 1998), p. 26.
25
In the context of a culture that was still primarily oral, both the pre-
Socratic philosophers (ca. seventh to fifth century b.c.) and the sophists
(fifth century b.c.) challenged traditional views of the truth. Some of
the most important pre-Socratic philosophers to have questioned the
mythic explanations of the cosmos offered by Homer and Hesiod used
poetic language to convey their views. Anaximander, for example, who
posited the “infinite” as the source of the cosmos, reportedly used a
poetic style to write his book on nature sometime in the first half of the
sixth century b.c.61 The later sixth-century philosopher Xenophanes
used “the language of poetry” to call into question the portrayal of the
gods’ immoral conduct found in the poetry of Homer and Hesiod.62
The fragments of Heraclitus’ book that come down to us (ca. 500 b.c.)
use paradoxes and poetic figures to describe the divine logos that he
considers to be the origin and ordering principle of the cosmos.63
The fifth-century thinker Parmenides used epic meter to record his
claim to have been divinely inspired (as did Hesiod), but unlike him,
described the cosmos as an abstraction, Being, whose essential nature
could be apprehended only by logic.64
Just as many pre-Socratic philosophers relied on the poetic medium
favored by the “song culture” to convey their iconoclastic views, so the
sophists introduced their new technology of argumentation through
“public performances of their skills in prose,”65 competing for recog-
nition in the open-air marketplace of ideas: “They were also, like the
tragic poets and their actors, performers in a competitive culture, dis-
playing their wares at major festivals like the Olympic Games, and able
to command audiences throughout the Greek world.”66
Even though it took place in what was still a “performance culture”
at Athens,67 the intellectual revolution challenged the security and
61
John Mansley Robinson, An Introduction to Early Greek Philosophy: The Chief Fragments
and Ancient Testimony, with Connecting Commentary (New York: Houghton Mifflin, 1968),
pp. 23–4.
62
Ibid., pp. 54–5.
63
Ibid., pp. 94–9.
64
Ibid., pp. 114–17.
65
Yunis, Written Texts and the Rise of Literate Culture, p. 4.
66
Allan, “Euripides and the Sophists,” p. 146.
67
For the notion that classical Athens was a “performance culture,” see Simon Goldhill and
Robin Osborne, eds., Performance Culture and Athenian Democracy (New York: Cambridge
University Press, 1999).
26
INTRODUCTION
stability provided by the mythological worldview. In the new world,

intellectuals could use the self-conscious study of logic and rhetoric to
overturn the authority of the old gods and justify their own immoral
behavior. This critique of tradition only became possible through the
development of a new metaphysics, one that challenged the old mythic
assumptions by viewing language solely as a human construct and
rhetoric as a subject that could be taught. The sophistic study of lan-
guage – and of civilization itself – made the new distinctions between
signifier and signified, between name and fact, grist for its philosoph-
ical mill. We have seen how these new distinctions could be used to
subvert old notions of the natural superiority of god over man, man
over woman, Greek over barbarian, and so on.
Euripides was not the only playwright to incorporate the conflict
between traditional beliefs and sophistic relativism in his drama. One
thinks of Sophocles, whose Antigone upholds the “timeless, unwrit-
ten” laws of the gods against Creon’s concern with the stability of the
polis68 – or whose Neoptolemus wavers between honoring his pledge
to Philoctetes and breaking it at the instigation of the opportunis-
tic Odysseus. The conflict between old and new modes of thought
also finds comic expression in most, if not all, of the plays of Aristo-
phanes. But of the three great Greek tragic playwrights, Euripides
most self-consciously uses this conflict as a means of raising a range of
interrelated philosophical and political questions: What is the proper
role rhetoric should play in the polis? Do democratic modes of debate
help resolve conflict and strife or do they merely serve to perpetuate
them? Can reasoned modes of argumentation help us reach univer-
sally acknowledged truths, if value terms are ultimately subjective and
politicized?
For Nietzsche, Euripides’ analytic, self-conscious approach to
drama meant the end of the noble tragic tradition of Aeschylus and
Sophocles.69 However, the combination of analysis and pathos, of
68
Antigone 455 (my translation).
69
“What were you thinking of, overweening Euripides, when you hoped to press myth,
then in its last agony, into your service? It died under your violent hands . . . And even
as myth, music too died under your hands . . . And because you had deserted Dionysos,
you were in turn deserted by Apollo. Though you . . . burnished a sophistic dialectic for
the speeches of your heroes, they have only counterfeit passions and speak counterfeit
27
detachment and nostalgia, accounts for much of Euripides’ dramatic

power, as well as his appeal to the postmodern age. Many parallels
between Euripides’ age and our own suggest themselves: we, too, live
in a highly rhetorical and litigious age; we, too, are experiencing our
own intellectual revolution, as we move from the age of the book to
the digital age. This paradigm shift has overturned traditional assump-
tions in a range of fields including not only science, technology, and
economics but also the arts, religion, and politics. The consequent
“proliferation of new languages”70 is creating both excitement and
anxiety in our day, just as it did in Euripides’.
We share the ancient Athenian ambivalence about the potential of
verbal contention to lead to a clear, simple voice of truth. On the one
hand, we have great faith in the potential of this dialectical exchange
of voices to lead to well-reasoned conclusions and progress in many
fields. On the other hand, we have grown skeptical of any claims to
have attained a transcendent voice of truth, whether made by political
candidates, scientists, religious leaders, or advertising campaigns. Like
the ancient Athenians, we are all too aware of how easily contending
parties in the political and social arena may distort the facts to serve
their own self-interest.
In spite of our yearning for a single, plain voice of truth, the
“two-sided strife of debate” still plays an essential role in our political
and popular culture. Significantly, only two political parties possess
voices powerful enough to determine national policy (in the United
States, at least), and debates that are almost exclusively two-sided still
play a key role in the American election process, from the national
speeches.” With this rhapsodic fervor, Nietzsche condemns Euripides in The Birth of
Tragedy. See Friedrich Nietzsche, The Birth of Tragedy and The Genealogy of Morals, trans.
Francis Golffing (New York: Anchor Books, 1956), p. 69. For an account of the pervasive
influence of Nietzsche’s negative judgment, see A. Henrichs, “The Last of the
Detractors: Friedrich Nietzsche’s Condemnation of Euripides,” Greek, Roman and
Byzantine Studies 27 (1986): 369–97. In “The Closet of Masks,” p. 51, Zeitlin refers
to Euripidean drama as evincing a “self-conscious awareness of a tradition which has
reached the end of its organic development.”
70
N. T. Croally, Euripidean Polemic: The Trojan Women and the Function of Tragedy. Cambridge
Classical Studies, ed. M. F. Burnyeat et al. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,
1994), p. 66, speaks of the “dismay at the proliferation of new languages” registered by
Thucydides, Aristophanes, and other writers of Euripides’ period.
28
INTRODUCTION
to local level. The practice of “double arguments” initiated by the

sophists is still used as a pedagogic device in law schools. As in ancient
Athens, the court system in the West is still structured by the presen-
tation of arguments by two opposing sides, including the possibility
of cross-examination of one side by another. In fact, Western democ-
racies still largely rely on the axiom that a reasoned, discriminating
exchange of views is most likely to attain the most accurate, truthful,
and just conclusions.
The belief that a reasoned exchange of viewpoints leads to “insight
and knowledge,”71 shared as it was by Protagoras, Pericles, and Plato,
has influenced other avenues of inquiry. The peer review process plays
an indispensable role not only in the process of academic publica-
tion but also in the modern scientific method. The scientific tradition
rejects any notion of transcendent truth in favor of theories or laws
whose truth is always provisional, insofar as they are subject to a coun-
tervailing voice or argument that better accounts for the empirical
data. Just as we assume that the open exchange of ideas will produce
both the best scientific results and the best governmental policy, so
we trust that open competition in the marketplace will result in bet-
ter products, fair pricing, and economic vitality. Western culture, as a
whole, still maintains a Protagorean optimism that the critical use of
double arguments benefits our political, scientific, and economic life,
a credo summarized well by Tannen:
Our determination to pursue truth by setting up a fight between two sides

leads us to believe that every issue has two sides – no more, no less: If both
sides are given a forum to confront each other, all the relevant information
will emerge, and the best case will be made for each side.72
But even as Western culture relies on debate and on the hermeneu-

tics of scientific and scholarly exchange, it has become increasingly
skeptical about whether these modes of inquiry really do lead to truth
and justice in the political, social, and legal arenas. The propensity of
lawyers, politicians, and media representatives for making the weaker
71
Deborah Tannen, The Argument Culture: Stopping America’s War of Words (New York:
Ballantine Books, 1998), p. 258.
72
Ibid., p. 10.
29
cause prevail over the stronger only increases this skepticism, as do

the increasingly polarized positions taken by opposing camps in the
culture wars.73
Prior to the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, the American
culture wars were fought primarily over domestic issues such as “polit-
ical correctness,” gender equality, educational policy, and the canon.
For conservatives, the loss of a shared belief in transcendent truths
deprives the country both of its founding ideals and of its coherent
identity. They argue that the tendency of individuals and groups to
define the “good” in terms that promote their own narrow concerns
subverts the general civic interest, a line of argument that has only
intensified since the declaration of the so-called war on terror.
Like Polyneices, conservatives maintain that truth and values tran-
scend political considerations, whereas liberals, like Eteocles, argue
that such categories are inevitably political. Conservative politicians
and cultural critics voice support for a canon based on the “best”
works, regardless of the ethnic origin, class status, or gender of the
author. Like Eteocles, critics on the left respond that the “best” is a
relative term, since it is inevitably defined and shaped by subjective,
politicized interests. The two sides in our culture wars no more agree
on the meaning of the “good” or “best” than do the brothers in
Euripides’ play.
Furthermore, conservatives deplore the “politically correct” agenda
of empowering and enfranchising groups that had been marginalized
in our democratic culture. We have seen how the sophistic arguments
of nature (physis) versus convention (nomos) and name (onoma) versus
thing (pragma) worked to subvert the traditional hold of the ancient
Greek aristocracy. The same sophistic distinctions have been used by
feminists, for example, to argue that gender roles in a patriarchal society
are primarily a product of social conditioning (nomos), not of genet-
ics (physis). The notion that language usage reflects political hierar-
chies bolsters the feminist argument for using gender-neutral language
73
In describing the positions of opposing camps in the ancient and modern culture wars,
I do not mean to deny the existence of a much wider spectrum of political views, either
in Euripides’ day or our own; I only seek to emphasize the fact that political rhetoric
does become polarized in times of crisis.
30
INTRODUCTION
instead of language that privileges the male (“humanity” in place of

“mankind,” for example). Feminist and other groups have likewise
challenged what they see as a Eurocentric bias in the canon. The
rhetoric employed by these groups of “giving voice” to individuals
or groups who have been “silenced” or “silent” reflects the ongoing
importance of the phonocentric debate in our own day.
The dichotomy traced out in the Phoenician Women of a single, tran-
scendent voice of authority versus multiple, competing voices persists
in our current culture wars. Underlying our contemporary debate are
the same questions about the status of truth, voice, and meaning that
were so urgent in Euripides’ Athens. The deconstruction of the voice
conducted by the sophists has clear political implications in our day,
just as it did in Euripides’. Now as then, opposing camps are debating
the status of the “powers that be,” the authority of traditional beliefs
and hierarchies, the importance of inquiry and debate, and the prob-
lem of preserving (or extending) imperial interests. Is there a voice
of truth and justice that commands unquestioning acceptance, that
transcends hierarchies of class, ethnicity, and gender? Or are claims to
possess such a voice politically motivated?
The rift between the two camps in our own culture war threatens
to open wider in the controversy about how best to respond to the
attacks of September 11. The rhetoric employed by President Bush and
his supporters urging a “war on terror” epitomizes the conservative
belief in the existence of truths that transcend history and politics. For
instance, the president has drawn a whole series of moral absolutes in
describing this war as a battle of good versus evil and in dividing the
world’s countries into friends and enemies based on their reaction to
American policies. The administration has cited the need for moral
clarity and a united front in this war. We can detect in this rhetoric
a nostalgia for a single, plain voice of truth in our own turbulent,
uncertain age.
The calls for national unity in the “war on terror” have muted some
of the prevailing skepticism about our political leadership and damp-
ened our tolerance for dissent. At the same time, the fear and instability
provoked by the terrorist attacks on America and other nations have
increased our nostalgia for a bygone simplicity and security, as well as
for shared moral beliefs. Like Theseus, Medea, and other Euripidean
31
characters, we yearn for a clear, reliable voice or sign by which we can

distinguish friend from enemy, good from evil, truth from deception.
But this yearning for “moral clarity” in the war becomes more prob-
lematic as “two-sided verbal strife” proliferates globally, and we hear
ourselves denounced by our adversaries in the very terms with which
we denounce them.74
The self-conscious analysis of language and the deconstruction of
the voice in Euripidean drama, therefore, do not merely reflect philo-
sophical concerns about the relationship of language to reality, but
broaden out to have important political implications, both in Euripi-
des’ day and in our own. The conflict between tradition and innovation
is a central one in all of the plays under study (and perhaps, in some
form, in the entire Euripidean corpus). Understanding this conflict
will enable us to place the drama of Euripides in the context of the
culture wars of his period, in addition to shedding light on our own.
Before exploring the radical nature of the challenge to received
views represented by Eteocles, we must first discuss at greater length
the traditional view of truth and justice championed by Polyneices.
74
In “Condemnation without Absolutes,” New York Times, October 15, 2001, p. A23,
Stanley Fish plays the role of a modern-day Eteocles to President Bush’s Polyneices,
arguing against the possibility “of justifying our response to the attacks [of September 11]
in universal terms that would be persuasive to everyone, including our enemies. Invoking
the abstract notions of justice and truth to support our cause wouldn’t be effective anyway
because our adversaries lay claim to the same language. (No one declares himself to be
an apostle of injustice.)” This dilemma has become particularly acute in the wake of the
prisoner abuse scandals that came to light in the spring of 2004.
For a conservative declaration of the need for “moral clarity,” see William J. Bennett,
Why We Fight: Moral Clarity and the War on Terrorism (New York: Doubleday, 2002).
32
1
THE “JUST VOICE” AND “WORD OF

TRUTH”: DIVINE REVELATION OR
MYTHOPOETIC CONSTRUCT?
A s we have seen, Polyneices’ “word of truth” evokes an ideal-

ized age in which the gods served as the ultimate arbiters and
dispensers of truth and justice. Nostalgia for an earlier period is not a
new phenomenon when it appears in the texts of Euripides and his
contemporaries, but is already present at the beginnings of Greek lit-
erature, in the poetry of Homer and Hesiod (ca. eighth century b.c.).
The idealized nature of this yearning is perhaps implicit in the origi-
nal Greek meaning of the word “nostalgia.” Derived from the Greek
words nostos, meaning “return,” and algos, meaning “pain,” “nostal-
gia” literally means “a painful yearning for a return home,” as we have
seen. Homer’s Odyssey, the archetypal epic of return, vividly illustrates
“nostalgia” in its colloquial sense of “homesickness.” Early on in the
epic, Athena paints a vivid picture of its hero, detained far from home
by the nymph Calypso: “. . . Odysseus, / straining to get sight of the
very smoke uprising / from his own country, longs to die” (1.57–9).1
And, when we first meet Odysseus himself, Hermes finds him “sitting
out on the beach, crying, as before now / he had done, breaking his
heart in tears, lamentation, and sorrow, / as weeping tears he looked
out over the barren water” (5.82–4).
Odysseus’ heartsick longing for home qualifies him as the archety-
pal nostalgic hero in Western literature. The epic recounts his tri-
umphant return home to reclaim his rightful place as king, husband,
and father after twenty years of war and wandering. The happy reunion
1
Translations of Homer’s epic come from The Odyssey of Homer, trans. Richmond Latti-
more (New York: Harper and Row, 1967).
33
of Odysseus and his wife seems to satisfy not only their shared desire
for his return but also the reader’s desire to see good rewarded and evil
punished (in the form of the slaughter of the suitors who have taken
over Odysseus’ estate in his absence).2
People suffering from homesickness inevitably romanticize the
virtues of home, and, in Odysseus’ case, the allure of home is cer-
tainly enhanced by the wide variety of obstacles and dangers he must
overcome to arrive there, including a long sea voyage complete with
storms and shipwrecks, as well as encounters with cannibalistic tribes,
one-eyed monsters, and temptresses mortal and divine. Nor are his
troubles over once he finally reaches his destination, because he must
contend with a horde of young nobles who have taken over his estate
and are besieging his wife.
When Odysseus, disguised as a beggar, has his first private audience
with his wife Penelope, he compares her to a beneficent king whose
just rule ensures happiness and prosperity for all under his reign:
‘Lady, no mortal man on the endless earth could have cause

to find fault with you; your fame goes up into the wide heaven,
as of some king who, as a blameless man and god-fearing,
and ruling as lord over many powerful people,
upholds the way of good government, and the black earth yields him
barley and wheat, his trees are heavy with fruit, his sheepflocks
continue to bear young, the sea gives him fish, because of
his good leadership, and his people prosper under him.’ (19.107–14)
Odysseus’ comparison, which foreshadows his recovery of his rightful

place as king of Ithaca, implicitly likens his homecoming to a restora-
tion of a Golden Age.
This romantic treatment of homecoming militates against a critical
appraisal of the social and political hierarchies underlying Odysseus’
rule. As Thalmann argues, his victorious return “presents the aristo-
cratic male as suited by both nature and achievement to wield dominant
2
Aristotle considers tragic playwrights who employ this double structure to be guilty of
pandering to their audience, since the pleasure it offers is more appropriate for comedy
than for tragedy (Poetics 1453a30–39). For references to the Greek text, see Aristotle, De
Arte Poetica Liber (Poetics), ed. Rudolf Kassel (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1965).
34
THE “JUST VOICE” AND “WORD OF TRUTH”
authority in the well-ordered home and polity.” The “enchanted pic-

ture” of the happy reunion of Odysseus and Penelope obscures a soci-
ety deeply “polarized between high and low (mostly slaves),” with “its
strict division of roles.”3
The longing to restore lost harmony and plenitude, not just in an
individual aristocrat’s home but in an entire society, may be found in
another archaic Greek text: Hesiod’s Myth of the Five Ages conveys
nostalgia for a return to a more virtuous, harmonious, and unfailingly
prosperous period, a Golden Age now irretrievably lost (Works and
Days, 106–212). The men of this Golden Age led peaceful lives free
of pain, work, strife, and sorrow; like Adam and Eve in the Garden
of Eden, they lived easily from the bounty of the earth. Successive
ages eventually devolve into a “race of iron,” beset by continual woes,
labor, evildoing, and the breaking of oaths.
Thus the longing for an earlier age that is described as peaceful,
harmonious, and consonant with the will of the gods finds precedent
in early Greek literature. Derrida aptly describes the longing for an
original, imagined wholeness when, in a different context, he speaks
of “an ethic of nostalgia for origins, an ethic of archaic and natural
innocence, of a purity of presence and self-presence in speech, . . . ”4
Although Polyneices’ “word of truth” exemplifies belief in the “purity
of presence and self-presence in speech,” representations of divine
speech in the archaic age are generally much more complex than
Polyneices’ description of it as “single and plain” would imply.
One of the clearest examples of the power of divine speech to
capture reality and transmit truth is found in the “second” invocation
of the Muses in Book 2 of the Iliad. Here the poet makes clear that
his speech, unaided by divine help, is inadequate to the task before
3
See William G. Thalmann, The Swineherd and the Bow: Representations of Class in the
Odyssey. Myth and Poetics (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1998), p. 283, and passim.
For a treatment of the “gender-specific assumptions operating in this myth of return and
recognition,” see Karen Bassi, Acting Like Men: Gender, Drama, and Nostalgia in Ancient
Greece (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1998), pp. 121–2.
4
Jacques Derrida, Writing and Difference, p. 292. The loss of what Derrida calls the dream
of “full presence, the reassuring foundation” and the concomitant yearning to recover
“the absent origin” form a pervasive theme in Euripidean drama.
35
him – reciting the catalogue of ships and warriors that went to Troy
from Greece:
Tell me now, you Muses who have your homes on Olympos.

For you, who are goddesses, are there, and you know all things,
and we have heard only the rumour of it and know nothing.
Who then of those were the chief men and the lords of the Danaans?
I could not tell over the multitude of them nor name them,
not if I had ten tongues and ten mouths, not if I had
a voice never to be broken and a heart of bronze within me,
not unless the Muses of Olympia, daughters
of Zeus of the aegis, remembered all those who came beneath Ilion.
I will tell the lords of the ships and the ships’ numbers. (Iliad 2.484–93)5
The miraculous qualities of divine (or divinely inspired) speech to cap-

ture reality stand in vivid contrast to the inadequacy of human speech.
Not even if the capacities of human speech were vastly multiplied
(to the point of the poet’s having “ten tongues” and “ten mouths”) or
became superhuman (“unbreakable”) in character could they attain the
power of divine speech. It is only through the Muses’ gift of memory
that the poet is able to recite the catalogue accurately and completely –
epitomizing the link between memory and truth in archaic poetry.
The Muses fill the song they transmit to the poet with their own
being and presence, guaranteeing its truthfulness.6 Indeed, the only
5
The Greek text for Iliad 2.484–93 runs as follows:
O P( , Q( C
: 1 (—
+ %&" *(, #"(8 , 4(8 #,
J 3
8 I : 8 4—
R J%' S) ; " /(.

T 0 *%9 A( 7A,
4 8 3 %
)((, 8 3 (' I,
6 "", #
8 /" *,
, 6 C
# Q(, S ,%'
%8", ( 2( + O E
/
$
"T N ) *"8 # " #(.
Translations of the Iliad come from Richmond Lattimore, trans., The Iliad of Homer
(Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1951). The Greek text is Homer, Opera, vol. 1
(Iliad 1–12), ed. D. B. Monro and T. W. Allen, 5 vols. 3d ed. Rpt. 1978 (Oxford:
6
In Acting Like Men, pp. 53–5, Karen Bassi speaks of “the Muses’ eternal and infinite pres-
ence” as guaranteeing their omniscience in this passage, which reflects a “logocentric
36
way for mortals to attain truth is through the gift of divine inspiration
or insight.7
In the Iliadic passage, the distinction between the speech of gods
and that of mortals stems from the contrast between divine and
human knowledge. The Muses’ voice, reflecting their direct, first-
hand knowledge of events, is originary; by contrast, the poet’s voice is
derivative, based as it is on the mere “rumour” of events. The passage
reminds us of the opposition drawn by Polyneices between the “word
of truth,” an unfaltering, transcendent word that perfectly captures
reality, and the “unjust argument,” a necessarily fallible human voice
that is irremediably divorced from truth.
Like Homer, the archaic poet Hesiod conveys the view that justice
is a divine gift and is transmitted through the voice of the gods or their
privileged human agents.8 In the Works and Days Hesiod speaks of
the voice of Justice that “cries out” against the “false proclamations”
of wrongdoers, who “twist the courses of justice” (256–62).9 This
pairing of voices, the one identified clearly as the voice of Justice and
the other as the voice of injustice, directly recalls Polyneices’ assertion.
ideal rooted in nostalgia and disenchantment.” Even Pratt, Lying and Poetry, p. 15, who
is at pains to challenge Detienne’s identification of the archaic poet as a “master of
truth,” concedes that this passage apparently equates poetic narrative with divine reve-
lation. Rosalind Thomas, Literacy and Orality in Ancient Greece (Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 1992), p. 116, refers to Odysseus’ praise for the ability of the bard
Demodocus to sing with seeming first-hand knowledge of events long past (Odyssey
8.487–91).
7
The archaic belief that only the gods know truth is underlined by Chester G. Starr,
“Ideas of Truth in Early Greece,” La Parola del Passato 23 (1968): 351. In Conventions of
Form and Thought in Early Greek Epic Poetry (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press,
1984), pp. 148–9, William G. Thalmann speaks of the unbridgeable gap between divine
and human speech that results from the discrepancy in knowledge possessed by gods and
by mortals.
8
Eric A. Havelock, The Greek Concept of Justice: From Its Shadow in Homer to Its Substance in
Plato (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1978), pp. 135, 213. Whereas references
to justice in early Greek literature use the metaphor of the voice, in an increasingly literate
age these references tend to appeal more to the eye: for this notion, see Jesper Svenbro,
Phrasikleia: An Anthropology of Reading in Ancient Greece, trans. Janet Lloyd (Ithaca: Cornell
University Press, 1993), pp. 114–16, 160.
9
Translations of Hesiod come from The Works and Days, Theogony, The Shield of Heracles,
trans. Richmond Lattimore (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1978). The Greek
text of Hesiod is Theogonia, Opera et Dies; Scutum, ed. Friedrich Solmsen. Rpt. 1983
(Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1970).
37
It also recalls Theseus’ wish that men should have a second, truthful
voice that could rebut their ordinary, deceptive voice. In Hesiod, the
“just voice” is clearly the voice of a goddess, the personification of
justice. In Homer, too, “A ‘justice,’ singular or plural (dikê, dikai), is
something spoken aloud.”10
The metaphysical traits that Polyneices associates with the divine
voice of truth – its plenitude, robustness, and self-sufficiency – also
find precedent in early Greek epic. According to the proem of Hesiod’s
Theogony, the Muses, the “mistresses of words” (28), “breathed a voice”
into the poet (29–32),11 a voice later described as “harmonious” and
unfaltering (39–40), as it is in the Iliadic passage. The Muses’ voice
transfers to the poet their own “power to sing the story of things / of
the future, and things past” (31–2), a power that validates the truth of
the poet’s song. Hesiod’s Muses also bestow their own harmonious,
sweet speech on nobles, allowing them to settle even great disputes
(81–7) – perhaps the prototypical example of a voice that “makes its
own case.” The Muses are capable of transferring the ethical qualities
of their discourse to men, allowing nobles to judge “with straight
decisions” and issue “unfaltering” declarations (86).12
Hesiod’s Works and Days tells us that Justice, the daughter of Zeus,
curses those nobles who render “crooked” judgments and decisions
(219, 221) and who “twist her in dealing” (224). If she is hurt by slan-
der, Justice tells her father Zeus of men’s “wicked purpose,” ensuring
the punishment of those who “twist the course of justice aslant” (260,
262). Hesiod also refers to the gods’ awareness of men’s “crooked deci-
sions” (251), aided by “thirty thousand immortal spirits” who report
to them. Conversely, though, Justice blesses those who “issue straight
decisions” (225). The Hesiodic metaphor of straight and crooked
10
Havelock, The Greek Concept of Justice, p. 135.
11
*8 ( 8 6 / 8( . . . (Theogony, 31–2). So the narrator describes receiv-
ing the breath of divine inspiration.
12
The supposed truthfulness and straightness of the Muses’ voice in these references must
be qualified by the claim they make earlier “to speak many falsehoods that resemble
the truth” (Theogony 27; my translation). As Pratt points out, the longer passage from
which this quotation is drawn (Theogony 22–35) is “riddled with notorious interpretive
problems” (see Lying and Poetry, p. 107, n. 12, for a partial bibliography). For Pratt,
Hesiod’s description of the double-edged nature of the Muses’ speech “suggests a riddle
that reveals . . . the nature of poetry, its dual character, its peculiar status with regard to
truth” (p. 110).
38
speech anticipates the contrast that Polyneices draws between his own
direct, plain speech and the indirect, shifting speech of his brother.
As Pucci argues: “The truthful mythos of Polyneices, therefore, pre-
supposes the distinctions already made by Hesiod between a straight,
unerring discourse mirroring things as they are and a crooked, false
logos, deviating from things.”13
One finds in later archaic poetry other examples of the triumph of a
voice of truth over a devious voice whose injustice is made apparent to
all. The Athenian lawgiver and poet Solon, writing in the sixth century
b.c., employs the same metaphor of straightness when he speaks of
“fitting justice straight.”14 And in the Homeric Hymn to Delian Apollo,
the newly born god declares that his mission is to “declare to men the
unfailing will of Zeus” (132).15 The Greek for “unfailing” (nêmertea,
132) in the phrase “unfailing will,” which can also be translated as
“unerring,” also evokes the metaphor of straightness. The same Greek
phrase recurs in the Homeric Hymn to Pythian Apollo, in which Apollo
promises to dispense unfailing knowledge of the future to mortals from
his oracle (252).16
Apollo’s ability to reproduce reality through his spoken discourse is
again evident in Pindar’s Olympian Ode 8. Seeing a vision of a snake
rearing up on a rampart, alongside two others who die, Apollo trans-
lates the vision into “plain word[s]” (46) that convey the will of Zeus:
“Hero, Pergamos shall be taken where your hands have wrought.
So speaks to me this vision sent
by Kronos’ deep-thundering son, even Zeus.” (42–4)17
13
Pietro Pucci, The Violence of Pity in Euripides’ Medea (Ithaca: Cornell University Press,
1980), p. 80.
14
For a comment on Solon’s use of the metaphor of straightness, see Havelock, The Greek
Concept of Justice, p. 253. Translations of Pindar come from Richmond Lattimore, trans.,
The Odes of Pindar, 2d ed. 1947 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1976). The
Greek text comes from Pindari Carmina, cum Fragmentis, ed. C. M. Bowra (Oxford:
15
["A(] "1 ( S "8 5
A (Homeric Hymn to Delı́an Apollo, 132).
Both the Greek and English texts of the Homeric Hymns come from Hugh G. Evelyn-
White, trans., Hesiod: The Homeric Hymns and Homerica. The Loeb Classical Library
(Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1959).
16
The etymology of the Greek for “unfailing” or “unerring” (negative plus the verb
"#) implies the straight path of an arrow or spear to its mark.
17
“K8"% ; , U", " *"%(
($ / V *; #(
8%
W" / 3 5"%: S'$” (Olympian Ode 8.42–4).
39
In a demonstration of the “metaphysics of presence” that avoids the

ambiguity traditionally associated with his oracle, the god is able to
“translate” a vision into words that capture the nature of reality. Like
the Muses, Apollo is able to transmit his own voice or sign of truth to
mortals. In Olympian 6, he gives the hero Iamus the art of prophecy, in
order for him “to hear even then the voice ignorant of lies” (66–7).18
As Apollo’s gift implies, the gods’ ability to discern the true inten-
tions of men is a necessary condition of their ability to dispense justice.
Just as Polyneices claims that the gods are aware of the injustice done
him by his brother, so the Hesiodic texts portray Zeus as having accu-
rate knowledge of the minds and intentions of both men and gods.
In the Works and Days Hesiod assures us that men guilty of hubristic
acts will suffer punishment at the hands of Zeus, who will sometimes
punish the wrongdoer’s whole city (238–41). A little later in the poem,
we are told that Zeus, who “sees everything,” pays special attention
to the “kind of justice” maintained in the community (267–9). Like
the Muses, Justice derives her understanding and authority from her
status as a daughter of Zeus. Indeed, justice itself is a gift to men from
Zeus that sets them apart from the animals:
. . . there is no idea
of justice among [the animals];
but to men he gave justice, and she in the end
is proved the best thing
they have. If a man sees what is right
and is willing to argue it,
Zeus of the wide brows grants him prosperity.
But when one, knowingly, tells lies and swears
an oath on it,
when he is so wild as to do incurable damage
against justice,
this man is left a diminished generation hereafter,
but the generation of the true-sworn man
grows stronger. (278–85)
Here, Hesiod sets forth the idealistic notion that justice and truth can
be attained through right argument and honest oaths, and that people
18
' 3 & : / =8 %( . . . (Olympian Ode 6.66–7).
40
who engage in these forms of discourse are rewarded, whereas those

who do not are punished.19
Zeus is as aware of wrongdoing among the gods as he is of human
wrongdoing. As Hesiod tells it, Zeus’ own rise to power is a charter
myth that dramatizes both the power and the justice of his reign. In
the Theogony Zeus declares that any god helping him in his struggle
with the Titans will duly receive his privileges “according to justice”
(360), a promise that he fulfills (404). The terrible punishment of
Prometheus, who opposed Zeus’ authority by stealing fire from the
gods and giving it to humanity, exemplifies Hesiod’s moral that “it is
not possible to hide from the mind of Zeus, nor escape it” (613–14),
an echo of similar sentiments in the Works and Days. The Titans are
punished by being eternally “buried under the darkness and the mists”
by Zeus’ decree (729–32). Later poetry reaffirms the moral that Zeus
will inevitably discover wrongdoing. For example, Pindar recounts the
story of Tantalus, who also stole divine property: ambrosia and nectar,
the food and drink of the gods. Like Prometheus, Tantalus suffers a
terrible punishment because he underestimated Zeus’ power: “If any
man thinks to elude / God, he is wrong” (Olympian Ode 1.64–5). At
the end of Aeschylus’ Prometheus Bound, Hermes counsels a defiant
Prometheus to yield to the inexorable power of Zeus’ words: “The
mouth of Zeus / does not know how to lie, but every word / brings
to fulfillment” (1031–3).20
In archaic Greek poetry great crimes against the gods, particularly
Zeus, never go undetected or unpunished. Even if wrongdoers appear
to have escaped divine retribution, their descendants pay for their
crimes in later generations. Some of the most powerful Greek myths,
as well as the tragic dramas inspired by them, depict the working
out of ancestral curses on later generations: the myths of the house of
Laius (the Oedipus cycle of Sophocles) and Atreus (the Oresteia trilogy
19
Hesiod’s optimistic vision, which nostalgically evokes a kind of Golden Age, must be
understood in the context of the moralistic aims of his poem. This passage once more
reinforces the idea that the strain of nostalgia found in Euripides can be traced back to
the beginnings of Greek literature.
20
As translated by David Grene in Aeschylus 2. Four Tragedies: The Suppliant Maidens, The
Persians, Seven against Thebes, Prometheus Bound, in The Complete Greek Tragedies, ed.
David Grene and Richmond Lattimore (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1956).
41
of Aeschylus) and the story of Croesus in Herodotus. The justice of

Zeus, even if it is delayed, is never denied. As the chorus in Sophocles’
Oedipus at Colonus sings, the eyes of the gods “are fixed on the just, /
Fixed on the unjust, too; no impious man / can twist away from them
forever” (279–81).21
The unerring nature of the justice dispensed by Zeus points to
another traditional feature of Polyneices’ speech: the equivalence it
draws between truth and justice. This equivalence, already announced
in Hesiod,22 is evident in Polyneices’ interchangeable use of these
concepts. Both truth and justice share the characteristics of sim-
plicity, clarity, and immediacy; both convey the authority of divine
pronouncements; both are defined in opposition to “shifting, intri-
cate interpretations.”
The traditional belief in the civilizing, ordering power of divine
speech persisted in fifth-century Athens, which was still “much more
a culture of the spoken word than of the written word.”23 Euripidean
drama grew out of “a culture where gods were called to witness and
defend all sworn transactions,” such as oaths and entreaties.24 Memory
21
The translation of Sophocles, by Robert Fitzgerald, comes from Sophocles 1. Three
Tragedies: Oedipus the King, Oedipus at Colonus, Antigone, in The Complete Greek Tragedies,
ed. David Grene and Richmond Lattimore (Chicago: University of Chicago Press,
1954).
22
Cf. Pucci, The Violence of Pity, p. 80, and Pietro Pucci, Hesiod and the Language of Poetry
(Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1977), p. 50. For the identity of truth and
justice in Plato’s Socrates, see Havelock, The Greek Concept of Justice, p. 310.
23
F. D. Harvey, “Literacy in the Athenian Democracy,” Revue des Etudes Grecques 79.2
(1966): 588.
24
Deborah Boedeker, “Euripides’ Medea and the Vanity of BCDCE,” Classical Philology
86 (1991): 97. For an account of how the “song culture” still prevailed in classical Athens,
even as growing literacy changed the way that culture was viewed and transmitted, see
Ford, “From Letters to Literature.”
Most scholars agree with Harvey, “Literacy in the Athenian Democracy,” pp. 588,
603, that Athenian society was organized around the spoken word. But they disagree
about the extent of literacy that prevailed in classical Athens. Against the view that
literacy was widespread taken by Harvey (p. 628) and Havelock, The Literate Revolution
in Greece, see Ford, “From Letters to Literature,” pp. 24–5, and William V. Harris, Ancient
Literacy (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1989), who both believe that the
archaeological and literary evidence fails to support such a conclusion. For Harris, the
marked increase in the public use of written documents in the period does not necessarily
translate into evidence of widespread literacy (pp. 65, 114): he estimates that only about
5–10 percent of the citizenry of Attica was literate (p. 114). The controversy stems in
42
still played a large part in this culture’s transmission of history, knowl-

edge, and values.25 That Homer’s epics were still being recited from
memory in Euripides’ era is supported by two roughly contemporary
accounts. Plato’s Ion describes a rhapsode holding an Athenian audi-
ence spellbound with a recitation from Homer (535e), and a character
in Xenophon’s Symposium boasts that he can recite both of Homer’s
epics by heart (3.5). Such testimony exemplifies the persistence of an
oral culture in classical Athens, a culture that still located truth, to a
large degree, “in the living memories and speech of its members.”26
The intellectual elite in mid- and late-fifth-century Athens, chal-
lenging the traditional view that the gods defined truth and justice,
adopted radical new modes of thought that allowed people to define
truth and justice for themselves. The contentious exchange of voices
defended by Eteocles was an indispensable mode of inquiry and anal-
ysis in this ambitious process of redefinition, a process that represented
the beginnings not only of democracy but also of science, philosophy,
and rhetoric. The “two-sided verbal strife” (amphilektos . . . eris, 500)
to which Eteocles refers was widespread in ancient Athens. The term
signifies any form of verbal contention between two parties, including
debate in the assembly or council, opposing speeches in the law courts,
the dialectic of philosophical exchange, the pairs of opposing speeches
in the history of Thucydides, or even the verbal agon in theater.
The intellectual revolution not only challenged the mythic authority
of the gods and the moral authority of the poets but also established
new political and social hierarchies. For the elite, the “two-sided verbal
strife” provided a liberating freedom from old constraints. As Rankin
argues, “The mere fact of sophistic teaching presupposes some rational
liberation from the bonds of inherited social, familial and civic custom,
some separation from the accepted ancient view of the power of the
gods over human life.”27
large part from the difficulty of defining precisely what is meant by the term “literacy.”
Even in late-fourth-century Athens, the majority of the population may have been able
to read and write only proper names, according to Harris (p. 114, passim).
25
Cf. Wise, Dionysus Writes, p. 26.
26
Ibid., p. 26.
27
H. D. Rankin, Sophists, Socratics and Cynics (Totowa, NJ: Barnes and Noble, 1983), p. 92.
43
Eteocles’ claim that men construct their own meaning recalls the
Protagorean dictum that “[o]f all things the measure is man.”28 Accord-
ing to this dictum, which epitomizes the philosophy of the Greek
enlightenment, human beings become the makers and “measure” of
language, values, and reality itself. Protagoras’ radical skepticism and
subjectivity emerge clearly from Farrar’s interpretation of his dictum:
“We may never know what the cosmos is like; the reality to which
we do have access is our personal experience. This is suggested by
the emphasis of Protagoras’ formulation: man is the measure and the
measure of all things.”29
The deconstruction of the divine voice of truth gave the sophists the
freedom both to challenge traditional hierarchies and to validate newly
emerging views of truth. Eteocles’ claim that verbal strife is inevitable
and irresolvable recalls the Protagorean aphorism mentioned earlier:
“[T]here are two contradictory arguments about everything.”30 Pro-
tagoras’ assertion, which “sounds a keynote for much fifth-century
discussion” in ancient Athenian culture, represents a dramatic realign-
ment of “the criteria of truth, probability and proof.”31
Although critics such as Plato’s Socrates attacked the sophistic
fondness for double arguments as inherently immoral, proponents
28
‘ # "# 8" *(; " , . . . ’ The Greek comes from Hermann
Diels and Walther Kranz, eds., Die Fragmente der Vorsokratiker, griechisch und deutsch,
vol. 2 (Berlin: Weidmann, 1935), p. 263 (DK 80B1). Translated by Robinson, An Intro-
duction to Early Greek Philosophy, p. 245, who notes that Protagoras’ aphorism was report-
edly the opening line of his book, On Truth.
29
Cynthia Farrar, The Origins of Democratic Thinking: The Invention of Politics in Classical
Athens (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988), p. 48. Corey also underlines the
dramatic scope of Protagoras’ “most memorable lines”: “The all-encompassing quality is
particularly pronounced in the Greek, where the first word of the man-measure fragment
is not ‘man,’ but ‘everything’ (pantôn) – thus Protagoras’ book began: Of all things, the
measure (in some vague yet intriguing sense) is man (in an unspecified sense).” See David
D. Corey, “The Sophist Protagoras in Plato’s Theaetetus,” paper presented at the annual
meeting of the American Political Science Association, Washington, D. C. (Septem-
ber 3, 2005), p. 3.
30
Translated by Robin Waterfield, The First Philosophers, p. 211. This idea finds a close
parallel in a fragment of a Euripidean drama, Antiope: “If one were clever at speaking,
one could develop a contest of double arguments on every topic.” *
"#% (()
'% / %) , ,
8% 4 (' (my translation).
See fragment 189 in Augustus Nauck, ed., Tragicorum Graecorum Fragmenta (Hildesheim:
Georg Olms, 1964), p. 416–7.
31
Goldhill, Reading Greek Tragedy, pp. 230–1.
44
of rhetoric such as Gorgias and Protagoras affirmed that the use of

reasoned persuasion could help individuals choose the better of two
alternatives, become good citizens, and contribute effectively to the
young democracy. Protagoras claimed that anyone studying with him
would learn “[t]he proper care of his personal affairs, so that he may
best manage his own household, and also of the state’s affairs, so as to
become a real power in the city, both as speaker and man of action”
(Plato, Protagoras 318e–319a). So great was his confidence in the power
of rhetoric that Gorgias called it a master art that held all others under
its sway (Plato, Gorgias 456a). The breadth and confidence of this state-
ment reflect the fact that the philosophies of Protagoras and Gorgias,
“in spite of their dramatized starting-point from the antilogies and the
antitheses, are in reality optimistic philosophies.”32
The preference Eteocles expresses for mediation over violence,
disingenuous though it is, reflects this optimistic faith in debate (515–
17). Protagoras believed “that an essential condition of communal life
was to uphold the democratic virtues of justice, respect for other men’s
opinions and the renunciation of violence in favour of peaceful per-
suasion.”33 The replacement of force by persuasion and of dogma by
critical scrutiny is considered one of the sophists’ chief contributions to
democratic ideals. In the Funeral Oration, for example, Pericles voices
confidence in the wisdom of debate as a mode of reflection before
plunging into action: “We Athenians, in our own persons, take our
decisions on policy or submit them to proper discussions: . . . the worst
thing is to rush into action before the consequences have been properly
debated” (Thucydides, History 2.40). The idealistic belief that govern-
ment can strike a proper balance between word and deed informs
both the Athenian and American democracies. Underlying this belief
is the confidence that “debate and deliberation do issue in correct and
rational action, and that the logos that ‘wins’ is in some sense the right
one.”34
32
Mario Untersteiner, The Sophists, trans. Kathleen Freeman (New York: Philosophical
Library, 1954), pp. 233–4.
33
Guthrie, “The First Humanists,” p. 20.
34
Barbara E. Goff, The Noose of Words: Readings of Desire, Violence, and Language in Euripides’
Hippolytus (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1990), p. 79.
45
In setting out the aims and purpose of his history, Thucydides also
expresses confidence in the power of deliberation and rational assess-
ment of data. He announces a new, critical concept of historical truth
that is based on the “plainest” evidence and leads to “reasonably accu-
rate” conclusions (1.21). This evidence is superior to “that of the
poets . . . or of the prose chronicles,” which may be more pleasing
to hear but which cannot be tested or cross-questioned (anekselenkta,
1.21), a hermeneutic principle insisted on by Eteocles. In discussing
his methodology for reporting live speech, Thucydides adopts a new
form of truth – the sophistic criterion of probability or likelihood –
to replace the certainty conveyed by the living word of truth:
I have found it difficult to remember the precise words used in the speeches
which I listened to myself and my various informants have experienced the
same difficulty; so my method has been, while keeping as closely as possible
to the general sense of the words that were actually used, to make the speakers
say what, in my opinion, was called for by each situation. (1.22)
As Bassi argues, “In the absence of verbatim sources, Thucydides makes

the truth and accuracy of any given speech commensurate with what
seems most plausible to him.”35 Thucydides implicitly acknowledges
that the inadequacy of his and his informants’ memory necessitates
the use of a different criterion of truth and accuracy than was claimed
by epic poetry. In granting that his own history “will seem less easy
to read” than earlier, more romantic narratives (1.22), Thucydides
alludes to the appeal of the “song culture” and the claim of sponta-
neous truthfulness made by the divinely inspired poet or rhapsode.
By contrast, Thucydides’ analytic process of writing necessitates first
finding a source, then filtering it through his reasoned assessment of
it, and finally composing a well-organized account of it.
Although the earlier histories may be more charming and pleasing
to the ear, they are outmoded, according to Thucydides. Further-
more, they are more subject to dispersal “in the unreliable streams
of mythology” (1.21) than is Thucydides’ mediated, deferred, and
complex version of the truth. Thucydides’ account is admittedly sub-
jective to some degree, but in his own view it provides a much closer
35
Bassi, Acting Like Men, p. 88.
46
approximation of the truth than do poetic or romantic accounts. The

thoroughness and concern for objectivity that make his work less read-
able also make it a more useful and reliable guide to both history and
human nature (1.22–3). Yet the complexity of Thucydides’ narrative
and his use of “antilogical speeches” undermine the claims he makes
for his own work, according to Yunis:36
The “clear view” of the patterns of human events that Thucydides promises
his critical reader (1.22.4) is not clear or transparent in any simple sense. . . . It
is, rather, a multifaceted glimpse into the multiplicity of events attained by
the reader; therein, for Thucydides, lies its utility.
Far from acknowledging any sense of inferiority to old mythic

truths, however, Thucydides claims to be supplanting them, even while
making similar claims not only of reliability but also of transparency.
His claim to use the “plainest” evidence, arrived at through cross-
examination, recalls Polyneices’ description of the “word of truth” as
simple and unadorned. Now it is the accounts of the poets that are
adorned and elaborated upon, much like the intricately woven “unjust
argument.”
The criterion of probability also becomes a more popular form
of argument in the law courts of Euripides’ day. Guthrie shows the
utility of the argument from probability for a defendant who cannot
otherwise prove his innocence:37
If a man accused of assault can produce facts showing incontrovertibly that

he did not commit it, he has no need of the art, but, if he cannot, he must
invoke the argument from probability. If he is smaller and weaker than his
victim he will say, ‘Look at me; is it likely that someone like me should go
for a big strong man like him?’ If on the other hand he is a Samson, he will
argue, ‘Would I be such a fool as to attack him when I am the first person
on whom suspicion would fall?’
The age of rhetoric trumpeted by Eteocles represented “the triumph

of probability over fact.”38
36
Harvey Yunis, “Writing for Reading: Thucydides, Plato, and the Emergence of the
Critical Reader,” in Written Texts and the Rise of Literate Culture, p. 204.
37
Guthrie, The Sophists, pp. 178–9.
38
47
In Plato’s Phaedrus, Socrates criticizes the use of the standard of

probability as a more important criterion in the law courts than truth-
fulness. For Socrates, the use of this standard reflects a willful disregard
of the truth in the interest of making the worse cause prevail over the
better:
. . . there is, [the rhetoricians] maintain, absolutely no need for the budding
orator to concern himself with the truth about what is just or good conduct,
nor indeed about who are just and good men whether by nature or education.
In the law courts nobody cares a rap for the truth about these matters, but
only about what is plausible. (272d–e)
But the truth that Socrates argues for also represents a break from the
mythological “word of truth” in favor of a new hermeneutic mode
that employs “two-sided verbal strife”: the philosophical dialectic. Like
Thucydides, Plato expresses a great deal of confidence in the capacity
of human reason to reach accurate conclusions by weighing contra-
dictory claims and evidence. As Goldhill argues, the ability to render
a rational account of a subject, as well as to give a clear, consistent
definition of universal terms, is “for Plato too an essential part of
knowledge.”39
In Plato’s Gorgias, Socrates expresses full confidence in the eventual
triumph of the word of truth in the dialectical exchange of voices:
it is “impossible” for the truth to be bested in argument, because
“[t]he truth is never refuted” (473b).40 This confident assertion implies
that the “word of truth” is capable of making its own case without
needing help from any external source. A “single truth, a single idea
of the good” seems to emerge from Plato’s dialogues, as a result of his
“attempt to create for his own fiction the clear moral center and unitary
voice that he finds lacking in less discriminating artists,” according to
Pratt.41
39
Goldhill, Reading Greek Tragedy, p. 230.
40
%&"
3 8 *
8% (Gorgias 473b10–11). For the Greek text, see Plato,
Opera, vol. 3, ed. John Burnet (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1899).
41
Pratt, Lying and Poetry, p. 155. Pratt’s claim that “the figure of Socrates dominate[s] all
other speakers” in Plato’s works (p. 155) is a generalization that could well be contested,
however, given the widely disparate roles played by Socrates in the early versus the late
dialogues.
48
The texts of Thucydides and Plato therefore posit the victory of the
new logos of reason and analysis over the old muthos of story and myth.
The confidence they put in their methodologies for attaining truth –
or a reasonable approximation of it – rivals the confidence Polyneices
puts in his transcendent “word of truth.”
The triumph of reason, logic, and probability, seen as both liberating
and progressive by some, represented a dangerous, anarchic state of
affairs for others. The “realignment of the criteria of truth, probability,
and proof ” produced greater anxiety along with greater confidence in
man and in “rational progress.”42 If “two-sided verbal strife” can be
used to argue both for and against the same proposition, without regard
to the justice of the matter, what common ground of morality remains?
Guthrie describes the practical consequences of the sophists’ teaching
on courtroom tactics: “Since there was no absolute or universal truth,
no one needed to consider, before attempting to make an individual, a
jury or a state change its mind, whether or not he would be persuading
them of a truer state of affairs.”43
Critics of the Greek enlightenment expressed concern that sophistic
modes of argument could be used to overthrow established values, “to
reverse the normal order of things.”44 Because the use of “double
arguments” necessarily involves the speaker in a play of “difference
and contradiction,”45 the “word of truth” no longer stands alone as
an irrefutable voice of authority; it no longer makes its own case. If
the absence of a transcendent voice of authority means that men have
in common only the names of things, could not each individual – or
group – define truth and justice in a self-serving way?
An argument made by the sophist Gorgias in On Nature draws the
same sharp distinction between words and things made by Eteocles:
“We do not, therefore, indicate existing things to our fellow men but
words, which are different from real things.”46 Gorgias elaborates on
42
Goldhill, Reading Greek Tragedy, pp. 201–2. According to Havelock, The Greek Concept
of Justice, p. 320, the upheaval in civic roles that occurred in the increasingly literate polis
contributed to this anxiety.
43
44
Goldhill, Reading Greek Tragedy, p. 232.
45
Ibid., p. 231.
46
Robinson, An Introduction to Early Greek Philosophy, p. 298.
49
the implications of this distinction in another work, in which he makes

an argument quite similar to Eteocles’: “If it were possible through
words to make the truth about reality pure and clear to the hearers,
judgement would be easy as simply following from what was said; but
it is not so.”47 Like Eteocles, Gorgias uses the gap between name and
thing, between signifier and signified, to emphasize the relativity of
truth and the inevitability of debate.
Antiphon’s On Truth dismantles not only the notion of a “just argu-
ment” but also the idea of justice itself. Antiphon begins by defining
justice in secular terms as “not breaking the rules of the city of which
one is a citizen.”48 There is no mention of the gods, no grounding
of justice in a transcendent morality of any kind. His next rhetori-
cal move is to investigate how a man can be “just . . . in a way most
advantageous to himself ” – an appeal to the sophistic principle of
advantage that recalls the attitude of many Americans toward the tax
code. Antiphon proceeds from this fairly innocuous starting point to
argue that disadvantageous laws can and should be disobeyed as long as
one is not in danger of being caught. His ingenious deconstruction of
the law depends on his use of a series of sophistic dualisms: advantage
versus disadvantage, nature versus custom or convention, and opinion
versus truth (or name versus fact).
Antiphon begins by arguing that it is advantageous for a man to
follow the city’s laws while in the presence of witnesses, but to follow
nature’s laws when he is alone, so that he does not suffer any “shame
or penalty.” He supports this view by asserting that the laws of the
city are merely a matter of agreement or convention (nomos), and
therefore contingent, whereas the laws of nature (physis) are absolute,
since they are universal. If one breaks the laws of nature, he suffers
“evil” because “he is not hurt because of opinion but because of
truth.” The implicit conclusion here is that it is better (even a “good”)
47
, 3 N / & )
'% 6
A ) "% "# %8(
:( [;] "#, " 0 4 "( ? ) ,"8$ * 6 3
L . . . The Greek is found in Diels and Kranz, Die Fragmente der Vorsokratiker,
vol. 2, pp. 302–3 (DK 82B11a). Passage from Gorgias’ Palamedes translated by Guthrie,
“The First Humanists,” p. 22.
48
This and subsequent passages from On Truth are taken from Robinson, An Introduction
to Early Greek Philosophy, pp. 250–1.
50
to obey the laws of nature than to obey the laws of the city, since
disobeying the laws of nature, which are in force at all times, is an
unmitigated evil, whereas disobeying the laws of the city injures a
man only if he happens to be caught. The laws of nature come to
represent a higher truth than the laws of the city: “Justice falls down
in a heap of fallacies: only nature is beneficial.”49 Antiphon succeeds
not only in deconstructing the traditional concept of justice but also
in elevating the concept of personal advantage to the status of a moral
“good.” His line of argument recalls Eteocles’ praise of tyranny as a
“good” and his convenient rationalization of injustice: “If one must
do a wrong, it’s best to do it / pursuing power – otherwise let’s have
virtue.”
Anxiety about the destructive impact of such “shifting, intricate
interpretations,” along with a yearning for a simple voice that could
transcend them, finds expression in other contemporary texts from
Euripides’ era. The agon between the Old and New Education in
Aristophanes’ Clouds (428 b.c.), Thucydides’ account of civil war on
Corcyra (427 b.c), and Plato’s myth of the origin of writing in the
Phaedrus (early fourth century)50 serve as illustrative examples. These
texts, representing the genres of comedy, history, and philosophy,
all convey anxiety about the prevalent new modes of argument and
debate. All of them stage, directly or indirectly, an agon between a
living, spoken, and originary “word of truth” or “just voice” and an
“unjust argument” that is derivative, duplicitous, and dependent on
rhetoric or writing to make its case.
As in Euripides’ Phoenician Women, the “unjust voice” or argu-
ment is portrayed as something new or added onto the originary
voice – a supplement to it, in Derridean terms. In fact, Derrida’s
description of the opposition drawn in the Phaedrus between spoken
and written discourse characterizes well the oppositions drawn in the
other texts under discussion: the “word of truth” is “natural, living,
49
Rankin, Sophists, Socratics and Cynics, p. 85.
50
The date of the dialogue is uncertain, but probably falls “fairly late in the middle
period,” sometime after the Republic, according to W. K. C. Guthrie, Plato, The Man
and His Dialogues. Earlier Period. Vol. 4 of A History of Greek Philosophy (Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 1975), p. 396.
51
knowledgeable, intelligible, internal speaking,” whereas the “unjust

argument” is “moribund, ignorant, external, mute artifice.”51
All of these texts thus share the nostalgic yearning for a simple voice
of truth that informs much of Euripidean drama and lends it so much
of its tragic – or tragicomic – power. Of course, the shape taken by the
nostalgia, its overall effect on the audience or reader, and the degree
to which it is satisfied differ markedly in each of these texts. The
disparate genres employed by the authors certainly account for much
of this difference – what might be termed the particular field of battle
on which the contest between old and new is played out. The aims of
the texts vary widely as well.
The nostalgia for the virtues of the past is most vivid in the com-
edy of Aristophanes, but, even there, one senses a certain admira-
tion for the new modes of thought, as exemplified by the originality
and verbal inventiveness of the characters Socrates and Euripides –
qualities claimed by the comic playwright himself and displayed in
his works.52 Nostalgia plays a much more circumscribed role in the
texts of both Thucydides and Plato, given that they are either rein-
venting a traditional genre (as with Thucydides’ analytic form of his-
torical inquiry) or inaugurating a new one (as with Plato’s Socratic
dialogues).53
In spite of their differences, all of these texts engage in some way
with the perceived loss of a stable, transcendent center of meaning
and value that purportedly existed in a bygone era. In contrasting the
deficiencies of the present with an idealized view of the past, each
text takes its own form of “poetic” license. Let us now examine how
51
Jacques Derrida, Dissemination, trans. Barbara Johnson (Chicago: University of Chicago
Press, 1981), p. 149.
52
See, for example, the parabasis of the Clouds (518–62), in which the chorus leader,
serving as a mouthpiece for the poet, claims that his comedies deserve first place in the
dramatic competition because they are novel and ingenious (545–8).
53
In Plato and the Socratic Dialogue: The Philosophical Use of a Literary Form (Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 1966), Charles H. Kahn argues that Plato “develop[ed]
the Socratic dialogue as a major literary form” (xv) and created the “‘realistic’ historical
dialogue” (p. 35). Plato clearly revolutionized the form of the philosophical dialogue. As
Kahn states, “He was the only Socratic writer to utilize the dialogue form as the device
for presenting a full-scale philosophical world view” (xiv).
52
the agon between these opposing worldviews plays out in each of the
three texts under examination.
Aristophanes’ comedy, the Clouds, presents Socrates as the archety-
pal sophist who instructs pupils in the art of making the worse cause
prevail over the better. His star pupil in the play is a young man who
wishes to learn to argue his way out of large gambling debts. The
most dramatic demonstration of Socrates’ pedagogical method comes
in his staging of a contest between “Right Logic” (or “Just Argu-
ment”) and “Wrong Logic” (or “Unjust Argument”) in which each
side uses its strongest arguments to refute the other.54 Wrong Logic
promises to refute Right Logic “[b]y original thought” (896), whereas
Right Logic promises to “smash” Wrong Logic’s lies “[b]y speaking
the Truth” (898–9), which is “[w]ith the Gods in the air” (903). The
eventual triumph of the New Education through the use of specious
logic represents a dramatic, caricatured version of the “deconstruc-
tion” of justice performed by Antiphon.
Like Polyneices, who argues on behalf of traditional concepts of
morality, “Right Logic” in the Clouds argues on behalf of the education
offered “in Athens of yore / When Honour and Truth were in fashion
with youth and Sobriety bloomed on our shore” (961–2).55 Right
Logic’s praise of a “manly old air all simple and bare” (969) and of
“Modesty, simple and true” (995) recalls Polyneices’ emphasis on the
directness, clarity, and simplicity of the self-evident “word of truth”
he is espousing. The emphasis on the simplicity of traditional music, as
opposed to the “intricate twistings” of the new music (970), parallels
the opposition Polyneices draws between the “single and plain” word
of truth and the “shifting, intricate” nature of the unjust argument.
Wrong Logic, denying that there ever “was Justice or Truth” (900–
1), cleverly points out the inconsistencies in Right Logic’s argument:
if the gods mete out justice, how did Zeus escape punishment for
imprisoning his father (904–6)? In the scene’s culminating debate,
54
Translation of The Clouds is by Benjamin Bickley Rogers, Aristophanes, In Three Volumes,
vol. I: The Acharnians, The Clouds, The Knights, The Wasps. The Loeb Classical Library,
ed. G. P. Goold. Rpt. 1982 (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1924).
55
[
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8% ?
; ("(: '( (Clouds 961–2).
53
Wrong Logic defends the practice of adultery by referring to the

mythological example of the philandering king of the gods, Zeus:
Why if you’re in adultery caught,

your pleas will still be ample:
You’ve done no wrong, you’ll say, and then
bring Zeus as your example.
He fell before the wondrous powers
by Love and Beauty wielded:
And how can you, the Mortal, stand,
where He, the Immortal, yielded? (1079–82)
Wrong Logic’s argument recalls the sophist Gorgias’ Encomium on

Helen, which defends Helen’s betrayal of her husband by arguing on
similar grounds that Love is a great goddess whom mortals cannot be
expected to resist.56 When Right Logic asks how Wrong Logic would
save his client from having a radish shoved up his rectum (1083–4),
the traditional punishment for adultery, Wrong Logic points out that
since the leading personalities of Athens, including the vast majority
of the audience members, are “wide-arsed” (euruprôktos, 1084) as well,
there is no reason to be ashamed of it (1090–1104).57
It is significant that sophistry is connected here with sexual immoral-
ity. Earlier in the agon, Right Logic had said that the student of the Old
Education would have a small tongue and penis, whereas both of these
organs would be large and overdeveloped in the student of the New
Education (1009–21).58 The implication is that democracy’s emphasis
56
Robinson, An Introduction to Early Greek Philosophy, p. 267: “God is stronger than man
in might and wisdom and every other respect. If, then, we are to posit Fate or God as
the reason, we must absolve Helen of her ill-repute.” Gorgias also defends Helen by
arguing that if she had been persuaded by Paris to elope with him, she would similarly
be exempt from blame, because persuasion has godlike powers.
57
In his edition of the play, Aristophanes: Clouds (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1968), p. 227,
n. on 1084, K. J. Dover points out that the term ": " is employed in the lines
that follow “as a general term of abuse . . . implying enlargement of the anus by habitual
subjection to anal coitus.”
58
The link between what Zeitlin calls “sophistic and erotic persuasion” is also found in
Gorgias’ Encomium on Helen, of course. For the “overlapping” of these forms of per-
suasion in Euripides’ Hecuba, see Froma I. Zeitlin, “Euripides’ Hekabe and the Somatics
of Dionysiac Drama,” Ramus 20 (1991): 77. Cf. Laura McClure, Spoken Like a Woman:
Speech and Gender in Athenian Drama (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1999), p.
131, for a discussion of this link in the Hippolytus.
54
on rhetoric has produced an effeminate, cowardly, and immoral breed

of Athenians in contrast to the race of muscular, brave heroes who
fought at Marathon (1009–14).
Later on in the comedy, the father of the young pupil corrupted
by Socrates tells the chorus about a quarrel that developed between
him and his son. The father recounts that his son, when asked to recite
some lines of contemporary poetry, picked a Euripidean passage about
incest. Rebuked by his father for having decadent literary taste, the son
proceeded to beat him up (1361–76). The play thus contrasts the
Aeschylean preference for straight talk and patriotic heroism with the
Euripidean penchant for sophistry and perverse conduct. Of course,
neither side escapes from the agon unscathed. Aeschylus’ pomposity
is just as effectively satirized as Euripides’ hair-splitting bookishness.59
Although the characteristics of the older generation are exaggerated
for comic effect, we may still detect in the portrait of the simple, strong
warrior a nostalgia for a transcendent “word of truth” derived from
the oral tradition. Bassi’s suggestion of a link between this nostalgia
for orality and militarism is provocative, both for Euripides’ day and
our own.60 In fact, the ending of the Clouds is unexpectedly violent,
showing a dark mood and a deep concern about the excesses of the
New Education: Socrates’ school is burned down (1484–1504).
Thucydides’ History also portrays the darker side of the “double
speaking” that became prevalent in the Peloponnesian War. In his
description of the civil war on Corcyra, Thucydides laments the fact
that war teaches men to represent private vendettas as public service
and immorality as virtue. Reacting to these “shifting, intricate inter-
pretations,” Thucydides too expresses nostalgia for a lost simplicity of
heart and transparency of intent.
Thucydides opens his account by signaling its programmatic impor-
tance for his narrative: the revolution was “one of the first which had
broken out,” foreshadowing both the violence and the deterioration in
59
For a discussion of the connection between Euripides and book learning, and for the
tradition that portrays him “as a lifelong book collector,” see Steiner, The Tyrant’s Writ,
pp. 210–12.
60
Bassi, Acting Like Men, p. 50. Bassi argues that “the valorization of the hoplite warrior
is part of the nostalgic enterprise of Athenian self-representation,” mentioning the
“idealized warrior” described by “Aeschylus” in the Frogs (pp. 214–15).
55
morals that would overtake the “whole of the Hellenic world” (3.82).
In fact other cities, hearing of what had happened elsewhere, indulged
in “still new extravagances of revolutionary zeal, expressed by an elab-
oration in the methods of seizing power and by unheard-of atrocities in
revenge” (3.82). These excessive actions, which transgressed the nor-
mal boundaries of civilized behavior, also corrupted normal linguistic
usage:
To fit in with the change of events, words, too, had to change their usual
meanings. What used to be described as a thoughtless act of aggression was
now regarded as the courage one would expect to find in a party member;
to think of the future and wait was merely another way of saying one was a
coward; any idea of moderation was just an attempt to disguise one’s unmanly
character; ability to understand a question from all sides meant that one was
totally unfitted for action. Fanatical enthusiasm was the mark of a real man,
and to plot against an enemy behind his back was perfectly legitimate self-
defense. Anyone who held violent opinions could always be trusted, and
anyone who objected to them became a suspect. (3.82)61
War, described by Thucydides as a “stern teacher” (3.82), teaches men

to become dangerously duplicitous “double speakers” to justify their
outrageous deeds. In the aftermath of these transgressions, speech-acts
that had been considered sacrosanct were routinely ignored, contested,
or violated: “As for ending this state of affairs, no guarantee could be
given that could be trusted, no oath sworn that people would fear to
break . . . ” (3.83).62 Boedeker points out the devastating consequences
of the abuse of divinely sanctioned speech in a democracy dependent
on powers of the spoken word in both the political and religious
realms.63
61
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62
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3.83.2).
63
Boedeker, “Euripides’ Medea,” pp. 97, 112.
56
For Thucydides, the internecine civil wars that broke out in various
city-states caused a widespread corruption of morals:
As a result of these revolutions, there was a general deterioration of character
throughout the Greek world. The simple way of looking at things, which
is so much the mark of a noble nature, was regarded as a ridiculous quality
and soon ceased to exist. Society had become divided into two ideologically
hostile camps, and each side viewed the other with suspicion. (3.83)64
Thucydides’ contrast of a bygone “simplicity” (to euêthes, 3.83.1)

and “nobility” (to gennaion, 3.83.1) with the proliferating forms of
“depravity” (kakotropias, 3.83.1; my translations) of his own day paral-
lels the dichotomy between a single, plain “word of truth” and “shift-
ing, intricate interpretations.” In drawing this contrast, Thucydides
conveys a sense of loss for an age largely free of the devastating effects of
the war and the corrupting influence it had on contemporary language
and morals. Yet the nostalgia he expresses for an ancient simplicity is
difficult to square with his hard-edged view of human nature, which
disposes both “[c]ities and individuals . . . to do wrong” (3.45) and is
“the enemy of anything superior to itself ” (3.84).65
Thucydides’ belief in an unchanging human nature is already clear
in the introduction to his work, when he expresses the hope that its
usefulness will more than compensate for its lack of romantic interest:
And it may well be that my history will seem less easy to read because of
the absence in it of a romantic element. It will be enough for me, however,
if these words of mine are judged useful by those who want to understand
clearly the events which happened in the past and which (human nature being
what it is) will, at some time or other and in much the same ways, be repeated
in the future. My work is not a piece of writing designed to meet the taste
of an immediate public, but was done to last forever. (1.22)
The notion that human nature is fixed and invariable conflicts with
his wistful remark that a “simple way of looking at things” existed in
the past but exists no more.
64
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65
A point suggested to me by an anonymous referee.
57
One senses a certain romantic quality in Thucydides’ assertion of

the unique importance of the Peloponnesian War and of his own role
in recording it. His proud statement that “the facts themselves prove
out that this was the greatest war of all” (1.21) recalls Polyneices’ claim
to possess self-evident truth. In claiming to have designed his work
“to last forever,” the author seems to be transferring the “romantic
element” supposedly missing in his account of the war to the claims
he makes about its importance and influence. Perhaps these claims
reflect a nostalgic hope that his work will somehow mollify the savage
excesses of human nature, helping it regain its lost simplicity. However
irrational or inconsistent this hope may be, it lends a certain poignancy
and pathos to Thucydides’ narrative. Bassi suggests that Thucydidean
history reflects, in part, a yearning to recover the lost ideal of the
Homeric warrior, who represents excellence in both word and deed
(Iliad 9.443) – a yearning that is also expressed in Platonic philosophy.66
To turn, now, to Plato: the contrast between the living “word of
truth” and the “unjust argument” finds perhaps its starkest expression
in the Phaedrus. There, Plato’s Socrates contrasts the living, spoken
words of the philosophical dialectic with the “dead letter” of writing
and rhetoric, which he criticizes as inherently unreliable, because it is
disconnected from the living voice and mind of its author. Further-
more, writing, which cannot answer questions on its own behalf, works
to the detriment not only of spoken discourse but also of the powers
of memory. Although Plato’s Socrates is championing a new mode of
truth, one arrived at through the dialectical process of philosophy, his
criticism of writing has a nostalgic aim: to preserve the primacy of the
oral tradition and its underlying phonocentric assumptions.67
In Socrates’ myth of the origin of writing, alluded to earlier, the
Egyptian king rejects the gift of writing that has been presented to him
by a god as a “recipe [ pharmakon] for memory and wisdom”(274e). The
66
Bassi, Acting Like Men, p. 9.
67
Cf. Havelock, The Greek Concept of Justice, p. 320, who mentions that in Plato’s ideal
state litigation would not be necessary, since oaths would always be reliable. Cf. also
Bassi, Acting Like Men, p. 23, who argues that Plato engages in a “nostalgic antitheatrical
enterprise.” In Tragedy and Enlightenment: Athenian Political Thought and the Dilemmas of
Modernity (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1997), p. 84, Christopher Rocco
describes the Platonic ideal of debate as one that “resembles the dialectical search for the
truth” – an ideal that recalls Polyneices’ belief in a voice that transcends rhetoric.
58
king argues instead that writing “will implant forgetfulness” in men

and will offer them not wisdom but the appearance of wisdom (275b).
Written words, Socrates argues in the dialogue, “seem to talk to you as
though they were intelligent,” but their inability to answer questions
proves their lack of intelligence. In fact, the written word is deficient
in comparison with the living, spoken word, since the written word
“always needs its parent to come to its help, being unable to defend or
help itself ” (275d–e). The “written word” is the deceptive “image” of
living speech, offering only the “semblance” of wisdom (276a, 275a).
By contrast, “living speech,” which is “written in the soul of the
learner,” can speak in its own defense and “present the truth ade-
quately.” This living speech is described as a “discourse that is brother
to the written speech but of unquestioned legitimacy.” Furthermore,
the words of a philosopher who employs dialectic “contain a seed
whence new words grow up in new characters, whereby the seed is
vouchsafed immortality” (276a, 277a).
The two “brothers” in the Platonic dialogue mirror the oppos-
ing sides taken by Polyneices and Eteocles. Like Polyneices’ “word
of truth,” Socrates’ “living speech” conveys transcendent meaning
plainly and directly, without embellishments. Like Polyneices’ “unjust
argument,” the written word needs the help of “clever medicine” to
make its case. Opposed to the philosophers’ living “word of truth”
are “the present-day authors of manuals of rhetoric” who are “cun-
ning folk who know all about the soul but keep their knowledge out
of sight” (271c). Far from being concerned with telling the truth,
these rhetoricians attempt to mislead juries by means of probabilities
that resemble the truth. They “[spend] hours” on their works, “twist-
ing them this way and that, pasting them together and pulling them
apart” (278d–e),68 a reference that recalls the “shifting, intricate inter-
pretations” assailed by Polyneices. Plato thus connects writing with the
crafting of specious argumentation by the sophists, who we know pro-
duced treatises and rhetorical handbooks for pedagogical purposes.69
68
. . . # ("8 * "'Y, "

) ; ") . . . (Phaedrus

278d9–e1).
69
B. M. W. Knox, “Books and Readers in the Greek World,” in The Cambridge History
of Classical Literature, volume I: Greek Literature, ed. P. E. Easterling and B. M. W. Knox
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1985), p. 11.
59
In short, Plato’s Socrates describes writing as a derivative, inferior, and

artificial medium, insofar as it is a contrived imitation of the speaker’s
living voice.
What light do the phonocentric assumptions of Plato’s dialogue shed
on the epistemological status of Greek tragedy itself? Tragedy as a genre
straddles both the “song” and “book” cultures. On the one hand, its
style and subject matter are almost exclusively derived from the world
of myth, and it features the voices of living speakers; on the other
hand, its dependence on a written script makes it part of the emerg-
ing “book culture.”70 The increasing reliance of tragedy on the tech-
nology of writing, seen in the context of other developments such as
the rise of prose and literacy in fifth-century Athens, raises questions
about its truth value. As Segal puts it: “What kind of truth can be
claimed by a discourse whose origins are no longer sacred, no longer
derived from the inspiration of the Muses, but lie in the writer him-
self as the fabricator of a text whose very materiality attests to its
human creation?”71 In contrast to the apparent power of oral poetry
to evoke “the full presence of events,”72 the use of masks and cos-
tumes makes tragedy’s dependence on disguise and illusion evident to
the audience, casting doubt on its ability “to render clear and secure
meanings.”73
According to Segal, tragic theater tells “the story of a double vision
or a double language (dissai phônai), of a backstage, of something
70
Cf. Herington, Poetry into Drama, p. 123, who argues that “the early Attic tragedians
were, and were thought to be, the heirs of the entire preceding poetic tradition, so far
as verse technique was concerned.” But Herington also sees Attic tragedy as “mark[ing]
an end,” because it culminates a long tradition of poetic competitions dating back to
the eighth century b.c. (p. 9). Havelock, The Greek Concept of Justice, p. 277, argues that
the language of tragedy – particularly its use of predication – shows increasing reliance
on the written word. In Dionysus Writes, p. 227, Jennifer Wise sees tragedy as reflecting
both the end of one tradition and the beginning of another.
71
Charles Segal, Interpreting Greek Tragedy: Myth, Poetry, Text (Ithaca: Cornell University
Press, 1986), pp. 105–6; see Segal, p. 80, n. 15, for a bibliography on the question of
literacy in classical Athens.
72
Ibid., p. 79. Cf. Thomas, Literacy and Orality in Ancient Greece, p. 116, who makes a
similar argument about the power of voice to evoke presence.
73
Cf. Rocco, Tragedy and Enlightenment, p. 166. Of course, Plato used the fact that tragedy
is a representational art as one of the arguments for censoring it in his ideal state (Republic
10.595a, 602b, 606e–607a, and passim).
60
hidden or beneath.” Euripides is particularly concerned with explor-

ing the “problem of representing, realizing, and verifying” the “inte-
rior realm” of his characters.74 Seen from this perspective, tragedy
resembles Socrates’ description of rhetoric as a “hidden” art. Euripi-
dean drama, which makes frequent reference to writing and books,
as well as to the status of the voice and the potential duplicity of
language, conveys an intense concern with this problem of represen-
tation.75 Euripides himself is reputed to have had his own library,76
and in the Frogs Aristophanes portrays him as a linguistically exact-
ing “close reader” of his rival playwright’s verse.77 Aristophanes’ gibes
inaccurately portray Euripidean drama as effete and shallow, devoid of
his predecessors’ tragic depth.
Yet much of Euripides’ dramatic power stems from his self-conscious
exploitation of the “double vision” and “double language” inherent
in the theatrical enterprise, situated as it is on the boundary between
the song and book cultures, between belief in a transcendent “word of
truth” and in the “two-sided strife of debate.” Euripides’ female char-
acters play an essential role in his exploration of the theme of “double
speaking,” insofar as they come to be associated with both the simple
“word of truth” and “shifting, intricate interpretations.” Whether or
not they are truthful or deceptive themselves, these characters express
an ardent desire to find an infallible means of reading character and
attaining hermeneutic certainty. Like Medea, they convey a longing
for what Zeitlin calls a “pure and univocal language” – for a “utopia
of signs” in which signifier and signified exactly correspond.78
74
Segal, Interpreting Greek Tragedy, pp. 80–1.
75
For the connection between “writing and emotional interiority” in an oral culture,
see Segal, Interpreting Greek Tragedy, p. 81. For the importance of writing and letters
in Euripidean drama and the playwright’s legendary connection with books, see Wise,
Dionysus Writes, pp. 13, 157, and 196–8.
76
For a discussion of the tradition that Euripides had his own private library, see Knox,
“Books and Readers,” p. 9.
77
Cf. Frogs 1155–7, when Euripides criticizes Aeschylus for repeating himself – perhaps an
implicit criticism of Aeschylus’ reliance on the formulaic high diction of epic as against
Euripides’ own use of conversational language (1056–8).
78
Froma I. Zeitlin. “The Power of Aphrodite: Eros and the Boundaries of the Self in the
Hippolytus,” in Directions in Euripidean Criticism: A Collection of Essays, ed. Peter Burian
(Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1985), p. 84.
61
To explore this question of the lost voice of truth, Euripides exploits

the female’s traditional associations with duplicitous or ambiguous
speech. Inasmuch as they embody the disjunction between outside
and inside, seeming and being, clarity and concealment, signifier and
signified, female characters in Euripidean drama personify the prob-
lem of representation in Euripidean drama. They possess the “semiotic
power” – the power of making meaning, of telling both truth and
lies – traditionally granted to female figures in early Greek poetry.79
Endowed with this power, Euripides’ female characters play a cen-
tral role in articulating the problem of the lost voice of truth – a role
that corresponds to the traditional portrait of women and goddesses
in archaic Greek poetry as “double speakers.”
According to Bergren, the power of these female figures is threaten-
ing to male poets, who seek to appropriate the “mobile doubleness of
language and the female” for themselves.80 Accompanying this dou-
ble power – and perhaps explaining it, according to Bergren – is the
stereotypical portrait of women as possessing a double nature: an attrac-
tive or seductive exterior that conceals a scheming, deceptive interior.
The archetypal figure of Greek myth with these conflicting traits is
Pandora. In Hesiod’s account, Zeus seeks to punish Prometheus’ arro-
gance in stealing fire from the gods and giving it to men by having
Hephaestus create the first woman. This woman is Pandora, whose
outward beauty is belied by her inner corruption: Hermes “put lies,
and wheedling words of falsehood, and a treacherous nature” into her
heart (Hesiod, Works and Days 78). Pandora fulfills her function by
first deceiving and seducing Prometheus’ brother, Epimetheus, and
then joining the human race, where she will continue to plague (and
delight) men.
On one level, Hesiod’s narrative can be read as an etiological myth
that explains how women come to be duplicitous and scheming. Even
before she speaks, Pandora is the archetypal “double speaker” by her
very nature: although she is outwardly attractive, her heart is corrupt.
Her body serves as a deceptive signifier, designed to mislead men
79
See Ann L. T. Bergren, “Language and the Female in Early Greek Thought,” Arethusa
16 (1983): 82, and passim.
80
Ibid., p. 78.
62
about her inner nature (signified). Metaphorically, Pandora exemplifies

women’s ability to “tell many falsehoods that resemble the truth.”
Because she is “the first being invested with symbolic, referential,
rhetorical elements,”81 Pandora introduces not only sexual difference
but also linguistic difference into the world. Hesiod’s narrative can
thus be read as a fall from a time in which meaning was simple and
plain into a time when meaning is necessarily dispersed, complex, and
divided. The story provides an archetype of the phonocentric debate
outlined in the Phoenician Women. According to Pucci:
The text implies both the human dawn unmarked by imitation and rhetoric
and a turning point that initiates the beautiful, imitative rhetorical process. In
this way, the text reproduces the split between a language identical to reality
and a language imitative of reality.
For Pucci, the portrait of the first woman is closely associated with
rhetoric: Pandora is at once “the ‘figure’ of the origin and the origin
of the ‘figure.’”82
Euripides inherits the tradition that associates women with rhetoric
and difference, with duplicity and artifice. But he does not uncritically
accept the misogynistic elements of this tradition. Instead, he uses
women’s traditional association with “double speaking” to expose and
explore contemporary anxieties about sophistry and other aspects of
the intellectual revolution.83 Indeed, female characters in Euripidean
drama express a sophisticated awareness of – and anxiety about – the
role of rhetoric in the polis, the potential duplicity of language, and
the problem of difference. Euripides’ female protagonists, and even
some minor characters such as the nurse in Hippolytus, are eloquent,
81
Pucci, Hesiod and the Language of Poetry, p. 100.
82
Ibid.
83
In Spoken Like a Woman, p. 7, Laura McClure makes a similar assertion about the female
characters in the Greek dramas she is investigating (including Euripides’ Hippolytus): that
they make a comment about the role and status of persuasion in the Athenian democracy.
I would take issue with the conclusion arrived at by some otherwise perceptive feminist
critics that Euripides’ dramas inevitably end up reinforcing patriarchal agendas; see, for
example, Nancy Sorkin Rabinowitz, Anxiety Veiled: Euripides and the Traffic in Women
(Ithaca and London: Cornell University Press, 1993). I would argue instead that they
can serve to call those agendas into question, at least in part. As Foley, Female Acts, p. 15,
argues, women’s voices in tragedy “bring into the forefront neglected or marginalized
political and social concerns.”
63
skilled speakers who use sophistic thought and modes of argument to

advance their cause.84
Whether they do so justly or unjustly, these female characters offer
penetrating critiques of duplicity, the violation of oaths, and the use of
rhetoric to rationalize unjust acts – issues of urgent concern in fifth-
century b.c. Athens. Their powerful use of “double speaking” gives
Euripides’ female characters an affinity with the prevalent practice of
arguing both sides of a question and other institutionalized forms of
verbal contention in the assembly and law courts.
The portrait of Phaedra in the Hippolytus epitomizes the ambivalent
attitude these female characters take with regard to truth. Although she
expresses nostalgia for an age of righteous conduct and transparently
truthful speech, in the end she yields to sophistry and to “shifting,
intricate” interpretations. Early in the Hippolytus, Phaedra, torn by
the forbidden love she has for her stepson Hippolytus, expresses the
wish that the same word should not have two contradictory meanings;
instead, the meaning of words should be clear and univocal so that they
cannot be used to deceive or corrupt people (385–7). Later in the play,
she condemns the “art of oversubtle words” as leading to the destruc-
tion of cities (486–9). But after allowing her nurse to tell Hippolytus
about her secret love and being rejected by him, Phaedra decides that
the only way to save her reputation is to kill herself. The concern she
expresses earlier about sophistry gives way to a desire for revenge as
she leaves behind a suicide note falsely accusing Hippolytus of rape.
Like the other female protagonists in the plays under study, Phaedra
stages a deadly (or potentially deadly) scene of deception in which
she reveals her powers both of making meaning and of employing
theatrical artifice.
Euripides’ portrayal of Phaedra’s suicide draws on the traditional
view of women’s speech as duplicitous and destructive, to be sure; but
84
The sophisticated awareness of these female characters is quite at odds with the fact that
women in ancient Athenian society were almost universally excluded even from access to
formal education, much less specialized training in rhetoric. Cf. McClure, Spoken Like
a Woman, p. 7. As Foley, Female Acts, p. 275, puts it: “Euripides’ female characters in
particular adopt the full range of rhetorical techniques that were normally the province
of men and acquired as part of an education for public life from which women were
excluded. . . . Such rhetoric by women did not go unnoticed by Aristophanes, who has
Euripides criticized in his Frogs for teaching everyone to argue (1070).”
64
the fact that she leaves this note attached to her body also suggests a
link between women’s speech, their bodies, and the potential duplic-
ity of rhetoric or writing. Like Pandora’s, Phaedra’s body becomes a
complex and double signifier that evokes Polyneices’ description of
rhetoric as shifting and intricate. The analogy between rhetoric, writ-
ing, and women’s bodies finds expression in the pervasive metaphor in
Greek culture that describes a woman’s body as “tablet folded up on
itself, the papyrus that must be unfolded to be deciphered.”85 Phae-
dra’s duplicity seems to confirm Hippolytus’ judgment of women as a
“coin which men find counterfeit” (616). But the play’s sympathetic
characterization of Phaedra’s struggle, as well as its depiction of The-
seus and Hippolytus as “double speakers” in their own right, does not
allow the audience to condemn her alone as “counterfeit.”
Although capable of employing duplicity themselves, Euripides’
female characters also effectively criticize the duplicity of men and
gods. Medea, for example, delivers a diatribe against Jason’s duplicity
that attests to the loss of character, the loss of faith in the old gods, and
the crisis of meaning in the period in which Euripides was writing.
Medea uses the metaphor of the counterfeit coin to indict Jason for
his betrayal of her:
O God, you have given to mortals a sure method

Of telling the gold that is pure from the counterfeit;
Why is there no mark engraved upon men’s bodies,
By which we could know the true ones from the false ones?
(Medea, 516–19)86
Medea’s wish for a sign that would have allowed her to detect Jason’s
scheming character echoes Theseus’ wish in the Hippolytus. Jason’s
85
Page duBois, Sowing the Body: Psychoanalysis and Ancient Representations of Women
(Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1988), p. 130.
86
The Greek text for Medea 516–19 runs as follows:
] ^, 6 "( 3 _ 5
/ <
A" "1 ( ` ( (,
") 2Y "6 8,
; "6" * 8 (1;
For the Greek text of the Medea, see Euripidis Fabulae, vol. 1, ed. Gilbert Murray. Rpt.
1974 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1902).
65
failure to honor his word epitomizes the felt loss of respect for divinely
sanctioned speech and morality in Euripides’ contemporary culture.
Medea’s indictment of the gods for their failure to provide a “sure
method” of distinguishing “pure” from “counterfeit” character signals
the wider loss of faith in the gods. Boedeker has argued persuasively
that Jason’s breaking of oaths and pledges he made to Medea violates the
“universe of human expectations for trust and open communication”
expected in an oral culture.87
Medea’s yearning represents an ironic critique of tradition in that
she assigns to Jason the traditional female role of telling “falsehoods
that resemble the truth” (Hesiod, Theogony 27). Portraying herself as a
victim of Jason’s treacherous “double speaking,” she assumes the tradi-
tional male role of heroic avenger of injustice. The chorus’ critique of
Jason turns into a condemnation of the tradition of misogyny in Greek
poetry that unfairly portrays women as deceptive and untrustworthy.
The chorus sings:
Flow backward to your sources, sacred rivers,

and let the world’s great order be reversed.
It is the thoughts of men that are deceitful,
Their pledges that are loose.
Story shall now turn my condition to a fair one,
Women are paid their due.
No more shall evil-sounding fame be theirs. (410–20)88
The chorus’ wish to reverse gender stereotypes that seem grounded in

the natural order foreshadows the feminist argument that the supposed
inferiority and deceptiveness of women, far from being natural givens,
are conventional assumptions. The chorus of women claim the “just
87
Boedeker, “Euripides’ Medea,” pp. 97, 112. For the belief in the importance of oaths,
see Havelock, The Greek Concept of Justice, pp. 213, 219.
88
The Greek text for Medea 410–20 runs as follows:
) F") "( %,
; ; # #
("8.
"#( 3 '
5
, )
8 ( ""$
& *&
5& ("8=( -$
" & %Y %8$
8 (8
# % aG.
66
voice” for themselves and assign the “unjust voice” to men. Creusa
and the chorus in Euripides’ Ion will issue a similar critique of a male-
dominated poetic tradition.
The questions these female characters raise, directly or indirectly,
have important political ramifications in the Athenian polis, especially
in the context of the crisis of values taking place in the Peloponnesian
War. In an era in which oaths are violated and the laws of gods are not
respected, how can the truth of someone’s character, his trustworthi-
ness, be ascertained? Are the tools of the young democracy – the tools
of logic and double arguments, trials, and cross-examination – helpful
or harmful in uncovering truth? How acute is the danger posed by
the newfound ability to argue a shameful cause well? Are traditional
sources of authority about the role and status of men and women still
a reliable guide to human conduct and character?
Their use not only of “semiotic power” but also of artifice and illu-
sion allies Euripides’ female characters with epistemological inquiry –
and with the workings of drama itself. A late play of Euripides, the
Helen, presents an intriguing mix of political, philosophical, and liter-
ary variations on the theme of the search for a lost voice of truth. In
a radical revision of tradition, Euripides presents Helen of Troy not as
the adulteress whose betrayal of Menelaus caused the Trojan War, but
as a victim of the gods’ duplicity and men’s false rumors. According to
Euripides, Hera created a phantom double of Helen who betrayed her
husband by going to Troy, while the real Helen was spirited away to
Egypt by Hermes. When Menelaus comes to Egypt on his way home
from Troy, Helen is faced with the problem of convincing him that
she, and not her phantom double, is the authentic Helen. For Euripi-
des’ Helen, the poetic tradition of Homer is not a voice of sacred truth
but a duplicitous voice of vile slander. The suspense of the play ini-
tially hinges, therefore, on the question of how Helen can refute her
duplicitous double, who personifies the worse cause triumphing over
the better. As the play unfolds, the question assumes a self-referentially
theatrical dimension: How can the playwright refute his duplicitous
double, the Greek poetic tradition that offers a very different account
of Helen?
In the Helen and the other plays under investigation here, the
female body takes on a pivotal role in the Euripidean investigation
67
of conflicting accounts, voices, and truths. Faced with the failure of

heroic fame to render a true account of her character, Helen turns to
her body in her search for a sign or voice of transcendent, unambigu-
ous truth. She asserts that though her shameful name or reputation
could be in many places at once, her body, which she has kept free of
shame, could not (66–7, 588). Paradoxically, Helen rests her claims for
her identity and the integrity of her character on the very thing – her
body – that went to Troy in her place as an exact replica of her. To
complicate matters, the play’s many self-referential theatrical allusions
remind the audience that Helen’s body is and could not be her own,
since it belongs to the actor who is playing her on stage.89
Helen’s body thus becomes, on the one hand, a simple, single sign of
truth, and on the other, the quintessential marker of the “mobile dou-
bleness” of the female, a locus of “shifting, intricate” interpretations.
Euripides’ treatment of the ambiguous, marginalized status of women,
women’s voices, and women’s bodies raises questions about the epis-
temological, political, and poetic assumptions of his age – and of our
own. To what extent are traditional beliefs skewed against women? If
those in power are misogynistic, how can women convincingly portray
their inner truth to another and obtain justice?90 In a postmythic age,
what objective criteria, if any, can we use to distinguish between truth
and deceptive accounts that resemble the truth? What sort of truth, if
any, do poetry and drama convey?
Female characters in Euripidean drama thus raise questions, directly
and indirectly, that bear importantly on the theme of the lost voice
of truth. Their distance from an originary, male voice of authority
is marked by their use of transferred, mediated, imitative, or duplici-
tous speech. Their portrait in Euripides is correspondingly bipolar. On
the one hand, insofar as they are portrayed as “shifting and intricate”
89
Cf. Karen Bassi, “Tradition, Invention, and Recognition in Euripides’ Helen,” conference
paper, American Philological Association Annual Meeting (1989) 2. For a discussion of
the complex, self-referential treatment of Helen’s beauty in Euripides’ Trojan Women, see
Nancy Worman, The Cast of Character: Style in Greek Literature (Austin: University of
Texas Press, 2002), pp. 125–33.
90
Although the feminist slant of these questions may seem anachronistic, I would maintain
that the plays invite the audience to ask them, even if Euripides’ age was far less inclined
than our own to explore their implications.
68
themselves, figures such as Phaedra come to personify difference,

duplicity, and the fall into interpretation. Like Hesiod’s Pandora, whose
scheming character belies her alluring appearance, Phaedra employs
the negative, destructive side of persuasion, turning her semiotic power
to tragic effect. Artemis’ condemnation of her at the end of the
Hippolytus helps heal the semiotic rift that Phaedra exploited. On the
other hand, both women and goddesses, if they use their “semiotic
power” in the service of men or gods, can serve as agents of redemp-
tion, seeming to restore the lost plenitude and authenticity of the voice.
Euripides’ Helen, for example, uses the stereotypically feminine qual-
ity of deceptiveness in her husband’s interest to restore her reputation,
bring about their escape from Egypt, and revive a lost panhellenic
grandeur. Similarly, in the Ion Athena’s use of her signifying power to
patch up Apollo’s reputation as a truth-teller restores Athenian pride
in the origins of their crumbling empire.
The romantic melodramas of the last phase of Euripides’ career,
therefore, offer conservative, nostalgic solutions to the crises of his age:
loss of faith in the gods, myths, and heroes; anxiety about the deep
divisions and suffering caused by the Peloponnesian War; concern
about the violation of oaths, pledges, and trust that became endemic
during the war; and cynicism about politics and sophistry in the young
Athenian democracy. The brutality of the internecine civil war must
have been particularly shocking to the Athenians, who had led the
Greek city-states to a glorious triumph over the Persians less than half
a century earlier. All of these factors combine to create in Euripidean
drama a sense of a world forever changed, a sense that is familiar to
us in the post-September 11 climate. Familiar, too, is the yearning for
a simpler age, for shared beliefs, and uniform codes of conduct that
allow people to draw sharp distinctions between heroes and evildoers.
In exploiting the tension between this sense of a bygone innocence
and the yearning to restore it, Euripides posits a radical dichotomy
between an earlier age of heroism and nobility and his own relativistic
age of analysis, sophistry, and debate. As we have discussed, Euripi-
des exploits this dichotomy for its dramatic effect: there was no sharp
break between mythic and analytic stages of thought, between the
song and the book cultures in ancient Greece. As reflected in Homer’s
epics, the Greeks of the archaic age loved to argue, often disrespected
69
or disobeyed the gods, and fought over the proper interpretation of

omens, dreams, and other divine signs. Conversely, most Greeks of the
classical period continued to worship the traditional pantheon of gods
and presumably still believed in the power of divinely sanctioned
speech. The nostalgia that Euripidean drama conveys for a nobler,
simpler time is belied by the existence of this continuum.
Nonetheless the “intellectual revolution” fostered by the Athenian
elite in Euripides’ period did undermine both traditional Greek reli-
gion and morality and the metaphysical system that validated them.
With its cowardly heroes, noble slaves, and self-absorbed gods, late
Euripidean drama issues a scathing critique of the heroic worldview,
only to retreat into nostalgia for the security of traditional hierarchies
and beliefs.91
This restoration of traditional values is not without its own self-
conscious irony, however. The dramas as a whole subtly deconstruct
the nostalgic solution that they offer by demonstrating the futility of
the attempt to transcend difference. Calls for a single voice of truth
or justice such as Theseus’ wish for a second, “just voice” (925–31),
which represent the voice as doubled, divided, and dispersed, reveal
the inevitable polysemy of the voice, both divine and human. Fur-
thermore, the use of female characters as a means of reintegrating the
male world of the plays is subverted by their own complexity and dif-
ference, qualities that they share with language and with the theater.
Thus read against itself, the “word of truth” is revealed to be already an
interpretation, a metaphoric and mythopoetic construct. Let us now
turn to the plays themselves to investigate more closely their approach
to the dilemma of the lost voice of truth and justice.
91
The Bacchae represents a notable exception to this assertion.
70
2
THE “JUST VOICE” AS PARADIGMATIC

METAPHOR IN THE HIPPOLYTUS
W ritten in the early phase of the Peloponnesian War, the

Hippolytus (428 b.c.) serves as a powerful introduction to
the theme of the longing for the “just voice,” a theme whose political,
philosophical, and dramatic implications resonate throughout the play-
wright’s corpus. Euripides uses a mythic story of passion, betrayal, and
deception to dramatize the dangers of placing too much confidence in
the tools of critical inquiry so prevalent in the young Athenian democ-
racy. The drama demonstrates that such tools as forensic speeches,
cross-examination, and the evaluation of evidence by inference and
probability are highly subject to cynical manipulation. The plot of
the Hippolytus seems to confirm the Thucydidean warning that pas-
sion, prejudice, and self-interest can all too easily prevail over justice
and truth. Though all of the play’s leading characters express long-
ing for a single, plain form of truth and justice, the play casts doubt
on whether a democracy that relies so heavily on “two-sided verbal
strife” can ever recover such simplicity – a question with great rele-
vance for our own historical moment, characterized as it is by a yearn-
ing for clear distinctions between friend and foe, truth and lies, good
and evil.
It is Theseus, “a powerful yet gullible man who is the embodiment
of Athenian democracy,”1 who most clearly articulates this yearning in
Euripides’ play. Theseus is wrongly convinced that his wife, Phaedra,
has been raped by his son, Hippolytus. As a result, he angrily confronts
1
Laura McClure, Spoken Like a Woman: Speech and Gender in Athenian Drama (Princeton:
Princeton University Press, 1999), p. 157.
71
Hippolytus, expressing the wish that he had possessed some indication

of his son’s true character beforehand:
If only men had some sure token of their friends,

and a way of judging their hearts,
of telling who is a true friend, and who is not.
All men should have two voices,
one the just voice, and the other as it ordinarily is,
so that the unjustly minded voice might be refuted
by the just voice, and we would not be deceived.
(925–31; my translation)2
Theseus’ wish for a touchstone to distinguish true from false friend is

dramatically ironic: he has already found Hippolytus guilty of Phaedra’s
charge of rape and has arranged for his punishment. So sure is he of his
son’s guilt that he rejects Hippolytus’ plea to consult “[p]ledges, oaths,
and oracles” (1055), the traditional means of ascertaining the guilt or
innocence of an accused party. Instead of trusting these traditional
hermeneutic methods, Theseus mistakenly puts his faith in the dead
Phaedra’s “testimony” over his son’s. Indeed, his speech about the
second voice, with its references to justice and injustice, truth and
falsehood, refutation and judgment, sets the stage for a scene that is in
fact structured as a trial.3
2
The Greek text for Hippolytus 925–31 runs as follows:
, " 5"( )
A"
(8 ( ; #%( "),
2(
A *( 2 6
,
((# & # "1 ,
6 3 6 2 *:%,
X J "( *G
8%
" , 0 \ 1.
The Greek text used is that of W. S. Barrett, ed., Euripides: Hippolytos (Oxford: Oxford
University Press, 1964), except that iota subscripts will be used. When not otherwise
noted (as here), translations are, with minor modifications, by David Grene in Euripides
1. Four Tragedies: Alcestis, The Medea, The Heracleidae, Hippolytus, in The Complete Greek
Tragedies, ed. David Grene and Richmond Lattimore (Chicago: University of Chicago
Press, 1955).
3
Cf. Richard Garner, Law and Society in Classical Athens (New York: St. Martin’s Press,
1987), p. 102, who argues that “the agon between Theseus and Hippolytus explicitly
takes the court form of accusation and defense with all the appropriate vocabulary and
commonplaces of argumentation.” Cf. the similar point made by Charles Segal, “Signs,
72
THE “JUST VOICE” AS PARADIGMATIC METAPHOR IN THE HIPPOLYTUS
In Theseus’ view, the evidence of Phaedra’s letter and body convinc-

ingly refutes Hippolytus’ defense. Theseus thus metaphorically equates
his son’s voice with the ordinary voice, and the “silent” testimony of
Phaedra’s letter and corpse with the second, just voice. He will come
to regret condemning his son to death only when Artemis announces
his son’s innocence at the end of the play (1307–12). His error demon-
strates the dangers of relying on the fallible tools of reason and logic
rather than on infallible divine judgment. As McClure argues, the
“forensic agon between Theseus and Hippolytus” demonstrates that
“the judicial process commands a tenuous authority, one easily under-
mined by verbal guile and sophistic manipulation of appearance.”4
As we have seen, Theseus’ call for a “just voice” emerges from a
semiotic crisis in late-fifth-century Athens, when a new skepticism
arose about voices and signs whose veracity was traditionally guaran-
teed by the gods.5 In his wish, and in the “trial” he conducts, Theseus
Magic, and Letters in Euripides’ Hippolytus,” in Innovations of Antiquity, ed. Ralph Hexter
and Daniel Selden (New York: Routledge, 1992), p. 426. The scene is replete with legal
references. Theseus, who had yearned for a “sure token” (or “proof ”) of character, argues
that Phaedra’s corpse so clearly “convicts” Hippolytus (943–5) that no speech can provide
his “acquittal” (960–1). Hippolytus expresses the wish that Phaedra were alive to serve
as a witness of his innocence (1022–4), but Theseus considers the dead Phaedra to be
the “surest of witnesses” against him (972). Although the chorus tells Hippolytus that
he has “rebutted the charge” by his oath (1036–7), he fails to convince his father; as a
result, he calls on the House of Theseus to “witness” his innocence (1074–5). Theseus,
however, counters that the house, a “voiceless” witness, “convicts” him of the crime
(1076–7).
Legal allusions, hardly confined to this central “trial scene,” also frame the drama as a
whole. At the beginning of the drama, Aphrodite claims that she will “punish Hippolytus
this day” (21–2), but at the end, Artemis finds him to be innocent and “just” (1298–9,
1307–8). She accuses Theseus of breaking of “nature’s laws” (1286–9) and finds him
proven “at fault” (1320–22), although his ignorance “acquits” him (1334–5). Though
falsely convicted of the crime, Hippolytus frees his father of guilt in his error (1449).
Early on, Phaedra refers to her fear of a “circle of condemning witnesses” (403–4) and
of the nurse’s “plead[ing] the cause of wrong so well” (505–6).
4
McClure, Spoken Like A Woman, p. 157.
5
The tradition is succinctly summarized by Christiane Sourvinou-Inwood, “Assumptions
and the Creation of Meaning: Reading Sophocles’ Antigone,” Journal of Hellenic Studies
109 (1989): 142: “ . . . the direct intervention of the gods through prophecy and other
sign-revelation is the ultimate religious authority, the only source of religious authority
transcending the polis discourse.” According to Goff, The Noose of Words, p. 88, manteia,
“were it attainable, would function exactly like the second, truthful voice of Theseus’
fantasy; it would be a touchstone to identify and correct the enigmas of human speech.”
The drama, however, leaves the precise referent of the “just voice” unclear. The argument
73
puts his faith not in the voice of mythic truth – the voice of the prophet,
the oracle, the pledge – but in the new, “two-sided” modes of inquiry,
the process of deliberation and rational inquiry that were so important
to the political and intellectual life of late-fifth-century Athens.6 The
wish that men had a second, “just voice” reflects a loss of belief in
a divine voice that could, if interpreted correctly, definitively sepa-
rate truth from falsehood for mortals. Theseus’ anxiety about being
betrayed by a false friend takes on particular poignancy when set in
the play’s contemporary context, the early years of a civil war beset by
treachery, foresworn oaths, and sophistic rationalizations of immoral
conduct. Theseus’ longing dramatizes the dilemmas of a postmythic
age that turns to logic and rhetoric instead of oracles and oaths as a
means of discerning a man’s true character.
We have seen how in Euripides’ age, doubt about the old mythic
truths grew as the intellectual revolution and the Peloponnesian War
undermined faith in traditional values. Both in the world of the Hip-
polytus and on the stage of historical action, tangled networks of
alliances, complex webs of deceit, and reciprocal charges of injustice
make the “just argument” hard to identify. In the texts of Thucydides
and Euripides alike, actual or threatened violations of decency and cus-
tom subvert claims to have attained a simple voice of justice. Instead,
lofty-sounding ideals too often provide convenient rationalizations for
selfish passions and a lust for revenge.
made by Herbert Musurillo, “The Problem of Lying and Deceit and the Two Voices
of Euripides’ Hippolytus 925–31,” Transactions of the American Philological Association 104
(1974): 236–8, that the “just voice” refers to the ventriloquized voice of a fifth-century
cult of seers seems far-fetched.
For a fuller account of the privileged status of the divine voice in early Greek poetry,
cf. also Thalmann, Conventions of Form and Thought, pp. 147–9. Thalmann argues that
in the Hesiodic view, for example, human language “will always contain an element of
error or deception” (pp. 148–9) in contrast with the divine language of the Muses, which
is considered to be “stable and coherent and beyond the limits of ordinary experience”
(p. 147). Cf. also Pietro Pucci, “The Language of the Muses,” in Classical Mythology
in Twentieth-Century Thought and Literature, ed. Wendell M. Aycock and Theodore M.
Klein. Proceedings of the Comparative Literature Symposium (Lubbock, TX: Texas Tech
University 11, 1980), p. 181, who claims that the divinely inspired poet produces a “pure,
inner ‘signified’ (meaning, idea, etc.) that seems to share nothing with the established
contingent and external aspects of language.”
6
This shift in modes of inquiry may be parallel to the movements from orality to literacy
and from poetry to prose described in Havelock, Preface to Plato.
74
The questions raised by the play, therefore, have important historical

ramifications: If self-serving interpretations all too easily undermine
the sanctity of oaths, what foundation can there be for reliable speech
and moral conduct? How can disputes be settled and violence averted?
Theseus’ longing for hermeneutic certainty serves as a keynote in
understanding the tragic action of the drama, which is preoccupied
with the potential duplicity of language and the consequent problems
of interpretation.
Recent critics, ever alert to questions of reading, misreading, and
ambiguity, have made perceptive remarks about Theseus’ exclama-
tion.7 Goff, putting Theseus’ wish in the context of a thematic pat-
tern of doubles, views it as a focal point in the drama’s “insistence on
the complexities and insecurities of witnessing, listening, reading and
interpreting.”8 Zeitlin suggests that Theseus’ reference to two voices
signals a theme of “double speaking” central to the play as a whole, but
especially important in the discourse of Phaedra.9 Taking these critics’
work as a point of departure, I argue that Theseus’ wish provides a
central, organizing metaphor for the drama’s paradoxical treatment of
the status of the voice, both human and divine.
Characters in other plays of Euripides express similar concerns about
the status of the voice and the ambiguity of language,10 but the Hippoly-
tus submits these issues to much more sustained and rigorous investi-
gation. Not only Theseus but Phaedra and Hippolytus as well express
anxiety about the capacity of language to misrepresent the self and
mislead the other. They, too, express a desire for (or a fear of) a voice
or sign of unmediated truth, which is (or is taken to be) transparent
to the consciousness of the speaking or signing subject. In their search
7
Goldhill, Reading Greek Tragedy, pp. 136, 126, who claims that “[m]isreading is an essential
dynamic of the Hippolytus,” also speaks of the “doubleness and uncertainty” of language
in the drama. Cf. also Segal, Interpreting Greek Tragedy, p. 81, who argues that Euripidean
drama self-consciously calls attention to the problem of “representing, realizing, and
verifying” the interior realm of mythical characters.
8
Goff, The Noose of Words, pp. 73, 128–9; cf. other references to the “second, truthful
voice” at pp. 44–7.
9
Zeitlin, “The Power of Aphrodite,” pp. 84–5.
10
In his commentary on lines 925–7, Barrett, Euripides: Hippolytos, p. 340, cites similar
passages at Medea 516ff. and Heracles 655ff. Cf. also discussion of these passages by Goff,
The Noose of Words, pp. 44–5.
75
for such a voice – whether in the interest of revealing or of concealing

the truth – they all turn to surrogate speakers, both real and rhetorical,
to mute signs, and ultimately to silence itself. The pervasive use of
the metaphor of voice in the play reflects an attempt to reclaim a lost
or diminished power of the voice to articulate inner truth – or what
passes as inner truth.
Theseus’ reference to “just” and “unjust” voices, which opens his
climactic encounter with his son, resonates throughout the drama, set-
ting up a series of pervasive oppositions between justice and injustice,
truth and falsehood, being and seeming, clarity and concealment, uni-
vocality and polysemicity. In privileging the first member of each of
these oppositions, Theseus’ fantasy reflects the movement of the drama
as a whole, which turns on a series of efforts to transcend (or exploit)
what Zeitlin calls “the potential of the signifier to include more than
one signified.”11 Indeed, the crisis of the drama arises from Theseus’
belief in the veracity of the letter in which Phaedra falsely accuses
Hippolytus of rape. Its denouement comes when Theseus recognizes
his error in too hastily condemning his son, whose death he must now
lament.
Theseus’ yearning for a voice that would perfectly capture the inner
mind and heart (diagnôsin phrenôn, 926) of one’s supposed friends exem-
plifies the phonocentric assumption that the medium of the voice
is capable of conveying, without distortion or deferral, full presence
and transcendent meaning. His fantasy evinces both affirmation and
doubt with respect to this assumption, by reflecting a division within
both voice and consciousness even as it posits a direct correspondence
between them.12 Voice thus becomes a metaphor for the disjunction
as well as for the correspondence between signifier and signified, a
transparent vehicle – but for both truth and lies.
These contradictory associations reflect the ambivalent attitude
toward “two-sided verbal strife” in both the ancient Athenian democ-
racy and our own. Like the Athenians, we consider debate, cross-
examination, and a fair hearing of both sides of a question to be the
11
Zeitlin, “The Power of Aphrodite,” p. 83.
12
Cf. Goff, The Noose of Words, p. 46, who argues that the second voice simultaneously
“achieve[s] a unity with reality” and “institute[s] a split in the speaking subject.”
76
most reliable means of attaining truth in the political and legal arenas;
but, at the same time, we remain aware of how easily the truth can be
distorted and manipulated for selfish or partisan ends.
The pervasiveness of the play’s concern with law, debate, and
sophistry invites examination of the role of rhetoric and debate in
fifth-century Athens.13 Like Sophocles’ Antigone, Euripides’ Hippolytus
is deeply concerned with the “nature, justice, and power of rhetoric,”14
asking the following questions in mythic guise: How much faith should
be put in persuasion and debate? Can debate provide a “sure token”
pointing toward justice and right action, or is every attempt at persua-
sion inevitably bound up with sophistry and deception? In the absence
of a divine or prophetic voice that speaks clearly to those knowing how
to interpret it, is there such a thing as a dispassionate voice of justice?
If there were, could it prevail over an unjust but persuasive voice?15
The ending of the play seems to resolve these vexing questions
by assigning the “just voice” to Hippolytus by divine proclamation.
Artemis, identifying Theseus and herself as the “chief sufferers” (1337),
reveals to him the “just heart” of Hippolytus (1298–9): he justly
kept the oath that he swore, since he reverenced the gods (1307–9).16
Artemis correspondingly finds Theseus at fault for consulting neither
“oaths / nor voice of oracles” (1321–2).17
13
For references to debate and rhetoric, see lines 291–2, 388–90, 486–9, and 971, among
other passages mentioned in this chapter.
14
Josiah Ober and Barry Strauss, “Drama, Political Rhetoric, and the Discourse of Athe-
nian Democracy,” in Nothing to Do with Dionysos? Athenian Drama in Its Social Context,
ed. John J. Winkler and Froma I. Zeitlin (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1990),
p. 259.
15
Cf. Goff, The Noose of Words, p. 79, who puts the last question in the context of Athenian
democracy, which, she holds, must to some extent believe that “debate and deliberation
do issue in correct and rational action, and that the logos that ‘wins’ is in some sense the
right one.” In this light it is intriguing to consider whether the just and unjust voice
might correspond to the better and worse argument of Protagoras’ Antilogoi (which could
also be translated as “just” and “unjust”). For discussion of this sophistic technique as it
applies to the nurse’s “seduction” of Phaedra, also see Goff, p. 53.
16
Cf. Nancy Sorkin Rabinowitz, “Female Speech and Female Sexuality: Euripides’ Hip-
polytos as Model,” Helios n.s. 13.2 (1986): 178, who claims that Artemis’ truthful procla-
mation at the end of the play represents the fulfillment of Theseus’ wish for a “just
voice.” Cf. also Segal, “Signs, Magic, and Letters,” p. 426, who calls Artemis’ appear-
ance a “pendant” to the “trial-like scene” between Hippolytus and Theseus.
17
. . . ( # b . . . (Hippolytus 1321).
77
After Theseus confesses his error, Hippolytus forgives him in an

exchange that seems to recover the fullness and justice of the voice
yearned for by Theseus. But this recovery is fleeting and bittersweet.
Only when he is dying does Hippolytus become fully present to his
father, who finally recognizes his innocence and noble character. Yet
living, human voices will commemorate Hippolytus’ memory, com-
pensating for his loss and the dumbing of “[t]he music which never
slept / on the strings of his lyre,” in the chorus’ lament (1134–5).
Artemis promises that choruses of young girls will remember him,
and Phaedra’s love for him, in song (1428–30) – a song whose truth
has divine validation.18 The ending thus enacts the restoration – if
poignant and belated – of the lost plenitude of the voice.
And yet, the play’s self-conscious analysis of the polysemy of the
voice and the sign undercuts this simplistic, nostalgic ending by
demonstrating the futility of the attempt to abolish or transcend dif-
ference. Although Phaedra, incited as she is by her nurse, is the chief
exemplar of “double speaking” in the play, Hippolytus and Theseus are
also guilty of it. The difference that resides within these male characters
and their discourse is projected onto Phaedra in order to facilitate their
reconciliation. As Rabinowitz argues, the epilogue “fixes Phaedra in
an attitude of praise for Hippolytus, and assures that she will only be
heard or seen from that perspective”;19 such an ending, dependent
as it is on traditional gender stereotypes, seeks to neutralize Phaedra’s
complexity, her doubleness, her “semiotic power.”20 Phaedra is, of
course, divided against herself: she advocates an aristocratic belief in
chastity and moderation as much as Hippolytus but, unlike him, does
not act on that belief.21 Abandoning the ideal of a simple, noble code
of conduct, she ends up employing “shifting, intricate interpretations”
to preserve her reputation.
Nor can a single, just voice capable of transcending duplicitous
interpretations be found in the divine sphere. The duality of divine
18
McClure, Spoken Like a Woman, p. 157.
19
Rabinowitz, “Female Speech and Female Sexuality,” p. 136.
20
Bergren, “Language and the Female,” p. 82.
21
Justina Gregory, Euripides and the Instruction of the Athenians (Ann Arbor: University of
Michigan Press, 1991), pp. 72, 78.
78
discourse is embedded in the very structure of the play, which is framed

by the appearances of goddesses whose only common ground seems to
be the people on whom they exact their vengeance. The failure of this
exchange between goddesses to produce either a resolution of their
conflict or a decisive victory seems to confirm the futility of Theseus’
longing.
The tragedy thus throws into doubt not only the possibility of find-
ing the “just voice” but also its very existence, on either the divine
or human plane. Gregory argues that the Euripidean corpus attempts
to reconcile aristocratic ideals with democratic practices; however, the
ending of the Hippolytus suggests that the new modes of argument
and analysis being used in fifth-century Athens render a naive faith
in aristocratic values impossible. Instead of confirming the possibility
of a clear, transcendental meaning of justice, the play depicts a series
of competing definitions, none of which proves to be irrefutable or
final. The “just voice” is shown to be an oxymoronic construction in
a postmythic age; the play demonstrates, in spite of itself, that voice
cannot transcend the limitations of the signifying medium and social
structures that shape it. Its integrity is vulnerable to “female” passion
and deceptiveness, to be sure (on the divine as well as the human
level), but also to “male” self-absorption and to the patriarchal quest
for power and glory.
The chorus’ description of woman’s nature as an “[u]nhappy . . .
compound” (161) provides an apt place to begin our investigation
of the theme of “double speaking,” because it introduces the whole
problem of difference that Phaedra embodies.22 The chorus mem-
bers, singing their entry song on stage, are expressing their concern
about their mistress Phaedra, whom they describe as feverish and fast-
ing (131–40). For the chorus, Phaedra’s sickness exemplifies a malady
that strikes women universally: “the torturing misery of helplessness, /
the helplessness of childbirth and its madness” (162–3). In describing
women as an “[u]nhappy . . . compound,” the chorus is espousing the
traditional view that difference and “double speaking” are inherent
in woman’s nature. Its metaphor of an “[u]nhappy . . . compound,”
22
The importance of this description (("' Y . . . "Y [161–2]) was shown to me
by Froma I. Zeitlin, “The Power of Aphrodite,” p. 68.
79
which could also be translated as an “ill-tuned harmony” (dustropô . . .

harmonia, 161–2), anticipates Theseus’ metaphor of competing voices.
But the chorus’ metaphor, which describes difference as dwelling
within a woman, allows no possibility of resolution of the con-
flicting voices. The “wretched helplessness” of women is itself an
“[u]nhappy . . . compound” of the physical pains of childbirth and the
mental agony of madness (161–9).
Phaedra’s opening dialogues with the nurse and with the chorus
exhibit a keen sensitivity to the whole problem of difference, as it
applies both to woman as a deceptive signifier and to language itself.
The nurse initially speaks with Phaedra in order to discover the cause
of the illness that plagues her. To accomplish this end, she employs
what she calls a “better argument” (292): only by talking about her
troubles can Phaedra find a “remedy” for them (297–300). Phaedra’s
answer to the nurse’s question about whether she has committed a
violent crime is revealing: “My hands are clean; the stain is in my
heart” (317). This description posits a discrepancy between outside
and inside that will be mirrored in Hippolytus’ image of women as
counterfeit coin (616). When she finally succeeds in hearing Phaedra’s
secret, the nurse leaves in horror, threatening to kill herself (352–61).
In addressing the chorus of palace women shortly thereafter, Phaedra
assigns her own dichotomous nature to people in general:
We know the good, we apprehend it clearly.

But we can’t bring it to achievement. Some
are betrayed by their own laziness, and others
value some other pleasure above virtue.
There are many pleasures in a woman’s life –
long gossiping talks and leisure, that sweet curse. (380–4)23
Phaedra’s implication that women are slothful, deceptive, and

promiscuous draws on the stereotypical portrait of women in archaic
23
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* , F 3 "% L ,
F J6 "8 ;

. ,(; J;
; 5,
"
8( ; (
A, " ', . . .
80
Greek poetry.24 In this passage Phaedra seems to single out female

speech and leisure as particularly dangerous,25 reinforcing the chorus’
view of woman as an “[u]nhappy . . . compound.” Her concern with
speaking justly is evident in her reference to two kinds of “shame”
(aidôs), one harmless and the other harmful, which are too easily
confused:
Then there is shame that thwarts us. Shame is of two kinds.
The one is harmless, but the other a plague.
For clarity’s sake, we should not talk of “shame,”
a single word for two quite different things. (385–7)26
This reference, which may reflect an interest in the sophistic dissoi

logoi,27 prefigures Theseus’ allusion to two voices. Phaedra’s argument
that the same word should be spelled differently if it has different
meanings may also show sophistic influence.28 Here Phaedra conveys
nostalgia for a single, plain voice, for a conjunction of outside (signifier)
and inside (signified) that would eliminate the problem of difference
from language and avoid an “[u]nhappy . . . compound.” The concern
she expresses about the pleasure women take in gossip, coupled with
her concern about the inherent duplicity of language, demonstrates a
close link between “erotic ambiguity” and sophistic rhetoric.29
24
In addition to Hesiod’s description of Pandora, one thinks of the misogynistic portrayal of
women in the lyric poet Semonides, discussed by Gregory, Euripides and the Instruction
of the Athenians, pp. 65–6. Although the Greek makes clear that Phaedra is speaking
about human nature, and not only about the nature of women, “her generalizations are,
for all their generality, conceived with her own circumstances and character in mind,”
according to Barrett, Euripides: Hippolytos, p. 229, n. on 381–5.
25
Rabinowitz, “Female Speech and Female Sexuality,” p. 130, argues that Phaedra’s attitude
about female speech, which reflects traditional patriarchal values, mirrors Hippolytus’.
Phaedra’s phrase, “sweet curse” (" ', 384), recalls the description of Pandora
in Hesiod’s Theogony as a “beautiful evil” (
', 585).
26
,1 $ ((; ,(, J 3 A,
J 4$ , " / (6
0 : ?( %"#.
27
McClure, Spoken Like a Woman, p. 131.
28
Ibid., p. 131.
29
McClure, Spoken Like a Woman, p. 131, argues that Phaedra’s allusion to spelling “rein-
forces the link between . . . writing and the deceptive rhetoric of the sophists in the
agon.”
81
Phaedra’s yearning for a clear distinction between signifiers

(kairos . . . saphês, 386) prefigures Theseus’ longing for a “sure token”
(tekmêrion saphes, 925–6) of men’s hearts. Her sophisticated analysis of
language raises a paradoxical dilemma: where can the simple “word of
truth” reside if the signified is necessarily divorced from the signifier –
if language is inevitably ambiguous?
Affirming her choice to pursue “shame” in its better sense of
“chastity” or “modesty,”30 Phaedra argues, “These then are my
thoughts. Nothing can now seduce me / to the opposite opinion”
(390–1). Phaedra now claims to be able to act on her knowledge of
the better course, although her earlier attempts to do so were unavail-
ing. Keeping silent about her forbidden love for Hippolytus, Phaedra
tells us, was the “first plan” she conceived:
Silence was my first plan.

Silence and concealment. For the tongue
is not to be trusted: it can criticize
another’s faults, but on its own possessor
it brings a thousand troubles. (393–7)31
The tongue here serves as an emblem of the ordinary voice that will
be decried by Theseus. Through her silence Phaedra seeks to control
the difference that she abhors in her own and women’s nature – and
in language. For if language – and women – are by their very nature
duplicitous and uncontrollable, a woman intent on remaining virtuous
ought not to speak of a forbidden passion. Indeed, enforced silence and
interiority for women are the antidotes to the corrupting influence of
30
In his commentary, Barrett, Euripides: Hippolytos, p. 230, n. on 385–6, argues that the
pejorative sense of the term is “indecisiveness” or “lack of resolution.” For an alternative
definition of the term as a “euphemistic metonymy for ",” see E. M. Craik, “cESd
in Euripides’ Hippolytos 373–430: Review and Interpretation,” Journal of Hellenic Studies
113 (1993): 45.
31
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82
the “mobile doubleness of language and the female.”32 When she is no

longer able to keep silent, Phaedra next decides to conquer love “with
discretion and good sense” (sôphronein, 399) – the aristocratic ideals
epitomized by Hippolytus.33 Failing in this effort also, she determines
that death is “the best plan of them all” (401).
Phaedra’s fear of the spreading of the “taint” of infidelity (411) reveals
an aristocratic ethos that puts the onus of moral responsibility on the
nobility: “ . . . when wickedness approves itself to those of noble birth,
it will surely be approved / by their inferiors” (411–12).34 Her con-
demnation of highborn women who consider shameful things good
recalls Thucydides’ account of the reversal of values that took place
during the civil war on Corcyra. Like Thucydides, Phaedra laments
the disappearance of the “simple way of looking at things” that she
associates with the male aristocratic system of values. She consequently
regards the need to accept death before dishonor as a clear sign of her
nobility.
Phaedra proceeds to condemn “lip-worshippers of chastity” who
violate their own precepts when they can avoid paying the conse-
quences (413–14). She wonders why wives who are righteous in words
alone do not fear that the rafters of the house may “take voice and cry
aloud” to expose their deceit (413–18). Phaedra’s use of the image of the
house ironically prefigures its role in her own death. The rafters of the
house do in a sense “take voice and cry aloud” to condemn her illicit
love:35 she hangs herself from them, as the chorus sings (764–75).36
32
The phrase, which I have quoted before, belongs to Bergren, “Language and the
Female,” p. 78. For the issues of women’s silence and confinement, cf. Rabinowitz,
“Female Speech and Female Sexuality,” pp. 127–33; Goff, The Noose of Words, pp. 1–20;
and Froma I. Zeitlin, “Playing the Other: Theater, Theatricality, and the Feminine in
Greek Drama,” in Nothing to Do with Dionysos? Athenian Drama in Its Social Context,
ed. John J. Winkler and Froma I. Zeitlin (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1990),
pp. 76–8.
33
(" )( "(#, as Phaedra expresses her prior resolution. On
the parallels that could be drawn between Hippolytus and Phaedra in this connection,
see Gregory, Euripides and the Instruction of the Athenians, pp. 71–2.
34
2 %&" ,("& ( *(
( ,< / / #" 'G % I
#
(Hippolytus 411–12).
35
. . . %%6 ;< (Hippolytus 418).
36
The same Greek word for “rafter” appears in both passages (8"; 418, 768).
83
The house here works as a kind of “just voice” of patriarchal author-

ity that refutes the ordinary voice by exposing its deceptiveness.
When Phaedra concludes her diatribe against hypocrisy, the nurse
returns on stage, having reversed her earlier condemnation of her
mistress:
In this world second thoughts, it seems, are best.

Your case is not so extraordinary,
beyond thought or reason. (436–8)37
She urges Phaedra to give in to her passion for her stepson. In making
her case the nurse draws on a host of sophistic arguments, some of
which recall Gorgias’ Encomium on Helen: it is not only futile but also
destructive and hubristic to resist the will of the gods, who furnish
many examples of illicit loves (437–43; 467–76).38 The nurse’s “better
argument” (292) and “second thoughts” (436) epitomize the ordinary,
scheming voice derided by Theseus.
The ensuing exchange between Phaedra and the nurse evinces dif-
fering interpretations of what is “beyond thought or reason” (eksô
logou, 437), a phrase that can also be translated as “beyond argument.”
Indeed, the play’s wider investigation concerns the proper use and
scope of rhetoric, questions that are also debated in contemporary
political discourse. We see in Thucydides’ Mytilenean Debate, which
is again discussed at the end of this chapter, a concern with whether
any position, once taken, should be considered “beyond argument.”
The Athenian polis was obsessed as much as we are today with debating
both sides of every question.
Phaedra goes on to accuse the nurse of indulging in speech that
threatens the welfare of both homes and cities:
This is the deadly thing which devastates

well-ordered cities and the homes of men –
that’s it, this art of oversubtle words.
It’s not the words ringing delight in the ear
37
F :" " (1". / %&" "(( 3 G
'% /
8 . . . (Hippolytus 436–8).
38
For an analysis of Gorgias’ line of argument, see Gregory, Euripides and the Instruction of
the Athenians, pp. 68–9.
84
that one should speak, but those that have the power
to save their hearer’s honorable name. (486–9)39
The opposition between “oversubtle” but delightful words and plain

but moral words parallels Theseus’ opposition between sophistic and
honest voices. Phaedra regards the lowborn nurse as a dangerous expo-
nent of sophistry.40 The nurse, whom Phaedra accuses of pleading the
cause of wrong too well (505), does draw on a variety of sophistic
techniques, including the arguments from advantage and from nature
(442; 471–2). She also employs Phaedra’s own distinction between
words and deeds in urging her to give in to her desire: “What you
want / is not fine words, but the man!” (490–1).
We have seen how the sophists’ boast to be able to teach rhetoric
to anyone willing to pay had a democratic aspect. Indeed, the dia-
logue between Phaedra and the nurse becomes a contest between an
idealistic, aristocratic ethos and a pragmatic, democratic one. Phaedra
insists on upholding the traditional aristocratic virtues of honor and
self-sacrifice, whereas the nurse argues that those ideals are not worth
dying for (490–1; 500–2).
Phaedra eventually succumbs to what the nurse calls the “better
argument” (beltiô logon, 292), a phrase that evokes sophistic debate
and also foreshadows Theseus’ exchange of voices. Phaedra’s failure to
follow her better nature demonstrates the validity of her own moral:
people know the good but are unable to actually achieve it (380–4).
Perhaps the double nature of the nurse’s discourse resonates with
Phaedra’s double attitude toward her own desire.41 It is not the nurse’s
sophistic ability to “plead the cause of wrong so well” (505)42 that
39
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40
McClure, Spoken Like a Woman, p. 131, points out the irony in the fact that the principal
exponents of sophistry in the play are “socially marginal figures like women and slaves”
who would generally not even be literate, much less trained in rhetoric.
41
A point suggested to me by an anonymous referee.
42
Y("& H
8%<
) . . . (Hippolytus 505). So Phaedra accuses the nurse.
85
causes Phaedra’s demise but her own prior susceptibility to “the cause
of wrong.”
Won over by the nurse’s arguments, Phaedra herself employs
sophistry to good effect. In fact she claims that her scheme to incrim-
inate Hippolytus will “profit” her (sumphoras, 716), a clear allusion
to the sophistic principle of advantage. The drama comes full circle:
although she initially maintains that her hope lies in silence, and asks the
nurse to keep quiet about her secret (520), Phaedra exploits the poten-
tial of the signifier for duplicity by “speaking” through surrogates –
first through the nurse, then through her letter, and ultimately through
the sign of her own body.43 Having abandoned her ideals of truth
and honor, Phaedra seeks to preserve only the appearance of these
ideals by exploiting the power traditionally assigned women of telling
“falsehoods that resemble the truth.”44
Her compromised silence in all of these instances reflects the dou-
ble nature of her desire, which at once demands and forbids ver-
bal expression. Zeitlin points out that Phaedra’s language reflects the
ambivalent state of her soul: “[T]he secret of Aphrodite, . . . in arous-
ing simultaneous desire for its fulfillment and its repression, necessarily
recodes language into the double entendre.”45 Phaedra’s transferred
speech, which allows her to maintain her silence and give voice to
her desire at the same time, reveals her as the archetypal “double
speaker.” Equivocating on her own pledge to keep silent, she allows
the nurse to name the object of her forbidden love – Hippolytus –
and thus can maintain that she did not divulge her secret (350–2). In a
similar fashion Phaedra permits the nurse to approach Hippolytus on
her behalf, even though she condemns her later for doing so (520–4;
685–7).
43
Phaedra’s letter is “tellingly” attached to her body, according to Sheila Murnaghan,
“Body and Voice in Greek Tragedy,” Yale Journal of Criticism 1.2 (1988): 36. Cf. also
duBois, Sowing the Body, p. 130, on the pervasive metaphor in ancient Greek culture of
woman’s body as a “tablet folded up on itself, the papyrus that must be unfolded to be
deciphered,” a provocative analogy for my reading of this episode.
44
Whereas Phaedra puts her deceptiveness to work in order to preserve the mere appear-
ance of marital fidelity, both Helen (in the Helen) and Creusa (in the Ion) work in their
husbands’ actual interests.
45
86
Exploiting “her privileged place in the system of exchange,”46 she

manipulates her silence, which becomes a signifier, like aidôs, capable
of two diverse meanings.47 In her letter, Phaedra successfully produces
a kind of silent, second voice that gives immediate and full expres-
sion to the supposed fact of her violated body. The female body here
masquerades as a single, plain sign of truth but is, in fact, a deceptive
signifier, the product of Phaedra’s “shifting, intricate” plot. Her letter
works as a kind of false oath, whose supposed veracity is confirmed by
the fact of her death. Ironically, the silence to which Phaedra resorted
as her “first plan” also becomes her last. Whereas she first intended to
conceal her passion while keeping her integrity, she now decides to
preserve her reputation by dishonest means. Phaedra’s withdrawal from
discourse by suicide makes her letter’s “testimony” an unimpeachable
witness for Theseus.
The denouement of the drama thus seems to confirm Hippoly-
tus’ earlier assessment of women. Incensed by the news of Phaedra’s
love for him, Hippolytus brands women as a “coin which men find
counterfeit!” (616). He goes on to wonder why the gods should not
have provided an alternative mode of conception:
Men might have dedicated
in your own temples images of gold,
silver, or weight of bronze, and thus have bought
the seed of progeny, . . . to each been given
his worth in sons according to the assessment
of his gift’s value. (619–23)
In answer to the problem women pose as deceptive tokens of exchange,

as embodiments of difference, Hippolytus proposes an exchange that
entails an exact and fair equivalence of true metals to sons. Just as
Theseus wishes to supersede linguistic difference, so Hippolytus wishes
to abolish sexual difference. Hippolytus’ wish for singleness and purity
46
Rabinowitz, Anxiety Veiled, p. 166.
47
Hippolytus’ silence also conveys two different meanings: whereas for Artemis it serves
as a definitive sign of his righteousness, for Theseus it clearly signifies his guilt and
corruption. For analyses of the complex interplay of speech and silence in the play, see
Bernard M. W. Knox, “The Hippolytus of Euripides,” in Greek Tragedy: Modern Essays in
Criticism, ed. Erich Segal (New York: Harper and Row, 1983); Goff, The Noose of Words,
pp. 1–26; and Goldhill, Reading Greek Tragedy, pp. 125–6.
87
mirrors Phaedra’s wish for univocacy of language. All three of the play’s
main characters – Hippolytus, Phaedra, and Theseus – thus express a
yearning to avoid or transcend ambiguity and deception.
In fact, the quality Hippolytus stresses most about women
is the discrepancy between their attractive appearance and their
vile nature,48 recalling the chorus’ metaphor of woman as an
“unhappy . . . compound.” According to Hippolytus, the bride’s father
“enriches his heart’s jewel / with dear adornment, beauty heaped
on vileness. / With lovely clothes the poor wretch tricks her out /
spending the wealth that underprops his house” (631–5). Outraged by
the nurse’s proposition on Phaedra’s behalf, Hippolytus would deny
women any interlocutors except “voiceless beasts” (646). If Theseus,
in his utopian fantasy, seeks to add a voice to eliminate the problem of
difference, Hippolytus in his seeks to subtract one. The play as a whole
“forges a link between sexuality and speech, chastity and silence” for
women, a link that reflects contemporary cultural prejudices.49
If Phaedra is punished for speaking her passion, Hippolytus is pun-
ished for not speaking his chastity, because he allows the nurse to bind
him to an oath with silence (657–8). He is thus at a disadvantage in
defending himself when Phaedra dies and leaves a note incriminat-
ing him: “I know the truth and dare not tell the truth” (1091). His
father refuses to believe Hippolytus, even when he swears an oath of
innocence by Zeus:
If I had one more witness to my character,

if I were tried when she still saw the light,
deeds would have helped you as you scanned your friends
to know the true from the false. But now I swear,
I swear to you by Zeus, the God of oaths,
48
This discrepancy recalls the stark contrast between exterior and interior drawn in Hes-
iod’s description of Pandora in the Works and Days (60–82).
49
Rabinowitz, “Female Speech and Female Sexuality,” p. 132 (here referring only to
Phaedra). In building her argument (p. 130), she cites “the famous Periclean motto –
that the best fame a woman can hope for is not to be spoken of among men (Thuc. 2.46).”
One can also find in the literature of the period a warning to men against indulging in
too much fondness for speech: see Cleon’s speech in Thucydides 3.38.5–7 (discussed at
the end of this chapter), as well as the speech of “Right Logic” in Aristophanes’ Clouds
(discussed in the first chapter), in which a love of rhetoric is connected with effeminacy
and a preference for action with manly virtue.
88
by this deep-rooted fundament of earth,

I never sinned against you with your wife
nor would have wished or thought of it. (1022–7)50
Phaedra succeeds in making Hippolytus share in her “mortal sick-

ness” (730) by putting him in the same bind in which she found
herself. Like her, he now suffers from the malady of knowing the
good but being unable to realize it; like her, he cannot speak for
himself but must employ intermediaries; like her, Hippolytus is “con-
demned and there is no release” (1090). “Unspeakable” things (877),
as Theseus calls them, cause the downfall not only of Phaedra but also
of Hippolytus, uniting them in a common fate. Their interlocking
fates are reflected in the interlocking word order of Hippolytus’ com-
parison of himself with Phaedra (a word order captured well in Grene’s
translation):
Virtuous she was in deed, although not virtuous:
I that have virtue used it to my ruin. (1034–5)51
Just as Phaedra does, Hippolytus addresses the personified House of
Theseus, asking it to “[t]ake voice and bear . . . witness” to his inno-
cence (1074–5). But Theseus sarcastically turns his metaphor of the
House against him, both by accusing him of calling “voiceless wit-
nesses” (1076, my translation) and by taking Phaedra’s letter and body
as irrefutable, silent witnesses to his guilt (1057–9, 1077).52 Theseus’
50
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polytus 1034–5).
52
Goff, The Noose of Words, pp. 26, 100, points out the irony of Theseus’ own reliance on
“voiceless witnesses” and of his assignment to Phaedra’s letter the status of the second
truthful voice. Cf. also Segal, Interpreting Greek Tragedy, p. 100, writing about the play’s
concern with the “dichotomies of visible and invisible, inner and outer purity, tongue
and heart”: “The silent speaking of Phaedra’s written tablets . . . proves to be more per-
suasive than the spoken utterances of face-to-face confrontation between Theseus and
89
naive reading of Phaedra’s letter contrasts with his ruthlessly literal

reading of his son’s metaphors. In fact, his metaphoric assignment of
voice to Phaedra’s letter (which he says “cries out unspeakable things,”
877) and to her corpse (which he regards as the “surest of witnesses,”
972) grants these signs the same transcendental truth value of the “just
voice.”
In wishing for a just voice, Theseus had called for a “sure token”
of one’s friends (tekmêrion saphes, 925–6). He uses the same adjective
in asking for “sure” curses from Poseidon (sapheis aras, 890) and in
calling Phaedra’s body the “surest of witnesses” (saphestatou marturos,
972). Doubly misled, he assumes both the veracity of his wife’s silent
testimony and the deceptiveness of his son’s spoken testimony. That
Phaedra’s “voiceless” letter and body should “take voice” to condemn
Hippolytus is all the more ironic in light of his wish that women had
only “voiceless” beasts as companions (645–8).
Acknowledging the failure of his attempts to move his father, Hip-
polytus wishes for a second self to judge him or bear witness for him:
“If I could only find / another me to look me in the face / and see my
tears and all that I am suffering!” (1078–9). Just as Theseus yearns for a
second, “just voice,” so Hippolytus wishes for a second self who would
be an empathetic, fair judge of his character. But his wish allows his
father to convict him of the charge of “self-worship” (1080). Hippoly-
tus’ inability to find a persuasive witness of his innocence other than
himself represents an ironic retribution for his single-minded devotion
to one goddess alone.
Theseus proceeds to condemn Hippolytus, and young men in gen-
eral, in terms that closely resemble his son’s condemnation of women
as “counterfeit” (616):
. . . I know that young men

are no more to be trusted than a woman
when love disturbs the youthful blood in them.
The very male in them will make them false. (967–70)
Hippolytus.” Hippolytus finally comes to the realization that his father would not believe
him even if he were in fact to break his oath of silence (1060–4), an oath he threatened
to break soon after taking it (612).
90
Both father and son fail to recognize versions of the truth other than the
one to which each clings so obstinately. Focusing solely on the incon-
sistencies they perceive in each other, they are blind to the divided
nature of their own being. Theseus has himself, of course, already
practiced a form of “self-worship” in finding Hippolytus guilty before
even giving him a chance to defend himself.
Paradoxically, as Goff suggests, Theseus’ curse may represent the
“just voice” for which he was yearning, insofar as it seems to tran-
scend difference by representing a perfect accord between “word and
world,” between signifier and signified.53 This interpretation is sup-
ported by Theseus’ own reference to Phaedra’s body as “refuting”
Hippolytus (kakselenchetai, 944) and Poseidon’s stroke as helping to
“convict” him (elenksô, 1267). For the words “refute” and “convict”
he uses forms of the same verb (elenchô) that he used to describe how
the just voice would refute the scheming voice (eksêlencheto, 930). The
irony is strengthened by Artemis’ use of that same verb twice at the
end of the play: first, when she points out that Phaedra commit-
ted suicide and wrote the incriminating letter precisely in order to
avoid being convicted of the crime through cross-examination (eis
elenchon mê pesêi, 1310); and second, when she condemns Theseus
for not having tested (ouk êlenksas, 1322) his son against the tradi-
tional hermeneutic devices of the “pledge” and the “voice of ora-
cles” (1321), as Hippolytus had requested earlier in quite similar terms
(oude . . . elenksas, 1055–6). Artemis thus turns Theseus’ own words
about the lack of a touchstone, of a sure method of cross-examination,
against him.54
For Vernant, tragic irony “may consist in showing how . . . the hero
finds himself literally ‘taken at his word’”; the hero’s discourse is shown
to possess oracular power insofar as it brings him the “bitter experience
53
Goff, The Noose of Words, p. 75. However, the decree of exile (893–8) Theseus adds to
his prayer to Poseidon (887–90) may reflect a certain skepticism about the efficacy of
his curse.
54
The play’s emphasis on refutation and cross-examination (
%) must remind us of
the importance of these new modes of inquiry in the discursive practice of the period,
including speeches and questioning in the courts, debate in the assembly, and the Socratic
use of dialectic.
91
of the meaning which he insisted on not recognizing.”55 Although

all three of the tragic actors exemplify Vernant’s definition, Theseus’
yearning for a “just voice” perhaps epitomizes it. Accusing Hippolytus
of “double speaking,” Theseus fails to perceive the “double speaking”
of the signs (and silence) that lead him to condemn his son.56 The-
seus accuses Hippolytus of using “holy-seeming words” while devising
shameful deeds (956–7), but this more aptly describes his own curse.57
At the end of the play, Artemis takes Theseus once more at his word
in announcing that his “belief of things unclear [aphanerê]” made his
blindness “clear [phaneran] to see” (1288–9).58 The juxtaposition of
the Greek words for “clear” and “unclear” recalls once again Theseus’
own dichotomy of “just” and “unjust.” After he realizes his error,
he agrees that he has been destroyed (1324). The single, plain word of
truth and justice by which Theseus judges and condemns his son turns
out to be catastrophically double-edged.
Hippolytus is also revealingly “taken at his word” in being found
guilty not only of self-worship but also of sophistry. The same charac-
ter who tells Theseus that he is not at all a clever speaker (986–7) earlier
utters the famous sophism, “My tongue swore, but my mind was still
unpledged” (612).59 This equivocation epitomizes the very disjunc-
tion of language decried by Theseus and condemned by Thucydides.
Like Phaedra, Hippolytus seeks to justify taking actions that he previ-
ously forswore. In addition to being “taken at his word,” Hippolytus
is also “taken at his silence.” The whole play dramatizes the fateful
consequences of his refusal to worship Aphrodite, or even to speak
55
Jean-Pierre Vernant, “Ambiguity and Reversal: On the Enigmatic Structure of Oedipus
Rex,” in Greek Tragedy: Modern Essays in Criticism, ed. Erich Segal (New York: Harper
and Row, 1983), p. 190.
56
One of the ironies highlighted by this encounter is that there is no way for the characters
of the drama (or for the audience) to know for certain the truth of the claims of chastity
made by Hippolytus – a point for which I am grateful to Ann Michelini.
57
Cf. the distrust of rhetoric Theseus expresses to Hippolytus at 960–1 and 971–2. Also
cf. Goff, The Noose of Words, p. 17, who notes that despite the awareness of “the fragility
of human understanding” he demonstrates in his exclamation about the second truthful
voice, Theseus all too quickly condemns his son as a hypocrite.
58
=8( :
' (; / ; "& ( (Hippolytus 1288–9).
So runs Artemis’ direct address, as translated by Barrett, Euripides: Hippolytos, p. 397, in
his note to these lines.
59
J %
)(( 71 , J 3 "6 1 (Hippolytus 612).
92
her name; her understated boast in the first line of the play that she is
“not nameless” (kouk anônumos; my translation) turns out to be more
than a rhetorical trope. When, in the first episode, Hippolytus’ servant
asks him to reconsider his silence toward the goddess (99), he gives a
sophistic reply – namely, that he does worship her, but from a distance
(102). This is only the first equivocation of a character who vaunts his
righteousness (sôphrosunê) and unequivocal honesty.
“Double speaking” is not confined to the human sphere of action
in the play. The absence of direct dialogue between Phaedra and Hip-
polytus is mirrored on the divine plane by the failure of their patron
goddesses, Aphrodite and Artemis, respectively, to confront each other.
Like the human actors, the goddesses are concerned not only with
being well heard by their audience but also with being well heard of –
with preserving their reputation (kleos).60 Aphrodite opens the play
with three references to her name: she says what she is called, claims
that she is called great by men, and describes herself as “not name-
less” (1–2, my translation). The action of the play may be read as a
displaced divine logos, the enactment of Aphrodite’s promise to avenge
Hippolytus’ disdain of her (21–2). Aphrodite implies that the “script”
she sketches out in the prologue has already somehow been inscribed
in the human actors (22–8): she says that there is no need for her to
toil much, since she has already “prepared the way” (prokopsas[a], 23) –
an instance of proleptically destructive discourse that is later replicated
in both Phaedra’s letter and Theseus’ curse.61
At the end of the play, when Artemis first appears, she demands to
be both heard and heeded (1283–5). Her vow not to let Aphrodite’s
machinations go unpunished provides not only a critical gloss on
Aphrodite’s script but also a countervailing revenge plot of a drama
60
Cf. the series of references in the Greek text to
8 (or its cognates) at 47, 405, 423,
489, 687, 717, 1028, and 1299.
61
Words function as weapons throughout the play. Just as naming Aphrodite as an object
of worship seems to be a sacrilegious act for Hippolytus, so naming Hippolytus as the
object of Phaedra’s love seems to be somehow tantamount to realizing that love – for
Phaedra, the nurse, and Hippolytus. The mere mention of Hippolytus’ name by the
nurse first “kill[s]” Phaedra (311) and then, the nurse herself (353). The chorus follows
suit by calling Phaedra “dead” (368). When the nurse changes course and relays Phaedra’s
love to Hippolytus, he recoils from her words as a pollution of which he would like to
be cleansed (653–4).
93
yet to be staged (1420–2).62 As happens with human discourse, the

speech of one goddess becomes a signifier for the other in an appar-
ently endless signifying chain; even the divine voice turns out to be
contingent on partial, self-interested notions of justice. Goff argues that
the language of the gods fails to satisfy the play’s “dream of an uncon-
troversial language” or of a “truthful voice,” insofar as it “both sets
up an alternative to human discourse and, simultaneously, reproduces
the conditions of that discourse.” When viewed from an analytical,
postmythic perspective, divine discourse, too, seems to be “structured
by distance and difference.”63
The play ends on an apparently reconciliatory note: Hippolytus
forgives his father and Artemis includes herself with both of them in
a circle of fellow sufferers (1404). Knox strikes a note of humanistic
positivism when he calls Hippolytus’ act of forgiveness “a free and
meaningful choice, a choice made for the first time in full knowledge
of the nature of human life and divine government.”64 Gregory, too,
praises Hippolytus as “truly noble” for pardoning his father.65 Even
Goff, who is attuned to the problematic status of language in the
play, praises his utterance as a “judicious use of powerful and effective
speech, the kind of speech that has previously been available only to
the gods or to those intent on harming their own kind.”66 Yet even as
he forgives his father, Hippolytus fails to show Phaedra any sympathetic
consideration.
Moreover, his gesture of forgiveness conceals an ill-founded sense
of moral superiority. The dying Hippolytus still claims that he sur-
passes all others in sôphrosunê (1365), a term that means not only
“chastity” but more generally “righteous moderation.” Yet he per-
sists in seeing loyalty to Artemis alone as the only possible meaning
of the term, ironically demonstrating the precise reason for his pun-
ishment by Aphrodite. Whereas Phaedra expresses concern about the
62
Cf. Charles Segal, Dionysiac Poetics and Euripides’ Bacchae (Princeton: Princeton Uni-
versity Press, 1982), p. 327, who sees in Artemis’ vow at the end of the play “presumably
the makings of another tragic suffering.”
63
Goff, The Noose of Words, pp. 87, 89, 102.
64
Knox, “The Hippolytus of Euripides,” p. 331.
65
Gregory, Euripides and the Instruction of the Athenians, p. 78.
66
Goff, The Noose of Words, p. 110.
94
dangers associated with linguistic equivocacy, Hippolytus fails to rec-

ognize the dangers associated with linguistic univocacy. An additional
irony in Hippolytus’ claim to unrivaled sôphrosunê is that Phaedra used
the same term when she vowed to teach him the lesson of moderation
by falsely incriminating him (731).67 But Hippolytus resolutely fails to
learn this lesson, as Barrett remarks:
Still in his last agony the same unshaken certainty of his own perfection: his
blindness to the defects of his narrow puritanism stays with him to the end,
and lets him see in his fate nothing but blind irrational injustice.68
Neither Hippolytus nor Theseus recognizes Phaedra’s tragedy, per-

haps because it is so analogous to their own. Though all three of
these characters express longing for, or seek to exploit, a signifying
medium that transcends difference, the drama as a whole enacts the
failure to reach a transcendental signified through either divine or
human dialectic. The search for the “just voice” ends in an unac-
knowledged hermeneutic aporia, casting into doubt the possibility of
escaping from moral and critical blindness. As Phaedra, Hippolytus,
and Theseus waver between speech and silence, disclosure and con-
cealment, discourse and the flight from discourse, they reveal that they
are all afflicted with the “inevitable disease” of “double speaking.”69
67
Zeitlin, “The Power of Aphrodite,” p. 84, points out that it is only through Phaedra
that Hippolytus comes to recognize that ("(: “indeed has a double meaning,”
one for him and another for her. Cf. Goldhill, Reading Greek Tragedy, pp. 133–4, who
argues that Hippolytus lays claim to general “soundness of mind,” not just chastity or
virginity, when he asserts that no one is more (1" than he (995).
68
See the note on lines 1364–7 in Barrett, Euripides: Hippolytos, p. 403.
69
Cf. Zeitlin, “The Power of Aphrodite,” p. 85, who argues that Phaedra’s illicit desire
“organizes the entire play around the notions of hiding and revealing, speech and silence.”
Zeitlin offers an eloquent interpretation of the “recognition of verbal paradox” that both
Hippolytus and Phaedra share (p. 83). These two characters are also united in their belief
that it is more honorable to keep silent about their secret than to divulge it (cf. 393–4,
656), and yet both equivocate in this regard. Cf. also Goldhill, Reading Greek Tragedy,
p. 125. For a parallel between Theseus and Hippolytus, see Harry C. Avery, “My Tongue
Swore, but My Mind Is Unsworn,” Transactions of the American Philological Association 99
(1968): 27, who argues that Hippolytus’ lament about women, in which he labels them
as counterfeit (616–17), resembles Theseus’ call for a clear, outward indication of men’s
character. For an account of the motif of dissimulation as it applies to both Phaedra and
Hippolytus, see Charles Segal, “Confusion and Concealment in Euripides’ Hippolytus:
Vision, Hope, and Tragic Knowledge,” Mêtis 3 (1988): 263–82.
95
Far from contaminating women’s nature alone, “double speaking” is

revealed as a problem inherent in language and in the human condi-
tion. In Zeitlin’s words, the play teaches a “tragic lesson” that requires
abandoning the dream of a “pure and univocal language,” the notion
of a “utopia of signs.”70
Theseus’ utopian fantasy posits an ideal model of communication in
which dialogue produces a clear resolution between competing voices.
Yet the drama portrays a series of audiences that are either improperly
sought or avoided, resulting in no such resolution. An audience is
sought when it should not be (first by Phaedra, who indirectly tells
her secret to the nurse, then by the nurse, who relays it to Hippolytus,
and finally by Theseus, who calls on Poseidon to fulfill his curse) and
is not sought when it should be (first by Hippolytus, who refuses to
address Aphrodite, then by Phaedra, who escapes cross-examination by
Theseus [cf. 1022–4, 1336–7], and finally by Theseus, who rejects his
son’s pleas to consult oaths, pledges, and oracles [cf. 960–1, 1055–9]).
Theseus’ concern with accurately reading the other, with distin-
guishing true from false friend, just from unjust voice, masks a failure
to recognize the ambiguity and contingency of the very value terms
“true” and “false,” “just” and “unjust” that he invokes.71 Female
speech may well be contaminated by its carnality, as Rabinowitz
argues,72 but male speech is equally infected by both passion and par-
tiality. Hippolytus’ speech (as well as his silence) is contaminated by an
70
71
Charles Segal, “Shame and Purity in Euripides’ Hippolytus,” Hermes 98 (1970): 278,
points out Euripides’ keen awareness of the “ambiguous, ‘protean’ quality of the moral
terms which most strongly guide our conduct.”
72
In “Female Speech and Female Sexuality,” Rabinowitz’s focus on the lethal, carnal nature
of female language in Hippolytus (pp. 134, 137) implies that the play leaves male speech
untainted, an implication with which I would disagree. Goff, The Noose of Words, p. 129,
however, takes too optimistic a view when she argues that language is perhaps redeemed
at the end of the play through the brides’ song that Artemis declares is to be sung in
honor of Hippolytus (1423–30). For Goff, this song provides a “vision . . . of a language
that can transform and transcend what otherwise is the recalcitrance of desire, of violence
and of language itself ”; on this point I would agree instead with both Segal, Dionysiac
Poetics, pp. 326–7, and Rabinowitz, “Female Speech and Female Sexuality,” p. 137, for
whom this supposedly commemorative ritual is highly ironic. Whereas Goff argues that
Phaedra takes voice through the brides (p. 127), Rabinowitz maintains that Phaedra does
not achieve the status of subject in the song, even though she is “hailed as object” (p.
136).
96
overvaluation, or too narrow valuation, of chastity; the self-righteous,

prejudicial nature of Theseus’ speech is evident both in his ironic
yearning for a just voice and in his destructive prayer to Poseidon.
Although Theseus frames his “just voice” as a transcendent virtue
(as Hippolytus does his sôphrosunê), it is a construct that defines jus-
tice in terms of loyalty to his own interests, evincing the dependence
of the logocentric tradition on the word of the Father. The fulfill-
ment of Theseus’ desire for an honorable, legitimate son coincides
with the stabilization of meaning provided by Artemis’ “sure signs”
of Hippolytus’ character.73 Likewise, it is no accident that Phaedra,
who betrays the House of Theseus, assumes the stereotypical female
role as the embodiment of duplicity and difference in the play. The
drama as a whole, however, writes a more radical and more disturbing
conclusion that undermines this traditional equation. The “just voice”
itself turns out to be an “unhappy . . . compound,” a signifier whose
contingency and partiality ill accord with the universal, transcendent
justice of which it is purported to be a transparent medium.
A brief look at a contemporary text that is also preoccupied with
“double speaking” may help connect this conclusion to the politi-
cal context of Athens when the Hippolytus was produced (428 b.c.).
Thucydides’ History incorporates “double speaking” not only struc-
turally (in its widespread use of opposing speeches, or antilogy) and
stylistically (in its frequent use of antithesis, irony, and paradox) but also
thematically: one thinks of the pervasive opposition between text and
subtext, rhetoric and Realpolitik, already evident in Thucydides’ intro-
duction, when he offers his analysis of the real reasons for the war, as
opposed to the stated reasons (1.23). These and other references recall
the dichotomies of truth and falsehood, reality and appearance, justice
and injustice, word and deed that pervade Euripides’ text – as well
as the “double speaking” implicit in Phaedra’s two meanings of aidôs,
Theseus’ two voices, and, on a larger scale, two kinds of logos, divine
and human. Thucydides’ analysis of the base motives that underlie
idealistic rhetoric privileges his own voice as a kind of just or truthful
one in a double discourse that runs throughout his History.74
73
Rabinowitz, Anxiety Veiled, pp. 178–80.
74
Bassi’s reference in Acting Like Men, p. 122, to “the nostalgic desire for a transcendent
masculine subject” found in epic may apply to Thucydidean history as well.
97
Another telling example of tension between text and subtext can be

found in Cleon’s speech in the Mytilenean Debate (427 b.c.), which
took place only a year after Euripides’ drama was staged. Ostensi-
bly, the debate concerned the policy Athens should adopt toward the
rebellious island of Mytilene: should Athens reverse its decision to
execute the entire adult male population of the island? But underly-
ing the debate about a specific policy is a deeper concern about the
proper use of rhetoric in the democratic polis. If legal and political
vocabulary pervade Euripides’ drama about passion and deception, a
lexicon of passion and deception pervades Thucydides’ debate about
speechmaking and public policy.
More specific parallels suggest themselves: just as Phaedra considers
it immoral for her to entertain second thoughts about her position,
which should properly be outside of argument, so Cleon argues that
it is corrupt to reconsider the decision already taken about Mytilene.
Cleon presents the original decision taken by the Athenian assembly
as a kind of unalterable “just voice.” According to Cleon, the mere
fact of this reconsideration points to the inherent infirmity of the
democratic system of government. Like Phaedra, he maintains that
too much cleverness can bring down cities:
We should realize that a city is better off with bad laws, so long as they
remain fixed, than with good laws that are constantly being altered, that lack
of learning combined with sound common sense is more helpful than the
kind of cleverness that gets out of hand, and that as a general rule states are
better governed by the man in the street than by intellectuals. These are the
sort of people who want to appear wiser than the laws . . . and who, as a result,
very often bring ruin on their country. (3.37)
Cleon goes on to attack the citizens’ gullibility, which for him results
from their fondness for elaborate displays of specious rhetoric:
Any novelty in an argument deceives you at once, but when the argument is
tried and proved you become unwilling to follow it; you look with suspicion
on what is normal and are the slaves of every paradox that comes your way. The
chief wish of each one of you is to be able to make a speech himself . . . You are
simply victims of your own pleasure in listening, and are more like an audience
sitting at the feet of a professional lecturer than a parliament discussing matters
of state. (3.38)
98
Later on, Cleon will again warn of the dangers of letting “pleasures
of the ear” guide public policy: yielding to the pleasure of hearing
clever arguments and emotional appeals is inimical to the interests
of the Athenian empire, since it can lead to growing “soft” in the
face of danger (3.40). Cleon sounds suspiciously like Phaedra, who
chastises the nurse for speaking “words ringing delight in the ear”
instead of those that “save their hearer’s honorable name” (486–9).
Both Cleon and Phaedra associate the destructive effects of sophistry
with the specifically female traits of seductiveness and duplicity. Pre-
sumably neither Cleon nor the “man in the street” whose common
sense he praises would be seduced “to the opposite opinion,” to use
Phaedra’s language (390–1).
Elaborating on his argument, Cleon characterizes the “other kind”
of citizens, the kind who respect established laws, as “unbiased judges,
and not people taking part in some kind of a competition” (3.37).
These people should be a model for politicians, who, like the rest of
the populace, tend to be “carried away by mere cleverness” (3.37).
Cleon’s division of the citizenry into two distinct groups, one direct,
honest, and just, and the other immoral, devious, and sophistic, recalls
Theseus’ two voices – and Phaedra’s two meanings of “shame.” Like
these two characters, Cleon turns to the security of old truths that
seem to be uncontaminated by the new sophistic thinking.
Far from being neutral, Cleon’s presentation of the common people
as “unbiased judges” reflects his own perceived sense of justice – in
this case, a form of justice that serves Athenian imperial interests. Like
Theseus’ exclamation, Cleon’s speech is a carefully crafted piece of
rhetoric that lays claim to being beyond rhetoric – in a similar way,
perhaps, to politicians’ claims today to be putting the national inter-
est above narrowly partisan agendas. Perhaps we share a fundamental
Athenian ambivalence about rhetoric in that we can accept its use in
public speeches only if it effaces itself.75
75
See Ober and Strauss, “Drama, Political Rhetoric, and the Discourse of Athenian
Democracy,” p. 250, on this ambivalence: “When a well-known politician stood up
to speak in Assembly or in a law court, his audience was eager to be entertained and
instructed, but might distrust him if he were to reveal too obviously the extent of his
skill.”
99
Of course, Thucydides’ description of Cleon as a man who was

“remarkable among the Athenians for the violence of his character”
and who “exercised far the greatest influence over the people” (3.36)
undercuts Cleon’s implicit claim to be an “unbiased judge” of Athenian
policy. This highly rhetorical description, which presents a prejudicial
interpretation as uncontested fact, indirectly claims the status of a “just
voice” for the Thucydidean narrative.
Thucydides’ account of civil war at Corcyra, covering the same year
(427 b.c.) as the Mytilenean Debate, again exemplifies the importance
of the motif of “double speaking.” Although the Athenian allies claim
to be acting to preserve democracy by slaughtering their enemies,
Thucydides tells us that their actual motives are personal – greed and
vengeance – not political (3.81). In fact, the lust for vengeance over-
whelms any concern for justice:
. . . terrible indeed were the actions to which they committed themselves, and
in taking revenge they went farther still. Here they were deterred neither by
the claims of justice nor by the interests of the state; their one standard was
the pleasure of their own party at that particular moment . . . (3.82)
The opposition drawn here between the competing claims of plea-

sure and principle recalls the similar dichotomy drawn by Phaedra.
In a phrase that echoes Phaedra’s rebuke of the nurse for arguing a
shameful cause too well, Thucydides criticizes the use of “attractive
arguments to justify . . . disgraceful action,” a practice that he says will
be widely used by both sides of the conflict throughout Greece (3.82).
As we have seen, Thucydides criticizes people’s tendency to distort
important value terms like courage, cowardice, and moderation to
promote their own personal or political advantage (3.82).76 The anxi-
ety he conveys about the unreliability and instability of language recalls
Phaedra’s concern about the dangerous potential for slippage between
the meanings of the word “shame.” Both Thucydides and Phaedra
76
In chapter four of her book, Goff, The Noose of Words, has a good discussion fitting the
problem of language in the play into a wider cultural and political context. She traces the
loss of faith in language inscribed in Thucydides’ History, from the optimism of Pericles’
Funeral Oration, in which Pericles voices the belief that there is no “incompatibility
between words and deeds,” to the “pervasive anxiety about rhetoric and language” in
the Mytilenean Debate and in the account of civil war at Corcyra (pp. 79–80).
100
express concern that “language has no inherent moral quality and no

control over the precise meanings it conveys.”77
As we have seen, Thucydides goes on to describe the “deteriora-
tion of character” that accompanies (or prompts) this devaluation of
language – a concern also voiced by Phaedra, when she speaks of “the
deadly thing which devastates / well-ordered cities” (486–7). Thucy-
dides illustrates the destructive effect of disregarding guarantees and
pledges: people tend to hide their true intentions and act precipitously
to protect themselves against injury (3.83). What causes this corrupt,
treacherous form of “double speaking”? As we have seen, it is the dis-
appearance of the “simple way of looking at things” (to euêthes), which
he considers to be the “mark of a noble nature” (3.83). For Phae-
dra, too, catastrophe would ensue if the nobles no longer preserved
traditional morality (411–12).
Thucydides’ concluding analysis of the underlying causes of the
atrocities committed in the civil war resonates with the themes of
Euripides’ drama – the destructiveness of passion, the attractiveness of
vengeance, the fragility of justice:
. . . human nature, always ready to offend even where laws exist, showed itself
proudly in its true colours, as something incapable of controlling passion,
insubordinate to the idea of justice, the enemy to anything superior to itself;
for, if it had not been for the pernicious power of envy, men would not so
have exalted vengeance above innocence and profit above justice. (3.84)78
Phaedra, who struggles with her passion but in the end proves incapable
of controlling it, exemplifies the moral that Thucydides expresses here.
Indeed, in these key passages, Thucydides voices concerns parallel to
those evinced by the Hippolytus: how can reason and civilized forms
of discourse prevail against the force of the passions? The longing
he expresses for a bygone “simplicity” or “singleness of heart” (both
77
N. T. Croally, Euripidean Polemic, p. 65.
78
. . . ; ) ' "A(( J " :(, , ; "& T '
, (8 *A
( "6 3 7"% N(, "(( 3 ,

3 ":$ %&" 0 ( "( "(
6 ", * 6 5
# ( ,(T I (Thucydides,
History 3.84. 2–3). Although editors doubt the authenticity of this passage, it does
reinforce several key themes announced earlier in Thucydides’ account of the civil war
at Corcyra.
101
possible translations of the Greek to euêthes) recalls Phaedra’s yearning

for univocacy of meaning and Theseus’ yearning for a sure token of
men’s hearts.
But, like the History, the play offers no clear means of bridging the
gap that opens up between simple ideals and codes of conduct and the
ability of mortals, as complex beings, to follow them. Hippolytus is
punished for resisting Aphrodite’s single truth and instead insisting on
Artemis’ single truth, and, in the context of the play, these truths seem
to be mutually exclusive. Luschnig comments on the play’s treatment
of the theme of divine versus human wisdom:79
In the process of considering the contradictions inherent in things, men reach
the truth about the world of phenomena, or at least they reach a truth which
can be shared and understood in common. The gods of Euripides are not
the measure of all things. Each of the gods of the Hippolytus is of one mind:
each sees one side. Euripides, in the human action, compels us to see that
there are two sides and therefore to see that the same thing, person, action,
or attitude, can possess now one qualifier and now its opposite. He does this
by attaching our sympathies to one character and then alienating us from the
same character; he does it by turning the victim of the gods or of passion or
of circumstance or of others’ interference into an agent of destruction; and
he does it by opposing the immutable world of the gods to the mortal world
of change.
The play suggests that mythic forms of truth and justice cannot be
reconciled with the analytic, rational forms of truth and justice pur-
sued in the democratic polis. Indeed, the Hippolytus casts doubt on
whether such aristocratic virtues as moderation, chastity, and good-
ness of heart can prevail over passion in a tumultuous period of Greek
history – particularly in a democracy wedded to the tools of “double
speaking.”80
The texts of both Euripides and Thucydides betray nostalgia for a
pre-sophistic age when values, voice, and meaning – as yet undecon-
structed – were presumably simple, single, and at one with themselves.
79
C. A. E. Luschnig, Time Holds the Mirror: A Study of Knowledge in Euripides’ Hippolytus,
vol. 102, Mnemosyne: Bibliotheca Classica Batava (New York: E. J. Brill, 1988), pp. 46–7.
80
The bleak ending of the Hippolytus undercuts Gregory’s argument, in Euripides and the
Instruction of the Athenians, p. 54, that the drama serves to reconcile aristocratic and
democratic notions of the virtue of moderation.
102
In calling for a return to traditional concepts of “nobility” and “justice”

that privilege the male over the female (and the high- over the low-
born), both texts implicitly claim to be speaking with a “just voice”
that transcends contemporary divisions and duplicity. And yet, through
their highly self-conscious critique of rhetoric, as well as through their
own complex use of it, both Euripides’ Hippolytus and Thucydides’
History highlight the fact that “double speaking” is an inherent char-
acteristic of any signifying medium, including both divine and human
language.81
In our own postmodern age, also beset by revolutionary change and
the dangers of war, we too long for the simple values of the past and
secure meanings of traditional truths. Like Cleon, our leaders call on
us to speak with one voice against the enemy and warn us that if we do
not, we will be aiding their cause. Yet, like characters in Euripidean
drama, we may find that the potential duplicity of language, voice,
and values is not easily exorcised. In the “war on terror,” for example,
how may we clearly distinguish between friend and foe in a world
of shifting and intricate loyalties, alliances, and political calculations?
Ultimately, both the dictates of Realpolitik and the elusiveness of value
terms may subvert calls for “moral clarity” and claims to have found a
touchstone to clearly distinguish good from evil, friend from foe.
81
Goff, The Noose of Words, p. 46, astutely states that the “‘deviations’ that Theseus seeks
to abolish are the very conditions of the existence of language” insofar as language is a
signifying medium that cannot “be identical to the world.”
103
3
THE BODY’S CRY FOR JUSTICE

IN THE HECUBA
T he Hecuba transposes Theseus’ question – how is the “just

voice” to prevail against the voice of self-interest, sophistry, and
deceit? – from a private domestic setting to a politicized, wartime
context. In the years that intervened between the Hippolytus (428 b.c.)
and the Hecuba (ca. 424 b.c.), this question acquired greater urgency
for the Athenians, because of the atrocities that occurred early in the
Peloponnesian War.1 Indeed, the Hecuba echoes concerns about the
brutalizing effects of war that are also voiced in Thucydides’ narrative.
Both works portray the violation of civilized norms by the Greeks in
war, their sophistic attempts to rationalize barbaric conduct, and the
failure of any voice of justice, reason, or moderation to make its own
case. Both the play and the history present us with a world that fails
to respect any transcendent principle of justice,2 asking: upon what
authority, moral or political, can humanity rely to preserve civilized
norms, in the absence of a divine “word of truth” that is both heard
and heeded?
1
Katherine Callen King, Achilles: Paradigms of the War Hero from Homer to the Middle Ages
(Berkeley: University of California Press, 1987), p. 259, n. 90.
2
According to Charles Segal, “The Problem of the Gods in Euripides’ Hecuba,” Materiali
e discussioni per l’analisi dei testi classici 22 (1989): 14, the play asks “what Gunther Zuntz
calls ‘the desperate question which is at the heart of all of Euripides’ works; the question:
how is man to live in a godless world?’” For Kovacs, The Heroic Muse, p. 84, the Trojan
women are “survivors of a vanished world” over which the gods no longer hold watch.
For William Thalmann, “Euripides and Aeschylus: The Case of the Hekabe,” Classical
Antiquity 12.1 (1993): 136, the Trojan War seems meaningless in the context of the
nihilistic world of the play.
104
THE BODY’S CRY FOR JUSTICE IN THE HECUBA
Euripides’ Hecuba poses this question with particular power and

pathos. In the play, the character who expresses nostalgia for a tran-
scendent “just voice” is not the powerful king of Athens but a pow-
erless victim of Greek aggression, Hecuba, formerly queen of Troy,
now Agamemnon’s slave. On their way home after winning the Trojan
War, the Greeks have stopped in Thrace, where Hecuba learns that her
daughter, Polyxena, is to be sacrificed as an offering at Achilles’ tomb.
After failing to convince Odysseus to call off the sacrifice, Hecuba
receives another shock: she learns that the body of her son has washed
up on the very shore where her handmaiden had gone to prepare her
daughter’s corpse for burial. Hecuba then realizes that the friend to
whom she had entrusted her son Polydorus has killed him for the gold
she had sent with him for safekeeping. Having failed to prevent the
deaths of both her children, she appeals to Agamemnon to allow her at
least to avenge herself on Polymestor, the supposed friend who killed
her son.
Hecuba’s desperate appeal to Agamemnon, reflecting what Buxton
calls her surrender to “the passion for revenge,”3 serves as the play’s dra-
matic climax, crystallizing its examination of human nature, the char-
acter of justice, and the power and limitations of rhetoric in achieving
it. After Agamemnon has rejected her plea for revenge several times,
a desperate Hecuba utters this last eloquent appeal:
If by some magic, some gift of the gods,

I could become all speech – tongues in my arms,
hands that talked, voices speaking, crying
from my hair and feet – then, all together,
as one voice, I would fall and touch your knees,
crying, begging, imploring with a thousand tongues –
O master, greatest light of Hellas,
hear me,
help an old woman,
avenge her!
She is nothing at all, but hear her, help her
3
R. G. A. Buxton, Persuasion in Greek Tragedy: A Study of Peitho (Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 1982), p. 180.
105
even so. Do your duty as a man of honor:

see justice done. Punish this murder. (836–45)4
Hecuba’s wish that her arms, hair, and feet could take voice to
supplicate Agamemnon has been called “astonishingly grotesque” and
“strange and desperate.”5 The striking nature of the image only rein-
forces its thematic importance, epitomizing the drama’s search for a
voice of justice that would be heeded in a world dominated by brute
force and the pursuit of self-interest. The gods who enforce justice and
punish wrongdoing, who uphold the laws of hospitality and the rights
of the suppliant, are often invoked but do not appear or act in this
play.6 The strong prey on the weak and innocent without any regard
for justice – and worse, defend barbaric deeds as just. A network of
4
The Greek text for Hecuba 836–45 runs as follows:
4 %8 '%% * 5"(
; "(; ; '( ; ) 5#(
H S#
8( H ) ,
X #’ " < () %#

’, * (A
'%.
] 8( ’, ] 8%( h P
( #,
, "#( " < "(5:
"', , ; 8 *(,
’ 2.
*(
%&" " < < ’ + "
; T T "- ) .
Translation of the play is by William Arrowsmith in Euripides 3. Four Tragedies: Hecuba,
Andromache, The Trojan Women, Ion, in The Complete Greek Tragedies, ed. David Grene
and Richmond Lattimore (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1958). The Greek text
is Euripidis Fabulae: Cyclops, Alcestis, Medea, Heraclidae, Hippolytus, Andromacha, Hecuba,
vol. 1, ed. Gilbert Murray. Rpt. 1974 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1902).
5
Michelini, Euripides and the Tragic Tradition, p. 152; Froma I. Zeitlin, “Euripides’ Hekabe
and the Somatics of Dionysiac Drama,” Ramus 20 (1991): 78. Gregory, citing parallels
in other Greek texts to Hecuba’s fantasy about the limbs of her body taking voice,
suggests that the audience would have considered it “as powerful rather than bizarre.” See
Justina Gregory, Euripides: Hecuba. Introduction, Text, and Commentary. American Philological
Association Textbook Series no. 14, ed. Ruth Scodel (Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1999), p. 144,
n. on 834–40. But the extended series of incongruous metaphors in the passage creates a
jarring and disturbing impression, in my view; at any rate, the passage could have struck
the contemporary audience as both powerful and bizarre.
6
One exception may be the gods of the underworld, who Polydorus implies granted
his request to be buried by his mother (49–51); but this instance of apparent divine
intervention is not itself portrayed in the play and is mentioned only briefly. Polydorus’
later reference to some god’s being responsible for Hecuba’s downfall seems merely
rhetorical (58–9).
106
associations binds Odysseus, Agamemnon, and Polymestor as oppor-

tunistic characters who disregard traditional norms in favor of a sophis-
tic definition of justice as “the advantage of the stronger.”7 Hecuba’s
failure in the play’s first episode to persuade Odysseus to call off her
daughter’s sacrifice only confirms this sense of a world run on the basis
of expediency, not justice.
The Hecuba, which Abrahamson aptly calls a “concentration camp
play,”8 evokes a series of haunting images that mirror atrocities com-
mitted in the Peloponnesian War, World War II, and many other wars
in human history: women and children are captured and taken into
slavery; a mother tries in vain to persuade an enemy soldier not to
kill her child; the child, who is being led off to her death, bravely
attempts to comfort her parent. These images succeed one another
in such rapid succession that the audience, like Hecuba, experiences
“[h]orror too sudden to be believed, unbelievable loss, / blow after
blow” (689–90).9
An unremitting atmosphere of horror pervades the play,10 which can
be read as a catalogue of forms of physical abuse and cruelty, including
dismemberment, enslavement, abduction, slaughter, and blinding. The
play depicts the reduction of human beings to the level of objects to be
possessed, used, and finally reduced to “nothing” (as Hecuba describes
her state [626]), conditions that justify the description of the play as “a
prisoner’s tragedy.”11 The drama thus insists on “the incontestable real-
ity of the body – the body in pain, the body maimed, the body dead and
hard to dispose of –,” the very reality that must be obscured, reframed,
or mystified if wars are to be waged successfully, according to Scarry.12
7
So Thrasymachus defines it in Plato’s Republic (338c). Agamemnon and Odysseus exem-
plify this definition of justice, according to both Gregory, Euripides and the Instruction of
the Athenians, p. 102, and C. A. E. Luschnig, “Euripides’ Hecabe: The Time Is Out of
Joint,” Classical Journal 71 (1976): 230.
8
Ernst L. Abrahamson, “Euripides’ Tragedy of Hecuba,” Transactions of the American
Philological Association 83 (1952): 121.
9
(’ (, & & 8". / a" ’ ’ !8" & ) "$
(Hecuba 689–90). So runs the fuller context of Hecuba’s lament.
10
Vicenzo Di Benedetto, Euripide: Teatro e Società (Turin: Giulio Einaudi, 1971), p. 138.
11
Abrahamson, “Euripides’ Tragedy of Hecuba,” p. 121.
12
Elaine Scarry, The Body in Pain: The Making and Unmaking of the World (New York: Oxford
University Press, 1985), p. 62. Scarry is speaking in general terms of the mechanisms
by which the machinery of war seeks to undermine this “incontestable reality,” but her
107
In a play filled with brutality, Hecuba epitomizes the vulnerabil-

ity of the human being to the operation of force. Stripped of all the
advantages she possessed as queen of Troy – status, wealth, power, and
privilege – she now occupies the lowest form of humanity in the eyes
of the Greeks: a slave, a barbarian, and a woman.13 Hecuba’s fall from
power is reflected in her frail, bent frame, bowed under the weight
of suffering no human being should have to bear. In her poignant
reversal of fortune, she represents the human being’s reduction to
the status of a “poor, bare, fork’d animal.”14 Zeitlin rightfully under-
lines the determining centrality of the body in the play, “whether
in contact or disjunction, supplication or slaughter, embrace or
lament.”15
What may be termed a fifth-century b.c. “theater of cruelty” does
not merely shock the audience. It raises penetrating questions about
the events it portrays, questions that resonate in our own era: In a
world dominated by self-interest, and in the absence of any clear voice
or sign of the transcendent, to what moral standard can helpless victims
appeal? Is there a higher principle or law of justice that holds sway in
the cosmos? Or is justice a moot proposition, to be defined by the
more skillful debater or the advantage of the stronger party? If men no
longer respect any transcendent principles (and the gods don’t seem to
enforce them), what voice can victims of war crimes raise that could
persuade their captors to honor justice? How do the perpetrators of
crimes against humanity seek to justify them, and what punishment
would constitute appropriate justice for these perpetrators?
The play dramatizes three strategies people employ to rationalize
war crimes and heinous acts of violence: the reduction of the vic-
tim to subhuman status; the use of expedient but ruthless bureaucratic
distinctions; and the invocation of higher principles to justify their
conduct (the most pervasive form of rationalization). Odysseus, for
example, argues that Polyxena should be killed to maintain the prin-
ciple that preserves civilization (306–8); Polymestor maintains that
analysis is equally compelling when applied to the wartime setting of Euripides’ drama.
For a fuller account of these mechanisms, see pp. 60–81, 124–33, and passim.
13
Cf. Croally, Euripidean Polemic, p. 53.
14
In the words of Shakespeare’s King Lear 3.4.106–8.
15
Zeitlin, “Euripides’ Hekabe,” p. 81.
108
he killed Polydorus as a “wise precaution” to preserve his friend-

ship with the Greeks (1137); Hecuba herself justifies not only blinding
Polymestor but also killing his two innocent children on the basis of
divine justice. From ancient to modern times these strategies have
been used to justify acts of genocide, terrorism, and ongoing cycles of
revenge.
The Hecuba dramatizes the human cost of such rationalizations by
juxtaposing cold-hearted abstractions and ideals with the pain and
suffering that they produce. The acts of gratuitous violence portrayed
or described throughout the play suggest a disturbing link between
male aggressiveness and sexuality – a link seen in both ancient and
modern wars.16 The demand of Achilles’ ghost for the blood of the
virgin Polyxena confirms this link, as do the erotic overtones of her
execution. The practice of taking captive women as concubines – as
Agamemnon does with Hecuba’s daughter Cassandra – again reminds
the audience that in war women are the victims of both male violence
and lust. Hecuba’s image of the body’s speech, therefore, reflects the
play’s pervasive concern with the “troubling connections among desire,
persuasion, and physical force.”17
The play’s sympathetic portrait of victims of war, its concern with
the implications of power politics, and its anachronistic references
to sophistry and demagoguery make clear that it is commenting on
the workings of Athenian democracy during the Peloponnesian War.
As Thalmann argues, “the experience of events surrounding the war
profoundly shaped Euripides’ attitude toward his culture.”18 In fact,
Euripides’ Hecuba can be read as a dramatic realization of Thucydides’
dictum that “war is a stern teacher” (3.82).19 The play depicts the
cycle of violence committed by people who, in the grip of neces-
sity, abandon higher codes of conduct and adjust their behavior to
16
Cf. Thalmann, “Euripides and Aeschylus,” p. 140, who speaks of the emphasis placed
by the play on “the male violence against women that characterizes the Trojan and all
wars.”
17
Nancy Worman, “The Body as Argument: Helen in Four Greek Texts,” Classical Antiq-
uity 16.1 (1997): 187. Worman is speaking of a scene in Euripides’ Trojan Women, but
the Hecuba conveys a similar concern.
18
Thalmann, “Euripides and Aeschylus,” p. 159, n. 82.
19
3 '
. . . 5 #(
. . . (3.82.2). Cf. Croally, Euripidean Polemic, pp. 43,
46, who applies Thucydides’ dictum to Euripides’ Trojan Women.
109
fit their circumstances.20 Segal argues that the Athenians, in watching

the drama, “were really watching themselves,” in that they had proven
themselves capable of equally barbaric conduct in the Peloponnesian
War.21 For Segal, the play offers “a devastating critique of a world that
has lost touch with basic moral values and with a language that could
articulate them.”22
Like Euripides’ play, Thucydides’ History issues a powerful indict-
ment of the violation of civilized norms in wartime. His account of
civil strife on Corcyra (427 b.c.) depicts brutal, sacrilegious acts that
likely took place only a few years before the production of the Hecuba:23
. . . people went to every extreme and beyond it. There were fathers who
killed their sons; men were dragged from the temples or butchered on the
very altars; some were actually walled up in the temple of Dionysus and died
there. (3.81)
Thucydides goes on to lament the “extravagances of revolution-
ary zeal” (tên hyperbolên tou kainousthai tas dianoias, 3.82.3) and the
“unheard-of atrocities in revenge” (tôn timôriôn atopia, 3.82.3–4) that
took place in the conflicts.24 The root meanings of the Greek words
for “extravagance” (hyperbolê) and for the “unheard-of ” nature of the
excesses (atopia) connote the transgression of conventional boundaries:
hyperbolê literally means “throwing over” a mark or limit, and so comes
to mean “extravagance” or “excess,” whereas the word translated as
“unheard-of ” (atopia) literally means “the state of being out of place,”
with connotations of perversity. Curiously, both of these words, or
20
Cf. Thalmann, “Euripides and Aeschylus,” p. 153, and J. K. Davies, Democracy and
Classical Greece, 2d ed., 1978 (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1993), p. 107.
21
Segal, Euripides and the Poetics of Sorrow, pp. 189–90.
22
Ibid., p. 210.
23
On 424 b.c. as the probable date of the play, see Thalmann, “Euripides and Aeschylus,”
p. 159, and Malcolm Heath, “‘Jure Principem Locum Tenet’: Euripides’ Hecuba,” Bulletin
of the Institute of Classical Studies 34 (1987): 40–1.
24
The full sentence from which the quotations are drawn runs as follows: “So revolu-
tions broke out in city after city, and in places where the revolutions occurred late the
knowledge of what had happened previously in other places caused still new extrav-
agances of revolutionary zeal, expressed by an elaboration in the methods of seizing
power and by unheard-of atrocities in revenge.” *((M8 N & ) '
,
; & *("M# :( ) "%8
T * 8" 6 + "5
6
( & ) ’ * "A( "A( ; ) ")
Y. (Thucydides, History 3.82.3–4)
110
their cognates, come later to carry rhetorical associations: hyperbolê of

course means exaggeration, and “the state of being out of place” has
as its root the Greek word topos, which is used to signify a rhetorical
“commonplace.” In the climate of war described by Thucydides, the
“claims of justice and the interests of the state” alike go unheeded
(3.82). The texts of Euripides and Thucydides both convey the sense
of a world gone awry.25
Thucydides goes on to argue that people distort the meaning of
words, wrench them out of place in order “[t]o fit in with the change
of events” (3.82): a “thoughtless act of aggression” is described as
“courage,” reasonable deliberation is considered cowardly, and so on.
As we have seen, this “double speaking” was used to rationalize break-
ing oaths, pledges, and other forms of speech that had been consid-
ered inviolable. Euripides’ drama also portrays the “double speaking”
that occurs as people seek to rationalize going “to every extreme and
beyond it” during war or its aftermath. The surreal image Hecuba uses
of her body’s limbs taking voice represents an ironically appropriate
response to a world whose values – and value terms – are themselves
radically “out of place.”
In such a world there is no such thing as a simple, plain voice of
justice that could command respect for the traditional norms of “justice
and fair treatment, the sanctions of respect and pity for the weak, the
rules pertaining to xenia, and . . . the proper treatment of the dead.”26
There remains only the contested form of justice described by Eteocles
in the Phoenician Women, one based on self-interest, expediency, and
political calculation. If Euripides’ drama is in many ways philosophical
and concerned with theoretical debates about the nature of justice
and the proper use of rhetoric, so Thucydides’ text is highly dramatic,
evoking aspects of Hecuba’s confrontations of Agamemnon, Odysseus,
and Polymestor. The texts of both Thucydides and Euripides reflect
25
The title of C. A. E. Luschnig’s article, “Euripides’ Hecabe: The Time Is Out of Joint,”
reflects this sense well. Cf. also Michelini, Euripides and the Tragic Tradition, p. 180,
who argues that the play’s “violations of taste and literary decorum” mirror the shame-
ful actions it portrays, and Max Pohlenz, Die Griechische Tragödie (Leipzig and Berlin:
Teubner, 1930), p. 296, who argues that the emotional impact of the long war may have
driven the playwright to transgress conventional artistic boundaries.
26
111
the preoccupation of late-fifth-century Athens with issues of power,

justice, and persuasion.27
Aside from the description of events on Corcyra, two other
Thucydidean accounts, the Spartan siege of Plataea in 427 b.c. (3.52–
68) and the Athenian sack of Melos in 413 b.c. (5.84–116), also offer
striking parallels to the Hecuba, both in the brutal acts they portray
and in the arguments used to rationalize those acts.28 In both situ-
ations, a people face the destruction or loss of their city, death, and
enslavement, the plight of Hecuba and the Trojan women in Euripides’
play. Thucydides’ accounts make clear that both the Plataeans and the
Melians are victims of barbaric acts of violence, whether on the part
of the Spartans or the Athenians. Thus the play may not only reflect
a reaction to actual atrocities in the Peloponnesian War but may also
anticipate atrocities to come.29
Plataea, a city initially founded by Thebes, grew restless under
Peloponnesian rule and sought aid from Athens when threatened by
Thebes late in the sixth century. In the early phase of the Peloponnesian
War, Plataea was besieged by the Spartans at the instigation of the
Thebans, who accused their colony of siding with the Athenian cause.
When the town finally surrendered in 427 b.c., just a few years before
the probable date of the play, at least two hundred of its men were
27
In Democracy and Classical Greece, p. 107, Davies argues that the motifs emphasized in
the Melian Dialogue, “the relationship between power and justice, and the role of
‘necessity,’” were “central preoccupations of Athenian intellectuals.” In Wild Justice:
A Study of Euripides’ Hecuba (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1995), p. 94, Judith
Mossman considers the analysis of the status of rhetoric as a “vital intellectual theme”
of the play.
28
The play’s commonly accepted dating to about 424 b.c. would put it just a few years
following events at Plataea (427 b.c.) and less than a decade before the Melian Dialogue
(415 b.c.). I am not suggesting that there was any direct or specific influence of either
author’s text on the other – only that they shared certain pervasive concerns and preoccu-
pations. Other parallels suggest themselves: In “Golden Armor and Servile Robes: Hero-
ism and Metamorphosis in Hecuba of Euripides,” American Journal of Philology (1990):
305, Charles Segal argues that the play dramatizes the “moral disintegration” outlined
in Thucydides’ account of civil war at Corcyra (3.82–3).
29
As argued by King, Achilles, p. 259, n. 90. In Euripide et la Guerre du Péloponnèse (Paris: C.
Klincksieck, 1951), pp. 152–3, Édouard Delebecque argues that the support of the two
Athenians for the sacrifice of Polyxena (123–7) alludes to recent instances of Athenian
brutality, such as the slaughter of prisoners of war from Aegina that took place in 424 b.c.
(mentioned in Thucydides 4.57).
112
put to death and its women were enslaved (3.68). As we have seen,
a similar fate awaited the inhabitants of the island of Melos, a colony
of Sparta that had remained neutral in the Peloponnesian War. Melos
refused to give up its neutrality and side with Athens. Athens, wish-
ing to make an example of Melos to other islanders who resisted
its hegemony, put to death its young men and sold its women and
children into slavery (5.116). The brutal reduction of Melos took
place in 416/415 b.c., some eight or nine years after the Hecuba was
produced.
In Thucydides’ account, both the Plataeans and the Melians turn
to dialogue in an attempt to dissuade their more powerful opponents
from acts of violence. In these dialogues both peoples appeal to a
higher law of justice, but their appeals fail to prevent the threatened
violence. Thucydides presents the aggressors in these conflicts – the
Thebans and the Athenians – as motivated by a need for revenge, but
cloaking the violence they commit under self-serving definitions of
justice. Both dialogues present motifs and themes that figure impor-
tantly in Euripides’ play: the failure of rhetoric to forestall violence
and the abuse of rhetoric in rationalizing it; the difficulty of arriving
at a consensus about the meaning of justice in time of war; and, finally,
the lack of respect for any transcendent value of justice.
Just as Thucydides, in implicit protest against pernicious forms of
“double speaking,” expresses a longing for the “simple way of looking
at things” (3.83) and for a straightforward “simple-mindedness” (3.82),
so Hecuba expresses a longing for a mythical time in which men
would universally heed, and the gods enforce, the righteous plea of
the suppliant. In wishing for additional voices that would compensate
for the inadequacy of her ordinary one, Hecuba demands recognition
from a captor who would deny her rightful claim. Her limbs cry out
to reclaim a lost power of voice and touch to speak on behalf of the
prisoner of war, the refugee, and other powerless victims of brutality.30
Hecuba’s plea, which metaphorically transforms her body from a
mute object into a speaking subject, culminates a series of attempts by
30
As Detienne, The Masters of Truth, p. 70, points out, the act of supplication is not
merely verbal but also physical, “leaving the body to speak through a kind of polysemic
prostration.” For Detienne, the gesture of the suppliant is filled with “religious power.”
113
victims of savagery to reclaim their humanity and achieve a measure of

justice. Part of “the greatest speech in the play,”31 her plea epitomizes
the drama’s search for a voice of justice that could forestall, alleviate,
or remedy undeserved suffering. The play’s setting provides a means
of examining the potential of rhetoric to serve as a force of justice, the
only weapon available to otherwise powerless victims.32
Like Theseus’ call for a second, “just” voice that would supplement
people’s “ordinary” voice, Hecuba’s wish dramatizes the need to break
the boundaries of traditional discourse. But her image of the body’s
breaking the confines of its silence is even more rhetorically extravagant
than Theseus’. This extravagance is ironically appropriate, inasmuch
as it responds to the breaking of the boundaries of civilized behavior
both by Polymestor and by the Greeks. Hecuba views the vengeance
that she takes on Polymestor as fitting retribution for the death not
only of Polydorus but also of Polyxena (749–50).
Hecuba has been described as the personification of rhetoric.33 The
description is apt for several reasons. Throughout the drama she shows
great eloquence, even when she is pleading unsuccessfully. Her rhetor-
ical skills prove effective when she first convinces Agamemnon to allow
her to avenge her son’s murder, then persuades Polymestor to enter
the women’s tent without armed escort, and finally defends the brutal
revenge she takes on him. Throughout the play she makes frequent
allusions to – and use of – the full range of sophistic modes of argu-
ment employed in the late fifth century b.c. In addition, she makes a
number of explicit references to the sophists, the controversial issues
they debated, and their art.
So gripping is the play’s portrayal of Hecuba’s plight that one loses
sight of the incongruity of both her knowledge and her deployment
of this art. Here we have a character from the heroic age, the enslaved
widow of King Priam, given the unlikely opportunity of making
long speeches, conducting debates with top enemy commanders, and
pleading her case in a makeshift trial – all while using the innovative
31
Buxton, Persuasion in Greek Tragedy, p. 180.
32
Zeitlin, “Euripides’ Hecabe,” p. 56, likewise argues that the play represents “a case study
or experiment in the extremes of human behavior.”
33
Cf. Rabinowitz, Anxiety Veiled, p. 119, and Gordon M. Kirkwood, “Hecuba and
Nomos,” Transactions of the American Philological Association 78 (1947): 66.
114
rhetorical techniques of Euripides’ own day. But rhetoric is a tool that

can be deployed by prisoners or refugees of war only with the con-
sent of their captors, which would rarely if ever be granted. Euripides
grants Hecuba this opportunity to examine the use of rhetoric not
only as an instrument of political power but also as an instrument of
justice.
In giving her voice the power of actually touching Agamemnon,
Hecuba dramatizes the sophistic claim that rhetoric acts in the world
as a physical force,34 a claim echoed in her assertion that rhetoric is
the “only queen of men.”35 But the play deconstructs this claim in
showing that the successful use of rhetoric depends on many factors
outside the speaker’s control, factors that limit its effectiveness as a
civilizing force. Both Euripides and Thucydides explore how deci-
sions made by policy-makers in the name of preserving civilization
lead to its destruction.
The prologue immediately focuses our attention on one of the play’s
central themes: the search by victims of unspeakable horrors for a voice
that could obtain some redress for the wrongs they have suffered. The
first voice to be heard in the play is, significantly, that of someone
utterly powerless to act on his own: the disembodied voice of the slain
Polydorus. The ghost tells us that he has appeared to Hecuba in a
dream to ask her to minister to his body, which was tossed into the
sea, “unburied and unmourned” (29). The ghost also tells the audience
that Polyxena must die a cruel, unjust death as a sacrificial offering to
Achilles’ ghost, which “appeared, / stalking on his tomb, wailing” (36–
7). The brutalization of Polydorus – his reduction to the status of an
object – foreshadows the treatment of Polyxena and of Hecuba herself;
likewise, his speaking on behalf of the rights of his body prefigures
Hecuba’s wish that her body could take voice in support of her rights.
In referring to his sister’s fate as well as his own, the ghost of
Polydorus invites the audience to compare the circumstances of their
deaths: Polydorus dies through the treachery of a supposed friend in
a land at peace; Polyxena is to die as a sacrificial victim to the ghost
34
Gorgias makes this claim in a passage from his Encomium on Helen that will be discussed
later in the chapter.
35
My translation of the phrase "# " ' (816) is more literal than
Arrowsmith’s “the only art whose power / is absolute.”
115
of Achilles, an enemy fallen in war.36 While the ghost of Polydorus

asks only for traditional burial rites, the ghost of Achilles demands
a human sacrifice as its war prize. The appearance of the ghost thus
helps to unify the action of the play, which has seemed disconnected
to some critics.37 Its appearance also sets the tone of despair, loss, and
metaphysical isolation that will pervade the play. The ghost departs
upon addressing his mother:
– O Mother,
poor majesty, old fallen queen,
shorn of greatness, pride, and everything but life,
which leaves you slavery and bitterness
and lonely age.
Some god destroys you now,
exacting in your suffering the cost
for having once been happy in this life. (55–8)
The ghost’s reference to the role of the gods in Hecuba’s downfall
emphasizes the injustice and cruelty of her fate.
If Polydorus has been cruelly separated from his body, Hecuba is all
too much in hers. Indeed, her first appearance, directly after Polydorus’
opening speech, highlights her physical weakness and infirmity. She
emerges, stumbling and shattered by the appearance of her son’s ghostly
image to her in a dream:
O helplessness of age!
Too old, too weak, to stand –
Help me, women of Troy.
Give this slave those hands
you offered to her once
when she was queen of Troy.
Prop me with your arms
and help these useless
stumbling legs to walk. (59–67)
36
Cf. Rabinowitz, Anxiety Veiled, p. 107, on the structure of the play as “chiastic,” insofar
as it interweaves the stories of the fates of brother and sister. Segal, “Golden Armor and
Servile Robes,” p. 312, speaks of the motif of burial as linking the two siblings.
37
Luschnig, “Euripides’ Hecabe: The Time Is Out of Joint,” pp. 227–8, argues that the
two ghosts serve to link the sacrifice of Polyxena with the revenge taken on Polymestor,
since the preparation of Polyxena’s body for burial leads to the discovery of Polydorus’
body.
116
Hecuba’s reliance on the Trojan women for support reinforces the

poignancy of her children’s fate, as yet unknown to her (a little later
she refers to her son as “the last surviving anchor of my house” [80]).
She does have a premonition of their death through the dream sent
by her son’s ghost. In the dream she sees a doe “torn” away from
her knees and mangled by a bloodthirsty wolf “with blood-red nails”
(90–1).
The image of the wolf, which recalls the description of Achilles’
ghost as “stalking” and “wailing” (37), looks ahead to Odysseus’
forcible separation of Polyxena from her mother (141–3) as well as
to her subsequent slaughter by Neoptolemus. Thus the wolf evokes
the bestial nature of the warrior, whether it is immediately apparent,
as in the case of Achilles, or concealed beneath a “honeyed tongue”
(132), as in the case of Odysseus. The dream emphasizes Hecuba’s
primal, physical connection to her children, a connection that con-
trasts with her ominous description of them as “phantoms of children”
(74).38
The images of frailty and helplessness that dramatize Hecuba’s fallen
state recur throughout the play: a little later on, when she hears from
the chorus of the fate of Polyxena, whom she will liken to a “staff”
(281), Hecuba nearly collapses (169–71). The physical and moral sup-
port given Hecuba by the chorus also anticipates their acting as her
agents – almost as extensions of her own body and will39 – when
they help her to take revenge on Polymestor at the end of the play.
Her plea to the gods to save her children (96–7) is the first of many
such appeals to both gods and men. It is dramatically ironic, because
the audience knows from the prologue that the children are doomed
(“ . . . you must see / your two last two children dead this day” [45–6]).
Hecuba soon receives confirmation of her fears when the chorus tells
her that the Greeks, persuaded by Odysseus, have voted to sacrifice
Hecuba’s daughter Polyxena on Achilles’ tomb. The chorus describes
Odysseus as a “hypocrite with honeyed tongue” and as a “demagogue”
38
Cf. Zeitlin, “Euripides’ Hekabe,” p. 74, who describes Hecuba’s bond to her daughter
as “symbiotic.”
39
Cf. the way in which Oedipus’ daughters “are repeatedly alluded to as extensions of
his body” in Sophocles’ Oedipus at Colonus, commented on by Murnaghan, “Body and
Voice in Greek Tragedy,” p. 39.
117
(132–3) who convinced the Greeks that the “honor of Achilles” far
outweighed the life of “one slave.”40
Early in the play, then, both Achilles and Odysseus display the neg-
ative side of their essential heroic characteristics in Homer’s epics: the
description of Achilles’ ghost as bestial stresses the inhuman nature of
his need for revenge, a need that proved so destructive to the Greeks
in his lifetime; the chorus’ description of Odysseus as a hypocrite and
a demagogue recasts this epic hero famous for his cunning as a corrupt
politician of Euripides’ own era.41 These negative portrayals of both
heroes predispose the audience against the Greek decision to sacrifice
Polyxena.
Polyxena’s likening of herself to a frightened lamb about to be
butchered (205–10) only increases the audience’s sense of Greek
40
Echoing the chorus’ judgment, Segal, “The Problem of the Gods,” p. 12, maintains
that Odysseus is Machiavellian; James C. Hogan, “Thucydides 3.52–68 and Euripides’
Hecuba,” Phoenix 26.3 (1972): 248, describes him as der kalte Politiker. Gregory, Euripi-
des and the Instruction of the Athenians, p. 102, sees both Odysseus and Agamemnon
as acting in a self-interested way. I disagree with critics such as Arthur W. H. Adkins
(“Basic Greek Values in Euripides’ Hecuba and Hercules Furens,” Classical Quarterly n.s. 16
[1966]: 193–219), who defend the conduct of Odysseus and Agamemnon as consistent
with traditional Greek values. To be sure, Odysseus does attempt to rationalize the sacri-
fice of Hecuba’s daughter Polyxena to Achilles’ ghost: he argues that the greatest heroes
deserve exceptional honors, to encourage warriors to fight on behalf of their people
(309–21). But his apparently magnanimous appeal to the ideal of honor is undercut by
his own narrow-minded refusal to honor his debt to Hecuba. Furthermore, the portrayal
of Achilles’ ghost as bloodthirsty throws into question the nature of the “honor” that
Odysseus defends. For more on the negative treatment of Agamemnon’s and Odysseus’
roles in the sacrifice, see King, Achilles, pp. 91–4, and Thalmann, “Euripides and Aeschy-
lus,” pp. 136–48.
Citing the Plataean dialogue in Thucydides as support, Hogan, “Thucydides 3.52–
68 and Euripides’ Hecuba,” p. 249, argues that Hecuba’s appeal to Odysseus for mercy
would have carried weight with the contemporary Athenian audience. Adkins’ point in
“Basic Greek Values,” p. 204, that Agamemnon understandably owes Polymestor some
loyalty because he is a guest-friend (xenos) of the Greeks is, I believe, undermined by
the portrait of Polymestor as monstrous and of Agamemnon as weak-willed and fearful
(853–64).
41
King, Achilles, p. 91–4, argues that the play subverts such attempts at political sophistry
and expediency. Segal, “Golden Armor and Servile Robes,” p. 304, argues that the
defining heroic qualities of both Odysseus and Achilles in Homer take on pejorative
meaning in the Hecuba: “ . . . we see Achilles’ singleness of purpose transmuted into the
inexorability of a bloodthirsty ghost and Odysseus’ resilient adaptability turned into
treacherous shiftiness and lying.”
118
barbarity. Odysseus’ persuasion of his fellow warriors to honor

Achilles’ request, the first act of persuasion depicted in the play, is
thus described as a corrupt exercise of power politics, introducing the
audience to a new world that discards the traditional rights of the
suppliant and concepts of divine justice.
The next scene, in which Hecuba fails to dissuade Odysseus to
call off her daughter’s sacrifice, offers an effective critique of the
Greeks’ redefinition of justice as the “advantage of the stronger.” When
Odysseus presents the results of the Greek decision to proceed with the
sacrifice by “majority vote” (220), it might have reminded the Athe-
nians of their own potential for brutality.42 In the Mytilenean Debate
(427 b.c.), for example, Cleon urges the assembly not to entertain feel-
ings of pity, eloquent appeals, or “claims of decency,” because these
were inimical to the interests of an “imperial power” (3.40). Similarly,
Odysseus denies Hecuba’s claim for pity and decency on the grounds
of a higher principle – preserving his city and government (306–8).
The Athenians did reverse their decision, voting to spare the inhab-
itants of Mytilene. But, twelve years later, the inhabitants of Melos,
who faced a similar fate, were not so fortunate. Odysseus’ advice to
Hecuba to yield to superior force anticipates the logic used by the
Athenians in their dialogue with the Melians:43
You understand your position? You must not attempt
to hold your daughter here by force, nor,
I might add, presume to match your strength with mine.
Remember your weakness and accept this tragic loss
as best you can.
Nothing you do or say
can change the facts. Under the circumstances,
the logical course is resignation. (225–9)
42
Buxton, Persuasion in Greek Tragedy, p. 173, points out that Hecuba’s description of
the vote of the Greek assembly to execute Polyxena (195–6) “reflects the usage of the
Athenian democratic polis.” The vengeance on the island of Mytilene approved by the
Athenian assembly (427 b.c.), although not enacted, was a harbinger of cruelties to
come.
43
Cf. the justification of the Athenian empire offered by its representative at the debate
at Sparta (432 b.c.) recorded by Thucydides: “It has always been a rule that the weak
should be subject to the strong . . . ” (1.76).
119
Odysseus’ cold counsel is reminiscent of the sterile Athenian response

to the Melians’ predicament:
Athenians. . . . if you have met here for any other reason except to look the
facts in the face and on the basis of these facts to consider how you can
save your city from destruction, there is no point in our going on with
this discussion. . . . you know as well as we do that, when these matters are
discussed by practical people, the standard of justice depends on the equality
of power to compel and that in fact the strong do what they have the power
to do and the weak accept what they have to accept. (5.87, 89)
The note of finality implicit in Odysseus’ warning to Hecuba might

have marked the end of the encounter. If nothing Hecuba can do or
say will change the outcome, as Odysseus says (228–9), why does he
engage in a sustained dialogue of more than a hundred lines with
her (229–331)? Euripides exploits the tremendous dramatic potential
in the exchange between an epic hero famous for his persuasiveness
and the eloquent but powerless Hecuba. Furthermore, he uses their
highly charged debate to explore competing definitions of justice that
are relevant to his own age – and our own: is justice a universally
recognized transcendent principle, or is it defined by the stronger
party to serve his own advantage?
Hecuba draws Odysseus into a long conversation by diplomatically
asking him permission to ask “one brief question” (236). In the ensuing
exchange with Odysseus, she draws on a whole host of arguments (just
as the Melians do in their dialogue with the Athenians) to dissuade
him from the path of violence, but fails – just as the Melians do with
the Athenians. In presenting her case she makes use of four procedures
of argument drawn from the sophistic repertoire: the argument from
reciprocity (charis); the argument from expedience or advantage (to
sumpheron); the argument from custom (nomos); and the argument from
justice (hê dikê ).44
The “brief question” Hecuba asks Odysseus is whether he remem-
bers an important service she rendered him during the Trojan War:
captured inside Troy while on a spying mission, Odysseus asked
44
For further explanation of these modes of argument, see Guthrie, The Sophists, pp. 21–2,
48, and 169. On Odysseus’ rejection of the argument from charis, see Buxton, Persuasion
in Greek Tragedy, pp. 174–6.
120
Hecuba to save his life, and she complied. The fact that Hecuba granted
Odysseus’ request entitles her to expect that he will return the favor in
her present circumstances – an assumption implicit in Hecuba’s “just
demand for payment of your debt of life” (273). Thus, her “brief ques-
tion” presupposes that Odysseus, in acknowledging the Greek law of
reciprocity (charis), will also acknowledge the justice of her claim on
him.
At the time of his capture Odysseus was, like Hecuba, pitiful, weak,
a slave at the mercy of his captors:45
Do you remember once
how you came to Troy, a spy, in beggar’s disguise,
smeared with filth, in rags, and tears of blood
were streaming down your beard? (239–41)
Odysseus’ reference to his own willingness to invent “many argu-

ments” (pollôn logôn, 250; my translation) in order to save his life
anticipates Hecuba’s use of similar phrases later in the play: for example,
she urges Polyxena to employ “every skill that pity has, every voice”
(pasas phthongas [337]) and to use “a thousand tongues” (pantoious logous,
840) in her own defense. The similarity in their positions – and the
fact that the roles are now reversed, with Hecuba at Odysseus’ mercy –
increases one’s empathy for Hecuba.
When Odysseus does not relent, Hecuba accuses him of caving in
to mob rule in the fashion of a fifth-century b.c. demagogue:
O gods, spare me the sight
of this thankless breed, these politicians
who cringe for favors from a screaming mob
and do not care what harm they do their friends,
providing they can please a crowd! (255–9)
The allusion recalls the chorus’ earlier assessment of Odysseus as a

hypocrite. Here she implicitly charges Odysseus with acting on the
basis of expediency, not justice. She uses another anachronistic allusion
when she calls the argument by which the Greeks have condemned
her daughter “sophistic” (sophisma, 258).
45
Contrast Homer’s account of Odysseus’ spying mission, in which Helen, not Hecuba,
recognizes him and lets him go (Odyssey 4.250–8).
121
In the fashion of a skilled debater, Hecuba next attempts to neu-

tralize the arguments Odysseus could adduce in favor of the sacrifice.
Employing the argument from custom (nomos), she asserts that the sac-
rifice of Polyxena would violate the Greek practice of using animals,
not humans, for sacrifice. She then appeals to the argument from justice
(hê dikê) by claiming that Helen would be a more appropriate victim,
since she – and her good looks – caused the war (265–70). Touching his
hand and chin in a gesture of supplication, Hecuba reminds Odysseus
of the debt he owes her:46
You admit yourself you took my hand;

you knelt at my feet and begged for life.
But see –
now I touch you back as you touched me.
I kneel before you on the ground and beg
for mercy back . . . (273–6)47
In asking for “mercy back,” Hecuba specifically appeals to the moral

obligation of reciprocity that should bind Odysseus (charin, 276).
Hecuba goes on to acknowledge that Odysseus holds power over
her, but begs him to use it kindly, since it can shift at any time:
And you have power,

Odysseus, greatness and power. But clutch them gently,
use them kindly, for power gives no purchase
to the hand, it will not hold, soon perishes,
and greatness goes.
I know. I too was great
but I am nothing now. One day
cut down my greatness and my pride. (282–5)
Hecuba supports her moral about the instability of power by referring

to her own fallen state. But she also refers to Odysseus’ own change
in fortune, from miserable captive to powerful conqueror.
In advising Odysseus to use his power wisely, Hecuba issues
him a veiled warning that he may one day face retribution for his
46
Mossman, Wild Justice, p. 55, asserts that Hecuba clearly makes this gesture here.
47
U= *, X A,
< "/; ( %" "( "$/#
( ) ) ) *%9 / #" ’ ) 6 . . . (Hecuba, 273–6).
122
actions – a warning that the Melians give the Athenians much more
directly:
. . . in our view it is at any rate useful that you should not destroy a principle
that is to the general good of all men – namely, that in the case of all who
fall into danger there should be such a thing as fair play and just dealing, and
that such people should be allowed to use and to profit by arguments that fall
short of a mathematical accuracy. And this is a principle which affects you as
much as anybody, since your own fall would be visited by the most terrible
vengeance and would be an example to the world. (5.90)
The Melians thus strengthen their appeal to justice by warning that the
fall of Athens would bring retribution in its wake.48 Understandably,
Hecuba is much more deferential in her dialogue with Odysseus, but
she is referring to the same universal “principle” as are the Melians.
In urging Odysseus to dissuade the troops from sacrificing her
daughter, Hecuba argues that his status and reputation carry more
weight than his actual words:
Even if your arguments were weak,
if you faltered or forgot your words, it would not matter.
Of themselves that power, that prestige you have
would guarantee success, swelling in your words,
and borrowing from what you are a resonance and force
denied to less important men. (293–5)
Hecuba here alludes to another influential concept stemming from

fifth-century b.c. Athens: politics and power count more than justice
or truth in the act of persuasion.49 Odysseus’ rejection of Hecuba’s
appeal ironically confirms this unstated axiom.
48
Gregory, Euripides and the Instruction of the Athenians, pp. 85–6, argues that the play con-
veys an implicit warning against Athenian imperialism. For a discussion of the warning
conveyed in Thucydides that the weak will band together to defeat the stronger, impe-
rialistic power, see Jacqueline de Romilly, The Great Sophists in Periclean Athens, trans.
Janet Lloyd (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1992), p. 174.
49
Michelini, Euripides and the Tragic Tradition, pp. 155, 157, argues the play demonstrates that
success in rhetoric stems not from ethics but from politics. Croally, Euripidean Polemic,
pp. 33–4, argues that before Plato, “discourses were judged not so much on the basis
of their reflection of the truth, but on the basis of their power, their persuasiveness.”
Aristotle acknowledges the important role played by a speaker’s character in influencing
the persuasiveness of his argument (Rhetoric 1377b20–1378a19). For the Greek text of
Aristotle, see Aristotelis Ars Rhetorica, ed. W. D. Ross (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1959).
123
Even though Odysseus acknowledges that Hecuba saved his life

when he was captured inside Troy, he draws a distinction between
her and her daughter, saying that he owes a debt to Hecuba
and not Polyxena. Odysseus now and Agamemnon later use cold-
hearted, bureaucratic distinctions to defend their refusal to try to save
Polyxena – distinctions that exemplify “the banality of evil,” a concept
that Kastely applies to the world of the play.50
Odysseus does go on to defend his actions by citing a higher prin-
ciple he claims to be protecting:
Besides, there is a principle at stake

and one, moreover, in whose neglect or breach
governments have fallen and cities come to grief,
because their bravest, their most exceptional men,
received no greater honor than the common run.
And Achilles deserves our honor far more than most,
a great man and a great soldier who died greatly
for his country. (306–10)
Odysseus’ argument recalls the complaint Achilles himself makes in

the Iliad about being deprived of proper recognition by Agamemnon:
Fate is the same for the man who holds back, the same if he fights hard.
We are all held in a single honour, the brave with the weaklings.
A man dies still if he has done nothing, as one who has done much.
(Iliad 9.318–20)
Although Odysseus bases his argument on the heroic value of individ-

ualistic “honor,” he then extends it to apply to the more community-
centered world of the polis (hai pollai poleis, 306). The question then
50
James L. Kastely, “Violence and Rhetoric in Euripides’s Hecuba,” Proceedings of the Mod-
ern Language Association 108.5 (1993): 1037, refers to Hecuba’s heroic opposition to a
“bureaucracy” and its “banal evil.” Cf. the phrase coined by Hannah Arendt, “the
banality of evil,” which aptly describes the world of the play. Arendt is referring to the
manner in which Nazi war criminals sought to rationalize their participation in geno-
cide. See her Eichmann in Jerusalem: A Report on the Banality of Evil (New York: Viking,
1964). Cf. Buxton, Persuasion in Greek Tragedy, p. 175, who refers to Odysseus’ “Shy-
lockian subtlety,” and King, Achilles, pp. 91–4, who agrees with Hecuba’s description of
Odysseus as sophistic. Even Heath, “‘Jure Principem Locum Tenet,’” p. 66, who asserts
that Odysseus makes a “strong case” for the sacrifice of Polyxena, criticizes his “cynical
evasion of his obligation to Hecuba.”
124
arises: would a citizen of Athens have accepted Polyxena’s sacrifice

as justified? Adkins argues that he would have, on the ground that
Polyxena was only a “barbarian slave” and that “such people” were
valued “lightly” by the Athenians in comparison to a warrior of
Achilles’ stature.51 Stated in generic terms, Adkins’ argument may
be convincing; but the drama subverts such generic classifications
by portraying the impact of brutal actions on individual lives. The
play presents a character in a specific context, and that context must
be considered fully before arriving at a definitive judgment on this
question.
Adkins’ argument mirrors Odysseus’ own low assessment of
Polyxena’s worth, an assessment that Euripides’ treatment of the scene
subverts. As the chorus reports, Odysseus convinced the Greek assem-
bly to sacrifice Polyxena by asking them to weigh the value of a slave
against the honor of Achilles (134–5). Yet the decision “to crown
Achilles’ grave / with living blood” (126–7) surely cannot be reduced
to abstract terms of relative value and social status.52 The poetry here
reminds us, with bitter irony, of a different sort of weighing involved
in the sacrifice, asking whether honoring a tomb is worth shedding
“living blood” and whether a civilization can – or should – resort to
such acts.
Having failed in her efforts to win over Odysseus, Hecuba urges
Polyxena to try:
Implore him, use every skill that pity has,
every voice. Be like the nightingale,
touch him, move him! (337–9)53
Hecuba’s exhortation of her daughter to use “every skill that pity has, /
every voice” anticipates her own wish that her limbs could implore
51
Adkins, “Basic Greek Values,” p. 200.
52
Hogan, “Thucydides 3.52–68 and Euripides’ Hecuba,” p. 246, asserts that “there is
something abstract, remote” about Odysseus’ principles, which are “removed from
the dramatic scene.” That scene depicts the fate of a human being “who is to die for a
dubious public advantage” (p. 255). Thalmann, “Euripides and Aeschylus,” p. 138, n. 28,
points out that Odysseus’ argument leads to “the killing of a helpless and innocent girl,”
and argues that the Athenian audience would not in any case have believed in human
sacrifice.
53
( :M #( >(’ ' (' / %%& F( . . . (Hecuba 337–8).
125
Agamemnon “with a thousand tongues” (840), using the range of

arguments to which the limbs of her body will give voice.54
Polyxena responds to her mother’s poignant plea by reassuring
Odysseus that she will not attempt to supplicate him. If persuasion
is the weapon of the weak, as Buxton argues,55 then Polyxena’s refusal
to employ it may be read as a sign of strength:
Have no fear. You are safe from me.
I shall not call on Zeus who helps the helpless.
I shall not beg for life. No:
I go with you because I must, but most
because I wish to die. (345–9)
Polyxena goes on to assert that she, who was held “almost a goddess”
at Troy, has no wish to live a life of a slave, with all of the degradation
that it entails (355–66).
She goes on to plead with her mother to help her avoid such a life:
“ . . . help me to die, now, / before I live disgraced” (374–5), lines that
recall the heroic ethos of Ajax, who declares: “Let a man nobly live
or nobly die / If he is a nobleman . . . ” (Sophocles, Ajax 479–80).56
Indeed, Polyxena’s resolve reflects her adoption of the ethos of the
warrior-hero.57
54
For another appeal in which nature takes voice to plead on the suppliant’s behalf, see
Iphigenia’s lament to her father in Iphigenia in Aulis:
If I had the tongue of Orpheus
So that I could charm with song the stones to
Leap and follow me, or if my words could
Quite beguile anyone I wished – I’d use
My magic now. (1211–15; trans. Charles R. Walker)
, 3 C"8 I, ] #",
'%,
* #Y(’i >( " 8",

'%( j *5
',
*’ 0 /
$ (1211–14)
For the Greek text see Euripidis Fabulae, vol. 3., ed. Gilbert Murray.
55
Buxton, Persuasion in Greek Tragedy, p. 174.
56
Translation is by John Moore in Sophocles 2. Four Tragedies: Ajax, The Women of Trachis,
Electra, Philoctetes, in The Complete Greek Tragedies, ed. David Grene and Richmond
Lattimore (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1957).
57
Thalmann, “Euripides and Aeschylus,” p. 147, Gregory, Euripides and the Instruction,
p. 96, and Mossman, Wild Justice, pp. 160–1, all make this argument.
126
The chorus’ praise of Polyxena as noble both in birth and in deed

evokes nostalgia for this earlier, heroic period:
Nobility of birth
is a stamp and seal, conspicuous and sharp.
But true nobility allied to birth
is a greatness and a glory. (378–81)58
The chorus’ words can be more literally translated as “the name of

nobility comes to greater effect for those worthy of it.”59 There is
great irony involved in the chorus’ view that an innocent young girl
embodies the ethos of a lost nobility, in contrast to the Greek warriors,
who are heroes in name but not in deed.
As Odysseus leads Polyxena out, Hecuba collapses, dramatizing her
reliance on her “staff” and prefiguring Polyxena’s own death. When
Hecuba says, “I am faint – my legs give way beneath me –” (438),
her words carry connotations of death (as does the chorus leader’s
description a little later of Hecuba’s lying “in the dust . . . her head
buried in her robes” [486–7]).60 Hecuba’s cry, “Touch your mother,
give me your hand, / reach me!” (439–40), is wrenching. The image of
Odysseus dragging Polyxena out of her mother’s reach contrasts vividly
with the tableau formed by Hecuba’s touching him in supplication in
the prior scene.
A Greek herald, Talthybius, enters to give another graphic account
of Greek barbarism. Moved by the plight of Hecuba, to whom he must
58
"6" ( * 5" / *(
) %8(, ; M " /
% b ( G (Hecuba, 379–81).
59
Commenting on these lines in The Violence of Pity, p. 207, n. 32, Pietro Pucci writes,
“Nobility therefore shines, is naturally conspicuous, just as Polyneices’ truthful logos is
by nature simple, direct, and therefore, we assume, unmistakable.” For the longing for
such a clear stamp, cf. Medea’s wish for a “mark engraved upon men’s bodies” by which
to discern their character (Medea 516–19); also cf. Hippolytus’ reference to women as
“counterfeit” coin (Hippolytus 616) or the old man’s reference to the possible misreading
of Orestes’ character as a “false” coin (Electra 550).
60
The word Hecuba uses for “giving way” (
:, 438) is used frequently in Homer to
describe the death of warriors whose limbs “give way” or “loosen” beneath them. The
word Lattimore translates as “buried” in the phrase “her head buried [G%
8, <
487] in her robes” literally means “shut or coop up, hem in, enclose,” but has clear
metaphorical associations with death.
127
give news of Polyxena’s death, he wonders whether “we, holding that

the gods exist, / deceive ourselves with insubstantial dreams / and lies,
while random careless chance and change / alone control the world?”
(489–91). The herald’s outcry is clearly anachronistic, reflecting fifth-
century skepticism about the existence and justice of the gods.61 The
mythic world of the play is partially fusing with the contemporary
world of the Athenians watching it, forcing the Athenians to confront
the contradiction between myth and reality in their own “Golden
Age.”
The ideal and the actual again clash in Talthybius’ account of
Polyxena’s death – an account that, on the one hand, glorifies her
death as a noble, freely chosen act and, on the other, portrays her as
a victim of sordid male aggression. Talthybius begins his account by
reporting Polyxena’s eloquent refusal to be physically coerced: “Let
me die free. / I am of royal blood, and I scorn to die / the death of
a slave” (550–2). This sentiment again reflects the noble, heroic ide-
als expressed by Ajax and other mythic Greek heroes.62 Talthybius’
description of Polyxena’s subsequent actions paradoxically both rein-
forces and subverts these heroic ideals:63
. . . she grasped her robes

at the shoulder and ripped them open down the sides
as far as the waist, exposing her naked breasts,
bare and lovely like a sculptured goddess. (554–60)
The comparison to a sculpture refracts Polyxena’s death through the

sublime lens of art, portraying her as an object of awe.64 According
61
Cf. Hecuba’s outcry in the Trojan Women 884–8.
62
In “Euripides’ Hecuba,” American Journal of Philology 82.1 (1961): 19, D. J. Conacher
specifically compares Polyxena with Ajax.
63
Iphigenia utters a similar sentiment as she submits to a similar fate in Iphigenia in Aulis:
“I shall die – I am resolved – And having fixed my mind I want to die / Well and
gloriously . . . ” (1375–6). The accounts of the sacrifice given by the chorus (1520–31)
and the messenger (1540–1613) omit the discordant elements in the Hecuba.
64
The reference to a statue (%#
, 560) looks ahead to Hecuba’s appeal to
Agamemnon that he view her sympathetically, from the perspective of an artist: “Be
like a painter. Stand back, see me in perspective, / see me whole . . . ” (808–9). The
passage also raises a philosophical question: can a victim or a slave rise above his or her
circumstances to attain inner freedom? This motif recurs when Hecuba tells Agamemnon
later on in the play, “But since your fears make you defer / to the mob, let a slave set
128
to Talthybius’ account, her gesture elicits praise from the Greeks for
her nobility and courage (577–80); the messenger himself praises her
mother as “the one most blessed in her children / and also the unhap-
piest.”65 The messenger’s account thus conveys a certain nostalgia for
a lost nobility and heroism.
Yet Talthybius’ description of Polyxena’s baring her breast introduces
a sexual element at odds with the traditional dictates of female modesty:
“Strike, captain.
Here is my breast. Will you stab me there?
Or in the neck? Here is my throat, bared
for your blow.”
Torn between pity and duty,
Achilles’ son stood hesitating, and then
slashed her throat with the edge of his sword. The blood
gushed out, and she fell, dying, to the ground,
but even as she dropped, managed to fall somehow
with grace, modestly hiding what should be hidden
from men’s eyes. (562–70)
The description of Polyxena’s attempt to maintain proper deco-

rum even as her blood “gushed out” creates a grotesque effect.
Polyxena’s exposure of “her naked breasts” dramatizes the inextri-
cable link between the male drives toward sexuality and aggression.66
you free / from what you fear” (868–9). In Iphigenia in Aulis, Iphigenia accepts her own
sacrificial death to ensure Greek freedom (1400–1).
65
The account has some parallels with Solon’s story of Cleobis and Biton, exemplars of
male heroic courage, who win similar praise for their exploits for themselves and their
mother (Herodotus, Histories 1.31–3). Their deed – harnessing themselves to an ox-cart
to convey their mother to a temple – won praise from an admiring crowd, which both
praised their strength and counted their mother fortunate in her sons. Struck dead by
the gods at the peak of their glory, they were further honored by having statues made of
them. In telling their story, Solon suggests that Cleobis and Biton attained the highest
form of happiness possible for mortals. See Herodotus, The Histories, trans. Aubrey de
Selincourt (London: Penguin Books, 2003).
66
Traditionally critics have adopted the romanticizing heroic perspective advanced by
Talthybius. For example, F. W. King, ed. Euripides’ Hecuba (London: G. Bell and Sons,
1938), p. 84, n. on 573–80, calls the soldiers’ admiration for Polyxena’s courage “perhaps
the most human and pathetic touch in this vividly beautiful and imaginative narrative.”
In “Concepts of Freedom and Slavery in Euripides’ Hecuba,” Hermes 99 (1971): 222,
Stephen G. Daitz finds in Polyxena a love of freedom that contrasts with her mother’s
willingness to accept slavery in order to achieve her ends; cf. also Conacher, “Euripides’
129
As Thalmann argues, the sacrifice of Polyxena explores the issues of

Athenian “reliance on gender imbalance and the ease with which it
turned to violence.”67 The play’s graphic presentation of human suffer-
ing does not permit the audience to cherish any idealistic or romantic
notions for long. Talthybius’ account reminds us that religious and
artistic ideals may well be used to rationalize or glorify the sacrifice of
innocent lives.
When she learns of her daughter’s death and sees a body being
brought in, Hecuba naturally believes it to be Polyxena’s, but finds
instead the mangled body of her son. Her discovery confirms
Polydorus’ prophecy in the prologue, “And you, poor Mother, you
must see / your two last children dead this day / my sister slaughtered
and my unburied body / washed up on shore at the feet of a slave”
(45–8). The fact that the servant finds Polydorus’ body washed up on
the very shore where she goes to bathe Polyxena’s corpse may seem
contrived, in that it lacks what Aristotle would call any necessary or
probable connection to prior events (cf. Poetics 1452a18–20). But the
very randomness and arbitrariness of the connection mirror the ran-
dom, arbitrary violence portrayed in the drama.68 The terrible fate of
the two siblings, and the interchangeability of their bodies,69 dramatize
the utter absence of a higher moral code that would govern human
conduct in either wartime or peacetime.
Hecuba,” p. 23, who accuses Hecuba of “pander[ing] to them with her daughter’s honor.”
More recent critics offer more skeptical reactions. In “Hecuba and Tragedy,” Antichthon
14 (1980): 33, G. H. Gellie finds “gratuitous particularity” in the account of Polyxena’s
death, and argues that her “aristocratic but artless idealism” fails to heighten the tragic
effect of the drama. Thalmann, “Euripides and Aeschylus,” p. 143, argues that Polyxena’s
gesture of self-exposure transforms her into a “depersonalized erotic object by and for
the male gaze.” For Rabinowitz, Anxiety Veiled, p. 60, Polyxena becomes an “object of
sadistic, murderous desire; the adulation given her is only a form of fetishism.”
67
Thalmann, “Euripides and Aeschylus,” p. 147.
68
Michelini, Euripides, pp. 179–80, makes a similar point: she argues that the play’s violation
of aesthetic norms runs parallel with the violation of ethical norms that it portrays; she also
argues that the play paradoxically derives beauty from its unifying treatment of shameful
elements.
69
Rabinowitz, Anxiety Veiled, p. 108, speaks of the “slippage” between the bodies as evinc-
ing both parallels and contrasts based on the gender roles of the two: “the fate of one
leads to mourning, the other to vengeance.”
130
Hecuba’s despair is reflected in her inability to grasp the blows

that assail her, one after another (583–4), and the want of words to
describe an “[u]nspeakable, unimaginable” crime (714). After bewail-
ing her “mourning endless” and “anguish unending,” she supplicates
Agamemnon to allow her to take revenge on her son’s supposed
murderer, Polymestor. Her great, central speech, which is framed by
appeals to justice, also uses the arguments from convention (nomos) and
reciprocity (charis). She begins by asking Agamemnon to consider if
her sufferings “seem just” (788), arguing that the cosmos is governed
by a superior law upon which ethical norms depend:
I am a slave, I know,
and slaves are weak. But the gods are strong, and over them
there stands some absolute, some moral order
or principle of law more final still.
Upon this moral law the world depends;
through it the gods exist; by it we live,
defining good and evil. (798–801)70
In the vision of the cosmic order advanced by Hecuba, even the pow-
erful gods adhere to a higher law (Nomos, 800), exercising their power
in the service of justice. She is doubtless referring to the gods’ tra-
ditional role in protecting the rights of the suppliant, sanctioning
the laws of hospitality, enforcing oaths, and so on.71 The Melians
appeal to this traditional role of the gods in their dialogue with the
70
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Cf. Zeitlin, “Euripides’ Hekabe,” p. 83, who also refers to the traditions governing treat-
ment of the weak and care of the dead. Hecuba will later insist on the importance of the
congruence of word and deed (1187–91). Gregory, Euripides and the Instruction of the Athe-
nians, asserts that Hecuba defends the traditions of “fellowship, guest-friendship, burial”
(p. 111). She further argues that Hecuba’s story enacts a “kind of Oresteia in reverse:
private vendetta comes into play after an appeal to institutionalized justice has failed”
(p. 108). For a fuller treatment of the parallels (and contrasts) between Aeschylus and
Euripides, see Thalmann, “Euripides and Aeschylus.”
131
Athenians: “ . . . we trust that the gods will give us fortune as good

as yours, because we are standing for what is right against what is
wrong . . . ” (5.104).
Hecuba’s idealized notion of a “moral order / or principle of law”
that governs the cosmos is anachronistic, projecting a sophistic concept
of law (nomos) back into the heroic age. (Homer, for example, gener-
ally portrays the gods as much more interested in guarding their rights
and prerogatives, or merely satisfying their whims, than in enforcing
a code of ethics.)72 She maintains that people live by this principle of
law, “defining good and evil,” or, to translate the Greek more literally,
“defining justice and injustice” (801). Her vision conveys a univer-
sal standard of morality that binds both gods and men, Greeks and
barbarians. Right and wrong, justice and injustice are clear, mutually
exclusive concepts whose meaning is grounded in the cosmic order.73
Segal considers Hecuba’s pronouncement in this passage to be “one
of Euripides’ fullest and most celebrated declarations of universal moral
principles deriving from the divine order.”74 For her part, Zeitlin
argues that Hecuba is the only character in the play to affirm any
belief in an “objective moral order.”75 Indeed, Hecuba’s emphasis on
the ethical dimension of the gods throws into high relief “the moral
disintegration of every part of the world in which she lives.”76 Here,
72
See Segal, Euripides and the Poetics of Sorrow, p. 197, for a discussion of the concepts of
universal law that won wide acceptance in the fifth century b.c.
73
Arrowsmith is taking poetic license when he speaks of Nomos (800) as an absolute upon
which “the world depends” and through which “the gods exist”; his translation of the
term as “some . . . principle of law” is closer to the Greek. In this sense nomos could refer
to the “traditional belief in the existence of the gods and in the universality of standards
of justice,” as argued by Gregory, Euripides: Hecuba, p. 139, n. on lines 798–801. In the
dramatic context, this reference would include the gods’ traditional protection of the
laws governing hospitality and supplication.
In The Fragility of Goodness: Luck and Ethics in Greek Tragedy and Philosophy (Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 1996), p. 400, Martha C. Nussbaum’s translation of nomos
as “convention” would undercut the force of Hecuba’s own argument, which attempts
to persuade Agamemnon to follow a moral imperative. If nomos were something as
contingent or relative as “convention,” how could it be something “strong” that is set
over the gods themselves? It must be conceded, however, that the exact meaning of nomos
in this passage is unclear.
74
Segal, “The Problem of the Gods,” p. 13.
75
76
Segal, Euripides and the Poetics of Sorrow, p. 202.
132
as elsewhere in the Euripidean corpus, the nostalgia for an idealized,

bygone era highlights the moral deficiencies of the playwright’s con-
temporary society.
When Agamemnon rejects her appeal, a desperate Hecuba laments
her lack of skill in the art of persuasion:
Why, why
do we make so much of knowledge, struggle so hard
to get some little skill not worth the effort?
But persuasion, the only art whose power
is absolute, worth any price we pay,
we totally neglect. (814–19)77
Hecuba’s mention of the teaching of rhetoric by paid instructors is

another anachronistic reference to the sophists of Euripides’ own day.78
Her description of rhetoric as the governing power of human life
implies that an effective speech can grip the listener with an almost
physical force – a notion found in Gorgias’ defense of Helen of Troy.
He argues that she cannot be held responsible for her actions if she has
indeed been seduced by Paris’ beguiling words:
Words are tremendously powerful and produce the most godlike effects in the
smallest, most obscure bodies; for words can put an end to fear, assuage grief,
effect joy, and increase pity. . . . What is there to prevent our thinking that
Helen, too, went to Troy influenced by words, but none the less unwillingly,
as one captured by violent captors? For it is possible to see that the power
of persuasion, though it lacks the appearance of compulsion, has the same
strength.79
77
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133
Implicit in this statement is the notion that the art of persuasion

is inherently deceptive inasmuch as the medium it employs, which
appears to be so insubstantial, achieves such powerful effects. Gorgias’
claim that “the power of persuasion . . . has the same strength” as phys-
ical coercion may seem extravagant and even frivolous. But for a pris-
oner of war who must rely on the force of her arguments alone to
save – or avenge – the life of a loved one, the successful use of rhetoric
would seem to be a godlike accomplishment. Hecuba’s description
of rhetoric as “the only queen of men” (tên turannon anthrôpôis monên,
816; my translation) reminds the audience not only of her own reversal
of fortune but also of the newfound importance of rhetoric in a world
that disregards higher principles of any kind.80
To return to the scene of persuasion with Agamemnon: after being
rebuffed once more, Hecuba resorts to urging Agamemnon to respect
the “claims of love” he owes her daughter, Cassandra, who serves as
his concubine:
I have seen my children die,
and bound to shame I walk this homeless earth,
a slave, and see the smoke that leaps up
over Troy.
It may be futile now
to urge the claims of love, but let me urge them
anyway. At your side sleeps my daughter
3 , #% ,9 aG 3 N, 6 3 : 6 6
(Diels and Kranz, Die Fragmente der Vorsokratiker, vol. 2, pp. 290–1 [DK 82B11] ). This
passage from Gorgias’ Encomium on Helen is translated by Robinson, An Introduction to
Early Greek Philosophy, pp. 267–8.
80
Hecuba uses the same Greek word for “queen” (:"[], 816) to describe persuasion
that she used to describe herself only seven lines earlier (809). In his note on this line,
King, Euripides’ Hecuba, p. 92, argues that “[t]he failure of her plea for Justice has taught
[Hecuba] that Persuasion, not abstract Law, is the ruler of men.” Buxton, Persuasion in
Greek Tragedy, p. 182, comments that the “connection between the power of peitho and
the moral authority of the persuader” is almost entirely missing in the play. Hecuba’s
description of rhetoric as “the only queen of men” evokes the sophists’ claim for the
centrality of rhetoric in the Athenian democracy. Cf. the description of the powers
of rhetoric in the passage from the Encomium on Helen just quoted. Also cf. Gorgias’
description of rhetoric as a master art that embraces all others in Plato’s Gorgias (456a).
In The Heroic Muse, Kovacs makes the argument that the play marks the passing of
an era.
134
Cassandra, once the priestess of Apollo.

What will you give, my lord, for those nights of love?
What thanks for all her tenderness in bed
does she receive from you, and I, in turn,
from her?
Look now at this dead boy,
Cassandra’s brother. Revenge him. Be kind to her
by being kind to him. (821–35)
As Scodel argues,81 Hecuba is in effect asking Agamemnon to regard

Cassandra as his wife and Cassandra’s brother as his kinsman. Hecuba
first substitutes her own acquiescence in Cassandra’s concubinage for
her daughter’s; she then “assimilates concubinage to marriage” in order
to evoke in Agamemnon a sense of goodwill and obligation (charis)
toward Cassandra’s whole family.
Although many critics have attacked Hecuba’s willingness to appeal
to Agamemnon on these grounds,82 her attempt to exploit whatever
attachment he has formed for her daughter only underlines the desper-
ation and powerlessness of her position. Manipulating their sexuality
was one of the few means available to captive women of ensuring their
survival and improving their lot – a means not available to the aged
Hecuba.83 In order to accomplish her revenge, Hecuba adopts the
discourse of exchange prevalent in the world of the war. By treating
Cassandra’s enslavement to Agamemnon as a freely chosen marriage,
Hecuba indirectly reminds the audience of the brutal truth underlying
the rhetoric of reciprocity that she employs. The sacrifice of Polyxena,
the concubinage of Cassandra, and the fate of the Trojan women serve
81
Ruth Scodel, “The Captive’s Dilemma: Sexual Acquiescence in Euripides’ Hecuba and
Troades,” Harvard Studies in Classical Philology 98 (1998): 144–5.
82
See Scodel, “The Captive’s Dilemma,” p. 1, n. 1, for a partial list. Kirkwood, “Hecuba and
Nomos,” 66, states that Hecuba’s use of persuasion here is “repulsive” and “entirely devoid
of moral content,” while Conacher, “Euripides’ Hecuba,” p. 23, asserts that Hecuba’s
moral decline may be traced out through her use (and abuse) of rhetoric, particularly in
“pandering . . . with her daughter’s honour.” Contrast Zeitlin, “Euripides’ Hekabe,” p. 77,
who argues that Hecuba’s appeal demonstrates the close connection between “sophistic
and erotic persuasion” (without making a pejorative judgment about her).
83
Scodel, “The Captive’s Dilemma,” p. 145, is speaking of Hecuba’s status in the Trojan
Women, but the argument holds equally well here.
135
to exemplify “the male violence against women that characterizes the

Trojan and all wars.”84
Having made the arguments from “law” (nomos) and from “good-
will” (charis), Hecuba returns to “nature” ( physis) in a rhetorical move
that epitomizes her mastery of the sophistic lexicon. She now expresses
the wish that her body could implore and touch her captor with a
chorus of voices. It is ironically appropriate that Hecuba, the character
“most closely connected with the syntax of the body” throughout the
play,85 should ground her climactic appeal for justice in her own body,
symbolically giving voice both to her own suffering and to that of her
dismembered children. In giving her body voice she seeks not only
to dramatize her plight as a suppliant but also to validate the claims
of a mother’s natural connections to her children. Hecuba’s body here
becomes a metaphor for the disruption of the natural order, an order
in which the conventional “language” of the suppliant, comprising
not only voice but also gesture, has to be supplemented in order to
regain its accustomed force. The strained nature of the image reflects
the desperation of Hecuba’s plight and the “inverted cultural tradition”
that produced it.86
Although Hecuba wishes that her body could take voice “by some
magic, some gift of the gods” (836),87 she is in fact relying on her
own “semiotic power” to try to persuade her captor of the justice
of her cause. Her reference to “tongues in my arms, / hands that
talked, voices speaking, crying / from my hair and feet” (837ff.) sym-
bolically gathers up all her arguments in a final summation; it also
perhaps evokes the power and inventiveness of rhetoric itself.88 The
parts of her body that “all together” cry out and clasp her captor
84
Thalmann, “Euripides and Aeschylus,” p. 140.
85
86
Michelini, Euripides and the Tragic Tradition, p. 153.
87
The phrase Arrowsmith translates “by some magic” would be more literally translated
“by the craft of Daedalus” (S#
8(, 838).
88
For other examples of the power of rhetorical inventiveness in the play, cf. Odysseus’
reference to the “inventions of many arguments” (
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he used to save his own life, and Hecuba’s plea that Polyxena use “every skill that pity
has, every voice” ( #( . . . %%&, 337–8) and “all sorts of arguments” (

'%, 840) to save hers.
136
seem to recover the power of a lost voice of justice by bridging the

gap between voice and body, voice and deed, voice and audience.
Indeed, for Kastely, Hecuba’s plea represents the strongest possible
appeal to the higher “moral law” she referred to earlier.89 In effect,
Hecuba seeks to invest her human voice with divine authority, clarity,
and power;90 such a divinely empowered voice, a voice free of differ-
ence, would inevitably make its own case. Indeed, as Zeitlin argues,
body, touch, and voice combine to create an “irresistible pressure” on
Agamemnon.91
As we have seen, Hecuba culminates her plea with an emotional
appeal to Agamemnon’s sense of justice and honor:
O master, greatest light of Hellas,

hear me,
help an old woman,
avenge her!
She is nothing at all, but hear her, help her
even so. Do your duty as a man of honor:
see justice done. Punish this murder. (841–5)92
In making her plea, Hecuba tries to turn her worthlessness in the

eyes of the Greeks to her advantage. Even if she is “nothing at all,”
Agamemnon should honor her plea on its merits; if he does not, he
negates not only her identity as a human being but also his own as a
“man of honor” – a flattering description for a man who has refused
thus far to act on principle.
89
Kastely, “Violence and Rhetoric,” p. 1042.
90
Hecuba’s wish for such a voice recalls Theseus’ wish that men had a second, just voice
that would be set over their ordinary, deceptive voice (Hippolytus 925–31) – although his
wish reflects a need to distinguish truth from falsehood, not to promote the justice of a
plea that he is making.
91
92
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137
True to his character, Agamemnon offers a cautious, politically

expedient reply; even though he acknowledges the justice of Hecuba’s
plea, he may not be able to act on his beliefs:
If I give you your revenge,

the army is sure to charge that I connived
at the death of the king of Thrace because of my love
for Cassandra. . . .
Believe me,
Hecuba, I should like to act on your behalf
and would come instantly to your defense.
But if the army mutters, then I must
be slow. (854–63)
Agamemnon’s careful balancing of his competing interests is mir-

rored in the antithesis he draws between “instantly” and “slow.”93
For Agamemnon, justice is a matter not of moral principle but of
political calculation.94
In response, Hecuba angrily accuses Agamemnon of kowtow-
ing to “public opinion” (more literally, to the “mob of the city”
[plêthon . . . poleos, 866]) – another anachronistic reference to fifth-
century Athenian politics. She seeks to shame the great commander
into action:
Then no man on earth is truly free.
All are slaves of money or necessity.
Public opinion or fear of prosecution
forces each one, against his conscience,
to conform.
But since your fears make you defer
to the mob, let a slave set you free
from what you fear. (864–9)
93
This antithesis is even more apparent in the Greek, which opposes adjectives for
“instantly” (T, 862) and “slow” (5"T, 863).
94
Cf. Adkins, “Basic Greek Values,” p. 204, who argues that if Polymestor had been
acting on behalf of Greek interests in killing his guest-friend Polydorus, Agamemnon
would have condoned the murder. Also cf. Gregory, Euripides and the Instruction of the
Athenians, p. 102, who argues that Agamemnon’s sense of self-interest is stronger than his
sense of justice, and Kirkwood, “Hecuba and Nomos,” pp. 66–8, who makes a similar
argument.
138
By implying that Agamemnon, the great commander, is behaving in

a slavish, effeminate way, Hecuba exploits his vulnerabilities, just as
she will do with Polymestor later on. At the same time, Hecuba’s
proposal that Agamemnon lend her “passive support” and obstruct
any opposition “covertly / without appearing to act for me” (874–
5) gives him the political cover he is seeking – or what a modern
American politician might call “plausible deniability.”
When Agamemnon asks Hecuba about how she would accomplish
her revenge with her “shaking hand” (877), one senses that she has
already won the battle. Hecuba’s reply, that the Trojan women will take
advantage of their “cunning” and “power in numbers” (883–4), sets
the stage for another scene that will once more dramatize her powers
of persuasion: she will succeed in luring Polymestor into the women’s
tent without any guards – by playing partly on his greed and partly on
his assumption that the captive women are weak.95
Soon after hearing her plea,96 Agamemnon does finally permit
Hecuba to proceed with her plans for revenge, saying:
The common interests
of states and individuals alike demand
that good and evil receive their just rewards. (902–4)
Agamemnon’s statement seems to accept the ideal of justice implied in

Hecuba’s reference to an “absolute moral order.” However, his craven
attitude and his acceptance of “justice” only when he has political
cover for it subverts his high-minded rationalization.
Now that Agamemnon has at least tacitly agreed with her plans,
Hecuba must persuade Polymestor to enter the tent of women. She
is able to do so by asking for a private audience with him, on the
pretext that she may entrust Priam’s gold to him for safekeeping. After
reassuring him that there are no men inside the tent (1018), Hecuba
95
In Anxiety Veiled, pp. 121–2, Rabinowitz points out that Hecuba reassures Polymestor
that he has nothing to fear, since there are only women inside the tent.
96
Because Hecuba draws on a whole range of arguments in her dialogue with Agamem-
non, one cannot say with certainty which one finally convinces him; perhaps it is the
cumulative effect of all of them. Indeed, in the passage under examination, Hecuba does
express a wish for a “thousand tongues” (or, more literally, “all sorts of arguments”). But
I do detect a softening in Agamemnon’s position in the speech he makes after hearing
Hecuba’s climactic plea (850–63).
139
assures him that she still considers him a friend, but in words that
contain ironic double meanings:
You are my friend, a friend for whom I feel

no less love than you have shown to me. (1000–1)
She then asks Polymestor to bring his sons along with him, in case
something should prevent him from retrieving the gold (1006). More
chilling still is her suggestion that Polymestor, once he learns where
the treasure is hidden, should take his children where he left her son
(1023). As they enter the tent, the chorus describes the imminent
punishment of Polymestor as just retribution for his crimes: “Justice
and the gods / exact the loan at last” (1030). The audience learns what
form this justice takes when Hecuba announces a little later that she
has blinded Polymestor and killed his sons.
When Agamemnon reappears, he commiserates with the plight of
Polymestor, who threatens to tear Hecuba “limb from limb” (1128).
Attempting to calm him down, Agamemnon offers to judge a case in
which Polymestor will play the role of the plaintiff:
No more of this inhuman savagery now.

Each of you will give his version of the case
And I shall try to judge you both impartially. (1129–31)
The trial scene that ensues, one of the most bizarre in Greek tragedy,
follows the typical sequence prescribed by an Athenian law court: first
Polymestor (the plaintiff) presents his case, then Hecuba (the defen-
dant) presents hers, followed by the judge’s decision.97 Agamemnon’s
opening proclamation alludes to two ideals of both ancient and con-
temporary democracy: first, that the hearing of testimony from oppos-
ing sides by an impartial judge can produce a fair and just outcome,
and second, that such a process promotes the civilized aim of settling
disputes peacefully. Agamemnon’s pride in the supposed superiority of
97
For the argument that the speeches used in Euripidean trial scenes reflect actual practice
in Athenian law courts, see C. Collard, “Formal Debates in Euripides’ Drama,” Greece
& Rome (2d ser.) 22.1 (1975): 63.
140
Greek civilization and justice is undercut by the transparent hypocrisy

of his claim to be impartial.98
According to Polymestor’s testimony, the Trojan women, pretend-
ing to admire his robe and his weapon, disarm him and separate him
from his children, with whom they seemed to be playing:
Then, incredibly,
out of that scene of domestic peace,
they suddenly pulled daggers from their robes
and butchered both my sons, while troops of women
rushed to tackle me . . .
and I went down beneath a flood of women,
unable to move a muscle. (1160–7)
To obtain their revenge, Hecuba and the Trojan women exploit the
traditional female concern with the indoor occupations of weaving,
child care, and hospitality.99 The chorus’ movement from one extreme
of stereotypical female behavior – modesty, passivity, and domesticity –
to the other – vengefulness and cunning – parallels Hecuba’s own vac-
illation between these extremes. By exploiting their own perceived
weakness, Hecuba and the chorus demonstrate a certain affinity with
rhetoric, which, as Gorgias describes it, is powerful without seeming to
be. The chorus’ claim to have acted justly wins a measure of the audi-
ence’s sympathy, both because of the heinous nature of Polymestor’s
crime and because of the transparent hypocrisy of his defense of it.
Having learned of Polymestor’s guilt in the prologue, the audience
would rightly dismiss his claim to have killed Polydorus out of con-
cern about the threat he posed to the Greeks.
98
When he refers to Polymestor’s “inhuman savagery,” Agamemnon uses the Greek term
5#"5" (1129), which connotes a trait belonging to foreigners – showing ethno-
centric pride in his own civilization.
99
In “Golden Armor,” pp. 314–15, Segal argues that the robes from which the women
pull their daggers connote traditional feminine values of modesty and obedience; Rabi-
nowitz, Anxiety Veiled, p. 122, asserts that the women “exaggerate their femininity” and
exploit their “supposed motherliness” to extract their revenge. A character in
Xenophon’s Oeconomicus, a dialogue on estate management, describes a woman’s god-
given nature as properly suited to indoor tasks and concerns (7.22). See Xenophon,
Memorabilia and Oeconomicus, trans. E. C. Marchant. Loeb Classical Library. Rpt. 1965
(Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1923).
141
This trial scene provides yet another forum for Hecuba’s rhetorical
skills. In rebutting Polymestor’s argument, she associates him with the
sophists of Euripides’ own era:
The clear actions of a man,

Agamemnon, should speak louder than any words.
Good words should get their goodness from our lives
and nowhere else; the evil we do should show,
a rottenness that festers in our speech
and what we say, incapable of being glossed over
with a film of pretty words.
There are men, I know,
sophists who make a science of persuasion,
glossing over evil with the slick of loveliness;
but in the end a speciousness will show. (1187–94; slightly adapted)100
In arguing that good language should reflect good conduct (literally,

that the tongue “shouldn’t be stronger than deeds” [1187–8]), Hecuba
reiterates the ideal of clear distinctions between moral categories that
she expressed earlier. Her sentiment also recalls Theseus’ wish in the
Hippolytus that inward deceptiveness should be clear and transparent
to all through the language people employ. A more literal translation
of line 1191 conveys this wish more clearly: “ . . . and one should not
ever be able to speak unjustly well,” a sentiment soon echoed by the
chorus, who proclaim that “Those whose cause is just will never lack /
good arguments” (1238–9). Both of these assertions convey a nostalgic
belief in a transcendental “just voice” that has no need of “shifting,
intricate interpretations.”
The claim by Right Logic in the nearly contemporaneous Clouds
(423 b.c.) that his adherents will obtain a small tongue and muscular
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build provides a comic caricature of Hecuba’s moral that actions should

speak more loudly than words. In asserting that his sophistic opponents
will obtain an enormous tongue and effeminate build, Right Logic
implies, as Hecuba does, that the tongue of the sophist is far stronger
than his deeds. This biting description of the sophist reinforces the
traditional association between duplicity and the female, stereotypes
that Polymestor plays on when he expresses utter contempt for women
(1182).
Hecuba attempts to counter these stereotypes by alluding to a heroic,
masculinist ideal of conduct that privileges deeds over words, drawing,
just as Aristophanes does, an implicit contrast between the heroes of
a bygone era and the sophistic demagogues of her own age. Just as
Hecuba accuses Polymestor of concealing evil with “a film of pretty
words,” so Right Logic accuses Wrong Logic of confounding base
and noble things (1019–21). Hecuba implicitly argues that, unlike
Polymestor, she is speaking on behalf of justice, without needing any
rhetorical artifice.
One finds similar assertions linking simplicity and directness with
justice and morality in other literary texts of Euripides’ age: in
Thucydides’ account of the debate between the Thebans and the
Plataeans, the Thebans argue, disingenuously, that “[g]ood deeds do
not require long statements; but when evil is done the whole art of
oratory is employed as a screen for it” (3.67);101 and in Plato’s Apol-
ogy, Socrates asserts that he, in contrast to his accusers, will make a
“straightforward speech in the first words that occur to me, confident
as I am in the justice of my cause” (17c). In our own day, we see similar
assertions of the simplicity of a just cause in calls for “moral clarity”
in the “war on terror.”
Hecuba’s rebuttal of Polymestor’s claims once again displays a host
of sophistic modes of argumentation marshaled in a well-organized
set speech. She makes use of the arguments from probability and from
nature when she asserts that any friendship between Greeks and sav-
ages (to barbaron, 1200) would be impossible because of their vastly
101
Cf. Buxton, “Persuasion in Greek Tragedy,” p. 184; Thucydides presents the Theban
argument itself as sophistic because it unfairly deprives the Plataeans of their right to
defend themselves (History 3.67).
143
different natures: “First, what possible friendship could there be /

between civilized Greeks and half-savages / like you?” (1199–1201).
This argument, which plays on Agamemnon’s ethnocentrism, recalls
his reference to Polymestor’s “inhuman savagery” (to barbaron, 1129) at
the beginning of the trial scene. The timing of Polymestor’s murder
of Polydorus, as well as his failure to turn over the gold to the Greeks,
belies his stated motive of friendship, according to Hecuba (1206–23).
She again relies on the sophistic argument from likelihood (to eikos)
when she rejects Polymestor’s explanation that he acted out of fear for
his own kingdom.
The only remaining motive is Polymestor’s greed for gold, his desire
for profit (kerdê ta sa, 1206–7), which would fall under the sophistic
category of advantage (to sumpheron): “ . . . it was your greed for gold
that killed my son, / sheer greed and nothing more” (1207–8). This
greed led Polymestor to betray his duty as a host and lose the honor
and advantages that would have thus accrued to him. Hecuba con-
cludes her set speech by invoking the principle of justice (to dikaion),
another procedure of sophistic argument, when she tells Agamemnon:
“ . . . if you acquit this man, you prove yourself / unjust” (1233). In
rendering his verdict Agamemnon confirms Hecuba’s judgment that
Polymestor acted for his own advantage (prosphor’, 1246): “You mur-
dered your ward, killed him in cold blood, / and not, as you assert,
for the Greeks or me, / but out of simple greed, to get his gold”
(1243–5).
As the play ends, Polymestor, claiming to have prophetic knowledge
from Dionysus (1267), predicts terrible fates for both Hecuba and
Agamemnon, as well as for Cassandra. Hecuba will be “changed to a dog,
a bitch with blazing eyes” (1265), and Agamemnon and Cassandra will die
at his wife Clytemnestra’s hands (1275–7). It is one of the play’s sharpest
ironies that the savage Polymestor should claim a prophetic voice of his
own at the end of the play – a voice that condemns Hecuba to her own
cruel punishment. Polymestor’s reference to Hecuba’s transformation
into a dog turns her own metaphor against her. If earlier she sought
to endow her ordinary human voice with divine power, now she
is deprived of both her human voice and her humanity. Polymestor’s
prophecy deconstructs the nostalgic faith that Hecuba had expressed in
144
traditional values by showing the injustice of revenge that masquerades

as justice.102
By accurately predicting the deaths of Hecuba, Cassandra, and
Agamemnon, Polymestor signals a continuation of the violence that
began before the play opened, with Polydorus’ death. This cycle of
revenge, which will continue after the play ends, calls into question
the civilizing aim of speech (and of theater itself ) to contain or displace
violence.103 The transgressive quality of the play’s violence evokes the
violation of the bounds of civilized conduct so vividly depicted in
Thucydides.
Hecuba, a radically divided figure – at once nurturing and destruc-
tive, idealistic and cynical – becomes a means of exploring Athenian
anxiety about the nature of justice and Athenian ambivalence about
the power of rhetoric. As Thucydides reminds us, Euripides’ own age
often saw barbaric acts rationalized under both traditional and sophis-
tic definitions of justice. That our own age has also witnessed this
phenomenon makes the play all the more compelling to a modern
audience.
102
Critics are divided about the effect of the prophecy that depicts Hecuba’s transformation
into a “a dog, a bitch with glowing eyes” (1265). Most critics take this transformation as
a sign of her moral degradation, but some disagree. For a list of critics in both camps,
see Zeitlin, “Euripides’ Hekabe,” p. 90, n. 39. I disagree with the view of Ra’anana
Meridor, “Hecuba’s Revenge: Some Observations on Euripides’ Hecuba,” American
Journal of Philology 99 (1978): 35, that Polymestor’s punishment is “appropriate” and
“positive.” Even if one were to accept that such a gruesome act could be justified, is
the revenge Hecuba takes on Polymestor’s children also justified? I would side instead
with those who, like Zeitlin (p. 85), Segal, Euripides and the Poetics of Sorrow, p. 186,
and Thalmann, “Euripides and Aeschylus,” p. 153, posit a moral equivalence between
Hecuba and Polymestor. As Kastely, “Violence and Rhetoric in Euripides’s Hecuba,”
p. 1046, argues, Polymestor does succeed in avenging himself on Hecuba through
his prophecy. Although Hecuba tries to make light of his remarks, his prediction of
her imminent transmogrification and death would have been given credence by the
audience, because he accurately predicts the deaths of both Agamemnon and Cassandra.
The pattern of the play’s imagery concerning body and voice also confirms a negative
reading of Hecuba’s transformation, I would argue.
103
Citing the lack of any “conciliatory gesture” or hint of a hopeful future at the end of the
play, Zeitlin, “Euripides’ Hekabe,” p. 57, calls it “the least consoling of Euripides’ dra-
mas”; Thalmann, “Euripides and Aeschylus,” p. 155, likewise finds a lack of resolution
in the play, insofar as it traces out “a circle of ultimately pointless violence.”
145
4
THE VOICE OF APOLLO AND THE

“EMPIRE OF SIGNS” IN THE ION
I f the Hecuba presents us with an apparently godless world run on

the basis of people’s greed and lust for power, the Ion (ca. 413 b.c.)
lays the charges of corruption squarely at the feet of one of the most
important gods in the Greek pantheon, Apollo. In the course of the
play Apollo is charged with raping a woman, abandoning his own child,
lying through his oracle, and hiding from his misdeeds behind inter-
mediaries. Other plays of Euripides contain passing criticisms or con-
demnations of the gods and the Delphic oracle,1 but the Ion conducts
a sustained, frontal assault not only on the reliability of the oracle but
also on the motives and character of its patron god. In questioning the
truthfulness of Apollo’s oracle at Delphi, the play questions the whole
mythic worldview of the Greeks and the metaphysical assumptions
upon which it is based. It is, therefore, the fullest and most direct exam-
ination of the problem of the lost voice of truth in Euripidean drama.
The play’s protagonist, Ion, crystallizes the play’s pervasive concern
with this problem when he asks, “. . . does Apollo tell the truth, / Or
is the oracle false?” (1537–8).2 Ion’s questioning of the truthfulness of
1
In Electra, for instance, see Orestes’ branding of the oracular commands as savage and
ignorant (971) as well as demonic and impure (979, 981), and the Dioscuri’s charge that
Apollo’s oracles were lies (1245–6). Also see accusations of the injustice and brutality
of the oracle for ordering Orestes to kill his mother at Orestes 417, 595–6 and Iphigenia
in Tauris 76ff. For other instances of the charge that the oracle is demonic, see Orestes
1668–9 and Iphigenia in Aulis 878–89.
2

6 H # :; (Ion 1537). Unless otherwise noted, the translation is
by Ronald Willetts in Euripides 3. Four Tragedies: Hecuba, Andromache, The Trojan Women,
Ion, in The Complete Greek Tragedies, ed. David Grene and Richmond Lattimore (Chicago:
University of Chicago Press, 1958). The Greek text used is A. S. Owen, ed., Euripides’
Ion. Rpt. 1957 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1939).
146
THE VOICE OF APOLLO AND THE “EMPIRE OF SIGNS” IN THE ION
the archetypal voice of truth in the ancient Greek world marks both
the dramatic and the metaphysical crisis of the play. His doubt is well
founded: in order to secure Ion’s inheritance, Apollo, who is his true
father, has apparently issued a false oracle deeming Xuthus to be his
father.3 Ion’s mother, Creusa, who earlier attacked Apollo as cruel and
unjust, now defends him, arguing that if Apollo had acknowledged
his paternity of Ion, Ion “would have lost / All hope of heritage or
father’s name” (1541–2). But Ion, unconvinced by his mother’s theory,
insists on consulting the oracle once more to clear up the confusion.
Before he can do so, however, Athena appears and confirms Creusa’s
explanation. Apollo indeed made a gift of Ion to Xuthus in order to
secure his son’s political advantage; the god’s justice was only delayed,
3
Even though the question of the veracity of the oracle is finally left unresolved, the
play as a whole suggests that Apollo has indeed issued a false oracle. Supporting this
reading is Hermes’ assertion in the prologue that Apollo will give his own biological
son ( 8, 70) to Xuthus (69–71), an assertion supported by Xuthus’ account
of the oracle he received ( 8, 536). See Anne Pippin Burnett, “Human
Resistance and Divine Persuasion in Euripides’ Ion,” Classical Philology 57 (1962): 91;
cf. Owen, Euripides’ Ion, who refers to Apollo’s “false oracle” (xix) and who maintains
that “Delphi has lied to Xuthus” (xxxiv). Creusa suggests that Apollo lied about
his paternity in order to facilitate Ion’s adoption by Xuthus (1534–6). According to
Owen, p. 176 (n. on line 1535), Apollo could not have been named as Ion’s real father,
as the contemporary practice of adoption required, because Creusa’s earlier silence
about Apollo’s paternity and her attempt to kill Ion would have been quite difficult to
explain.
Owen does allow, however, that the oracle could have been ambiguously worded
so as to suggest “that either Xuthus or Apollo was Ion’s father”: “Euripides probably
imagined that there would have been some such ambiguous oracle, a trick to secure the
god’s immediate purpose, but by which he could declare that he had not departed from
veracity” (xx). But what of Hermes’ assertion in the prologue? Hermes is not the most
reliable source of information, insofar as he is the god of “equivocal communication,”
as pointed out by Nicole Loraux, “Kreousa the Autochthon: A Study of Euripides’
Ion,” in Winkler and Zeitlin, eds., Nothing to Do with Dionysos? Athenian Drama in Its
Social Context (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1990), p. 171. This association is
only reinforced by the fact that Hermes makes a false statement in the prologue, “the
only example in Greek Tragedy where something is definitely announced in a prologue
as going to happen, which does not” (Owen, Euripides’ Ion, xix, n. 1): Hermes says that
Creusa will not learn of the oracle’s declaration of Ion as Apollo’s son until she is back
in Athens (69–73), whereas she learns of it in Delphi. As for the account of the content
of the oracle that Xuthus gives to Ion, we have no other outside corroboration of it
than from Hermes, who has been shown to be unreliable. Nor does Athena directly
address Ion’s question in the epilogue. Ultimately, the question of the veracity of the
oracle is superseded by the question of the god’s benevolence: is Apollo guiding events
to a happy conclusion for Creusa and Ion or not?
147
not denied (1560–2, 1614–15). This explanation quickly wins over

both Ion and his mother, who cease their attacks not only on Apollo’s
truthfulness but also on his justice. Like the Helen, produced perhaps a
year or two later, the Ion ends with the triumphal reunion of estranged
family members.
The happy endings of both the Ion and the Helen reflect the changed
nature of Euripidean drama in the last decade or so of the Pelopon-
nesian War. Both plays are romantic melodramas that feature com-
plicated plots in which threatened or actual violence among relatives
is narrowly averted. The light-hearted tone of these dramas, along
with their overall structure, has prompted critics to associate them
with comedy as well as melodrama. For Bernard Knox, “Euripidean
comedy” presages the development of Greek New Comedy; for Bernd
Seidensticker, it represents the beginnings of the genre of tragicomedy
in European literature.4
Although both the Ion and the Helen do grapple with serious philo-
sophical and religious concerns, they both represent a retreat from the
moral and political crises then plaguing Athens, crises traced out in
Thucydides’ account of the Melian Dialogue (416/15 b.c.) and the
Sicilian Expedition (415–13 b.c.).5 Both plays take refuge in a certain
nostalgia for a divine voice that is ultimately just, even if it is not truth-
ful.6 Whereas the Helen celebrates a panhellenic victory over Egyptian
barbarians, the Ion writes a new myth of Athenian supremacy for a
postmythic age, one that does not eliminate skepticism about the gods
but incorporates it into an ironic and entertaining intrigue.
4
Bernard Knox, “Euripidean Comedy,” in Word and Action: Essays on the Ancient Theater
(Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1979). Arguing against the origin of tragi-
comedy in the modern era, Bernd Seidensticker, Palintonos Harmonia: Studien zu komischen
Elementen in der griechischen Tragödie. Hypomnemata 72: Untersuchungen zur Antike und zu
ihrem Nachleben (Gottingen: Vandenhoeck and Ruprecht, 1982), p. 247, asserts: “Die
Geschichte der ‘synthetischen Tragikomödie’ beginnt nicht erst in der Romantik oder
bei Shakespeare und Molière, sondern mit Euripides.”
5
A. M. Devine and Laurence D. Stephens, “A New Aspect of the Evolution of the
Trimeter in Euripides,” Transactions of the American Philological Association 111 (1981): 43–
64, place the play between the performances of the Trojan Women (415 b.c.) and the Helen
(412 b.c.) on metrical grounds.
6
Christian Wolff, “The Design and Myth in Euripides’ Ion,” Harvard Studies in Classical
Philology 69 (1965): 174, argues that the play expresses a certain nostalgia for the city’s
noble past, “a nostalgia which may well be imagined in the years after Sicily.”
148
This chapter considers the play of metaphysical assumptions that

underlies the overall plot of the Ion, as it moves from a sustained critique
of a mythic word of truth to a restoration of faith in the spirit if not the
letter of the divine word. Just as the Helen deconstructs the divinely
inspired voice of epic fame, so the Ion exposes and magnifies the
inconsistencies implicit in the traditional portrayal of Apollo’s voice as
an infallible “word of truth.” The play’s challenge to Apollo’s veracity
subverts the traditional phonocentric belief in the power of the divine
word to articulate truth, convey meaning, and establish order.
The Ion focuses on two contradictions inherent in this traditional
phonocentric belief and the metaphysical assumptions that underlie
it. The first is the contradiction between the portrait of Apollo in his
role as an unbiased voice of truth and his portrait in myth as a selfish,
even narcissistic being. Here the play exploits a central contradiction
in the traditional portrait of the Greek gods. On the one hand, the
gods (especially in their earliest manifestations) embody amoral forces
of nature that know little law or restraint. But, on the other hand, they
also exemplify certain moral principles and social ideals in their role as
guarantors of oaths and pledges, guardians of important customs, and
speakers of truth.7
Euripides’ drama also probes a second inconsistency in the tra-
ditional portrait of Apollo’s oracle at Delphi. The god’s voice, as
expressed through his oracle, is considered to be a transcendent, infal-
lible “word of truth,” offering a transparent view of the nature of
reality (if it is correctly interpreted). Yet the oracle is notoriously enig-
matic and difficult to interpret, as the familiar myth of Oedipus the
king reveals. Like the utterances of the Muses, Apollo’s oracular pro-
nouncements always have the potential to mislead and delude mortals.
Added to this inherent risk of misinterpretation is the potential for
error, distortion, or deceit that can arise as the god’s will is transmitted
to mortals through a priestess (or other intermediary) who may be
unreliable, self-serving, or subject to external pressure or influence.8
7
Cf. Stanley E. Hoffer, “Violence, Culture, and the Workings of Ideology in Euripides’
Ion,” Classical Antiquity 15.2 (1996): 309.
8
For examples of attempts to manipulate oracles, see the story of Themistocles’ success-
ful reinterpretation of a Delphic pronouncement (from Herodotus’ Histories 7.139–44,
149
Thus the oracle embodies both sides of the debate between Polyneices
and Eteocles: on the one hand, the oracular voice of Apollo is a “single
and plain” voice of truth that evinces the “metaphysics of presence”;
on the other hand, the riddling, ambiguous nature of the oracle means
that it depends on “shifting, intricate interpretations” for its truth to
be revealed. Let us examine the metaphysical assumptions implicit in
both of these perspectives before proceeding to an analysis of the text.
The oracle of Apollo serves as a transparent medium of the god’s
voice, conveying infallible knowledge of both the present and the
future, as Hermes says in the prologue of the play (5–7). Hermes’ asser-
tion that Apollo “gives [humnôdei, 6; literally “sings”] / His prophecies
to men (6–7)” implies that the god conveys his meaning through the
voice without any slippage or distortion. Hermes’ reference to the ora-
cle as the “earth’s mid-center” or “navel” (omphalon, 5) recalls another
key assumption of phonocentrism. In Derridean terms, the divine
word serves as a center and origin that grounds a culture’s whole sys-
tem of speech, values, and meaning. This center admits of no absence
or difference from itself. As Derrida states, “all the names related to
fundamentals, to principles, or to the center have always designated an
invariable presence.”9
referred to earlier) and the story of Alexander the Great’s intimidation of the Delphic
priestess in Plutarch’s Life of Alexander (14.4).
9
Derrida, Writing and Difference, p. 279. Although Derrida is referring to the Western
philosophical tradition beginning with Plato, I am arguing that the Delphic oracle
also exemplifies Derrida’s views about the center. Although the oracle is notoriously
ambiguous and prone to misinterpretation, an underlying faith in its ultimate truth-
fulness pervades Greek literature and history. Lisa Maurizio, “Delphic Oracles as Oral
Performances: Authenticity and Historical Evidence,” Classical Antiquity 16.2 (1997):
312, surveying ancient accounts of the outcome of Delphic predictions, reports that
“[o]f the six hundred or so oracles attributed to Delphi, all are fulfilled, that is, none
are represented as forgeries or as inaccurate predictions.” At the same time, Maur-
izio argues for a more critical weighing of the evidence that recognizes that these
oracles are really “religious testimonia”; as such, they reflect a very different world-
view and sense of truth than modern scholars typically espouse. Euripides’ drama criti-
cally examines the metaphysical assumptions of this ancient belief-system in a way that
is remarkable in a pre-Platonic text, especially one that is not philosophical per se.
Delphi also exemplifies Mircea Eliade’s conception of the mythological axis mundi.
Mircea Eliade, The Sacred and the Profane: The Nature of Religion, trans. Willard R. Trask
(New York: Harper and Brothers, 1961), pp. 36–7, speaks of “the image of a universal
pillar, axis mundi, which at once connects and supports heaven and earth,” and argues
that such a pillar “can be only at the very center of the universe, for the whole of the
150
Though Hermes does not mention it, Apollo’s self-present, infallible

“word of truth” is inevitably mediated, however. As Heraclitus says,
“The lord whose oracle is at Delphi neither speaks out nor conceals,
but gives a sign.”10 Thus the oracle’s “word of truth” is based on the
god’s silence and the deferral of his presence. In fact, the play’s critique
of Apollo stems primarily from his invariable physical absence. Apollo
himself never appears in the play; the fact that he speaks and acts
through a false oracle or through intermediaries only reinforces this
absence. But perhaps even more significant than Apollo’s absence in
the play is his absence from himself – his being at odds with his own
reputation as a reliable truth-teller.
Indeed, the attack on the truthfulness of Apollo is inextricably linked
with the attack on his justice. Throughout most of the play, Creusa,
Ion, and the chorus attack the morality and justice of a god who would
rape a woman and abandon a child. How can a god who seeks to evade
responsibility for his own unjust acts be a reliable, transcendent voice
of truth? Creusa wonders where people can obtain justice if the gods
who rule the world are unjust (252–4), and Ion argues that it is all the
more important for a powerful god like Apollo to be just (439–40).
Later on, Creusa calls the god of prophecy and music ungrateful and
disloyal (876–80) as well as base (912), and the chorus correspondingly
suggests that his oracle is fraudulent (685).
Significantly, the matter about which Apollo apparently lies is his
paternity of Ion. Zeitlin speaks of the irony that “the god who authors
habitable world extends around it.” The axis of this spiritual center is “located ‘in the
middle,’ at the ‘navel of the earth.’” Confirming the notion that Delphi functions as
an axis mundi in the play is the view of Anne Pippin Burnett, trans. and ed., Ion: By
Euripides. Greek Drama Series (Englewood Cliffs: Prentice-Hall, 1970), p. 135: Delphi was
called the navel of the earth not only because it was considered the earth’s center but also
because it served as a “magical connective orifice linking the surface of the earth to the
earth goddess Ge.” Delphi’s location at the navel of the earth accounts for its function
as a “metaphorical birthplace for cities, legal codes, and civic institutions,” according to
Carol Dougherty, “Democratic Contradictions and the Synoptic Illusion of Euripides’
Ion,” in Josiah Ober and Charles Hedrick, eds., Dêmokratia: A Conversation on Democracies,
Ancient and Modern (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1996), p. 263.
10
G, [ ' *( * S
,
8% ":
& (.
The Greek is from Diels and Kranz, eds., Die Fragmente der Vorsokratiker, vol. 1 (Berlin:
Weidmann, 1934), p. 172 (DK 22B93). Translated by Robinson, An Introduction to Early
Greek Philosophy, p. 96.
151
the oracle’s voice is at the same time, or so it is said, the author of the
hero, Ion himself.”11 Her metaphor is apt; the play questions Apollo’s
authority on both of these counts. At stake in both of these questions
is the status of Apollo and his divine word as the transcendent, fully
present, self-identical center of an entire system of metaphysics. For
most of its action the Ion subverts this phonocentric belief.
One recognizes in the play’s critique of divine truth and justice the
rational skepticism of Euripides’ own age. The play questions the logic
of worshipping deities who violate the very standards of justice they
set for the human race. In criticizing Apollo and the other gods as
unjust, Ion and Creusa are holding them accountable to a new code
that the Olympians rarely follow. Of course, the attempt to subject the
mythic gods to rational or moral examination is anachronistic.
The play’s attempt to reach a self-consistent definition of divine
justice by “cross-examining” Apollo, the gods, and the whole mythic
tradition bears some resemblance to the movement of a Socratic dia-
logue.12 This examination of the veracity of myth and story culminates
at the end of the drama in the questioning of the veracity of the oracle
itself. Ultimately, in asking “Is Ion merely being called Apollo’s son,
or is he in fact Apollo’s son?” the play tests the contradictions between
name and reality, name and being,13 and eventually myth and reason.
The oracular word of Apollo becomes the last in a series of stories
to be tested against the touchstone of rational inquiry: is it just an
unproven or unprovable story, like the myth of Athenian autochthony
or the other improbable myths alluded to in the play?14 What grounds
are there for believing in an oracle whose patron or intermediary may
be issuing self-serving or contradictory responses? Creusa’s complaint
that Apollo is a rapist who let his own child die causes even his own
dedicated votary to question him (429–52). But the critique of Apollo’s
word and character extends beyond the god to the institution of the
11
Froma I. Zeitlin, “Mysteries of Identity and Designs of the Self in Euripides’ Ion,”
Proceedings of the Cambridge Philological Society n.s. 35 (1989): 145.
12
Ion will use the verb for “cross-examine” ( G8
%8, 367), cognate to elenchos, when he
exhorts Creusa not to put the oracle to the test (367).
13
The opposition between onoma and pragma is a favorite Euripidean motif. See Friedrich
Solmsen, “CkCQc and KmcDQc in Euripides’ Helen,” Classical Review 48 (1934):
119–21.
14
Wolff, “The Design and Myth,” p. 187.
152
oracle itself. The play’s early scenes suggest that the sacredness and
purity of Delphi rely on violence and the suppression of the female.15
Significantly, the drama reduces the female presence at Delphi,
which originally belonged to the earth goddess Ge, to the voice of a
priestess “speaking Apollo’s words and acting as his surrogate.” The
center of the earth is thus not gender-neutral, but associated initially
with the earth goddess, whom the myths tell us Apollo displaced.16
Creusa’s reference to Apollo’s seat at “the temple at earth’s center”
(910) reminds us of this act of displacement. Just as the navel (ompha-
los) marks the absence of the mother, so the temple marks the absence
of the original deity whom Apollo replaced. The play of absence and
presence, as it applies to the roles of both Creusa and Apollo, will be
an important motif throughout the drama.
Delphi’s location at the center of the earth (the omphalos) associates
the oracle directly with the female’s ability to procreate – and indirectly
with her “semiotic power” – because the mother in a prescientific age
is the only possible source of sure knowledge of the father’s identity.
Thus the female has a double connection to the transcendental signi-
fied represented by the “center,” as either the sure guarantor or the
potential fabricator of her offspring’s paternity (or perhaps both). The
Ion presents us with a god who has appropriated the female’s traditional
power, dating back to Pandora, over duplicitous, mediated speech.
Indeed, the accusation that Apollo is lying is closely related to the
accusation that he is hiding behind the oracle or other intermediaries
that he uses to speak on his behalf. Ion urges Creusa not to ask the
oracle about a shameful “secret [Apollo] wants to hide” (365, 367), and
Athena’s speech in the epilogue supports the suspicion that Apollo still
has something to hide: he refuses to appear “lest he should be blamed
for what / Has happened in the past” (1558–9). The fact that Apollo’s
voice is invariably mediated introduces the possibility that others may
15
Cf. Hoffer, “Violence, Culture, and the Workings of Ideology,” p. 299, on the battle of
Olympians and Giants.
16
See Rabinowitz, Anxiety Veiled, p. 195. Cf. the domestication of the powers of the
chthonic deities, the Erinyes or Furies, by Athena (working in conjunction with Apollo),
at the end of Aeschylus’ Eumenides. But there, the transformation of the vengeful god-
desses into beneficent ones is accomplished through peaceful, not violent, means –
through Athena’s powers of persuasion.
153
be not only covering up for him but also misrepresenting his word for
purposes of their own.
To dramatize this potential, Euripides constructs a long series of
substitute speakers and signs that purportedly replace Apollo’s voice
or convey his will. The series of potentially duplicitous substitutes for
Apollo begins in the prologue with the appearance of Hermes and
ends in the epilogue with the appearance of Athena, both of whom
tell us they are serving as Apollo’s agents. But in between we also
have several other characters who purport to be speaking or acting for
Apollo or interpreting his will, including his Pythian priestess, Xuthus,
and Creusa. Ion’s suspicion that Creusa is lying about Apollo’s paternity
leads him to insist on consulting the oracle himself at the end of the
play.17 Ion’s uncertainty about the identity of his father widens into a
radical skepticism about the possibility of humans obtaining any certain
knowledge. To follow the plot is to follow the trace of a bewildering
series of replacements for Apollo’s original voice and presence.
This series of replacements reminds us that the word of Apollo is
always necessarily mediated. The oracle functions as a kind of litur-
gical supplement,18 partaking of the paradoxical double nature of the
supplement, as described by Derrida. On the one hand, the oracu-
lar “word of truth” is supposedly a repetition without difference of
Apollo’s voice or inner meaning, reflecting the oracle’s supernatu-
ral power to embody the nature of reality (assuming, of course, it is
interpreted correctly). In this way the supplement serves as a sign of
presence, plenitude, and identity. But Apollo’s “word of truth” is also
subject to slippage, distortion, and deceit, either voluntary or involun-
tary, on the part of the god and his intermediaries or interpreters. As
with the poetic voice of heroic fame (kleos), the fact that Apollo’s voice
is mediated introduces at least the theoretical possibility that his mean-
ing or intent will be somehow distorted or diluted. The same oracular
word that guarantees meaning and presence may also mark the defer-
ral, loss, or displacement of meaning and presence. The attempts made
17
One finds similar skepticism about claims of divine parentage elsewhere in Euripides.
For example, in the Bacchae Semele’s sisters claim that she has concocted the story that
Dionysus is her lover to escape the shame of having an illegitimate child (25–31).
18
A point suggested to me by Tim Beal.
154
by Ion and Creusa to kill each other following Xuthus’ consultation

of the oracle reflect its destructive potential.
Given the drama’s sustained, penetrating critique of the god and
his oracle, how does it restore faith in his voice and presence? The
ending of the play rationalizes the god’s behavior and glosses over the
duplicitous potential of his oracular pronouncements. The critique of
Apollo offered by various characters turns out largely to have been
based on limited and misleading information.19 The contingency of
the characters’ critiques is dramatized by the startling reversals in their
attitude toward the god and in their own concepts of justice. Nothing
illustrates the tragicomic potential of these reversals better than the
scene in which Creusa, who has condemned Apollo as unjust, clings
to his altar for protection, while Ion, who has been the god’s pious
devotee, condemns the injustice of the divine law protecting suppliants.
The events of the play dramatize the fallibility of human judgment
through a whole series of misidentifications and misunderstandings
that culminate in Creusa’s and Ion’s plot to kill each other.
Although Apollo seems to have been absent through these troubling
events, he has in fact been an invariable, benevolent presence protect-
ing his own – and we have this on divine authority. Both Hermes
and Athena, who frame the play, insist that Apollo is managing events
behind the scenes. Speaking of Creusa’s and Ion’s visit to Delphi,
Hermes says in the prologue: “Apollo seems indifferent, / But he
controls their fate and guides them here” (67–8). And in the epilogue,
Athena assures everyone that “Apollo then / Has managed all things
well” (1595). Not only Hermes and Athena but other actors, speakers,
and signs work as substitutes for the voice and will of Apollo, com-
pensating for his absence and for the deceptiveness of his oracle. Even
the most foreboding events of the play must later be reread as signs
of Apollo’s benevolent presence and intent.20 It is no exaggeration
19
Cf. Wolff, “The Design and Myth,” p. 185, who speaks of the play’s “demonstration of
the limits of human knowledge.”
20
Cf. Burnett, “Human Resistance and Divine Persuasion,” p. 101, on the play as a “prov-
idential comedy” and similar comments in Felix Martin Wasserman, “Divine Violence
and Providence in Euripides’ Ion,” Transactions of the American Philological Association 71
(1940): 601, who also argues that the audience feels “Apollo’s presence” throughout the
play.
155
to claim, as Dougherty does, that “[t]he entire plot of the Ion is pre-
sented in oracular terms – set at Delphi, framed by the absent presence
of Apollo.”21
Apollo’s invariable presence flickers behind the play of opposites, of
secrecy and exposure, of presence and absence, of truth and falsehood,
that pervades the whole drama. The false oracle issued by Apollo leads
to the false recognition scene between Ion and Xuthus, which in turn
incites Creusa to plot against Ion. Presumably, Apollo saves Ion by
sending the dove to drink the poison Creusa intended for him,22 and
he similarly saves Creusa from Ion by inspiring the Pythian priestess
to bring the tokens left in Ion’s cradle. Hermes, Athena, the Pythian
priestess, and other agents of Apollo underscore the nature of the oracle
as a cryptic “writing” to be decoded, a veil that has to be pierced to
attain the god’s true, originary voice.
Like the consultant of an oracle, the spectator of the drama has to
decipher the ambiguous meaning of individual events in its intricate
plot (even while knowing the eventual outcome in advance, thanks to
Hermes). The happy ending brings the audience in on a secret still kept
from Xuthus – the true identity of Ion’s father. The ending confirms
that Ion is not only the son of a god but also the founder of a dynasty
that will culminate in the Athenian empire of Euripides’ own day. The
pleasure the original audience would have taken in finally discovering
an oracular message so propitious for Athens’ hegemony provides an
escape from the difficult conditions under which the play was first
produced. The rest of this chapter outlines the general contours of
this apparent progression from anxiety to confidence, from absence to
presence, from ambiguity to clarity, even while pointing out factors
that potentially disrupt this movement.23
Let us begin with Hermes’ speech in the prologue, which presents
Apollo’s conduct much more positively than does Creusa’s subsequent
description of it. In Hermes’ version, Apollo did compel “Creusa /
To take him as her lover” (10–11), but afterwards, took steps to protect
21
Dougherty, “Democratic Contradictions,” p. 264.
22
Cf. Burnett, Ion: By Euripides, pp. 10–11.
23
Cf. Zeitlin, “Mysteries of Identity,” p. 181, who maintains that the drama “exemplifies
the ways in which Athens represents itself as ‘escaping’” a tragic outcome.
156
her and her child: he apparently saw to it that Creusa’s father was
ignorant of her pregnancy (15), instructed Hermes to rescue the child
and transport him to Delphi (29–36), and arranged for his upbringing
there (47–8). Hermes also tells us that Apollo will ensure the fame and
prosperity of his child and his whole lineage.
Hermes’ emphasis on the motif of Apollo’s benevolence announces
an important theme, that of the inherent limitation of human knowl-
edge. The characters in the drama are necessarily ignorant about vital
information that Hermes imparts to the audience. This information,
including Ion’s true parentage, his history, and his destined fame as a
“founder of ancient cities” (74–6), foreshadows the happy ending, one
that restores Athenians’ pride in their city-state – another manifestation
of the play’s nostalgic bent.
It is appropriate that Hermes begins a play that is obsessed with
questions of origins by recounting his own genealogy. He tells us that
he is the grandson of Atlas, “who wears on back of bronze the ancient /
Abode of gods in heaven” (1–2). The reference to Atlas’ being forced
by the Olympians to carry the sky on his shoulders alludes to the war
between the Olympians and the Titans that will serve as an impor-
tant motif throughout the play. The chorus members will describe
scenes from this war that they see depicted on Apollo’s temple at
Delphi; Creusa will also indirectly refer to it when she recounts how
Athena gave Erichthonius “[t]wo drops” of the blood of the Gorgon
she vanquished in this battle (1003). In the mistaken belief that Ion
is threatening to displace a potential heir of her own from Athens’
throne, Creusa will later ask the old man to use one of these drops
to poison Ion’s wine. But her fears about Ion are unfounded: Apollo,
a representative of the new Olympian order, will ultimately favor the
“earthborn” line of Athens of which Creusa is a descendant.24
24
Vincent J. Rosivach, “Earthborns and Olympians: The Parodos of the Ion,” Classical
Quarterly n. s. 27 (1977): 294, sees in Creusa’s resistance to Apollo a chthonic rebellion
against Olympian rule, and regards Ion himself as a blend of Olympian and chthonic
elements. Loraux, “Kreousa the Autochthon,” p. 191, also sees Ion as a kind of hybrid,
mediating between two opposed theories of generation, birth from a single parent and
birth from two. Hermes does refer to Creusa’s ancestor, Erichthonius, as a “son of Earth”
(22).
Missing in the prologue (and in the play as a whole) is any reference to the goddess
Earth as the original prophetic voice at Delphi, or to Apollo’s having supplanted her in
157
After describing his genealogy, Hermes says that he has arrived at

Delphi, where Apollo “gives / His prophecies to men, and passes
judgment / On what is happening now and what will come” (6–7).25
Hermes’ reference to Apollo’s singing his prophecies (humnôdei, 6)
reflects the phonocentric notion that the god’s voice is the ultimate
source of truth and knowledge, a notion that the chorus will later
reemphasize, when they speak of the Pythia as merely echoing Apollo’s
voice (91–2).
Despite assuring us that Apollo will show his favor to Creusa, Ion,
and Athens, Hermes also refers to him in a negative light. The first
such reference is to Apollo’s having forced himself on Creusa (10–11) –
a description consistent with Creusa’s own account of the event (941).
Also damaging to Apollo’s reputation is Hermes’ assertion (69–71) that
the god of prophecy will lie through his oracle by denying that he is
Ion’s father. Apollo’s veracity is further subverted by the fact that events
do not turn out as Hermes predicts:26 Creusa finds out about Xuthus’
supposed paternity of Ion at Delphi, not at Athens, a discovery that
prompts her to try to kill Ion. Burnett captures well the prologue’s
paradoxical portrait of Apollo:
The Apollo of Ion is able to foresee, and so in a sense to control, the massive
shapes that loom in the future; the coming history of the Aegean lands is
under his eye. And he can, on the other hand, shape the least detail of a
personal destiny . . . The temple doves and the mortal Pythia move in perfect
consonance with his will, and yet what we see on this stage is a mixing of
events Apollo had intended with others that he had evidently never for a
moment foreseen.27
that role. Cf. Burnett, Ion: By Euripides, pp. 132, 135, who refers to Ge as the original
occupant of the shrine at Delphi and to Euripides’ account of the conflict between Ge
and Apollo in Iphigenia in Tauris, 1234–82: after Ge disputed Apollo’s new role as god of
prophecy, Zeus himself ensured that Apollo’s voice alone would convey true prophecy
to men. Cf. also 1259–82; there, the chorus tells of Earth’s wish to save the oracle for
her daughter, Themis, and of Apollo’s appeal to Zeus to grant it to him instead. An
account in Aeschylus omits mention of any conflict between the powers of earth and
sky by referring to Apollo’s having received his seat at Delphi as a gift from Phoebe,
who herself inherited it from Themis (Eumenides 1–8).
25
n5 +Y 5" / # b ; 8
( M (Ion 6–7).

26
At least according to Hermes’ account. But, as suggested earlier, the patron god of
ambiguity and lies may not be the most reliable source in any event.
27
Burnett, Ion: By Euripides, pp. 10–11.
158
This pattern of inconsistencies and contradictions in the portrait of

Apollo will pervade the entire drama, although its overall movement
is to restore faith in the god.
Ion’s opening song reinforces the impression of Apollo’s benevo-
lence and providence conveyed in the prologue. Ion hymns Apollo as a
god who not only sustains him but also confers blessings on humanity;
Ion’s idealized portrait of Delphi with its “silvery eddies” (95), its
“eternal garden” (115), and “never-failing” stream (118) strengthens
the portrait of the god’s essential beneficence.28
The tone of reverence for Apollo continues in the chorus’ entry
song (parodos), in which Creusa’s handmaidens approach the temple
and view the art displayed there. The chorus expresses admiration for
the artistic homage paid to Apollo “who protects the streets” (187) and
to the other Olympians who defeat the earthborn Giants. The chorus’
idealized view of the gods is reflected in its praise of the “bright-eyed
beauty” of the temple (189). The chorus members succeed in identi-
fying Iolaus and Athena among those who are portrayed defeating the
Giants:
Can it be he whose story I hear

As I sit at my weaving,
Iolaus the shield-bearer,
Companion of Heracles,
Whom he helped to endure his labors? (196–200)
Can you see her, brandishing
Her Gorgon shield against Enceladus – ?
I can see my goddess Pallas Athene. (209–11)
Later, they excitedly ask Ion if Apollo’s temple “[r]eally contains the
world’s center” (223). The chorus’ naive faith in the gods and heroes is
reflected in their taking the artistic representations of them as reality.29
The entire scene is in a sense a comment on the power of traditional
28
Hoffer, “Violence, Culture, and the Workings of Ideology,” p. 316, speaks of both the
idyllic portrait of Delphi and its darker associations in concluding that the play at once
“idealizes and undercuts the sanctity” of Apollo’s shrine.
29
Wolff, “The Design and Myth,” pp. 172, 179, who argues that the play is structured
around repetitions and doublings, mentions that Athena is first seen as a sculpture at
Apollo’s temple and is later seen as a character.
159
representations of the gods, both in art and in story. And yet the cho-
rus’ need to confirm the “story” they have heard about Delphi (225)
raises broader questions that pervade the play as a whole: What is the
true nature of the gods, and which traditional representations of them
are true? How does one distinguish between representation and reality,
imitation and original? This skepticism about myth thus reflects the
play’s wider, epistemological inquiry into the basis of human knowl-
edge and the nature of truth.30
The chorus’ naive belief in Apollo contrasts vividly with the harsh
criticism of him voiced by Creusa in the next scene. While the chorus
expresses awe upon seeing the temple, Creusa reacts to the same sight
by bursting into tears (241–3). She explains her reaction to a puzzled
Ion:
. . . when I saw this temple,
I measured an old memory again,
My mind elsewhere, though I stand here. (249–51)
Her reference to “measuring an old memory” foreshadows her “taking

the measure” of Apollo and finding him wanting. Later on she will
use the same metaphor of measuring when she tells Ion that her son,
had he lived, would have had the “same measure” (tauton . . . metron,
my translation) of age as Ion (354). Her use of this metaphor highlights
the irony of her not taking the true “measure” of her son – of not
recognizing him – and likewise, the irony of her not recognizing the
true character of the god. Her recognition of her son will later cause
her to admit that she had misjudged Apollo’s character. Seen with
the benefit of hindsight, Creusa’s misjudgments cast doubt on the
wisdom of Protagoras’ faith in human perception as the measure of all
things.
Creusa’s absence from herself, reflected in her statement that her
mind was elsewhere – at home in Athens – while she was standing at
30
Cf. Wolff, “The Design and Myth,” on the play’s investigation of the truth of myth
and story, and the multiple perspectives that arise from this investigation. Cf. Zeitlin,
“Mysteries of Identity and Designs of the Self,” 165, who argues that the play’s explo-
rations of “epistemological concerns about truth and illusion, the fictive and the real”
are sharpened by its focus on the veracity of Apollo’s oracle.
160
Delphi, anticipates the “splitting” off of herself involved in her fabri-

cation of a “friend” who she says slept with Apollo.31 This “splitting”
of Creusa ties in with the play of absence and presence that pervades
the drama as a whole, particularly in the paradoxical coexistence of
Apollo’s guiding presence with his physical absence. The theme of
Creusa’s absence from herself also ties in with her ignorance of her
own identity as Ion’s mother. In a wider sense, Creusa’s ignorance
of her relationship to Ion reflects her ignorance of her own mor-
tal limitations in presuming to condemn a god. The play thus illus-
trates the danger of claiming sure knowledge about the nature of the
gods.
Indeed, Creusa reveals her ignorance of Apollo’s character when
she criticizes him soon after meeting Ion in front of the temple:
“Unhappy women! Where shall we appeal / For justice when the
injustice of power/ Is our destruction?” (252–4).32 To articulate the
paradox implicit in Creusa’s lament: if the gods, who are traditionally
viewed as the sources and adjudicators of justice for men, are them-
selves unjust, where can justice be obtained? Her critique anticipates
the argument Ion will later make when he, too, expresses disillu-
sionment with divine justice: “How then can it be just for you to
stand / Accused of breaking laws you have yourselves / Laid down for
men? (442–3).33 The two complaints mirror each other: the opposi-
tion of “justice” (dikên, 253) and “injustice” (adikiais, 254) in Creusa’s
statement is parallel to the opposition of “laws” (nomous, 442) and
“lawlessness” (anomian, 443) in Ion’s.
The attacks on the hypocrisy of the gods by both Creusa and
Ion reflect the sophistic view that justice, far from being a transcen-
dent moral principle, is defined by those in power according to their
own best advantage. The Athenian position in Thucydides’ Melian
31
Hoffer, “Violence, Culture, and the Workings of Ideology,” pp. 308, 304, argues that
Creusa’s fabrication of a friend reveals her “divided mind” and reflects her shame,
dramatizing the psychological effects of “social oppression.”
32
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A / ). ; (, / , )
": 7
:; (Ion 252–4).
33
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7
(#; (Ion 442–3).
161
Dialogue (416/415 b.c.), which is nearly contemporaneous with

Euripides’ play, provides a clear example of this view: “Our opin-
ion of the gods and our knowledge of men lead us to conclude that
it is a general and necessary law of nature to rule whatever one can”
(5.105).34 The cynical reliance of the Athenians on the principle of
“might makes right” in advocating their imperial interests allows them
to justify slaughtering the men of Melos and enslaving their women
and children. Creusa and Ion are protesting against the apparent appli-
cation of such a principle in the divine sphere. However, they later
rationalize their attempts on each other’s lives with a similarly transpar-
ent appeal to divine authority. The narrowly avoided violence between
close relatives exploits – only to relieve – tensions Euripides’ audience
would have felt during the Peloponnesian War, because of the civil
strife that often set family members against each other.35
To return to the scene under discussion: refusing to explain why she
is so dissatisfied with divine justice, Creusa begins to tell Ion about her
background and the reason she has come to Delphi. Ion’s awestruck
reaction to the fabulous stories she relates about Athens mirrors the
chorus’ reaction to the stories they have heard about Delphi (265,
275). Creusa’s account of Athena’s serving as a surrogate mother to the
earthborn Erichthonius echoes the story of Ion’s rearing by his own
surrogate mother, the Pythia; Creusa and Ion refer in quite similar
terms to the “mother[s]” who did “not give birth” to the children
they raised (ou tekousa, 270, 1324; my translation). Conversely, Creusa
herself is a mother who gave birth to a child but did not rear him. The
role both Athena and Creusa play as surrogate mothers anticipates the
34
J%: %&" ' 'G < "1 ' () & + :(
%, [ 0 ",< "$ (History 5.105.2).
35
Thucydides describes the divisive effect of civil war on families: “Family relations were
a weaker tie than party membership, since party members were more ready to go to
any extreme for any reason whatever” (5.82). It is true that Ion and Creusa concoct
their plots against each other in ignorance of the fact that they are related (and the plots
are not successful). Nonetheless, for the play’s contemporary audience, the threatened
violence between relatives would doubtless have triggered emotional associations with
the civil war. A plot depicting strife between family members that almost erupts into
violence becomes for Aristotle the best plot for arousing the tragic emotions (Poetics
1454a4–9).
162
role they will both play at the end of the drama as surrogate speakers
(or interpreters) for Apollo.
When Creusa invents a “friend – who says – she lay with Phoe-
bus” (338), she is constructing a narrative with affinities both to her
own story and to Ion’s. For this imaginary friend, like Athena and
the Pythia, is a mother in name only, not in fact. The ways in which
Creusa’s and Ion’s narratives overlap provide clues to their real relation-
ship that only the audience can appreciate. (Creusa and Ion do glimpse
the affinity of their tales in their exchange at 359–60.) Creusa’s creation
of her own fictional narrative again raises the question of the veracity
of story that pervades the play.36
The ironies of the scene are compounded by the fact that both
Creusa and Ion construct mother figures for themselves, Creusa in the
form of her imaginary friend and Ion in the form of the Pythia, whom
he thinks of as his mother (321). To further complicate matters, Creusa’s
friend, “[t]he absent woman whose complaints are here” (385), and
the “unhappy mother” she imagines misses Ion (360), are one and the
same person: Creusa herself. For if Creusa has fabricated an absent
friend whom she is representing at Delphi, this third character, whom
she refers to as Ion’s “unhappy mother,” is, without her knowing it,
herself – a phantom self, an imitation at two removes from herself, of
which she is as unaware as Ion is of his true mother. In saying that her
“friend” suffered the loss of her child just as Ion’s mother did (330),
Creusa unknowingly refers to herself by a double displacement.
The play’s simultaneous search for the one “true” mother, father,
and oracle involves distinguishing the original from a dizzying array
of substitutions and imitations. In Euripides’ multilayered “nonrecog-
nition” scene, Creusa’s allusion to a fictive friend cannot but remind
the audience that the “original” mother is herself an imitation, an
actor playing Creusa on the stage. Her metatheatrical reference to her
own status as an imitation suggests the difficulty (or impossibility, as
I will argue later) of separating original from imitation. The chain of
substitutions multiplies itself, both in this scene and throughout the
36
Cf. Wolff, “The Design and Myth,” p. 187.
163
play: Ion has a whole series of surrogate mothers (and fathers) to whom
he refers during the course of the action.37
Like Creusa, Ion has a shadow narrative of who he is; unlike her, he
is ignorant of his own parentage. After identifying himself as “Apollo’s
slave” (309), he tells her he has no idea of how he came to Delphi:
“I only know that I am called Apollo’s” (311, my emphasis).38 Ion’s
statement evokes the same antithesis of word versus fact, of name
versus reality, that was evoked by Creusa’s fabrication of a friend. The
ambiguity in Ion’s statement – being called “Apollo’s” could mean
being Apollo’s offspring as well as his slave – foreshadows Athena’s
pronouncement that Ion is in reality born “of Apollo” but will not
be called his son. Ion’s assertion thus serves as another oracular sign of
both his true identity and his promised destiny.
The reverence toward the god and his shrine that Ion expresses in
his monody rapidly gives way to criticism when he hears more details
about Apollo’s mistreatment of Creusa’s unnamed “friend.”39 How-
ever, Ion does refuse Creusa’s request to consult the oracle about the
child’s whereabouts. When she persists, citing the fact that “oracles are
open to all Greeks” (366), Ion counters by saying that posing such a
question might provoke the god’s wrath by exposing his culpability:
“Convicted of evil . . . Apollo would justly take vengeance on / His
prophet” (370–2). Here Ion seems to contradict his earlier condem-
nation of the god as unjust (355).
Ion’s shifting views of divine justice again reveal the contradictions
in the traditional Greek portrait of the gods as both transpersonal prin-
ciples of justice and arbitrary, self-interested beings. In urging Creusa
37
Cf. Wolff, “The Design and Myth,” p. 173, and Zeitlin, “Mysteries of Identity and
Designs of the Self,” p. 171, who recounts “the range of reproductive strategies” alluded
to in the play.
38
I
6 a$ BG
A (Ion 311). Owen, Euripides’ Ion, p. 95, n. on 311,
mentions the fact that because Ion is a slave, he has no legal name of his own until
Xuthus gives him one.
39
It is intriguing that Creusa’s account of her imaginary friend’s encounter with Apollo
is much less damning of the god than the account of her own experience that she later
relates to the chorus. Whereas Creusa tells Ion that her friend “lay with Phoebus” (338),
she later tells the chorus of women that Apollo “cruelly forced her” (900). Perhaps she
is represented as playing to her audience in both cases. See Burnett, “Human Resistance
and Divine Persuasion,” pp. 90–1, for an analysis of the play’s various presentations of
Creusa’s encounter with Apollo.
164
not to force Apollo to answer her question, Ion asks her not to “cross-
examine” the god ([e]kselenche, 367; my translation). His use of the term
calls to mind the method of “cross-examination” (elenchos) employed
in the Socratic method. It is as if Ion is asking Creusa not to criticize the
god from the contemporary perspective of the Greek enlightenment.
Unable to persuade Ion to help her, Creusa, noticing the arrival
of her husband Xuthus, asks Ion to keep her story about her friend
confidential. Xuthus, unaware of this child’s existence, has come to
Delphi to seek a “promise / Of children from Apollo’s house” (423–
4). Xuthus’ belief that an oracular promise of children will indeed
be fulfilled exemplifies the phonocentric assumption that the divine
voice is capable of guaranteeing reality.40 Later on, the chorus will
echo Xuthus’ appeal by calling for “a clear response / Of the blessing
of children” (470–1).41 The chorus’ praise of children as a sign of “joy
overflowing” (476) anticipates the exuberance of the ending, when
the couple’s wish for a child is granted – along with a promise of his
beginning a great dynasty.
When Xuthus and Creusa leave the scene, Ion is left to ruminate
further on the justice of Apollo’s actions:
I must confront
Apollo with his wrongs. To force a girl
Against her will and afterward betray!
To leave a child to die which has been born
In secret! No! Do not act thus. But since
You have the power, seek the virtuous path.
All evil men are punished by the gods.
How then can it be just for you to stand
Accused of breaking laws you have yourselves
Laid down for men? But if – here I suppose
What could not be – you gave account on earth
For wrongs which you have done to women, you,
Apollo and Poseidon and Zeus who rules
In heaven, payment of your penalties
40
Cf. Rabinowitz, Anxiety Veiled, p. 216, who speaks of Apollo as “the transcendental
signifier” who “is the source of the seed and visions but works through women’s bodies,
his prophetess and Kreousa.”
41
. . . %8 " " / :( ["(] (Ion 470–1).
165
Would see your temples empty, since you are

Unjust to others in pursuing pleasure
Without forethought. And justice now demands
That we should not speak ill of men if they
But imitate what the gods approve, but those
Who teach men their examples. (436–51)42
The character who earlier insisted that Creusa not “cross-examine”

Apollo does so himself, issuing an even more extensive critique of the
gods’ justice. Creusa had spoken of the impossibility of obtaining jus-
tice from the unjust, powerful gods. Now, in terms that again recall the
sophistic debate about the nature of justice,43 Ion implores Apollo to
use his strength justly: “ . . . since you have the power, seek the virtu-
ous path” (439–40). According to Owen, “The pious young votary of
Phoebus becomes the mouthpiece of Euripidean views, hardly appro-
priate to his character or office.” Although one cannot be sure what
Euripides’ own views were, Owen is correct in pointing out that
Ion’s remarks are “hardly appropriate to his character or office.”44 In
portraying the unlikely shifts in Ion’s attitude to Apollo, from naive
devotion to trenchant criticism, Euripides is clearly not concerned
42
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44
Owen, Euripides’ Ion, p. 102, n. on line 436.
166
with achieving dramatic consistency in his portrayal of Ion’s character;

rather, he is interested in exploring questions about divine justice that
preoccupy his own age.
Ion goes on to argue that if Apollo, Poseidon, and Zeus had to
pay the penalty for their unjust deeds it would effectively bankrupt
their temples – a claim that shows the absurdity of his own attempt
to judge the gods by the standards of human law or morality.45 Ion
concludes his diatribe against traditional Olympian religion by drawing
a sharp philosophical distinction: “It is no longer just to speak ill
of men if we imitate the things the gods consider good, but [it is
just to speak ill of] the ones teaching us those things” (449–51, my
translation). Ion’s use of logical analysis, reflected in a double antithesis
(unjust / good; men / gods) that involves a complex scheme of moral
classification, contains the subtlety of a line of argument in a Platonic
dialogue.
The meeting between Xuthus and Ion (517–675) “answers” the
meeting between Creusa and Ion. Whereas mother and son fail to
recognize each other in the earlier scene, in the present scene Xuthus
and Ion succeed in coming to a false recognition of each other as father
and son.46 Xuthus has just been told by the oracle that the first person
he meets will be his son. Seeing Ion, he excitedly greets him as his
son, but is angrily rebuffed by him. But a little while later, Ion ends
up accepting the new name his “father” bestows upon him:
Ion. You my father! This is fool’s talk. – How can that be? No!
Xuthus. Yes. – The story which I have to tell will make it clear.
Ion. What have you to say?
Xuthus. I am your father. You are my son.
Ion. Who has told you this?
45
Ion magnifies Apollo’s importance by grouping him with Zeus and Poseidon, members
of the older generation of the gods who are usually grouped with Hades as rulers of the
three domains of the cosmos: sky, sea, and underworld.
46
Friedrich Solmsen, “Euripides’ Ion im Vergleich mit anderen Tragödien,” Hermes 69
(1934): 401, refers to this meeting as a kind of “pseudo-recognition” scene. Ion’s initial
rejection of Xuthus as his father anticipates his initial rejection of Creusa as his mother
later on in the play (1403–4). Another parallel between the two scenes is that both
Xuthus and Creusa offer to die to prove they are Ion’s true parents (527, 1415), a comic
reversal of the parricidal theme of Oedipus the King.
167
Xuthus. Apollo, he who reared my son.

Ion. You are your own witness.
Xuthus. But I know my oracle too.
Ion. You mistook a riddle.
Xuthus. Then my hearing must have failed.
Ion. And what is Apollo’s prophecy?
Xuthus. That him I met–
Ion. Oh! A meeting? Where?
Xuthus. As I came from the temple here.
Ion. Yes, and what would happen to him?
Xuthus. He would be my son.
Ion. Your own son or just a gift?
Xuthus. A gift and my own son. (528–37)47
This encounter puts a comic spin on the dangerous ambiguity that the
oracle has traditionally posed for those who come to consult it. Instead
of receiving a potentially deceptive but true oracle, Xuthus receives
a transparently clear but false oracle.48 At issue here are the same
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Contrasts with Sophocles’ Oedipus the King are striking: Oedipus’ discovery of his true
parentage leads to the loss of his kingship and his ruin, whereas Ion’s discovery of his true
parentage leads to his future kingship and good fortune. For further comparison of the
168
epistemological questions about the reliability of sense-perception that

pervade the Helen as well.
Assuming that he has correctly interpreted the oracle and taking its
veracity on faith, Xuthus, overjoyed at finding his long-lost son, names
him “Ion,” basing the name on the actual wording of the prophecy
he received. Xuthus derives the name of his son from the Greek word
“coming,” since the oracle had granted a son to him as he was “com-
ing” out from the temple (eksionti, 535, 662; my emphasis). Burnett
comments that Xuthus’ choice of this name reveals the working out of
Apollo’s plan: “Apollo’s perfect control rings out in the sound of the
name ‘Ion’ that occurs to Xuthus’ lips, confirming Hermes and the
whole providential plan that he had indicated.”49 The name “occurs to
Xuthus’ lips” seemingly by chance, just as Xuthus seemed to “chance”
on Ion (tuchê, 661) as he left the oracle.50 But both events presumably
reveal the controlling consciousness of the god. Let us recall that in the
prologue, Hermes first mentioned that Apollo would give his son the
name of Ion, and would make that name famous throughout Greece
“[a]s founder of ancient cities” (74–5).
In naming Ion, Apollo decreed his destiny with his oracular word
of truth, giving birth not only to Ion but also, metaphorically, to his
whole lineage. When Xuthus claims to be bestowing a name on Ion,
he is unconsciously repeating Apollo’s originary “word of truth” as
conveyed by the Pythian priestess – one of the many symbolic repeti-
tions of Ion’s birth.51 There is no apparent slippage, loss, or distortion
in all of these repetitions of Apollo’s originary word. The name “Ion”
reveals the workings of the “metaphysics of presence” in both guar-
anteeing Ion’s identity as the god’s son and ensuring the fullness of his
legacy. As Rabinowitz implies, the transcendental signifier of Apollo
two plays, see Knox, “Euripidean Comedy,” pp. 257–8, and Dougherty, “Democratic
Contradictions,” p. 264, who reads the happy ending of the Ion in terms of “colonial
oracles” that are successfully interpreted.
49
Burnett, Ion: By Euripides, p. 10. Burnett also points out that the pun on Ion’s name,
based as it is on the participial form of the Greek verb “to come / go,” is also appropriate
because Ion “on this day will be ‘going’ from Delphi, soon to be ‘coming’ to Athens”
(p. 72, n. on line 661).
50
Cf. the Pythian priestess’ later reference to Apollo as sharing in Ion’s fortune ( :,
1368) and Ion’s later remarks on : (1512–15).
51
Wolff, “The Design and Myth,” p. 171.
169
appropriates the procreative power of the mother by providing the

“seed” of his son’s birth.52 Just as Xuthus does not realize that Apollo
preceded him in naming Ion, neither does he realize that the god also
preceded him as the “original” father of Ion.
The union of signifier and signified in Ion’s name restores the
“truth” and “reality” that had been compromised by Apollo’s false
oracle, resolving the apparent contradictions in the god’s character
and voice: although Apollo seems to be indifferent, and not even
to be present, he is in fact guiding events to a happy conclusion
for Ion and Creusa. The name “Ion” turns out to be a “signifi-
cant” name that foreshadows not only his own destiny but also that
of his descendants, the Ionians. In the epilogue, Athena tells us that
Ion’s eponymous descendants will add to Athens’ strength by occu-
pying Ionia (1582–7). As Dougherty argues, Ion’s name “prefigures
and legitimates his expansionist role as Athenian colonizer of Asia
Minor.”53
At the end of the episode, Xuthus tells Ion that he will not divulge
his plans to pass on his kingship to him until they are all back in
Athens. At the same time, he warns the chorus, upon pain of death,
not to mention his discovery of his son. But all does not work out
as Xuthus plans; the chorus boldly informs Creusa that the oracle has
given Xuthus a son – an act that they believe would deny Creusa an
heir of her own (774–5). Ignorant of Ion’s true identity, the chorus
members are also unaware of the benevolent intentions behind Apollo’s
oracle. They voice their suspicion that the oracle is contrived (685) –
without realizing that it has been contrived for Creusa’s benefit. The
crises in the plot arise precisely because of the misunderstandings occa-
sioned by the delay in the realization of the divine promise inherent
in Ion’s name.
Informed of Xuthus’ plans by the chorus, Creusa attacks men and
gods alike as “[u]ngrateful betrayers of women” (880) while reserving
special opprobrium for Apollo. After raping her and abandoning her
child, Apollo has now denied her the right to have her own heir. The
52
Rabinowitz, Anxiety Veiled, pp. 215–6.
53
Dougherty, “Democratic Contradictions,” p. 262.
170
beauty of the golden-haired Apollo’s appearance (887–8) and music

(883) contrasts vividly with the harshness of his conduct.54 In her
monody Creusa attacks the hypocrisy of the god who is renowned for
giving music and prophecy to humanity:55
O you who give the seven-toned lyre

A voice which rings out of the lifeless,
Rustic horn the lovely sound
Of the Muses’ hymns,
On you, Latona’s son, here
In daylight will I lay blame. (881–6)
O hear me, son of Latona,
Who assign your prophecies
From the golden throne
And the temple at earth’s center,
I will proclaim my words in your ears:
You are an evil lover. . . . (907–12)
Yet Creusa’s ignorance of the actions Apollo took after assaulting her
blunts the force of her accusations of the god. Reinforcing the irony
of her ignorance is the chorus’ remark that Creusa will not permit a
foreigner to rule at Athens as long as “her eyes / Still have their clarity”
(1071–2).56
Creusa’s attack on Apollo as the treacherous god of poetry provides
the backdrop for the chorus’ subsequent attack on unjust male poets,
who glorify the gods’ illicit loves (1090–1105).57 Both Creusa and the
chorus are attacking “the detachment of art,” to be sure, but they
54
Wolff, “The Design and Myth,” p. 185, speaks persuasively of “[t]he incompatibility of
‘beauty’ and ‘justice’” in a play that is concerned with the search for “an objective justice.”
Burnett, “Human Resistance and Divine Persuasion,” p. 96, mentions the “explosive
tension between Creusa’s anger and Apollo’s beauty.”
55
Cf. Burnett, Ion: By Euripides, p. 132: “Music, like prophecy, was a gracious and gratuitous
boon, . . . and the Delphic oracles were thought of as a kind of song.”
56
Zeitlin, “Mysteries of Identity and Designs of the Self,” pp. 146–7, refers to the concern
of the Athenians with the purity and legitimacy of their citizens and, particularly, of their
leaders.
57
Wolff, “The Design and Myth,” p. 181, suggests that in this passage, Apollo becomes a
figure for poetry itself.
171
are also attacking what they view as a mendacious, male-dominated

tradition.58
The denouement of the play seeks to restore this tradition, and
Apollo’s central role in it, by portraying the god as the savior of Creusa
and Ion. After all, it is the intervention of Apollo that foils Creusa’s
unjust plot to kill Ion, as the servant relates: the old man attempted
to poison Ion by putting the Gorgon’s blood given him by Creusa
into Ion’s wine cup, but the plot is exposed when a dove (presum-
ably sent by Apollo) drinks the poison first (1181–1208). Pursued by
Ion and his fellow Delphians who wish to kill her in revenge, Creusa
takes refuge at Apollo’s altar. In claiming to have taken the true “mea-
sure” of Creusa (1271), Ion uses the same metaphor of measuring
that Creusa used earlier (250), reflecting the reciprocal nature of their
delusion.
Ion’s lack of pity for Creusa is balanced by the pity he feels for his
mother. Although his mother is physically absent, Ion maintains, she is
never absent from his thoughts: “Even if her body [to sôma] is absent for
me, her name [tounom’] is not ever absent” (1277–8, my translation).59
Ion’s ever-present thoughts about his mother reflect the drama’s persis-
tent nostalgia for a lost presence. The name, which replaces his mother’s
bodily presence, evokes the plenitude of her being, even though it is
based on an absence. Without realizing it, Ion prefers the name of
his mother over his actual mother, whom he is seeking to kill. This
preference for the name over the reality of his mother foreshadows
the subordinate role Creusa will play in the epilogue, when she again
becomes a mother in name only.
Ion’s reference to his mother’s paradoxical presence-in-absence
reminds us of Creusa’s reference to her friend, who was both present
(as Creusa herself ) and absent (as a fiction). The familiar opposition
between absence and presence, body and name, also prefigures the
58
Ibid., p. 181. Owen, Euripides’ Ion, p. 141, n. on 1090–8, points out that this passage
recalls Medea 410ff., “the first stasimon, which preceded, as here, a projected murder.”
59
; %&" , ()# / ( , ( (Ion 1277–8). In
his note on line 1277, Owen, Euripides’ Ion, p. 156, points to Euripides’ Helen 1100 as
another example of the antithesis between sôma and onoma; see the next chapter for a
reading of the use of this antithesis in the Helen.
172
gift of Ion that Apollo makes to Xuthus in order that Ion may have
the “name” of the father, even though his actual father is absent. The
power of naming to evoke presence and guarantee identity also fore-
shadows Creusa’s naming of the tokens to establish her maternity of
Ion. In the epilogue Athena will also draw on the power of naming
to confer divine authority on Ion’s dynasty. If later scenes demon-
strate the life-giving potential of the name, the scene under discussion
demonstrates its destructive potential.
Ion’s failure to recognize his own mother almost leads him to com-
mit violence against her, just as Menelaus’ failure to recognize his own
wife in the Helen almost leads him to abandon her. There, Menelaus,
too, unwittingly gives priority to the name over the reality, prefer-
ring the “name” of past glories to the reality of his wife’s presence. In
dwelling nostalgically on the powers of the name to evoke presence,
both Ion and Menelaus remind us that they are themselves actors, prod-
ucts of theater’s power to construct living presences from legendary
names.
Ion’s preference for the “name” of his mother also reminds us that
others have played the role of mother for Ion while his biological
mother was absent. This drama, obsessed as it is with the search for
origins, invites us to ask: What is a mother? Who is the real mother, the
biological parent or the one who does the actual work of parenting?
The same questions could apply to the father as well, since Xuthus
will end up playing the role of father in the absence of the “real”
father, Apollo. Ion’s question about the identity of his father concerns
the relative importance of nature (physis) and nurture (nomos). But
his question also has wider epistemological connotations: if we don’t
even know who our parents are, how can we know who we are, and
indeed, what certain knowledge of ourselves and the world can we
obtain?
The confrontation between Ion and Creusa at Apollo’s altar involves
an ironic reversal of roles: Creusa seeks protection at the altar of the
very god she so recently condemned, whereas Ion, who argued that
Apollo’s shrine should be immune from prosecution by Creusa, would
now deny divine protection for Apollo’s suppliant. The ultimate irony
is that both Creusa and Ion claim to be faithfully representing Apollo,
173
even as they reveal themselves to be opposed to him and his laws.

Their sharp exchange is worth quoting in full:
Creusa. I warn you not to kill me – and I speak

Not only for myself but for the god
Who guards this place.
Ion. What can you have in common with the god?
Creusa. My body is his to save, a sacred charge.
Ion. You tried to poison me and I was his.
Creusa. No longer his; for you had found your father.
Ion. I belonged to Phoebus till my father came.
Creusa. But then no more. Now I belong to him.
Ion. Yes, but I had the piety you lack. (1282–90)60
The characters who were formerly so sympathetic with each other

are now avowed enemies. Creusa bases her claim to be speaking for
Apollo on her status as a suppliant and on her belief that her body is
his “sacred charge”; Ion asserts that he is justified in trying to avenge
Creusa’s attempt on his life, since he is a votary of Apollo.
Ion’s question to Creusa, “What can you have in common with the
god?” takes the form of a riddle to which the answer is Ion himself,
because he is the offspring of Creusa and Apollo. The irony of Creusa’s
reply – that her body belongs to Apollo – is that in claiming sanctuary
for her body, she remains in her mind convinced of Apollo’s ongoing
mistreatment of her. This mistreatment of course began with Apollo’s
violation of her body at Athens. Creusa’s inner division recalls her
earlier allusion to thinking about Athens even though her body was
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174
in Delphi. (Conversely, Ion had referred to his mother as present in

his mind, although she was physically absent.)
In reply, Ion insists that he, not Creusa, belongs to Apollo (1286),
and rails against the injustice of her obtaining divine protection for her
misdeeds:
The unjust should not have the right of refuge
At altars, but be driven away. For gods
Are soiled by the touch of wicked hands. The just–
The injured man, should have this sanctuary. (1314–17)
Arguing against the traditional rights of the suppliant, the votary of

Apollo arrogates to himself final judgment about who is just and who is
not. Both Ion and Creusa distort the meaning of divine justice to serve
their own self-interest. The scene suggests that mortals are led astray
by their narrow sense of self-interest, the fallibility of their judgment,
and their ignorance of the will of the gods. Ironically, both Ion and
Creusa belong to Apollo in a different sense than they intend – a fact
that only the appearance of the Pythian priestess can help them realize.
Inspired to appear by Apollo, as she says, the priestess plays the role of
dea ex machina to resolve the impasse between mother and son.
Significantly, Ion addresses Pythia as “[m]other in all but name”
(1324): literally, “mother – though you did not give me birth.” The
Pythia, who raised Ion in Creusa’s absence, will now produce the clues
that will help him find the mother who bore him. The present and
absent mother, the mother in name and in fact, the phantom “friend”
and Creusa herself will then merge into one single individual. Pythia,
who says she nursed Ion on behalf of Apollo, brings out the cradle in
which she found him as an infant:
I reared you, child,
For Phoebus’ sake, and these [tokens] restore to you,
Which he wished me to take and keep, although
Without express command. (1357–60)61
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175
Without using the medium of words, Apollo apparently is able to

transmit his will to the Pythian priestess just as unerringly as he does
when he inspires her with his oracles. These tokens serve as oracular
signs provided by Apollo through which the god arranges for his son’s
miraculous “rebirth.” Indeed, a little earlier, Ion refers to the tokens
the priestess has produced as “happy signs” (makariôn . . . phasmatôn,
1354). Recognizing the cradle in which she had exposed Ion, Creusa
risks death by leaving the altar and greeting him as her son (1409).
Ion angrily rejects her claim to be his mother in a comic echo of the
scene in which he rejected Xuthus’ claim to be his father. Still facing
the threat of death at Ion’s hands, Creusa agrees to die if she is unable
to identify the contents of the cradle (1415).
Creusa demonstrates a kind of a “semiotic power” in successfully
identifying the tokens, which serve as oracular pronouncements that
she must interpret to establish her maternity. Her demonstration of
“semiotic power” allows Ion to experience a kind of rebirth, as he
himself will later tell Creusa (1444). Rabinowitz argues astutely that
male narrative power displaces female procreative power in the play;62
Creusa’s successful identification of the tokens shows she has put her
potentially destructive power in the service of Apollo. In the romance
of the reunited family, no longer does the mother harbor hatred toward
her “husband,” Apollo, or her newfound son. Just as Apollo’s violence
toward her is forgiven, so is the violence she threatened against Ion
forgiven.
Like the oracle, which can bring either salvation or destruction,
depending on whether it is interpreted correctly, the tokens are capable
of bringing either life or death to Creusa. If she does not identify
them correctly, she risks death; but if she does, she saves not only her
own life but also Ion’s, at least in a metaphorical sense, by allowing
him to know his true identity. This dual power reflects the double-
edged nature of the two drops of Gorgon’s blood that Creusa inherited
from Erichthonius (999): one drop works as a fatal drug (pharmakon,
1286), which Creusa used in her attempt to poison Ion; the other drop
has healing powers. The Gorgon’s blood is therefore a “twofold gift”
(1010) that evinces the double power of the supplement, the pharmakon
62
176
analyzed by Derrida in his essay on Plato’s Phaedrus. The oracle of

Apollo reveals its supplemental function in that it is also a “twofold
gift” with the power to enlighten and deceive, and in this play, to
save and to destroy. (The story of the Gorgon, an earthborn monster
vanquished by the Olympians, reminds us that Apollo appropriated
his own “semiotic power” from an earth goddess.)
As if to evoke her power over life and death, a Gorgon appears at the
center of the weaving that Creusa identifies as one of the tokens. In
describing the serpents on the weaving as “reminders” or “imitations”
(mimêmata, 1429; my translation) of Erichthonius, Creusa reminds us
of her own mimetic power, her power not only to produce fictions and
deceptions but also to unveil them. Throughout the play and the events
it describes, Creusa reveals herself as both a victim and a perpetrator
of intrigues and plots. She keeps the whole episode with Apollo secret
from Xuthus, and when she first meets Ion, she attributes the child
she had by Apollo to a fictive friend. Later, when she hears that the
oracle has granted Xuthus a son, she “weaves” a plot on Ion’s life, to
use Ion’s expression (plekousa, 1410).63 Creusa thus reveals her skill not
only in weaving garments (huphasm’ huphên’, 1417) – a quintessentially
female skill in Greece – but also in weaving intrigues. Conversely, she
is able to identify the tokens, solve the mystery of Ion’s identity, and
divine the reason for Apollo’s denial that he is Ion’s father.64
Indeed, the question of the true identity of Ion’s father arises soon
after Ion discovers that Creusa is his mother. For if Ion at first doubts
his mother’s account of a liaison with Apollo (1488, 1523–7), he is
even more skeptical about why the god himself would deny that he
was Ion’s father (1532–3). Creusa explains that Apollo did not deny
63
Cf. the emphasis of Bergren, “Language and the Female,” on the importance of the
metaphor of weaving in the characterization of the female in archaic Greek poetry. Cf.
also Ingrid E. Holmberg, “The Sign of QpqEd,” Arethusa 30.1 (1997): 1–33, on the
link between deceptiveness and the female in Homer and Hesiod.
64
Creusa’s solution to the problem of Apollo’s denial is one solution that the privileged
spectator (or reader) of the play will recognize to be in accord with the god’s own will, as
expressed through his intermediaries. Indeed, Athena will later confirm Creusa’s notion
that Apollo “gave” Ion to Xuthus ((, 1561; cf. , 1536). But, as I will argue
later, the ending of the play paradoxically both affirms and subverts the metaphysical
assumptions upon which the very notion of a “correct” interpretation of an oracle
depends.
177
he was the father, but simply made a gift of Ion to Xuthus, “just as a
man / Might give a friend his son to be his heir” (1535–6).65 Under
this interpretation, Apollo has in effect made Xuthus Ion’s adoptive
father, following what Rabinowitz calls “a legal model of historical
adoption.”66 And the purpose of Apollo’s “gift” of his son, Creusa
speculates, was to secure Ion’s position at Athens: “Acknowledged
as his son” [literally, “if you were called the son of a god”], “you
would have lost / All hope of heritage or father’s name” (1541–2).67
In solving the riddle of how Ion can be the “son” of both Xuthus and
Apollo, Creusa finds the double meaning of an ambiguous term that
is often required to decode a vexing oracle.68 But her rationalization
of the god’s intent fails to convince Ion, who insists on consulting
the oracle once more to get a definitive answer to the question of his
parentage.
Ion’s question, “[D]oes Apollo tell the truth, / Or is the oracle false?”
poses the play’s culminating challenge to the traditional portrait of the
god as a truth-teller. An ironic reversal takes place: whereas earlier
Ion dissuaded Creusa from consulting the oracle, now it is Creusa
who seeks to dissuade him from doing so. But Ion persists, only to be
stopped on his way by the sudden appearance of Athena, who says that
Apollo sent her (1556). She essentially confirms Creusa’s explanation of
Apollo’s motives: the god gave Ion to Xuthus in order that Ion might
have “an established place among a noble house” (1562). When the
plans went awry and Creusa began to plot against Ion, Athena tells us
that Apollo found a “means / Of rescue” for them (1565).
In the epilogue Athena speaks and acts in place of Apollo, who
refuses to appear “lest he should be blamed” for his conduct (1558).
The dea ex machina can thus be read as the last in a series of oracular
65
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The tragic denouement of Sophocles’ Oedipus the King turns on the same ambiguity about
the identity of parents (biological versus adoptive) as does the happy ending of the Ion. For
another example of an imaginative solution of an ambiguous oracle, see Themistocles’
interpretation of the “wooden wall” oracle in Herodotus’ Histories, mentioned previously
(7.142, 8.51). Creusa takes even greater liberties with the actual language of the oracle
(as reported by Xuthus) than does Themistocles.
178
“signs” given by Apollo – a series that extends back to Hermes’ appear-

ance at the beginning of the drama. The play is thus framed by inter-
mediaries for Apollo who indirectly confirm his divine authority and
prophetic knowledge. Not just Hermes and Athena but all the other
substitutes for Apollo are celebrated as evidence of his good intentions
and benevolent presence, helping to ensure Ion’s place at Athens.
Ion’s (and the audience’s) doubts about the oracle and his divine
parentage are finally resolved by Athena’s prediction that he will be
one of the founders of a great Athenian empire. Relaying Apollo’s
word concerning the future of Ion’s line, Athena in effect issues the
“oracular response” for him (chrêsmous, 1569):
Creusa,
Go with your son to Cecrops’ land, and then
Appoint him to the royal throne; for since
He is descended from Erechtheus, he has
The right to rule my land: and he shall be
Renowned through Greece. His sons, four branches from
One stock, shall name the country and its peoples,
Divided in their tribes, who live about my rock.
....................................
They shall live in the two broad plains of Asia
And Europe, which lie on either side the straits,
Becoming famous under this boy’s name,
Ionians. (1571–8, 1585–8)69
69
The Greek text for Ion 1571–8 and 1585–8 runs as follows:

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179
Moreover, Athena prophesies that Xuthus and Creusa will themselves

have children:
First Dorus, whose name

Shall cause the Dorians to be hymned throughout
The land of Pelops. Then Achaeus, king
Of that seacoast near Rhion, who shall mark
A people with his name. (1589–93)70
As the patron goddess who gives her name to Athens (1555), Athena
offers the “clear response / Of the blessing of children” initially sought
by Xuthus and Creusa. Athena’s epilogue, replete with proper names as
well as words for naming and their cognates, demonstrates the genera-
tive power of Apollo’s originary word. In naming Ion, Apollo decreed
his destiny through his oracular word of truth. When Xuthus claims
he is bestowing on the boy the name, he is really repeating Apollo’s
actual “word of truth” as conveyed by the Pythia. This significant
name is the basis of a rebirth for the nameless slave of Apollo that
will lead to a reunion with his mother, integration into a new family,
and, eventually, the birth of an eponymous people and an empire. So
Apollo’s oracular “word of truth” gives birth to Ion, and by extension,
the people named after him, and the empire founded by the dynasty.
This empire is built on a series of repetitions that serve to replace the
originary word of Apollo.
In ordaining the proliferation of Ion’s children, who are all descen-
dants of Apollo, Athena’s “oracle” again appropriates for the male
the procreative and semiotic powers of the female. Athena, a virgin
goddess “born from the single masculine principle,”71 bears witness
to the male’s procreative power not only through her very presence
but also through the message she delivers: she pays tribute to Apollo’s
70
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180
power to make word into flesh. Apollo’s fecundity thus seems to more
than compensate for the difference and absence that constitute the
divine voice. We have seen references to Athena’s serving as a sur-
rogate mother to Erichthonius; now she plays a similar role for Ion.
The pairing of Apollo and Athena at the end of the play forms part
of Ion’s family romance: he, his line, and the Athenian people as a
whole are in a sense offspring of a divine coupling between Apollo and
Athena.
Athena’s jingoistic72 speech sanctions the justice of Ion’s rule (1574),
and by extension, the justice of Athens’ hegemony over the lands
colonized by his descendants. In fact, Athens’ control of the grain-rich
region around the Hellespont referred to by Athena (1585–8) proved
to be an important factor in the early years of the Peloponnesian
War.73 The epilogue’s whole series of eponymous names – Athena,
Ion, Dorus, Achaeus, Aegicores – produces an “empire of signs” that
grants divine authorization for Athenian imperialism.74 The romance
of the nameless slave’s transformation into the founder of a dynasty
runs parallel with the fairy-tale ending for Athens, which will also
enjoy a prosperous future (1605).75 As with any romance, this one
involves glossing over inconvenient realities: Athena’s speech denies
the existence of conflicts that were to occur between an expansionist
Athens and her “kindred” Ionian cities.76
Athena delivers the play’s ultimate judgment of Apollo: he “man-
aged all things well” in preserving both the long-term interest of both
Ion and Creusa (1595). Mary-Kay Gamel sees Athena as “[a] slicker
72
Rabinowitz, Anxiety Veiled, p. 204, considers Athena’s speech to be a “colonizing ‘master
narrative,’” while Hoffer, “Violence, Culture, and the Workings of Ideology,” p. 316,
speaks of its “simple jingoism.”
73
Burnett, Ion: By Euripides, pp. 127–8, n. on 1585.
74
I borrow the term “empire of signs” from the translated title of a book by Roland Barthes,
L’Empire des Signes (Geneva: A. Skira, 1970). Cf. Zeitlin, “Mysteries of Identity and
Designs of the Self,” p. 182, on the epilogue’s “veritable flood of proper names” and
Loraux, “Kreousa the Autochthon,” p. 179, on the myth of autochthony as reinforcing
the play’s imperialistic bent.
75
Delebecque, Euripide et la Guerre du Péloponnèse, p. 232, comments on the ending’s “all’s
well that ends well” quality: “ . . . tout est pour le mieux, en fin de compte, dans la
meilleure des Athènes.”
76
Hoffer, “Violence, Culture, and the Workings of Ideology,” p. 313, argues that the speech
“mystifies Athens’ imperialism.”
181
company spokesman than Hermes” because she is better able to salvage

the reputation of both Apollo and the Delphic oracle, a “powerful,
male-controlled” institution “which has so much knowledge and so
much power.”77 Athena’s explanation of the absent Apollo’s motives
are unabashedly political; she stresses the practical advantages of Ion’s
placement in a noble home and the glories of the dynasty that he will
found.
In both the ancient and the modern world, a woman may make a
better “company spokesman” than a man in sensitive “sexual harass-
ment” cases like Creusa’s; Athena is certainly more “politically cor-
rect” and less subject to criticism as a female. Unlike Hermes, who
casts doubt on Apollo’s integrity and veracity, Athena omits men-
tion of Creusa’s rape and stays “on message” much more effectively
to promote the company line. Hermes is, after all, the god of ambi-
guity, deception, and lies; his very name, which gives us our word
“hermeneutics,” aligns him with “shifting, intricate interpretations.”
By contrast, Athena delivers a “single and plain” message, as befitting
her birth from a single, male parent – Zeus – from whose forehead she
sprung.
This shift from Hermes to Athena, from polysemy to univocacy,
symbolizes the male appropriation and domestication of women’s
“semiotic power.” In fact, part of Athena’s appeal as a spokesperson for
Delphi is her unquestioning allegiance to the male “chief executive
officer,” Zeus, and his son. Athena and Apollo team up to make an
effective “power couple” determined to protect Ion’s interests – and
the interest of Athens as well. As conveyed by Athena, Apollo’s “word
of truth” promotes a patriarchal, imperialistic agenda and serves as
effective “damage control” of an endangered company image.
Although they earlier criticized Apollo’s actions as unjust and cruel,
both Creusa and Ion now readily accept Athena’s defense of him. Ion
now says he believes Athena’s assurance that he is in fact Apollo’s son,78
77
Mary-Kay Gamel, “ ‘Apollo Knows I Have No Children’: Motherhood, Scholarship,
Theater,” Arethusa 34.2 (2001): 159.
78
The stage direction preceding Ion’s speech at 1606–8 in Willetts’ translation has him
saying these lines “ironically,” but I find no evidence in the Greek for this.
182
and Creusa praises the oracle for having restored her son to her (1610–
11). Athena offers a pithy “moral of the story”: “The gods perhaps /
Move to action late, but in the end they show their strength” (1614–15).
In the drama’s closing song, the chorus draws an analogous moral:
He whose house is pressed by trouble should respect the gods,

So preserving courage. For at last good men are honored,
Evil men by their own nature cannot ever prosper. (1620–2)79
The same Olympians who were attacked as unjust and exploitative

early in the play are now praised for their justice and acumen in dis-
cerning the true character of men, a character that corresponds to their
birth. The gods eventually help “good” (“noble”) men, and not “evil”
(“base”) men. With this nod to the privileges of the high-born,80 the
play takes refuge in traditional pieties, retreating from its earlier cri-
tique of divine injustice.81 The ending, which restores the clear, sharp
distinctions between moral absolutes so yearned for by Ion, reflects
a conservative social morality; it projects nostalgia for a clear, divine
voice of justice and truth into a glorious future for Athens.82
However, certain factors continue to subvert one’s confidence in
the restoration of Apollo’s word. His refusal to appear at the end of
the play, which seems cowardly, indirectly reminds us of the absence,
difference, and deceptiveness that define the divine voice. The oracular
“word of truth” confirming Xuthus’ paternity of Ion by a nameless
79
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(Ion 1619–22).
80
Cf. Wolff, “The Design and Myth,” p. 191, n. 12. This slant is obscured by Willett’s
anachronistic translation of *(
; (1621, meaning “noble”) as “good” and ; (1622,
meaning “base”) as “evil.”
81
This resolution of the sophistic split between nomos and physis was perhaps foreshadowed
by Ion’s claim earlier in the play that nomos and physis combined to make him a just
man for the god (643–4). Of course the revelation that Apollo is Ion’s father lends an
unexpected irony to these lines. For a comment on the “mischievous” allusion that
Euripides may be making here to the sophistic “double arguments,” see Victor Bers,
“Tragedy and Rhetoric,” in Ian Worthington, ed., Persuasion: Greek Rhetoric in Action
(New York: Routledge, 1994), p. 193, n. 23.
82
Cf. Wolff, “The Design and Myth,” p. 174.
183
girl of Delphi (551) is a fabrication about which Xuthus must remain

ignorant and Creusa silent. As Athena instructs Creusa:
But tell no one that Ion is your son,

And Xuthus will be happy in his belief,
While you may go away . . . (1601–3)
Rabinowitz sees in Creusa’s enforced silence the culminating evidence

of the male appropriation of the female’s power of procreation.83
Gamel, too, criticizes the official denial of Creusa’s role as mother,
a denial that ignores her devotion to her newly rediscovered son: “Ion
gets neither truth nor love from either of his fathers; from Creousa he
gets both.”84
The happy ending metaphorically winks at the audience by making
them complicit in the duping of Xuthus.85 The Athenian spectators
can derive the pleasure, and benefits, of a myth legitimating their city-
state’s supremacy while recognizing on some level that the myth and
the oracle that legitimize it are fabrications. The word of Apollo is
anything but “single and plain.” In spite of Xuthus’ implication that
Apollo speaks clearly and truthfully to anyone capable of hearing (533),
the displaced, mediated, and ambiguous status of Apollo’s voice calls
such phonocentric assumptions into question.86 The “transcendental
signifier” may be male, as Rabinowitz argues,87 but he depends on
a whole series of potentially unreliable and deceptive females, both
human and divine, to receive, transmit, and interpret his divine mes-
sages. The Pythian priestess, Creusa, and Athena all form indispensable
links in helping to establish Apollo’s paternity of Ion. The proliferation
of such substitute speakers – both male and female88 – underlines the
83
Rabinowitz, Anxiety Veiled, pp. 210–15, p. 217. She also argues that the play adopts the
view, advanced by Apollo in Aeschylus’ Oresteia, that the mother is simply an incubator
of the seed (p. 210).
84
Gamel, “‘Apollo Knows I Have No Children,’” p. 174.
85
Cf. the similar structure of the Helen, in which the audience is complicit with the duping
of Theoclymenus.
86
In “Orality, Masculinity, and Greek Epic,” Arethusa 30.3 (1997): 315–40, Bassi discusses
the connection between mediated speech and deception in the Greek epic.
87
88
Hermes of course must be added to the list of surrogate speakers for Apollo. Significantly,
both Hermes and Athena are known for their wiles.
184
fact that the originary “word of truth” is always already a repetition,

subject to slippage and distortion.
After all, the truth of Ion’s birth depends not only on Creusa’s
silence but also on Apollo’s. If Apollo’s paternity of Ion is ultimately
unverifiable and contingent, so, too, is his oracular word of truth.89 Just
as the oracular word of Apollo inevitably depends on other speakers
and media to validate its originary, truthful status, so Apollo’s paternity
of Ion is ultimately based on the testimony of others – on supplemental
acts of calling and naming.90 The play’s answer to the question of the
identity of Ion’s father reflects this fundamental irony. Whereas earlier
in the play, Ion was “called” Apollo’s without knowing he was Apollo’s
son, now he is convinced that he is Apollo’s son (1607) but will not
be “called” Apollo’s. This continuing disjunction between naming
and being reflects a radical epistemological uncertainty that the play’s
nostalgic ending fails to resolve. As Zeitlin points out, “. . . the ‘true’
versions [of Ion’s parentage] in this drama belong to the world of
the myth and the ‘false’ to the world of reality.”91 Indeed, truth and
fiction interpenetrate so much in the drama that the very existence of
a transcendent voice of truth is called into question.
The drama’s deconstruction of Apollo’s oracular voice raises ques-
tions that seem postmodern before the fact: What if anything legiti-
mates political, social, and religious hierarchies? Are they grounded
in the natural order, or are they merely the product of arbitrary
89
Gamel, “ ‘Apollo Knows I Have No Children,’ ” p. 164, recognizes that the play presents
fatherhood as “constructed rather than transcendent,” a statement that tends to undercut
her reading of the play as an instrument of an oppressive masculinist ideology.
90
Considering the play from a rationalist perspective, one could argue that Apollo’s pater-
nity of Ion could be verified only through Creusa’s testimony (if at all). Male anxiety and
insecurity about the identity of one’s father has a long lineage in the Greek tradition.
Cf. Telemachus’ assertion that no one can ever, on his own, be sure of who his father
is (Odyssey 1.215–16).
91
Zeitlin, “Mysteries of Identity and Designs of the Self,” p. 147. In “Kreousa the
Autochthon,” pp. 188, 187, Loraux, who argues that “there is something suspect at
the very heart of the representations of paternity” in the play, refers to “the true father
who posed as the false one and the false one who believed himself to be the true sire.”
One wonders how persuasive or truthful the oracle’s response to Ion’s question would
have been, had it been offered. Given that the oracle had previously denied that Apollo
was Ion’s father, how would Ion know which oracular response was the definitive one,
which version of the “truth” to believe?
185
conventions? Is any empire that is said to be divinely ordained

merely an “empire of signs” that serves the interests of the rul-
ing hegemony? Such questions can be applied to our contemporary
American democracy: are our concepts of truth, justice, and freedom
universal, transcendent ideals, or are they mythic justifications for self-
interested motives?
The drama’s criticism of one of the most powerful and respected
institutions in the ancient world, Apollo’s oracle at Delphi, evokes the
skepticism that has recently arisen about American institutions and
authorities. One thinks, for example, of the controversy about the
Catholic Church, which has recently been, like Euripides’ Delphi,
tainted by allegations of sexual abuse and of subsequent attempts at a
cover-up. In our own day, public demands that not only high Church
officials but also government and corporate leaders be held accountable
for fraud and corruption reflect growing suspicion about institutions –
like Delphi – that had been assumed to be benevolently paternalistic.
A related question, much debated in our own time, is whether and to
what extent the private lives of powerful public figures should be open
for criticism. Euripides’ play also anticipates postmodern questions
about the relationship between the aesthetic and the political. Creusa’s
attack on “the god of truth and art”92 implies that works of art should
not be judged solely on aesthetic grounds but should be subject to
criticism for their moral and political content, as well as for the views
and conduct of their creators.
The radical notion that the play flirts with, but does not finally
embrace, is that all claims to power, privilege, and legitimacy (including
aesthetic judgments) are politicized human constructs, not transcen-
dent givens. However slick a company spokesperson Athena may be,
her promotional claims, read between the lines, undo themselves. Far
from being transcendent and neutral (“transparent” in our contempo-
rary rhetoric of business and accounting practices), Apollo’s supposed
voice of truth promotes a political agenda founded on evasion and
suppression of the truth. The lingering uncertainty about Ion’s birth
92
Gamel, “‘Apollo Knows I Have No Children,’” p. 161.
186
also compromises the truth value of the oracle. As Rabinowitz argues,

“ . . . the play constructs truth claims as claims of identity.”93 If read
critically, the ending suggests that the categories of good and evil, like
those of truth and falsehood, are founded in convention, not nature.
Furthermore, Apollo’s “gift” of Ion to Xuthus subtly points to the
fact that paternity – and the dynasty authorized by it – is inevitably a
social and textual construct, and not a biological given.94 Euripides’
drama subverts its own reassuring myth of Athenian hegemony by
exposing the scaffolding of its own myth-making process.95 Truth, like
paternity, becomes a text caught up in a play of differences, a narrative
to be constructed or reconstructed.96 Seen in this light, Xuthus’ fictive
paternity of Ion reveals itself ultimately as the ingenious creation not
of Apollo but of the drama itself. In celebrating its own proliferation
of substitutions, imitations, and illusions, the drama vaunts its own
mythopoetic power as a remedy for the period of political decline,
war weariness, and semiotic crisis in which Athens then found itself.97
The dramatic text itself thus emerges as the last of a long series of
oracular substitutions for Apollo.
93
94
This is of course not to deny the biological fact of paternity, but only to emphasize
the point that identifying a child’s father is problematic in a way that identifying its
mother is not. Far from banishing all doubt about Ion’s paternity, I would argue, the
play reinforces the doubt by showing that paternity is necessarily based on claims and
assumptions whose truth value is uncertain or even suspect. (Nor does the veracity of
Creusa’s claim of maternity go unchallenged in the play.)
95
Cf. Arlene W. Saxonhouse, “Myths and the Origins of Cities: Reflections on the
Autochthony Theme in Euripides’ Ion,” in J. Peter Euben, ed., Greek Tragedy and Political
Theory (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1986), pp. 256, 264, who argues that
myths of autochthony repress the violence that accompanies the founding of a city, and
that Apollo’s failure to appear at the end of the play symbolizes this repression. Cf. also
Wolff, “The Design and Myth,” p. 187, who argues that the play is about myth and
its workings, and Loraux, “Kreousa the Autochthon,” p. 178, who argues that the play
subjects the myth of autochthony to the “test of constant questioning.”
96
Cf. Wolff, “The Design and Myth,” p. 173, on the play’s “Pirandellian” investigation of
the truth. Zeitlin, “Mysteries of Identity and Designs of the Self,” p. 154, argues that the
play explores “the complexities of ideological mythmaking.”
97
Cf. Pietro Pucci, “Euripides: The Monument and the Sacrifice,” Arethusa 10.1 (1977):
178, on Euripidean drama as offering a “remedy” for the violence and pathos that “the
poet vainly tries to control.”
187
5
WHERE IS THE GLORY OF TROY? HEROIC

FAME IN THE HELEN
I n the Helen (412 b.c.), Euripides returns to the mythic subject

matter of the Trojan War that he treated so movingly not only in
the Hecuba (ca. 424 b.c.) but also in the Trojan Women (415 b.c.). Like
the Hecuba, the Trojan Women concerns the fate suffered by Hecuba
and other women taken as slaves by the Greeks after they sacked and
burned Troy and killed its defenders; it was produced about the time
of the Athenian reduction of Melos. Just two years after Melos, the
Athenians themselves suffered a catastrophic defeat, as the expedition
they launched against Sicily with great fanfare was mercilessly crushed
in 413 b.c.
Produced only a year after the destruction of the Sicilian Expedition,
the Helen treats the Trojan War not as the source of the grievous
suffering depicted in Euripides’ antiwar plays but as the background
for a spectacular, escapist plot worthy of a Hollywood director. In
Euripides’ version of the Trojan War, Paris abducts not Helen but a
clone of her made by Hera, so lifelike as to fool her own husband.
Also reminiscent of Hollywood is the play’s grand finale, when Helen,
reportedly urging the Greek troops to rescue her from her Egyptian
foes, shouts, “Where is the glory of Troy [to Trôikon kleos]? Show it
to these barbarians” (1603–4).1 Helen’s rallying cry, which results in
her rescue from her Egyptian captors, apparently leads to the recovery
1
K q"
8; / G " " 5"5#"$ (Helen 1603–4). All transla-
tions of the play are (with minor modifications) by Richmond Lattimore in Euripides 2,
from The Complete Greek Tragedies, ed. David Grene and Richmond Lattimore (Chicago:
University of Chicago Press, 1956). The Greek text comes from A. M. Dale, ed., Euripides’
Helen (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1967).
188
WHERE IS THE GLORY OF TROY? HEROIC FAME IN THE HELEN
both of her good name and of the glory of Troy. One may well imagine
the appeal of this happy ending for the contemporary audience, which
had long been embroiled in a war whose aims might have seemed as
illusory as those of Euripides’ Trojan War.2
Along the way the drama does, however, pose some vexing ques-
tions about war, questions that resonate in our own day: What are
the underlying causes of war and how legitimate are they? Do these
causes justify the terrible toll in human suffering that war exacts? How
trustworthy is the basis of heroic fame? Earlier in the play, Menelaus,
using the same phrase that Helen uses in the dramatic finale, vows not
to shame “the glory of Troy” (845, my translation). Curiously, both
of them praise the glory of the Trojan War without a trace of irony.
Yet the very premise of this play – that Paris abducted not Helen but a
phantom-copy (eidôlon) of her made by Hera – calls into question the
whole rationale of the expedition against Troy.
Throughout the play the chorus and various characters ask Helen’s
question, but with a different emphasis: where, indeed, is the glory
of Troy if Paris’ reported abduction of Helen never occurred, and
the Trojan War was fought over a phantom? For these characters,
who deplore the inanity of the war, the immortal fame of the Iliadic
warriors becomes a report as illusory as the story of Paris’ abduc-
tion of Helen.3 The phantom comes to symbolize the hollowness
2
Bernd Seidensticker, Palintonos Harmonia, p. 198, argues that the play’s original audience
would have drawn a parallel between Euripides’ version of the Trojan War and the Pelo-
ponnesian War. Cf. also Conacher, Euripides and the Sophists, p. 110. For an opposing
view, see W. G. Forrest, The Emergence of Greek Democracy: The Character of Greek Poli-
tics, 800–400 b.c. (London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1966), pp. 9–10, who maintains
that the play, which he calls a “melodramatic fantasy . . . of no immediate relevance,”
reflects a desire to escape the terrible reality of the Sicilian Expedition, as does A. N.
Pippin (Burnett), “Euripides’ Helen: A Comedy of Ideas,” Classical Philology 55 (1960):
155. In Greek Tragic Poetry, trans. Matthew Dillon (New Haven: Yale University Press,
1972), p. 315, Albin Lesky takes a middle view with which I am sympathetic. Asserting
that the play’s “invective against the war (1151) is surely inseparable from the mood of
Athens in 412,” he wonders “whether Euripides did not write this colorful and imagi-
native play, complete with a happy end, precisely as an escape from the afflictions of the
time.”
3
Cf. the remarks by the phantom (608–15); the servant (603, 707, 718, 749–51); the chorus
(1122–4); Theoclymenus (1220); and Helen herself (362). The phantom’s substitution for
Helen does not in itself necessarily diminish the valor of the deeds performed in the
Trojan War or the glory attained through those deeds; but that is the conclusion these
189
of the heroic fame (kleos) that the Iliadic warrior is willing to risk
his life to acquire.4 The drama thus undermines not only the privi-
leged status of heroic fame as a reliable “word of truth,” but also the
canonical status of Homer’s epic as a kind of truthful voice sanctioned
by the Muses. Although Helen and Menelaus still speak nostalgically
of “the glory of Troy,” it is not until the end of the play that Helen’s
authentic reputation is apparently restored and the glory of the war
regained.5
Euripides’ play thus exploits the tension inherent in the two primary
meanings of kleos – a tension that already forms a crucial problem
in Homeric poetics. As it is commonly used in Homeric epic, kleos
means “immortal fame,” authorized and legitimated by the gods; but it
can also mean mere “report” or “rumor.”6 Euripides takes this subtle
contradiction in the Homeric concept of kleos and pushes it to its
limits. Just as he has done with the eidôlon, a Homeric device that he
turns against Homer,7 Euripides subverts the Iliadic concept of kleos
by exposing – and magnifying – its inherent contradictions.
Chief among these contradictions is the notion that gaps and rifts
inevitably open up in the transmission of a hero’s reputation. Pucci
characters reach, a fact that supports a reading of the play as antiwar (perhaps in spite of
itself – see the conclusion of this chapter for a discussion of the double-edged effect of
the Greek victory over the Egyptians).
4
Achilles epitomizes the warrior’s decision to sacrifice his life in exchange for eternal
glory. Offered a choice between a long, anonymous life and a short, glorious one by his
mother, a goddess (Iliad 9.410–16), Achilles ultimately chooses to die a glorious death in
the Trojan War.
5
In Grafting Helen: The Abduction of the Classical Past (Madison: University of Wiscon-
sin Press, 2001), p. 53, Matthew Gumpert argues that the problem of distinguishing
truth from falsehood is a central one in the play, and that “the role of the name will
be crucial in the representation and resolution (to the extent that one exists) of that
problem.”
6
For an examination of the interplay between these meanings in Homer, see Pietro Pucci,
“The Language of the Muses,” pp. 163–86.
7
In the Iliad, Apollo creates an eidôlon to replace the beleaguered Aeneas, whom he carries
safely out of Diomedes’ reach (5.445–53). Will Prost, The Eidôlon of Helen: Diachronic
Edition of a Myth (Ph.D. diss., The Catholic University of America, 1977), pp. 24–5,
points out that although there are many incidents in Homer in which the gods assume
mortal form to deceive the enemy, the eidôlon of Aeneas is the unique instance of a
“separate, substantial, and special creation” that is substituted by the gods for someone
else. But Homer does not exploit the ironic implications of this substitution, which is
only temporary.
190
articulates this contradiction in the following way:8 on the one hand,

Homer’s Iliad presents the Muses as guaranteeing the truth of the epic,
which they relate to the poet in their full presence and authority; on
the other hand, the poet repeats what he has been told by the Muses,
repeats a “hearsay” – a kleos – and it is this repetition that produces
kleos in the sense of eternal fame.
The same repetition that guarantees the hero’s immortal fame there-
fore subjects it to distortion and error as the echo of the original source
(the Muses) grows fainter and fainter.9 Although the poet should dupli-
cate the Muses’ account, the possibility of straying from it remains as
kleos spreads through a series of repetitions, first by the poet himself
and then by others. Nor is the Muses’ own tale necessarily free from
distortion and duplicity, because it is a “recalling,” a “reminding,”
and therefore itself a repetition. Given that repetition is the “unavoid-
able condition” of both truth and falsehood,10 a subtle but unresolved
tension between the two senses of kleos persists in Homer.
Euripides creates a split between these two meanings of kleos in his
play, a split that corresponds to that between Helen and her eidôlon. The
eidôlon embodies kleos in the sense of mere “report, rumor, hearsay” in
that it gives rise to Helen’s false reputation as an adulteress. Euripides’
Helen, dismayed by this slander, repeatedly expresses her desire to win
an “immortal fame” that reflects her true nature – her innocence,
goodness, and fidelity. Euripides exploits the fact of having another
character in his play called “Helen” – that is to say, the phantom
“Helen,” in quotes – to investigate the whole question of the name
and its dubious relationship to one’s kleos. He also puts quotes around
8
The argument that follows is summarized from Pucci, “The Language of the Muses,”
pp. 169–79.
9
According to Pucci, “The Language of the Muses,” p. 179, Homer’s second invocation
to the Muses in the Iliad makes clear this second possible meaning of kleos as “rumor” or
“hearsay”:
Tell me now, you Muses who have your homes on Olympus.

For you are goddesses, you are there, and you know all things,
but we [poets] hear only the kleos and know nothing.
Who then were the chief men and the lords of the Danaans?
(2.484–7, translated by Pucci)
10
Ibid., p. 163.
191
Helen’s name in other ways – by punning on it in the middle of the

play and naming an island after her at the end of the play.
Running in parallel with the slippage between the two senses of
kleos is the reduction in status of the proper name in Euripides’ drama.
The heroic name in epic typically serves as the unique “property of an
individual,”11 conveying to posterity an accurate reflection of his or
her essential traits. As Detienne argues, in Homeric poetry a warrior’s
“victory was a pure favor from the gods and his feats, once completed,
took form only through words of praise. A man was thus worth only
as much as his logos.”12 The Helen calls into question the status of
the heroic name as a stable, transparent sign of character, a status that
reflects an assumption of the “metaphysics of presence.” In arriving
at his critique of this metaphysics, Derrida builds on Saussure’s per-
ception that the meaning of a signifier can be known only through its
difference from the other terms in its linguistic system. Thus a signifier
does not convey meaning in and of itself but only in relation to the
other elements in the system. Given that the dispersal of these elements
throughout the system is the necessary condition of meaning, no signi-
fier can have a fully determined, originary, and transcendent meaning,
because it carries within itself an absence – the trace of other signs.13
Euripides challenges the “metaphysics of presence” implicit in the
epic equivalence between character and reputation by suggesting that
one’s reputation, like one’s very name, becomes increasingly subject to
distortion as it is spread abroad. (The play may have been influenced by
the sophistic argument against the “primitive belief ” in a magical link
between name and person.)14 In the Helen, the name loses its privileged
status and comes to be regarded as a signifier whose meaning, far from
being unitary, transcendent, and self-consistent, becomes vulnerable
to dispersal, to slippage, to what Derrida calls “dissemination.”15 This
11
Simon Goldhill, The Poet’s Voice: Essays on Poetics and Greek Literature (New York:
Cambridge University Press, 1991), p. 27.
12
Marcel Detienne, The Masters of Truth, p. 46.
13
Derrida, Of Grammatology, pp. 52–3, 65.
14
As argued by Solmsen, “CkCQc and KmcDQc in Euripides’ Helen,” p. 120.
15
Cf. Goldhill, The Poet’s Voice, p. 27, n. 49, who in discussing the implications of the
status of the proper name in epic, mentions the concept of “dissemination” developed
by Derrida. For a full exposition of this concept, see Jacques Derrida’s Dissemination.
192
vulnerability helps explain the play’s pervasive references to Helen’s

name (her onoma) as an object of strife (43; 196–9), distortion (249–51),
duplication (487–8), dispersal (588), purchase (884–6), theft (1099–
1100), and lending (1652–3). Helen’s sullied name thus becomes a kind
of phantom image of her that, like the eidôlon, falsely but convincingly
represents her in her absence.
These and other references portray Helen’s name and her identity
alike as an object of exchange among both men and gods. Indeed, at the
very beginning of the play, Helen tells us that Hera created the eidôlon in
order to deprive Paris of the prize promised him by Aphrodite – Helen
herself (27–36). The shaping of Helen’s phantom double thus becomes
the first in a whole series of threatened or executed “abductions”
of Helen. Hermes carries Helen off to Egypt and thereby forestalls
Paris’ threatened abduction of her to Troy, but she is then exposed to
Theoclymenus’ aggression. Helen almost remains stranded in Egypt
when Menelaus initially fails to recognize her, putting his trust in
the “memory of great hardships” (593) more than in Helen herself.
Menelaus’ statement indicates that the war fought to retrieve Helen
and the glory derived from it become ends in themselves. As Foley
argues, even at the end of the play, Helen’s deceptive promise of her-
self to Theoclymenus “turns her once more into a commodity to be
exchanged among men by abduction.”16 By suggesting that the basis
of heroic fame is a need to convert Helen into a possession, the drama
critiques the nature of her role as a marker of men’s (and gods’) status
in a competitive system of exchange.
At the same time, Euripides’ play invites examination of its own par-
ticipation in the process of “abducting” Helen and thereby conveying
(or dispersing) heroic fame. The inclusion of more than one Helen
within the play, coupled with its many allusions to Helen as a copy
or a double, foregrounds the fact that Euripides’ Helen is an altered
image of Homer’s character. Even as it acknowledges competing with
Homer’s version of the war, the play subverts its own credibility by
continually calling attention to its own status – and that of its heroine –
as imitation, as poetic construct. Furthermore, the play’s extravagant,
16
See Helene P. Foley, “Anodos Dramas: Euripides’ Alcestis and Helen,” in Innovations of
Antiquity, ed. Ralph Hexter and Daniel Selden (New York: Routledge, 1992), p. 144.
193
playfully self-conscious revision of Helen’s character undercuts its own

attempt finally to “capture” her by presenting the one “true” version
of her story.17
Although many critics have taken the play to be a straightforward
exoneration of Helen,18 the existence of a duplicitous double of Helen
who is hardly distinguishable from her, even by her own husband,
“emphasizes that she is out of control, that at least one of her – or per-
haps both of her – is (still) not to be trusted.”19 The fact that the eidôlon
not only looks like Helen but talks like her as well further undermines
her credibility. The resemblance between them is only strengthened
at the end of the play, when in escaping from Theoclymenus, Helen
“reproduces, despite her innocence, the seductiveness and destructive-
ness of her rejected alter ego.”20 The traditional Helen lives on even
in Euripides’ radically transformed version.
Helen’s warlike cry, “Where is the glory of Troy? Show it to these
barbarians,” seems strikingly incongruous coming from a character
who had complained about the destructiveness of a war fought over a
phantom.21 Euripides’ innocent, faithful Helen seems to merge with
her deceptive phantom double, whose abduction caused much blood-
shed. The complaint of Helen’s “husband,” Theoclymenus, about
“women’s artful treacheries” (1621) further blurs the line between
the innovative and traditional versions of Helen.22
17
The splitting of Helen into chaste and adulterous versions, remarked upon by Foley,
“Anodos Dramas,” p. 143, may represent an attempt to control the “semiotic power”
of the female, as Bergren, “Language and the Female,” p. 82, argues is the case with
Stesichorus’ Helen.
18
Cf. A. N. Pippin (Burnett), “Euripides’ Helen: A Comedy of Ideas,” p. 157: “The plot of
the Helen shows violence frustrated and innocence triumphant”; Richmond Lattimore’s
preface to his translation of the play (p. 262): “[Euripides] contrived, through the old
idol-story, to remove that stain of dishonor which the Egyptian version had re-attached
to Helen”; and Prost, The Eidôlon of Helen, p. 196: “By having Helen carried to Egypt,
without boarding Paris’ well-benched ships, Euripides fully exonerates his heroine.”
19
Karen Bassi’s argument about the effect of Stesichorus’ use of the eidôlon holds equally
well here. See “Helen and the Discourse of Denial in Stesichorus’ Palinode,” Arethusa
26.1 (1993): 62.
20
Foley, “Anodos Dramas,” p. 144.
21
As Pietro Pucci, “The Helen and Euripides’ ‘Comic’ Art,” Colby Quarterly 33.1 (1997):
68, remarks: “It is impossible to draw a connection between this bloodthirsty Helen and
the Helen who never sailed to Troy.”
22
A point suggested to me by Victoria Pedrick.
194
According to Pucci, the overlapping roles of Helen and the phan-

tom reveal its “supplementary function.”23 Indeed, the creation of the
phantom is but the first in a whole chain of substitutions that serve to
replace the “original” Helen. As a false image of Helen that is associ-
ated with both her false “name” and her “reputation,” the phantom
points to the fact that “name” and “reputation” serve as substitutes for
the individual in the heroic tradition. Helen’s fame, in turn, is linked
to the fame of the warriors who fought and died in the Trojan War in
order to recover her. So the phantom replaces not only Helen’s body
but also her name, which is in turn linked to the fame of the Trojan
War as it is propagated in heroic song. The phantom thus illustrates the
fact that the very basis of heroic fame – the dispersal of one’s name and
reputation – can also undermine its truth value. Therefore, the phan-
tom comes to symbolize the dissemination of meaning and presence
that threatens the simple “word of truth.”
Euripides’ story of a war that was fought over a substitute Helen
exposes, and questions, the process of substitution by which the heroic
code – and perhaps all war – operates: How does one distinguish
between a war worth fighting and a war fought on the basis of illusory
ideals? Does regaining Helen (let alone her phantom double) justify the
high cost of war? Euripides’ Helen poses many of the same troubling,
complex questions about war as do his two great antiwar plays, the
Hecuba and the Trojan Women. Yet this whimsical play, with its escapist,
melodramatic ending, fails to answer satisfactorily the questions that it
raises. In spite of this failure, the play offers a penetrating critique of
the status of kleos, the martial ethos of the Iliad, and the mythopoetic
process itself.
The prologue initiates this critique by raising many issues that will
be explored throughout the play, issues such as the credibility of myth
and story, the relationship between name and reputation, the reliabil-
ity of the senses, and the nature of the gods and their influence on
the reputations of mortals. When Helen first enters the stage, she tells
the story of her enforced stay in Egypt, where she has been deposited
by Hermes. Upon the death of the kindly King Proteus, she had to
23
Pucci, “The Helen,” pp. 44–5. Cf. Gumpert, Grafting Helen, pp. 52–3.
195
resist the advances of his son, Theoclymenus. Helen then tells the
story of Zeus’ transforming himself into a swan in order to seduce her
mother Leda, adding the proviso, “if that story is reliable” (ei saphês
houtos logos, 21; my translation). Helen’s skepticism about the myth
of her own birth calls to mind the play’s status as an alternative ver-
sion of her story. She goes on to register skepticism about Aphrodite’s
motives when she uses a similar phrase to “if that story is reliable” (and
in the same metrical position in the line): “ . . . Aphrodite, promis-
ing my loveliness / (if what is cursed is ever lovely) to the arms /
of Paris, won her way” (27–9).24 The phrase “if what is cursed is
ever lovely” (ei kalon to dustuches) puts quotes around the word “love-
liness” to show its ambiguity and doubleness. As Downing argues,
“Helen’s kallos [loveliness] and its effects become divided, or doubled,
between her and the eidôlon (image) . . . ”25 Bassi points out the irony
involved in the fact that Helen’s beauty, her most clearly identifying
feature in epic, becomes the means by which people are deceived
about her.26
Like the doubleness of her appearance, identity, and reputation, the
doubleness of Helen’s own rhetoric is a motif that will pervade the
play. In Helen’s account not just stories about Zeus but Zeus himself
takes on a double aspect. He brought war on Greece for two disparate
reasons – to reduce the strain of overpopulation and to increase the
fame of Achilles (38–41). According to Helen, Zeus takes a double
attitude toward her as well: although he allows her reputation to be
sullied, he does help her maintain her chastity by picking Proteus, the
“most temperate” of men, to be her guardian in Egypt (46–8). Zeus’
contradictory attitude toward Helen parallels Hera’s, who victimizes
her at the beginning of the play and helps her at the end (1005–6).
Already in the prologue, then, human reputation is portrayed as
vulnerable to the whim of duplicitous, quarreling, and arbitrary
gods.
24
3 #
, ,
(8, / W: " "(’ X l
8G" %, /
-Y (Helen 27–9).
25
Eric Downing, “Apatê, Agôn, and Literary Self-Reflexivity in Euripides’ Helen,” in
Cabinet of the Muses: Essays on Classical and Comparative Literature in Honor of Thomas G.
Rosenmeyer, ed. M. Griffith and D. J. Mastronarde (Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1990), p. 2.
26
Bassi, “Tradition, Invention and Recognition in Euripides’ Helen,” p. 2.
196
Another pervasive motif to emerge in the prologue is the ques-

tion of the significance and appropriateness of names. In describing
her current dilemma, Helen provides the etymology of the names
of both Theoclymenus and his sister, Eido. Theoclymenus, whose
name translates as “one who heeds the gods,” is named after the rev-
erence for the gods held by his father (9–10).27 His sister Theonoë
was named “Eido” (“image”) as a child, because she was the image
of her mother (11). As an adult, however, she is renamed “Theonoë”
(which means “understanding God”) because of her prophetic powers
(13–15).
The names of Proteus’ children introduce the play’s concern with
the reliability of sense-perception: “Theo-clymenus” and “Theo-noë”
are themselves doublets, both involving the root Theo (God) and a suf-
fix connoting a process of perceiving or knowing: klumenos (hearing)
and noê (perceiving / understanding). Moreover, Theonoë’s childhood
name – Eido – also connotes knowledge, since its meaning as “image”
derives from the verb for “seeing / knowing.” Theonoë’s adult name,
which means “understanding God,” nonetheless signals a change from
a lower level of consciousness, from the level of “image” (Eido) to
the prophet’s ultimate knowledge of reality. Downing points out that
Theonoë’s two names foreshadow Helen’s own “double identity”
and that “the exchange of signifiers enacts a drama of substitution
similar to that about Helen.”28 Indeed, the play’s central question –
will Helen recover her good name? – is closely linked with the question
of whether Theoclymenus and Theonoë will live up to theirs.
The prologue, then, presents a Helen who is skeptical about myth,
the gods, and human knowledge and obsessed with names, image,
and reputation – especially her own. In the scenes that follow, her
difficulty in distinguishing herself (and being distinguished) from her
phantom twin becomes a means both of examining the relationship of
Euripides’ Helen to Homer’s and of undermining the epistemological
foundations of kleos.
27
These lines are, however, bracketed off in Dale’s edition of the play.
28
Downing, “Apatê, Agôn, and Literary Self-Reflexivity,” pp. 4–5. Downing also points
out that the name “Eido,” in addition to evoking the eidôlon, foreshadows the concern
of the second half of the play with knowledge of the divine.
197
Helen again reveals her concern with her own image when, in
speaking with the chorus a little later, she wishes that her much-
vaunted beauty could be wiped clean “like a picture”:
I wish that like a picture I had been rubbed out

and done again, made plain, without this loveliness,
for so the Greeks would never have been aware of all
those misfortunes that now are mine. (262–5)29
We recognize in Helen’s wish for a plainer appearance (aischion eidos

[263]) a yearning for a simple sign that could convey the truth of her
character. In bemoaning the fact that her “loveliness” helped create the
problem of her tarnished reputation (260–1), Helen draws an implicit
analogy between her beauty (a visual signifier) and her reputation (a
linguistic signifier). Her attractive appearance, which she considers a
deceptive form of ornamentation, thus recalls the rhetorical embel-
lishments scorned by Polyneices. Helen would like to exorcise the
deceptiveness that has been traditionally linked to women’s bodies
since Pandora; her beauty serves as a “dangerous supplement” that
subverts the integrity of her unblemished character.30
Indeed, Helen’s wish that she could, “like a picture,” be “done again,
made plain” (262–3) wonderfully illustrates the ambiguities associ-
ated with the process of representation. On the one hand, the picture
painted of Helen by her reputation is a misleading imitation that is
responsible for the diminution and dispersal of her authentic character
and identity. But, on the other hand, the plainer appearance (aischion
eidos) that Helen would like to have is, ironically, also an “image,” an
imitation: in fact, the Greek word for phantom (eidôlon) is a diminutive
29
The Greek text for Helen 262–6 runs as follows:
4’ *G
(’ X %
’ N #

4( I
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,
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h P
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30
See the chapter on “ ‘ . . . That Dangerous Supplement . . . ’ ” in Derrida, Of Gramma-
tology, pp. 141–64. Cf. the description of the phantom as a supplement to Helen in
Gumpert, Grafting Helen, pp. 52–4.
198
form of the word for image (eidos). Helen here seems to regard her
own appearance in much the same light as the phantom image of her
made by Hera.
In a sense Euripides’ play itself fulfills Helen’s wish to be remade
again as a truer likeness, if it is taken to convey a “truer” version of
Helen than Homer’s epic, which has contributed to her false repu-
tation.31 But Helen’s reference to herself as an “image” reminds the
spectator or reader that Euripides’ Helen, like Homer’s, is a fictional
character. The “original” that Helen would like to redo is, metaphor-
ically, a “picture”; insofar as original and copy are always already imi-
tative, one cannot be distinguished from the other. The difficulty of
distinguishing between original and imitation is compounded by the
fact that elsewhere in the play, Helen refers to her body as the guarantor
of her identity, in contrast to her “name” or reputation.32
In fact, the tone of Helen’s wish reminds us that Euripides’ charac-
ter, despite its striking originality, is still a remade version of Homer’s.33
The self-pitying aspect of Helen’s comment about her “evil fate” recalls
her portrait in both the Iliad and the Odyssey. As Segal maintains,
Euripides’ Helen has much in common with Homer’s, particularly her
guilt and self-consciousness.34 We recall how in Iliad 6.343–8 Helen
expresses a wish that a storm had carried her away when she was
first born. She deprecates herself in both the Iliad and the Odyssey,
calling herself “a nasty, malicious bitch” (Iliad 6.344) and “shameless”
(Odyssey 4.145).35 Helen’s wish in Euripides that she could be wiped
clean “like a picture” evokes another important characteristic of her
Iliadic portrayal: her awareness of herself as an object of artistic rep-
resentation. She seems to romanticize her role as a heroine of the
Trojan saga by saying that Zeus chose Paris and her for an evil fate,
31
Ingrid E. Holmberg, “Euripides’ Helen: Most Noble and Most Chaste,” American Journal
of Philology 116 (1995): 33, asserts the “image of Helen” that spreads false information
about her “is the epic image.”
32
For relevant examples see 66–7, 588, 1099–1100.
33
Euripides of course drew inspiration for a Helen who never went to Troy from Stesi-
chorus’ Palinode. See Bassi, “Helen and the Discourse of Denial,” for a detailed inter-
pretation of the Stesichorean tradition.
34
Segal, Interpreting Greek Tragedy, p. 233.
35
Another aspect of Homer’s Helen that Euripides’ character reflects is her invective against
Aphrodite (cf. Iliad 3.399–412 with Euripides’ Helen 1097–1100).
199
to be sure, but for eternal fame as well (Iliad 6.355–8). Helen’s double
attitude toward her fate in Homer – self-rebuke for causing others
so much suffering alongside with an extreme concern with her own
reputation – is replicated in Euripides’ portrait.
The ruinous duplicity traditionally assigned to Helen is also associ-
ated with her in Euripides, but only indirectly – through the figure
of the eidôlon. Using the same word (agalma) that Helen had used in
comparing herself to a “picture,” the servant reporting the disappear-
ance of the eidôlon asks if the Greeks died for a “picture of a cloud”
(nephelês agalma, 705; my translation). Also serving to link Helen, the
eidôlon, and the motif of duplicity are other disparaging references to
her as an imitation or a copy.36 The specific link between Helen and
deceptive mimicry goes back to another Homeric antecedent: in the
Odyssey, Menelaus reports that she attempted to expose the ruse of
the Trojan Horse by mimicking the voices of the wives of the Greeks
hidden inside it (4.277–9).37 Homer’s Helen also shows an ability to
recognize likenesses that reveals her to be “a master of disguise”:38 first,
when she observes that the young stranger visiting Sparta resembles
Telemachus, who it in fact is (4.141–6); and second, when she reports
that she recognized Odysseus when he entered Troy disguised as a
beggar (4.240–64).
36
Cf. Teucer’s description of the real Helen as a “deadly likeness” and a “copy” (74–5)
(which I discuss in the next paragraph of the text) and Menelaus’ reference to her striking
resemblance to his wife (559). Downing, “Apatê, Agôn, and Literary Self-Reflexivity,”
p. 9, argues that the eidôlon “provides the clearest opportunity for the self-reflexive
representation of the dramatist’s own apatê within the play itself.”
37
Cf. Prost, The Eidolon of Helen, p. 42, who calls Helen an “uncanny mimic” in the
Odyssey, and Bergren, “Language and the Female,” p. 80, who refers to “Helen’s mastery
of the verbal mimêsis of truth.” Cf. also Froma I. Zeitlin, “Travesties of Gender and
Genre in Aristophanes’ Thesmophoriazousae,” in Playing the Other: Gender and Society in
Classical Greek Literature (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1996), pp. 409, 410, who
describes Helen in the Odyssey as a “mistress of mimesis, linked . . . to secrecy, disguise,
and deception” – traits that link her with poetry, considered as “the imitation of many
voices in the service of seduction and enchantment.” The wiles of both Homer’s and
Euripides’ Helen also link her with Odysseus himself.
38
Ann L. T. Bergren, “Helen’s ‘Good’ Drug: Odyssey IV.1–305,” in Contemporary Literary
Hermeneutics and Interpretation of Classical Texts/Herméneutique littéraire contemporaine et
interprétation des textes classiques, ed. Stephanus Kresic (Ottawa: Ottawa University Press,
1981), p. 208.
200
The first explicit reference in Euripides to Helen herself as a double

comes in the play’s first episode, when Teucer calls Helen a “deadly
likeness” and “copy.” As the play progresses, the distinction between
Helen and her phantom twin increasingly blurs, culminating in her
own husband’s failure to recognize her. Teucer’s encounter with Helen
is the first in a series of scenes that directly question the veracity of
report and the reliability of the sense-data on which it is based. His
reaction upon seeing Helen merits close examination:
Oh gods, what a sight I see before me! Do I see
the deadly likeness of that woman who destroyed
all the Achaeans and me? May the gods spurn you for
looking so much like Helen’s copy. (72–5)39
Bassi points out that Teucer’s astonishment at seeing Helen in Egypt
may well mirror the reaction of the audience. His references to her as
a “sight” (opsin, 72), a “likeness” (eikô, 73), and a copy (mimêm’[a], 74)
remind us that the “Helen” on stage is herself an imitation, a fact that
certainly complicates the issue of her true identity.40 Ironically, only
Teucer’s deluded certainty that he saw Menelaus drag off the “real”
Helen by the hair saves her from his wrath (115–16).
The dialogue between Teucer and Helen that follows broadens the
issues of the recognition of a specific individual and of the accuracy of
her kleos into a wider problem of cognition. In their dialogue Helen
plays the role of the skeptical philosopher:
Helen. Did you see the poor woman, or have you only heard?
Teucer. I saw her with my own eyes, as I see you now.
Helen. Think. Could this only be an impression, caused by God?
Teucer. Speak of some other matter, please. No more of her.
Helen. You do believe your impression is infallible.
Teucer. These eyes saw her. When the eyes see, the brain sees too.
(117–22)41
39
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l:. (, 2( / ZP
8, :( (Helen 72–5).
40
Cf. Bassi, “Tradition, Invention and Recognition,” p. 7.
41
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201
This dialogue, which calls into question both the reliability of percep-
tion and its relationship to intellection, dramatizes a “proto-Cartesian
assault on sense experience.”42 Helen’s skepticism about the evidence
of the senses reflects the prevailing attitude of the sophists, who Guthrie
tells us doubted “the possibility of certain knowledge, on the grounds
both of the inadequacy and fallibility of our faculties and of the absence
of a stable reality to be known.” Guthrie traces the background of this
skepticism back to the pre-Socratic philosophers, whose inquiries into
the Urstoff of the cosmos implied that the plain man couldn’t “believe
[his] own eyes” when it came to discerning the true nature of reality –
that motion and change are illusory, for instance.43
Helen’s question, “Did you see the poor woman, or have you
only heard?” implies that personal observation is more reliable than
hearsay,44 reinforcing the contingency of kleos (kluô, “to hear,” is cog-
nate to kleos). The foundations of kleos are further undermined if an
individual’s own observation can be a mere impression (dokêsin 119,
121) sent by the gods. Of course, Teucer’s insistence that he saw Helen
being carried off just as certainly as he sees Helen in front of him
as he speaks (118) contains a dramatic irony that would surely be
picked up by the audience. Like Teucer, the audience would have
trouble “recognizing” as Helen a character who, morally speaking,
resembles Homer’s Penelope more than Homer’s Helen.45 With these
P – ( 6 '( 4 * ).

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42
Carol Gould suggested this point to me in a personal communication. Helen’s skep-
tical concern about a false impression sent by God (119) finds a parallel in Descartes’
speculation in Meditations on First Philosophy about an evil spirit that may skew our
perception.
43
Guthrie, The Sophists, pp. 47–8, 15.
44
In outlining their methodologies, Herodotus (2.123.1; 7.152.3) and Thucydides (1.22.2–
4) both privilege personal observation over mere hearsay (although both remain skeptical
even of eyewitness accounts). Cf. Heraclitus (fragment 101a), who states that “eyes are
more accurate witnesses than ears” (but contrast his fragment 107, when he asserts that
both eyes and ears are “bad witnesses,” if men lack understanding). My translation of
the Greek, which comes from Diels and Kranz, Die Fragmente der Vorsokratiker, vol. 1: for
fragment 101a, see p. 173 (DK 22B101a) and for fragment 107, see p. 175 (DK 22B107).
45
Euripides turns Helen, the notorious adulteress, into a paragon of fidelity, a sort of
Penelope figure: “the worst of her sex” becomes “the best of wives,” as Zeitlin,
202
self-referential theatrical allusions, Euripides is pointing out that drama

balances believing against not believing by pitting perception – what
we see on stage – against intellection – what the mind knows. Such ref-
erences undercut the drama’s implicit claim to be presenting the “true”
Helen; they demonstrate instead an affinity between the “mobile dou-
bleness of language and the female” that pervades the Greek poetic
tradition.46
Teucer’s comment that Helen has the “body” but not the “heart”
of the traditional Helen (160–1) recalls the lines that she utters just
before his entrance, when she claims that although she has a name of
ill repute, she has kept her body free of shame (66–7). Throughout
the play, Helen refers to her body as the true guarantor of her iden-
tity and kleos, in opposition to her name, which she complains was
stolen by the gods and given to barbarians (1099–1100). As a result,
Greeks and Trojans fought over her name (42–3; cf. 196–9) and her
false kleos as an adulteress was dispersed through many lands, even
though she preserved her body intact for her husband (588). Helen’s
references to her pristine body are all the more ironic in that her body
is the object of mimetic representation not only in the form of the
eidôlon but also in the form of the actor who is playing her role. The
irony is only compounded by the failure of Helen’s own appearance to
provide the necessary confirmation of her identity for her own hus-
band. Euripides, then, is continually drawing attention to the nature
of drama itself, which, unlike epic, displays “bodies” on stage. But he
may also be suggesting that Homer’s Helen is herself an imitation and
thus no more substantial or real than his own “corporeal” version of
her.
Some of the same epistemological complexity occurs in the next
episode, a scene of recognition – or nonrecognition – between Helen
“Travesties of Gender and Genre,” p. 394, wittily remarks. Like Penelope, who held
off the suitors for so many years, Helen steadfastly resists the advances of her lecher-
ous host, Theoclymenus. Like Penelope, who implies that only Odysseus’ return can
restore her lost glory (Odyssey 18.251–5; 19.124–8), Helen depends on her husband’s
return to salvage her reputation (287–92). The amusing irony of Euripides’ casting
Helen “in der Rolle der Penelope” is mentioned by Seidensticker, Palintonos Harmonia,
p. 163.
46
203
and Menelaus. Indeed, Teucer’s mistaking of the eidôlon for the “real”
Helen, and of the “real” Helen for the eidôlon, foreshadows her
encounter with Menelaus, who incredibly enough makes the same
double mistake. The Teucer episode foreshadows the later encounter
in another way: just as Helen barely escapes death at Teucer’s hands,
so she narrowly avoids what to her will be the catastrophe of losing
her husband a second time (592, 594–6).
Helen reacts to the news of Menelaus’ death – an example of false
kleos that mirrors her own false kleos – in a typically self-conscious
way, through a monody that Burnett describes as Helen’s song to her
own Muses – the sirens and Persephone.47 In the subsequent duet
with the chorus, Helen laments the destruction caused by her – or by
her name (196–9). But the ambiguity of her description of her name
as “causing much suffering” ( poluponon, 199; my translation) neatly
reflects her own double attitude with respect to her name and her
reputation alike: poluponon can mean “enduring” as well as “causing”
much suffering.48 She refers to the suffering her name and reputation
have both caused and endured when, a little later on, she sings that
Hermes, who abducted her while she was picking flowers, made her
a cause of strife while her name suffered “a false fame and a vanity”
(248–51).
The chorus sympathizes with Helen as a victim of a “rumor . . . that
gives [her] up to barbarian lusts” and as someone who has lost her
husband (224–7). But curiously, a little later, the chorus warns her
not to believe Teucer’s report that Menelaus is dead. Their skepti-
cism is borne out when, soon thereafter, a bedraggled, shipwrecked
Menelaus appears on stage. He boasts – although he denies it is boast-
ing – of the great expedition he and Agamemnon, “two renowned
brothers,” mounted against Troy (391–6). Menelaus expects that his
famous name will help him gain access to the palace and be accorded
proper hospitality (502) – in short, that his name will “make a
47
Burnett, Catastrophe Survived, p. 77, n. 1.
48
For the meaning “enduring much suffering” (“much-suffering,” “much-laboring”), cf.
Pindar Nemean Ode 1.33, Aeschylus Suppliant Maidens 382, and Euripides Orestes 175; for
“causing much suffering” (“painful,” “toilsome”), cf. Aeschylus Persians 320, Sophocles
Philoctetes 777, and Electra 515.
204
difference.”49 But a lowly portress disabuses him of this notion as

she brusquely dismisses him:
Menelaus. Ah, where are all my armies now, which won such fame?
Portress. You may have been a great man there. You are not one
here.
(453–4; adapted)50
In this version neither Helen nor Menelaus has the kleos she or he
deserves. Euripides’ Helen is better than she is in Homer, but her kleos
fails to do her justice. Euripides’ Menelaus, who is worse than he is
in Homer, has nonetheless achieved kleos at Troy. If Helen’s name and
reputation have spread too widely, Menelaus’ have not spread widely
enough: the kleos that Menelaus assumes is universal apparently has
not reached as far as Egypt.
Aside from reflecting a sophistic concern with the relativity of
nomoi,51 the portress’ comment that Menelaus was great “there” but
not “here” could be read metaphorically to underline the distance
between Homer and Euripides: Menelaus was great in epic, in Homer,
but not here in drama, in Euripides. Indeed, when compared with
Homer’s character, Menelaus in Euripides’ drama is almost as unrec-
ognizable as Helen. His portrayal as a comically ineffectual figure52
49
Cf. Goldhill, The Poet’s Voice, p. 27, who asserts that in epic, the use of the heroic name
“makes a difference.”
50
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51
Guthrie, The Sophists, p. 16, speaks of the new sophistic awareness, gained through
increased contact with other cultures in the fifth century, that “customs and standards
of behaviour which had earlier been accepted as absolute and universal, and of divine
institution, were in fact local and relative.”
52
Cf. Dale, ed., Euripides’ Helen, xi, who finds a “half-comic tone” in Menelaus’
bewilderment in Egypt. Seidensticker, Palintonos Harmonia, 175, considers him to be
a “Karikatur eines tragischen Helden” when he first appears on stage and later, in
his confrontation with the portress, a “vollends zur komischen Figur.” Foley, “Anodos
Dramas,” p. 141, describes his reliance on his former greatness as “at some points almost
ludicrous.”
205
underscores the sharp discrepancy between his kleos and what we see
on stage.
Menelaus’ dismay at his rude treatment is compounded when he
hears that Helen, the daughter of Zeus, is living in Egypt (470):
. . . while I come bringing my wife, lost once by force,

from Troy, and she is guarded for me in the cave,
all the while some other woman with the same name
as my wife has been living in this house. She said
that this one was by birth the child of Zeus. Can it be
there is some man who bears the name of Zeus and lives
beside the banks of the Nile? There is one Zeus; in heaven.
Tyndareus is a famous name. There is only one,
And where is there another land called Lacedaemon
or Troy either? I do not know what to make of it. (485–96)53
Menelaus swoons as he contemplates the possible existence of copies

not just of Helen but also of Tyndareus, Sparta, Troy, and even Zeus.
His speculation that Zeus is a man living on the banks of the Nile is
a wry reflection of the play’s pervasive skepticism about myth. The
tragic (or tragicomic) effects of human delusion are powerfully staged
in Euripides’ Bacchae when Pentheus, maddened by Dionysus, thought
he saw “two suns . . . two Thebes, two cities, and each with seven gates”
(918–20).54 Now Euripides makes great comedy out of Menelaus’
confusion.
53
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54
Cf. commentary on the scene by Charles Segal, Dionysiac Poetics and Euripides’
Bacchae (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1982), pp. 197–204, and Seidensticker,
206
Menelaus retreats from the dizzying prospect of a doubled cosmos

into the refuge of “the simple name of the heroic past,”55 where there is
a one-to-one correspondence between signifier and signified: “There
is only one famous name of Tyndareus” (494), he reassures himself.
Gathering up his nerve against the servant’s threats, he wrongly assumes
that his name will produce instant recognition and results:
There is no man whose heart is so uncivilized

that when he has heard my name he will not give me food.
Troy is renowned, and I, who lit the fire of Troy,
Menelaus, am not unknown anywhere in all the world. (501–4)
His rebuff by the lowly portress is comically deflating. Later in the

play, the great hero of the Trojan War, who says he prefers an active
death to a passive one (814), will resort to playing dead in order to
regain his glory.
Helen returns to the stage having been reassured by Theonoë, whom
she regards as all-knowing (823), that Menelaus is in fact still alive. It
is all the more amusing that Helen, armed with this information from
a supposedly infallible source, fails to recognize her husband when he
first appears. Frightened of his tattered, bedraggled appearance (554),
she fails to heed the warning she herself gave Teucer not to trust the
evidence of the senses. Once she finally recognizes Menelaus, however,
he fails to recognize her (Euripides is clearly having fun with the topos
of the recognition scene) and, like Teucer, mistakes the copy for the
original. Helen, who earlier urged Teucer not to trust the evidence
of sight because what he saw might be a vision sent by God (119),
must now reverse herself and argue that “seeing is believing” to a
Menelaus who thinks that what he is seeing may be a vision caused
by the goddess Hecate (569).
When Helen insists that he is seeing the real Helen, Menelaus insists
that, although her body (sôm[a], 577) is remarkably similar to his wife’s,
he has left his real wife in the safety of the cave. To Helen’s frustrated
Palintonos Harmonia, pp. 123–9. Translation by William Arrowsmith in Euripides 5, from

The Complete Greek Tragedies, ed. David Grene and Richmond Lattimore.
55
207
question, “Who shall teach you better than your eyes?”56 Menelaus
responds that his vision must be either sick or deficient. Euripides
delays having Helen simply tell Menelaus about the eidôlon in order to
explore the same theme of the reliability of the senses outlined in the
scene with Teucer. In the space of twenty-four lines (557–81), there
are eleven references to vision, seeing, and objects of sight. The comic
wordplay on Helen’s name in her dialogue with Menelaus – lines 561–3
begin with Hellênis, Hellênis, Helenê57 – provides an aural analogue to
the visual confusion surrounding Helen’s true identity.58
Even after Helen finally explains the source of the confusion – that
Hera fashioned a phantom and put it in her place (582–6) – Menelaus,
preferring the copy to the original, is still not convinced that she is
the real Helen. When Menelaus, still dumbfounded, asks Helen how
56
Bassi, “Tradition, Invention and Recognition,” p. 11, finds in the line a self-referential
allusion to the process of perception by spectators in the theater.
57
The English text for Helen 561–3 runs as follows:
Menelaus. Are you a Hellene woman or a native here?

Helen. Hellene. But tell me who you are. I would know too.
Menelaus. You are more like Helen, my lady, than any I know.
The corresponding Greek text for lines 561–3 runs as follows (if we accept Markland’s
suggestion for line 561, supplied from Aristophanes’ Thesmophoriazusae 907):
<Q
8 – ZP
; I H * " %A;>

ZP
8 – ZP
$
& ; ( 8

.
Q
8 – ZP
8 < ( 6 #
( I, %:.
See Dale’s edition of the Helen for Markland’s recension.
58
Euripides’ inspired nonrecognition scene between spouses recalls a scene in Ionesco’s
“La Cantatrice chauve” when a Monsieur and Madame Martin, who happen to meet
accidentally, express mounting surprise over the fact that they live on the same street, in
the same building, even in the same apartment, crying “Comme c’est curieux! comme
c’est bizarre! et quelle coı̈ncidence!” at every turn. If further confirmation were necessary,
they discover that they both have a two-year old daughter named “Alice” with one white
eye and one red eye. After hearing these and other detailed proofs, they realize that they
are married and joyfully celebrate their “reunion.” The similarity to Euripides’ drama
is increased by the revelation in the subsequent scene that the couple is not in fact
married, because Donald Martin’s baby girl named “Alice” has a white eye on the right
and a red eye on the left, whereas this is reversed in Elisabeth Martin’s daughter named
“Alice.” Like Euripides, Ionesco is having fun with the traditional signs of recognition,
both in everyday life and in the theater. Just as Euripides draws attention to the fictional
status of his drama by asking, Who is the real Helen? so Ionesco asks, through the
mouthpiece of another character, “Mais qui est le véritable Donald? Quelle est la véritable
Elisabeth?” See scenes 4 and 5 of Eugène Ionesco, “La Cantatrice chauve: Anti-Pièce,”
in Théâtre d’Eugène Ionesco, vol. 1 (Paris: Editions Gallimard, 1990), pp. 26–32.
208
she could be in Troy and Egypt at the same time (587), she takes a
different tack: “My name [onoma] could be in many places, but not
my body [sôma]” (588).59 Helen made the same distinction between
“body” and “name” in the prologue of the play, when she contrasted
her “name of guilt in Greece” with her “body uncontaminated by
disgrace” (66–7). Through these and other references Helen suggests
that the name, like the phantom, projects a false image of her, but
one that is even more threatening because it may be dispersed more
widely. As a vehicle of deception, the eidôlon becomes a figure for the
polysemy of the signifier, both visual and linguistic.60
Threatened with the uncontrollable dispersal of her reputation, her
“name,” Helen refers to her body as the authentic ground of her
being; the body thus serves as a supplement that restores the truth
of her essential self. Yet earlier, when Helen expressed a wish that
she could be remade without her beauty, she implied that her bodily
appearance was the cause, and not the cure, of her false reputation.
The confusion over Helen’s identity reaches an absurd (and perhaps
poignant) climax. Menelaus justifies his error by referring to the hard-
ships of the war fought to recover the false Helen from the Trojans.
He tells the real Helen: “I trust my memory of great hardships [ponôn]
more than you (593).” Segal comments, “In a setting where war and
Troy are called into question, an identity defined by Troy’s fall is highly
problematical.”61 Menelaus’ willful refusal to recognize the real Helen
suggests that her beauty is not to blame for causing the war, as Helen
(262–3), the chorus (383), and the Homeric tradition all assume, but
men’s own yearning for glory.
Only the servant’s news about the disappearance of the eidôlon –
a veritable deus ex machina – finally convinces Menelaus of Helen’s
true identity. Ironically, Menelaus’ recognition of Helen coincides
with the revelation that the war was fought over a phantom.62 The
59
%8 0
, () (Helen 588).

60
Cf. Bassi, “Helen and the Discourse of Denial,” pp. 65–6, on Stesichorus’ eidôlon as a
figure for the problems of signification.
61
62
As Segal, Interpreting Greek Tragedy p. 236, points out: “Menelaus’ recognition of Helen is,
in fact, a double anagnorisis. The joyful discovery of his real wife is balanced by the grim,
mocking discovery of the emptiness of the prize of war. All in vain, all for a phantom
(704–10).”
209
servant’s report of the phantom’s parting words represents the only

time in antiquity that it is given a speaking role.63 As it departs into
the ether whence it was formed, the phantom takes credit (or blame)
for falsely inspiring suffering and death in Helen’s place. Curiously, the
eidôlon sounds very much like Helen. Its assertion that the Greeks and
Trojans died “for me” (di’ em’, 609) recalls Helen’s claim that Troy fell
“because of me” (di’ eme, 198; my translation). Likewise the eidôlon’s
“You thought that Paris had Helen, when he never did” (dokountes
Helenên ouk echont’ echein Parin, 611)64 closely resembles Helen’s state-
ment that Paris “thinks he holds me now / but holds a vanity that is
not I” ([kai] dokei m’ echein – kenên dokêsin, ouk echôn, 35–6).65 Both
of these statements draw a contrast between opinion and knowledge;
both play on the words dokeô and echein / ouk echein; both employ
chiasmus, internal rhyme, paradox.
The eidôlon also touches on the discrepancy between Helen’s char-
acter and her reputation: Helen “heard evil things said of her, who did
nothing wrong” (614).66 This statement echoes Helen’s own use of
the onoma / pragma antithesis: “I have done nothing wrong and yet my
reputation / is bad” (270–1).67 It is true that Helen expresses regret
about being the cause of so much suffering, whereas the eidôlon seems
to take some pride in it (608–11).68 And yet even as the eidôlon con-
firms Helen’s innocence, its repetition and echoing of her words blurs
the lines between them, reinscribing to some degree her traditional
duplicity and guilt.69
Similarly paradoxical in its effect is Menelaus’ apparent exoneration
of Helen. He assigns responsibility for the war not to her but to the
gods and fate: “it was a god who took you away / from my house, and
63
Prost, The Eidolon of Helen, p. 202. Of course, the phantom, which speaks only through
the mouth of the messenger, does not itself appear onstage, a fact that perhaps sharpens
the irony of the misidentifications of Helen.
64
ZP
8 K#" (Helen 611).
65
[;] – / 6 '(, (Helen 35–6).
66
. . . & ?( 3 , (Helen 615).
67
") 3 N( , ,; (
A$ (Helen 270).
68
The servant describes the phantom’s speech as mocking (619–20).
69
Cf. Downing, “Apatê, Agôn, and Literary Self-Reflexivity,” p. 2, who argues that Helen
“retains and attracts many of the qualities of the eidôlon, including its beauty (and even
its fiction, 262–3).”
210
drove you / away, where your fate was stronger (641–3).”70 Menelaus’
argument recalls the rationalization of Helen’s behavior in Gorgias’
notorious Encomium on Helen: “God is stronger than man in might
and wisdom and every other respect. If, then, we are to posit Fate or
God as the reason, we must absolve Helen of her ill-repute.”71 The
very boldness of the drama’s transformation of Helen gives it the air of
an extravagant piece like Gorgias’, undercutting its own credibility.72
“There is pleasure in hardships heard about” (665), Menelaus goes on
to tell Helen, as he encourages her to tell her story. The sufferings of
the past now become prologue to a series of plot intrigues that lead to
the happy reunion of Helen and Menelaus.73
In spite of the servant’s repeated insistence that the Trojan War was
fought “in vain,” (603, 751), “for a cloud” (706), and “for nothing”
(718), Menelaus continues to refer to it as a reliable guide to heroic
behavior in his present circumstances. Faced with the threat of discov-
ery by Theonoë, Menelaus tells Helen he would rather fight than sub-
mit meekly, which would be unworthy of Troy (808); he then swears
not to shame the “glory of Troy” (845; my translation), promising to
die defending Helen and her honor, if necessary. The Iliadic bombast
of these lines rings hollow for two reasons; first, they evince no recog-
nition of the fact that the war was fought under a mistaken belief,
and second, they are comically at odds with Menelaus’ own cowardly
behavior. Not only does he rely on sophistic distinctions to save
70
. . . * ' 3 (( ( * / "
*
: / ("& -( "((
(Helen 641–3).
71
"1 "(( ; 5 ; ( ;
. , N q:

; ) ) 6 , 8, [H] 6 P
8 (

8 (Diels
and Kranz, Die Fragmente der Vorsokratiker, vol. 2, p. 290 [DK 82B11]). As translated
in John Mansley Robinson, An Introduction to Early Greek Philosophy, p. 267. Zeitlin,
“Travesties of Gender and Genre,” p. 414, argues, intriguingly, that although Gorgias
makes no overt use of the phantom image in his defense of Helen, he implicitly treats
her psyche as a kind of image that is formed by the power of logos and opsis. Cf. Helen in
Euripides’ Trojan Women, who defends her behavior by referring to the power wielded
both by the gods over mortals and by Aphrodite over Zeus himself (948–50, 964–5,
1042–3).
72
Cf. Bassi, “Helen and the Discourse of Denial,” p. 68, on Stesichorus’ Palinode, which
she argues “sacrifices credibility by taking the risk of hyperbolic denial.”
73
Cf. Seidensticker, Palintonos Harmonia, p. 197, on the Trojan War as providing a continuing
counterpoint to the comic features of the play.
211
face – as when he explains that although he did beg before the gates of
the palace earlier, he “did not call it so” (792) – but he also depends on
Helen’s help in dealing with Theonoë, who could expose the couple
and destroy their homecoming. A role reversal takes place: despite all
of his rhetoric about action, the man who fought on Helen’s behalf
at Troy now asks his wife to confront Theonoë: “Best for woman to
approach woman. You do this” (830). As Menelaus’ suggestion indi-
cates, the happy ending will depend on these two women’s joining
forces and deploying their feminine wiles.
Ironically, Helen (followed by Menelaus) frames her request for
help in terms of the same Greek concept of kleos that failed to impress
the portress. Whereas Helen appeals to Theonoë’s concern for her
own and her father’s kleos (940–3), Menelaus urges her not to incur
the notoriety (duskleia) of killing him (993–5). Convinced by these
appeals, Theonoë reassures the couple that she will not stain Proteus’
reputation by treating them unjustly (999). As long as she is alive, she
will preserve her father’s good name, ensuring that it will not turn to
bad (1028–9). Theonoë, who is Helen’s counterpart in many ways,74
plays her part in restoring Helen’s true kleos, just as her father’s played
his in helping Helen preserve her chastity. Indeed, Theonoë considers
that she is acting in her father’s stead (1011–12), and indirectly, as an
agent of Helen’s father, Zeus. The identity of Theonoë’s interests with
her father’s is as complete as Helen’s with her husband’s.
Theonoë proves to be an indispensable ally for Helen because of her
divine consciousness, which allows her not only to distinguish between
imitation and reality but also to make mere images seem real. Like
Hesiod’s Muses, who “know how to speak many falsehoods that resem-
ble the truth” (Theogony 27), Theonoë possesses “semiotic power.”
Helen will soon demonstrate the same power, when she successfully
employs deceit to escape from Egypt with Menelaus. Theonoë could
expose the plot but chooses to help Helen restore her true reputation.
Both Helen and Theonoë, the one a victim of the gods, the other an
exponent of the divine power of prophecy, manipulate image and illu-
sion; both do so in the service of protecting a greater truth sanctioned
74
Segal, Interpreting Greek Tragedy, p. 245, calls Theonoë Helen’s “purer self.”
212
by the Greek patriarchal order.75 Just as Helen expresses nostalgia for

the lost “word of truth” of her reputation, so Theonoë serves as an
agent of its recovery at the end of the play. In doing so, she is of course
forced to betray (or at least mislead) her brother Theoclymenus.
Theonoë justifies her opposition to her brother by arguing that
both the living and the dead must fulfill their moral obligations,
or face sanctions for not doing so (1013–16).76 For Theonoë, kleos
can be preserved only by strict adherence to a universal standard
of justice (tês dikês, 1002) that is inherent in the cosmic order.
Removed from the realm of the contingent, the divisions that beset
kleos earlier – Egyptian versus Greek customs, standards of greatness,
and morality – seem to have dissolved. Even the divisions among
the Greek gods are subsumed within a metaphysical scheme that
posits a single cosmic force – “the god” – as Pippin (Burnett)
points out: “In the speeches of Helen and Theonoë in particular, a
distinction is made between ‘the gods’ in the plural, and a single divine
force which is sometimes theos, sometimes daimon.”77 This force –
“the god” – is aligned with a patriarchal sense of justice (914).
Now that they have Theonoë’s support, Menelaus and Helen must
face the more serious threat posed by Theoclymenus, with whom a
new drama “of recognition and deception”78 begins. Helen’s sugges-
tion that Menelaus bring a false report of his own death to Theo-
clymenus (a ruse that Menelaus identifies as a stale theatrical device
[1056])79 begins a new series of role reversals for the reunited cou-
ple. Whereas before Helen was the victim of a false report, she now
employs the false report of her husband’s death to win their free-
dom.80 Whereas before Helen was the dupe of her false double, she
now devises a false double for Menelaus that will dupe Theoclymenus.
75
Holmberg, “Euripides’ Helen,” p. 37, argues that Theonoë, a figure gifted with divine
knowledge of the truth, “sanctions Helen’s deceit by herself engaging in concealment,
which only serves to uncover the truth.”
76
See comment by Dale, ed., Euripides’ Helen, p. 132, on lines 1013–16.
77
Pippin (Burnett), “Euripides’ Helen,” p. 161.
78
Bassi, “Tradition, Invention and Recognition,” p. 10.
79
Orestes employed the same trick in Aeschylus’ Libation-Bearers.
80
Downing, “Apatê, Agôn, and Literary Self-Reflexivity,” p. 11, suggests that Menelaus’
empty tomb “becomes the exact counterpart” to the eidôlon.
213
Helen cleverly suggests that her husband play the role of a sailor who
comes to report Menelaus’ death by drowning. She then convinces
Theoclymenus to allow her to honor her dead husband, whose corpse
is missing, by holding a “burial ceremony in empty robes” (1243). This
ruse convincingly demonstrates Helen’s control of the chain of substi-
tutions that make up the signifying process. The “empty robes” mark
or hold the place of the corpse of Menelaus, which is a fiction reported
by Menelaus himself, who is playing the role of his own fellow sailor.
Helen’s tremendous “semiotic power” could be threatening were it not
put in the service of her husband.81 The death of Menelaus that is not
a death recalls the ambiguous news that Teucer brought Helen about
her brothers: “They are dead, not dead [tethnâsi kai ou tethnâsi]. There
are two logô [words / accounts / interpretations] here” (138; my tran-
slation).
Indeed, on a large scale, the drama suspends two simultaneous
accounts, two different interpretations not only of Helen’s kleos and
character but also of the Trojan War and its significance. The private
tale of the couple’s intrigues now diverges from the public tale of the
suffering caused by the Trojan War. Whereas the chorus continues
to sing of the lives lost in vain, of the widows who cut their hair
in mourning (1121–4), all for a war-prize (geras) that was not a war-
prize (1134), Helen’s grief for her “dead, not dead” husband is now
only feigned. She adds a theatrical component to her skills in verbal
deception: cutting her hair, changing into black clothing, and scratch-
ing her cheek red (1087–9), she will mimic grief as convincingly as
her husband plays dead. Even as the chorus sings of the ambiguity
of human logos – “No man’s thought / I can speak of is ever clear.
The word of god only I found unbroken” (1149–50)82 – Helen and
Menelaus take advantage of this very ambiguity to make good their
escape. In a scene full of comic irony, using ambiguous language as an
“expression of intention and power,”83 Menelaus and Helen speak in
81
Holmberg, “Euripides’ Helen,” pp. 37–8, argues that Helen’s triumph results from her
“single-minded devotion to Menelaus.”
82
/ (3 * 5"$ / ) ) []
3 [" (Helen
1148–50).
83
Cf. Pippin (Burnett), “Euripides’ Helen,” p. 153.
214
double entendres to deceive the unwitting Theoclymenus. This scene

represents the victory of an Odyssean form of kleos based on subtlety
and indirection (advocated by Helen) over the aggressive, direct Iliadic
form (advocated by Menelaus).84
As they did with his sister, Helen and Menelaus play on Theo-
clymenus’ concern with preserving his reputation. Like Theonoë,
Theoclymenus readily adopts the Greek concept of kleos, although
he, unlike her, has been described as a ruthless barbarian.85 He meekly
complies with the supposed Greek custom that requires burial at sea,
proclaiming that he “cannot keep up with Greek usages” (1246) and
asking only that his guests bring a good report of him back to Greece
(1280–4). Menelaus and Helen readily exploit Theoclymenus’ new-
found good will and gullibility: they play on the ambiguity of the
signifier “husband” (posis) in such a way that Theoclymenus thinks
that they are referring to him when they really mean Menelaus (1205,
1288–9, 1294). The secret signs that Helen earlier said she would use to
reunite with her husband – “signs that no one else could recognize”
(291)86 – turn out to be the signs of language itself. In a particu-
larly clever example of ambiguous, coded language, Menelaus calls on
Helen to honor “the husband who is present” (ton paronta men, 1288)
and to let go the husband “who is no longer present” (ton de mêket’
ont’, 1289; my translations). These lines bring together the split iden-
tities of Menelaus as the absent husband, the husband who is dead in
name (cf. logô thanein; 1050, 1052), and the very much alive husband,
who will make his presence felt in the upcoming battle.
Theoclymenus’ servant will comment later on how well both
Menelaus and Helen play their respective roles: “[S]he mourned aloud,
most cleverly, for that husband who was by her side, by no means
84
See Foley, “Anodos Dramas,” for a fuller exposition of the question of the competition
between Iliadic and Odyssean forms of kleos in the play, and Gregory Nagy, The Best
of the Achaeans: Concepts of the Hero in Archaic Greek Poetry (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins
University Press, 1979), for the epic background of this competition.
85
See references to him as a tyrant (817) who is guilty of hubris (785) and who wields a
“savage [5#"5"’] sword” (864).
86
Helen’s reference to these secret signs recalls Penelope’s use of the trick of the bed –
something that only she and Odysseus knew about – as a means of confirming her
husband’s identity (Odyssey 23.177–80).
215
dead” (1528–9).87 The messenger’s later description of Menelaus as

“the supposed dead man” (ouket’ ôn logoisi, 1572) is a translation of a
phrase that means, literally, “the one who is no longer – in words.” But
the phrase could also be construed to mean “the one who is no longer
in words alone,” foreshadowing Menelaus’ return to the heroic ideal
of unity between word and deed. If before he was merely rumored
to have rescued Helen, now he has in fact done so. As with the two
senses of “husband,” so the two senses of kleos seem to come together
at the end of the play. Of course, the strangely eager acceptance of
Greek ideals by both Theoclymenus and Theonoë makes the couple’s
successful escape possible.
The drama reaches its climax with the messenger speech that relays
the news of the couple’s escape. With Menelaus onboard ship with
her, Helen is said to rally his crew to battle with the cry: “Where is
the glory of Troy? Show it to these barbarians” (1603–4; adapted). It is
as if Helen, too, is asking to be shown a glory that she has merely heard
about before. One answer the play offers to her question, “Where is the
glory of Troy?” is “in Egypt,” because that is where Menelaus finally
rescues the real Helen, reversing the portress’ rebuff (“You were a great
man there, but not here”) by resituating Troy in Egypt. After staging a
successful siege of Theoclymenus’ “fortress,” Menelaus recaptures his
abducted wife to gain glory in Egypt, not Troy.
The ending of the play again veers toward catastrophe, which is
averted only by a second deus ex machina. Theoclymenus, angered at
what he perceives to be his sister’s betrayal, vows to take vengeance on
her. Only the miraculous appearance of the Dioscuri stops him from
exacting his revenge. They assure him that his sister was obeying the
will of the gods, who ordained that Helen should be reunited with
Menelaus after Troy fell. Like his sister, who turns out to be a “true”
prophetess, Theoclymenus in the end proves “true” to his name, yield-
ing quickly to the will of the gods once it is made clear to him (1680–3).
The “truths” espoused by brother and sister alike are those promoted
by the Greek patriarchy: Theoclymenus, like Theonoë, keeps “the
righteous orders” of Zeus and the gods, according to the Dioscuri
87
(1 5" ' ( 8( / '( 8
"' ' (Helen
1528–9).
216
(1648–9). Their acceptance of the Greek concept of kleos and their

submission to the will of Greek gods help produce what appears to be
the full restoration of Helen’s name – a restoration that the Dioscuri
seem to confirm at the end of the play.88
In return for the temporary “theft” of her name, the Dioscuri ordain
two acts of compensatory naming: Helen, who had “lent her name”
to the gods during the war (1653), “shall be called a goddess” herself
at the end of her life (1667); moreover, an island off the coast of Attica
will be named “Helen, meaning Captive, for mankind hereafter”89 to
commemorate the spot where Hermes abducted her (1670–5). Pre-
sumably this dedication grants Helen the authentic reputation she had
been seeking, correcting the false report of her abduction by Paris.
Furthermore, the naming of an island after her seems to remove the
signifier “Helen” from the threat of dissemination by endowing it with
a divinely authorized, unitary, and transcendent meaning.
The ending of the drama, one may argue, salvages both Helen’s good
name and the glory of Troy. Indeed, Helen’s rallying cry, “Where is
the glory of Troy?” presents her rescue as a successful replay of the
Trojan War: now Menelaus rescues the real Helen from the “bar-
barian” Egyptians, who play the role of the Trojans. The pathos and
poignancy of Greek losses in the Trojan War are replaced by jubilation;
like Helen, Menelaus glories in the slaughter of the barbarians, whom
he urges the “flower of . . . Greece” to slash and slaughter (sphadsein
phoneuein barbarous, 1594), according to the messenger. Finally, Helen’s
reputation seems ensured by human and divine authority alike as both
Theoclymenus and Theonoë recognize the justice of Helen’s cause and
the Dioscuri memorialize her good name. Transcendent “fame” has
apparently been purged of the contingency and duplicity of “report.”
In showing “the glory of Troy” regained, this happy ending
enacts nostalgia for the panhellenic unity so notably missing in the
Peloponnesian War. The dangerous duplicity of the “simple name”
88
Foley, “Anodos Dramas,” p. 143, comments that Helen’s reputation “receives at the close
of the play both a divine defense and a lavish recognition from Theoklymenos.”
89
The Dioscuri’s phrase “for mankind hereafter” (
* 5", 1674) recalls a
similar phrase uttered by Homer’s Helen, when she claims that she and Paris suffered a
harsh fate in order to become objects of song “for men of the future” (; 7 ( /
"1 ( . . . *((8(, Iliad 6.357–8).
217
of heroic glory might have been all too apparent to the Athenians
watching the Helen in 412 b.c., only a year after the annihilation of
the Sicilian Expedition. Indeed, the chorus perhaps alludes to the
devastation wrought by the Peloponnesian War when it predicts that
violence will never leave the “cities [poleis] of men” if they rely on
weapons instead of words to resolve disputes (1155–60).90 The play’s
many poignant references to the tragedy of war remind us that kleos
is a signifier whose supposed transcendence is purchased at a terrible
cost in human life and suffering.91
This critique of the hollow ideals of war, however, is all but forgotten
in the midst of an ending that celebrates “a dubious victory against
unarmed barbarians.”92 Whereas the Hecuba, produced only a dozen or
so years earlier, encourages empathy for the Trojan women who were
the victims of war, the Helen reduces the Egyptian foes to subhuman
“savages” whose slaughter ensures Greek glory. This jingoistic ending
recalls the double plot of the Odyssey, in which the good triumph and
the bad are punished – the least tragic plot line for Aristotle (Poetics
1453a30–39).93
The ending provides a comic, self-consciously theatrical diversion
from the grim realities of war. Downing comments aptly that in
the Helen, Euripides probes the “illusion-inducing power of his own
work.”94 That things are not what they seem to be in the world of the
drama is confirmed by the frequent use of the formula “x = not x”
90
Seidensticker, Palintonos Harmonia, p. 198, considers that Euripides is making a direct
appeal to his audience in this ode – “beinahe wie in einer Komödien-Parabase.” For a
strikingly similar appeal, see Euripides’ Suppliant Women (747–50). Lesky, Greek Tragic
Poetry, p. 312, considers the second strophe of the ode to be a “vigorous protest crying
out in the maze of history against the madness of war.”
91
Cf. Goldhill, The Poet’s Voice, p. 71, who argues that in Homer, “kleos is to be gained in
exchange for the stake of the hero’s life and suffering.”
92
Foley, “Anodos Dramas,” p. 144. The victory of the famous Spartan hero and his reclaimed
wife over their non-Greek enemies may have had a panhellenic appeal for the Athenian
audience, however.
93
Other Odyssean overtones of the ending include Helen’s cleverness, which recalls Pene-
lope’s, as well as Menelaus’ transformation from downtrodden beggar to triumphant lord.
Menelaus even uses Odysseus’ trick of assuming another person’s identity to give a false
report of himself. See Holmberg, “Euripides’ Helen,” pp. 35, 39–40, for the argument
that Euripides creates a new “myth of female subjectivity” in granting his Helen the
power to drive the narrative action of the ending.
94
Downing, “Apatê, Agôn, and Literary Self-Reflexivity,” p. 9.
218
in the text: Helen’s kleos is not the kleos she deserves (270, 615); the
deeds apparently done in the Trojan War were not done (erg’ anerg’,
362); the war itself was fought over a geras that was not a geras (geras, ou
geras, 1134). The Helen seems to exemplify this formula on a large scale,
as its penetrating critique of heroic values gives way to a pleasurable
restoration of them.
The drama as a whole, however, deconstructs its nostalgic ending
by demonstrating the duplicity of heroic fame and the destructive-
ness of wars fought in pursuit of it. The drama exposes the internal
contradictions of the terms of the heroic code of the Iliad, contradic-
tions that lead to their negation.95 The play’s attempt to banish the
duplicitous element of kleos fails as surely as its attempts to exorcise
Helen’s waywardness. If Euripides presents Helen as a continual object
of men’s attempts to capture her in song as well as in war – as a figure
who is “forever abducted but never fully captured”96 – he presents
heroic kleos as an equally insecure possession, insofar as it is always
contingent on others’ “retelling” or “reports,” which themselves may
be suspect.97 False or misleading accounts may circulate for a variety
of innocent and not-so-innocent reasons, including the inherent lim-
itations of human language and perception, which petty and deceitful
gods can skew so easily.
Although the ending suggests that Menelaus is in full possession
of Helen and Helen is in full possession of her kleos, the play’s
Odyssean critique of Iliadic values counters this impression by privileg-
ing absence over presence in such Odyssean ruses as Menelaus’ playing
“the no-man and beggar.”98 Moreover, the fact that Helen’s rallying
cry, like the phantom’s parting address, is reported in a messenger
speech gives it the status of a kleos (in its sense as “hearsay”), putting it
at one remove from the immediate “reality” of the dramatic spectacle.
95
Cf. ibid., p. 3, on the play’s “almost obsessive” use of “gemination.”
96
97
The fact that the germ of Euripides’ critique of kleos is to be found in the Iliad is reinforced
by Michael Lynn-George, Epos: Word, Narrative, and the Iliad (Atlantic Highlands, NJ:
Humanities Press International, 1988), p. 271, who refers to the Iliad’s “awareness that
any such duration as aphthiton kleos [immortal glory] is dependent upon the discourse of
others.”
98
Cf. Foley, “Anodos Dramas,” p. 145.
219
By the time Helen asks to be shown “the glory of Troy,” the drama has
radically undermined the credibility of any act of showing, including
its own.99
Helen’s name remains double, even multiple – and potentially
duplicitous. The appearance of the Dioscuri at the end of the play
recalls the “two stories” circulating about them; like the “twinned”
Helen, the “divine Twins” have a twofold reputation. According to
Teucer, one of these stories – the one adopted by the ending of the
play – describes them (already twins, “likenesses” of each other) as
“likenesses,” imitations, like Helen: “Men say they have been made
[“likened to . . . ,” more literally] stars” (homoiôthente, 140).100 The same
Greek verb is used to describe Hera’s creation of the eidôlon (homoiôsas’,
33), the duplicitous act that caused Helen’s undeserved suffering. Like
Helen, then, the Dioscuri are fabled imitations of imitations whose
own mimetic status undermines the truth value of their address. Fur-
thermore, the dubious etymology101 they use in naming the island
after Helen points to the inevitable slippage involved in the signifying
process. Their commemoration of the status of Helen as “captive”
reminds us that she can never be fully “captive” in language; their act
of nomination undoes itself. In substituting the phantom for Helen,
Euripides calls attention both to the symbiotic relationship of his Helen
to Homer’s and to her symbolic role as an ongoing object of contention
by men, in both politics and poetics.102
99
Cf. Bassi, “Tradition, Invention and Recognition,” p. 6, who remarks that the play
implicitly asks “where and how can truth be located in what is only imitation and
doesn’t Euripides’ play itself fall under suspicion?”
100
(" ( 8 #( 1. (Helen 140)
101
In commemorating Helen’s status as a “captive” of Hermes, who abducted her from
Paris, the Dioscuri play on the similarity of the name “Helen” to the Greek root hel-
(from the aorist of F"8, “to capture”), an etymological link that in her commentary
on the play Dale, ed., Euripides’ Helen, p. 168 (n. on line 1673), calls “more than
usually far-fetched.” The play on Helen’s name recalls (and may have been inspired
by) the more sinister punning in Aeschylus’ Agamemnon, based on another meaning of
F"8, “to kill / destroy.” There, the chorus sings that Helen was aptly named, since
she became “a hell to ships, men, and cities” (!
8 a
" !
8- /
, 688–90).
For the Greek, see Denys Page, ed., Aeschyli: Septem Quae Supersunt Tragoedias (Oxford:
102
For a discussion of Helen as a “figure upon whom can be focused the problem of
imitation itself,” see Zeitlin, “Travesties of Gender and Genre,” p. 408.
220
The drama subtly calls attention to Helen’s status as a poetic con-

struct in both Homer’s text and Euripides’. The fact that kleos is con-
veyed by language – and thus participates in all of its inherent ambigu-
ities – means that no one version of Helen can be final and authorita-
tive. “Fame” remains infected by “report” as surely as Helen’s goodness
remains tainted by her eidôlon-traits. The drama as a whole deconstructs
the notion of a unitary, transcendent meaning of kleos by demonstrat-
ing the slippage between its two root meanings in Homer. Through its
many self-referential theatrical allusions, the Helen frequently under-
scores the fact that the “‘true’ or ‘false’ Helen, is in either case, an
imitation.”103 By the end of the play, the notion of a “real” Helen has
become so problematic that the redemption of both her name and the
glory of Troy can only be partial and paradoxical.
Helen’s kleos can no more be fully restored than the split in the
two senses of kleos can be fully resolved. As Pucci suggests, the very
act of repetition, which is the necessary condition of kleos, simulta-
neously subverts its truth value. Euripides’ drama shows that because
kleos is inevitably based on an absence, it is always subject to error and
distortion. Although the play purports to exonerate Helen, it ends
up appropriating her as a metaphor for the duplicity inherent in the
mimetic process – the process by which mythic figures are represented
and their fame transmitted. The commemoration of Helen’s status as
“captive” reminds us that Euripides himself has only temporarily bor-
rowed or stolen Helen’s name, and that she remains an object of future
mimetic activity.
Far from betraying anxiety about its own derivative, imitative status,
however, Euripides’ drama celebrates and has fun with it. Menelaus’
line, “There is pleasure in hardships heard about” (665), could be
read metaphorically to refer to the pleasure the audience may take
in Euripides’ play – the “new” Helen – which leaves behind both
the “old wounds” of the Trojan War (604) and the fresher wounds
of the Peloponnesian War. The play’s nostalgic impulse to restore a
lost grandeur is essentially conservative, reinforcing “male structures of
order and ‘truth’” by means of a Helen newly committed to preserving
103
Bassi, “Tradition, Invention and Recognition,” p. 8.
221
them.104 Indeed, the male playwright shows a remarkable affinity with

his female protagonist, whose ruse of a burial ceremony for a miss-
ing corpse epitomizes the art of theatrical inventiveness, an art that
conjures a simulacrum of presence out of “airy nothing.”105
104
Holmberg, “Euripides’ Helen,” p. 37.
105
In Shakespeare’s reference to the power of a “poet’s pen,” from A Midsummer Night’s
Dream 5.1.16.
222
EPILOGUE
The nostalgia expressed by Euripidean characters is also the drama’s

own, insofar as the plays offer themselves as an answer to the longing of
Athenian society for a simple, single “word of truth.” But Euripidean
drama undoes this claim even as it makes it, in that it reveals itself
as requiring the “clever medicine” of theatrical artifice to make its
case. This implicit failure lends at times poignancy and pathos, at times
tragicomic irony to the drama’s attempt to heal contemporary divisions
and revive lost glories.
We share the Euripidean nostalgia for an originary, autonomous,
and authoritative voice of truth that speaks clearly to all. As with
Athens’ shift from a “song culture” to a “book culture,” our shift
from the age of the book to the information age renders our own
nostalgia for a simple voice of truth both urgent and problematic.1
We, too, live in an age beset by revolutionary changes – political,
social, and moral – and our “intellectual revolution” has much in
common with theirs: “ . . . the relativism, the abandonment or reversal
of previously accepted standards, the permissiveness, the widespread
diversity of opinion.”2 Like the Athenians of Euripides’ age, we pride
ourselves on our rationality and inventiveness, even as we fear relying
1
High-tech cultures using electronic devices that depend on print and writing develop
new forms of orality, according to Walter J. Ong, Orality and Literacy: The Technologizing
of the Word (London and New York: Routledge, 1982), p. 11. In Acting Like Men, p. 46,
Karen Bassi argues that nostalgia for orality “may well be a necessary and even predictable
feature of the proliferation of literate (including electronic) technologies.”
2
Although written in an earlier historical moment, the comparison by W. K. C. Guthrie,
“The First Humanists,” p. 22, is still apt.
223
EPILOGUE
on these powers too much. In postmodern America as in ancient

Athens, a great chasm divides an elite corps of scientists and intellectuals
from the masses of people who reject science and logic in favor of
mystic practices and traditional religion.
We also maintain a certain faith in rhetoric as the foundation of
our system of government, even as we share a distrust of its potential
for abuse. Our ambivalence has become more pronounced with the
advent of new technologies – everything from cell phones to Internet
and video conferencing – that have all but eliminated the need for
face-to-face contact and for a living exchange of voices.
Like the Athenian elite, who believed that the new “technology”
of sophistic argumentation would ensure better functioning of their
democracy, we have great confidence in our new technology. The
power of television, radio, and now the Internet to disseminate infor-
mation rapidly across the country makes possible a better-informed
citizenry. Televised debates between candidates for local and national
office bring issues to voters’ own living rooms. Other forums such
as electronic town meetings, talk back and call-in television shows,
and radio talk shows allow average Americans to make their voices
heard and to participate more fully in the democratic process. New
computerized voting machines using touch screens will, it is thought,
enable citizens to cast their votes in a more timely and accurate
way.
The new technology promises not only to broaden the democratic
franchise but also to make knowledge universally available to our cit-
izenry. Web sites operated by government, business, and universities
offer a tremendous amount of information to anyone with Internet
access, which is now available at no cost at public libraries across the
country. Moreover, the Internet fosters the free exchange of ideas glob-
ally, holding out hope for more rapid scientific advances, better inter-
national relations, and wider dissemination of democratic principles
and practices.
Yet the same technological capacities that allow us to project our
voice and presence instantly across the continent – and the world –
have inspired not only confidence but also anxiety. Perhaps one sign
of this anxiety – and the nostalgia for oral culture that underlies it –
is the pervasive use of metaphors of the voice in a society that has
224
EPILOGUE
become adept at reproducing, simulating, and replacing the human

voice. We may glimpse this nostalgia in the informality of such terms as
online “chat rooms,” the colloquial language used in “voice mail” and
electronic mail messages, and the folksy tone of programmed voices
that “converse” with callers.3 The casual diction used in these venues
may veil anxiety about a technological culture increasingly able to
replicate not only our voice but also our image.
The all-pervasive marketing of “image” in American business,
advertising, and politics, along with the growing problem of virtual
identity theft, makes Euripides’ Helen seem uncannily relevant to our
own age, as does the growing likelihood that human beings will one
day be cloned and cyborgs manufactured. Like Helen, we may worry
that phantom images of ourselves may deprive us of our unique human
identity; like Menelaus, we may no longer be able to distinguish image
from reality because of the pervasiveness of digitally created or modi-
fied images. Indeed, the blurring of the line between the human and
the nonhuman, the real and the synthetic, through high technology
puts a postmodern spin on questions posed by a number of Euripidean
plays, not solely the Helen: in an age in which “likeness to us is the
measure and proof of a humanity that once was, and is no longer,”4
how do we distinguish between original and copy, true and counterfeit
versions, authentic and deceptive voices?
Like the ancient Athenians, we, too, have become increasingly
skeptical about whether the “twofold strife of debate,” amplified and
disseminated as it is by technological means, really can lead to truth and
justice in the political and legal arenas. The tendency of lawyers, politi-
cians, and media representatives to argue both sides of a question only
increases this skepticism, as do the increasing rancor and shallowness of
our political discourse. Whether conducted in Congress, at the work-
place, on street corners, or in cyberspace, whether aired on television
or radio, political debate in this country all too easily degenerates
3
I am thinking of certain computer programs used in obtaining directory assistance that
invite callers to repeat their request for information by saying, “I didn’t get that.”
4
Elissa Marder, “Blade Runner’s Moving Still,” Camera Obscura 27 (1991): 97. In interpret-
ing the film’s portrayal of androids, Marder goes on to argue that they are “[d]oubles of life
which, in their doubling and their difference from it, carve out an image of ‘humanity’
through which humans attempt to see themselves as human” (pp. 97–8).
225
EPILOGUE
into shouting matches, competing sound bites, and ad hominem com-

ments, with each side eager to oversimplify, distort, or dismiss the
other side’s position.
Eteocles’ assertion that “nothing is like or equal among men / except
names – and names are not facts” seems as apt a description of our
own historical moment as it does of the fifth century b.c.: how does
a democracy adjudicate conflicting claims to justice, truth, and equal
rights when its people can’t agree on the meaning of those terms – or
even on the possibility of defining them clearly?5 The balanced, fruitful
form of debate praised by Pericles in the Funeral Oration seems an
unattainable ideal in what has become an “argument culture.”6
Indeed, “culture wars” are raging here, just as they did in ancient
Athens, concerning a similar set of questions: Are there objective truths
that transcend politics and history? Can the meaning of words, espe-
cially of value terms, be fixed and clear? Can debates about the justice
of our democracy and the political, economic, and military power
it should project in the world ever be finally resolved? The divide
between modern-day absolutists and relativists, traditionalists and post-
modernists, seems as wide as that which divided the Platonists and
sophists in ancient times.
The growing prevalence and stridency of debate have inspired in
contemporary America, just as they did in ancient Athens, a longing
for truths perceived to be simple, self-evident, and universal. We, too,
yearn for a clear voice of truth that will resolve complex new moral
and social dilemmas, a yearning that can be detected in both political
discourse and popular culture. Well before the attacks of September 11,
politicians called for national unity, vowed to restore traditional moral-
ity, and pledged to renew our lost greatness. A nostalgia for a bygone
age of heroism also pervaded our popular media. One thinks, for
5
In an op-ed piece appearing in the New York Times about a month after the September
11 attack (“Condemnation without Absolutes,” October 15, 2001; p. A23), Stanley Fish
warned against the use of “the empty rhetoric of universal absolutes to which all subscribe
but which all define differently.” The longing for the simple truths of an idealized oral
culture runs in parallel with a militaristic tradition that extends from Homer to the present
day, according to Karen Bassi, Acting Like Men, pp. 49–50.
6
A phrase coined by Deborah Tannen that appears in the title of her book, The Argument
Culture: Stopping America’s War of Words.
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EPILOGUE
example, of the recent spate of films and books that paid homage to
“the greatest generation” of Americans who fought in World War II.7
Our nostalgia for simple, clear patriotic values has only become
more fervent following the attacks of September 11, as we, like the
ancient Athenians, have undertaken a war, and confront the prospect of
future wars, in order to defend our imperial interests. The description
of the “war on terror” as a conflict between good and evil, in which
other nations must choose sides, implicitly lays claim to the status of a
transcendent “word of truth” or “just voice”; by employing it, political
leaders seek to rally their constituencies around clear moral judgments
in a time of crisis.
But, as we have seen in the case of Polyneices, there are risks in
claiming that one’s position makes its own case. Such rhetoric can,
for example, be used to dismiss dissenting voices as unpatriotic and
to avoid examining the justice of one’s own position and conduct.
Although surely America has the right to defend itself against those
who perpetrated the September 11 attacks, serious debate can take
place about the best means of doing so. Clearly defining the enemy
and the objective of so unconventional a war as a “war on terror”
creates vexing moral dilemmas.8 In seeking to hold the global alliance
against terror together, for example, we may, on the grounds of fight-
ing terrorism, find ourselves supporting regimes that brutally sup-
press dissident groups. We may also find ourselves guilty of “dou-
ble speaking” in calling for new democratic governments in regimes
that oppose us while ignoring autocratic governments in regimes that
support us.9
Given that there can be no condoning of terrorist acts, there is a
danger in equating moral virtue with one’s own national interests, as
we have seen in the case of the Athenian empire. Attaining a simple,
clear, and just policy in the shifting and intricate world of Realpolitik
7
A phrase used as the title of a recent book by Tom Brokaw, The Greatest Generation (New
York: Random House, 1998).
8
In an op-ed article (“Real Battles and Empty Metaphors,” New York Times, September
10, 2001, p. A31), Susan Sontag criticizes the president’s declaration of “war” against “a
multinational, largely clandestine network of enemies” as an attempt to arrogate unlimited
military powers for his administration.
9
The point of an editorial entitled “Double Talk on Democracy,” New York Times, October
6, 2002, “Week in Review” (section 4), p. 12.
227
EPILOGUE
may be more difficult than some American politicians have implied.

Adding to the difficulty is the fact that the “twofold strife of debate”
is now played out in a global forum, one in which “our adversaries lay
claim to the same language” and employ the same “abstract notions
of justice and truth” as we do.10 Euripidean drama, then, foreshadows
aspects of our postmodern condition in combining nostalgia for a
lost voice of truth and justice with the suspicion that every voice is
inevitably politicized, subjective, and self-serving.
The escapism of Euripidean drama produced in the last decade of the
Peloponnesian War also foreshadows trends in our own contemporary
culture. Predictions that the attacks of September 11 would eliminate
or curtail the frivolity and violence of our entertainment industry
have proven to be unfounded. Like the Athenians of Euripides’ day,
oppressed as they were by economic hardships and the perils of war,
we are indulging more than ever in socially conservative romantic
melodramas reminiscent of Euripides’ Helen and Ion. For example,
many of our most popular movies and television shows contain a
Euripidean-style blend of violence or danger, complicated plots, self-
conscious theatricality, and happy endings (though they typically lack
Euripides’ artistry and philosophical depth). “Catastrophe survived,”
a phrase that epitomizes the nature of most of late Euripidean drama,11
is the overriding theme of many examples of the so-called reality TV
genre.
Unlike the popular entertainment of our own day, however, Euripi-
dean drama exhibits a freedom of intellectual inquiry and imaginative
energy that belie its conservative, nostalgic side. In celebrating the
power of its own playful inventiveness, late Euripidean theater, there-
fore, also anticipates the postmodern impulse toward “the Nietzschean
affirmation, that is the joyous affirmation of the play of the world and
of the innocence of becoming, the affirmation of a world of signs
without fault, without truth, and without origin.”12
10
Stanley Fish, “Condemnation without Absolutes.”
11
The phrase is drawn from the title of a book on late Euripidean drama by Anne Pippin
Burnett, Catastrophe Survived: Euripides’ Plays of Mixed Reversal.
12
Derrida, Writing and Difference, p. 292.
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240
GENERAL INDEX
See the Citation Indexes for references to specific lines in ancient works.
Abrahamson, Ernst L., 107 alêtheia defined as truth/absence of

absence and presence forgetfulness, 22
Derrida Allan, William, 15
on desire for purity of presence and Anaximander, 26
self-presence in speech, 35 ancient Greek world, Euripides’ work
on “metaphysics of presence,” 5–7, reflecting, 1, 223. See also Athenian
7n17 empire; intellectual revolution in
in Helen, 215, 219, 221 Greek world; Peloponnesian War
in Ion hospitality, reciprocity, and other
apparent silence/absence of Apollo traditional Greek customs,
balanced by actual continuous Hecuba’s nostalgic appeal to, 121,
presence, 151–6, 172 122
Creusa’s absence from herself, 160–1, panhellenic unity, Helen exhibiting
172, 175 Greek nostalgia for, 217
dichotomy between truth/justice and Andromache (Euripides), nostos theme as
duplicity of Apollo and oracle, used in, 20n48
183–7 Antigone in Phoenician Women (Euripides),
female presence, suppression and critique of brothers’ rigidity and
appropriation of, 153, 169–70, 176, refusal to compromise by, 18
180, 182 Antigone (Sophocles), 77
Ion’s longing for his absent mother, Antilogoi (Protagoras), 77n15
172 Antiphon, On Truth, 50–1, 53
naming’s power to evoke presence, Apollo. See Ion
173 Apology (Plato), 25, 143
“metaphysics of presence,” 5, 7n17, 40, Apology (Xenophon), 21
150, 169, 192 archaic texts, nostalgia for idealized past in,
Adkins, Arthur W. H., 125 33–42
Aeschylus. See also specific works argument and rhetoric. See intellectual
in Aristophanes’ Frogs, 11–13 revolution in Greek world; rhetoric
on divinity of justice, 41–2 aristocratic belief system
Nietzsche on, 27 Hippolytus’ treatment of, 78, 79, 83, 85,
Ajax (Sophocles), 126 102
241
GENERAL INDEX
aristocratic belief system (cont.) Helen, body, name, and identity in, 203,
in Thucydides, 101 207–9
Aristophanes. See also specific works Phaedra’s body as signifier in Hippolytus,
anxiety about intellectual revolution in 64–5, 86n43, 87, 89, 90, 91
Greek world and nostalgia for Boedeker, Deborah, 56, 66
traditional values expressed in, 51, “book culture.” See transformation from
52, 53–5 “song culture” to “book culture”
Euripides as portrayed by, 1, 11–13, 15, Burnett, Anne Pippin, 158, 169, 204, 213
55, 61 Bush, George, 31
Euripides’ drama epitomizing discursive Buxton, R. G. A., 105
practice of comedy of, 1
Hecuba’s arguments against sophistry Cassandra’s concubinage, Hecuba’s
and, 142–3 rhetorical use of, 134–6
Aristotle, 1, 130, 218 Cleisthenes, 13
artistic imagery Cleobis and Biton, 129n65
in Hecuba, 128n64 Cleon’s speech in Mytilenean Debate,
in Helen, 198 98–100
in Ion, 186 Clouds (Aristophanes), 51, 53–5, 142–3
Athenian empire. See also Peloponnesian commodity/object, Helen in Helen as,
War 193, 219, 220
“Golden Age,” contradiction between conservative tendencies of Euripidean
myth and reality in, 128 drama, 15–18, 69–70, 183
Ion as justification of hegemony of, 156, Corcyra, Thucydides’ account of civil war
157, 170, 181, 184 in, 51, 55–7, 83, 100–1, 110
Melos, reduction of, 17, 112, 112n28, Creusa. See Ion
113, 119, 120, 123, 131, 148, 161, criterion of probability
188 law courts, use in, 47–8
Mytilenean Debate, 84, 98–100, Thucydides’ adoption of, 46
100n76, 119 Croesus, myths of, 42
nostalgia for former glories of, 20 “culture wars,” ancient and modern, 8, 30,
Pericles’ justification of, 17 30n73, 31–2, 226
Plataea, siege of, 112, 112n28, 113, 143
politics and power valued more than debate and rhetoric. See intellectual
justice and truth in, 18, 97–103, revolution in Greek world; rhetoric
113, 119, 123 deconstruction
semiotic crisis in late fifth century, concept of difference
nostalgia emerging from, 73–5 Eteocles of Phoenician Women and, 7
Sicilian Expedition, 17, 188, 218 female characters and, 63
tyranny and brutality of, 17, 112, 117 Pandora and, 63
atopia, 110 Phaedra in Hippolytus and, 79
Atreus, myth associated with, 41–2 of divine voice of truth, 44, 149, 185
of kleos or heroic fame, 149, 217–22
Bacchae (Euripides), 206 of law in ancient and postmodern
Barrett, W. S., 95 worlds, 50–1, 53
Bassi, Karen, 46, 55, 58, 196, 201 of single, simple “word of truth,” 7, 31,
Bergren, Ann L. T., 62 32
Blade Runner (movie), 225n4 of traditional values, 70, 144
the body Delphic Oracle. See Ion
in Hecuba (See Hecuba) democracy
242
GENERAL INDEX
Euripides associated with, 12–14 substitution and surrogacy

of sophists, 13–14, 85 duping of Theoclymenus in Helen,
trial in Hecuba alluding to values of, 140 214
vote on Polyxena’s sacrifice in Hecuba as eidôlon in Helen (See eidôlon in Helen
perversion of, 118–27 and themes of substitution and
Derrida, Jacques doubling)
on desire for purity of presence and in Ion, 154, 162–3, 179, 187
self-presence in speech, 35 of tragedy, 60, 61
divine word as center and origin, 150, truth’s double-edged nature in
150n9 Hippolytus, 92
on meaning of signifiers, 192
on metaphysics of presence, 5–7, 7n17, eidôlon in Helen and themes of substitution
40 and doubling, 188–95
on opposition between spoken and doubleness of Helen’s own rhetoric,
written discourse, 51–2 196–201
pharmakon as analyzed by, 7 final speech and disappearance of
on transcendental signified, 6 eidôlon, 209–10
Detienne, Marcel, 22, 22n51, 22n52, 24, Helen’s name as type of eidôlon, 193
24n56, 192 kleos, eidôlon as embodiment of, 191
difference, concept of. See under Menelaus’ non-recognition of Helen,
deconstruction 203–9
Dioscuri in Helen, 220 Theonoë, 197
divine voice or authority. See gods traditionally duplicitous character of
Dougherty, Carol, 156, 170 Helen and, 194, 200
Downing, Eric, 196, 197, 218 Electra (Euripides), criticism of gods in,
drama. See theater 146n1
duplicities and dualities Encomium on Helen (Gorgias), 54, 84, 133,
“double speaking” 211, 211n71
in Hecuba, 111 enlightenment, Greek. See intellectual
in Helen, 195–201 revolution in Greek world
in Hippolytus, 95–7, 102–3 epistemological inquiry
Plato on sophistic fondness for female characters in Euripidean drama
“double argument,” 44 allied with, 67
Thucydides’ concerns regarding, Greek tragedy and, 60, 67
55–8 in Helen, 67, 68, 197, 203–9
female characters’ association with in Ion, 160, 160n30, 168, 173, 185
duplicity (See female characters) escapism
gods, duplicity of, 24–5, 78, 146–50, of Helen, 188, 189n2, 195
177, 183–7 of Ion, 148, 156
holistic vs. dualistic worldviews in postmodern attraction to, 228
Phoenician Women, 8–11 Eteocles. See Phoenician Women, debate
“just voice” in Hippolytus between Polyneices and Eteocles in
opposing pairs set up by, 76, 97 Euripides’ poetics of nostalgia, 1–2, 223.
paradoxical treatment of status of, See also specific plays and more
75–9, 95–7 specific topics
Muses, potential truthfulness/duplicity Aristophanes’ portrayal of Euripides, 1,
of, 36, 38n12, 191, 212 11–13, 15, 55, 61
postmodern anxiety regarding, 28, blend of skepticism and nostalgia as
225 source of tragic power, 1
243
GENERAL INDEX
Euripides’ poetics (cont.) Phaedra’s body as signifier in

classificatory issues presented by, 20 Hippolytus, 64–5, 86n43, 87, 89,
comic elements in late dramas, 148 90, 91
conservative tendencies of Euripides, commodity/object, Helen in Helen as,
15–18, 69–70, 183 193, 219, 220
different forms of expression of, 19–20 critique of assumption of female
female characters and, 61–9, 70 duplicity, 66
Helen, affinity of Euripides with male aggression and sexuality linked in
character of, 222 Hecuba, 109, 128–30
radical innovator, Euripides viewed as, Medea’s critique of traditional Greek
11–15 misogyny, 65–7
Thucydides’ parallels with (See on reinforcement of patriarchal agendas
Thucydides’ parallels with in Euripides, 63n83
Euripides) “semiotic power” (See “semiotic
explicit nostalgia, expressions of, 19 power” of females)
sophistic distinctions between
female characters physis/nomos and onoma/pragma
association with duplicity used by, 30
as commentary on nature of truth, Foley, Helene P., 193
67–9, 70 Ford, Andrew, 10n22, 12n27, 42n24
feminist critique of, 66 Frogs (Aristophanes), Euripides as
in Hecuba, 139, 141, 141n99, 143 portrayed in, 11–13, 61
in Helen (See Helen) Funeral Oration of Pericles, 10, 45,
in Hippolytus (See Hippolytus) 100n76, 226
in Ion, 67, 69, 177, 184
association with rhetoric Gamel, Mary-Kay, 181, 184
as commentary on nature of truth, gods
61–9 continuing belief in and nostalgia for,
Hecuba and Polyxena in Hecuba, 20–5
114–15, 118, 123n49, 127–34, Derrida on centrality of divine word,
134n80, 136n88, 142–4 150, 150n9
Helen and eidôlon in Helen, 195–201 duplicity of, 24–5, 78–9, 146–50, 177,
“democratic” tendencies in Euripides 183–7
evinced by treatment of, 12–14 Euripides’ skepticism about nature and
epistemological inquiry, allied with, 67 existence of, 12
Muses, potential truthfulness/duplicity in Hecuba
of, 36, 38n12, 191, 212 absolute moral law attributed to, 131,
as reinforcing patriarchal agendas, 63n83 132n73, 132–3, 137
representation, problem of, 62 doubts expressed about existence of,
“semiotic power” of (See “semiotic 104n2, 128
power” of females) Hecuba’s effort to invest own voice
feminist theory, 68n90 with authority of, 137
appropriation and suppression of female nonappearance and silence of, 106,
presence in Ion, 153, 169–70, 176, 106n6
180, 182, 184 in Helen
the body Dioscuri, significance of, 220
in Hecuba, (See under Hecuba) single divine force in, 213
Helen, body, name and identity in, skepticism about gods’ truthfulness
203, 207–9 and motives in, 196
244
GENERAL INDEX
Theoclymenus’ obedience to, 216 “all speech” passage, 105, 109, 113–4,
in Hippolytus 136–7
“double speaking” of gods in, disembodied ghost of Polydorus,
93–4 115–16
duality of divine discourse, 78–9, disruption of natural order, Hecuba’s
93–4 body as metaphor for, 136–7
Homeric portrayal of, 132 frailty of Hecuba, 116–7, 127
in Ion, 146–50 (See also Ion) insistence on reality of body’s pain in
“just voice” of, 20–5, 38, 78 war, 107
justice of divine speech in archaic male aggression and sexuality linked,
poetry, 37–42 109, 128–30, 134–6
Phoenician Women, Polyneices’ “word of Cassandra’s concubinage, Hecuba’s
truth” in, 3–5, 20–5, 35–7 rhetorical use of, 134–6
skepticism about, 12, 196 dog, transformation of Hecuba into,
truth of divine speech in archaic poetry, 144–5, 145n102
35–7 “double speaking” in, 111
Goff, Barbara E., 75, 91, 94 female duplicity in, 139, 141, 141n99
“Golden Age” gods in (See gods)
Athenian empire, contradiction Helen compared, 188, 195
between myth and reality in, heroic values critiqued in, 118, 118n41,
128 129n66
Hesiod’s myth of, 35, 41n19 Polyxena as ironic embodiment of,
Homeric nostalgia for, 34 126–7, 128–9
Goldhill, Simon, 48 Hippolytus’ desire for simple justice
Gorgias, 5n7, 45, 49–50, 50n47, 54, 84, mirrored in, 137n90, 142
133–4, 211, 211n71 Odysseus, Hecuba’s plea to, 118–27
Gorgias, Plato, 45, 48 Peloponnesian War reflected in, 104,
Gorgon’s blood in Ion, 157, 172, 176 109, 112
Greek world. See ancient Greek world, rationalization of injustice and
Euripides’ work reflecting hypocrisy in, 106–7, 108, 117, 118,
Gregory, Justina, 79, 94 118n41, 127–39, 140, 144–5
Grene, David, 89 reciprocity, hospitality, and other
Grube, G. M. A., 17 traditional Greek customs,
Guthrie, W. K. C., 47, 49, 202 nostalgic appeal to, 121, 122, 131,
131n71
Havelock, Eric A., 9n20, 10n22, 37n8, revenge on Polymestor, 139
38n10, 42n24, 49n42, 58n67, rhetoric as used by Hecuba in, 114–15,
60n70, 74n6 123n49, 134n80, 136n88, 142–4
Hecuba (Euripides) simple justice of past, nostalgia for,
absolute moral law, nostalgia for, 131, 113–14, 142, 143
132n73, 132–3, 137, 142 Talthybius, 127–30
Achilles’ bestiality in, 109, 117, 118 as “theater of cruelty,” 107–8
Agamemnon Thucydidean parallels with concerns of,
Hecuba’s plea to, 131–9 109, 112, 113, 119–20, 122–3,
rationalization of injustice and 131–2, 143, 145
hypocrisy by, 106–7, 108, 117, trial scene in, 140–4
138–9 violence, prophecy of Polymestor
artistic images in, 128n64 predicting ongoing cycle of,
the body in 144–5, 145n102
245
GENERAL INDEX
Hecuba (Euripides) (cont.) metaphysics of presence challenged in,

vote on Polyxena’s sacrifice as corrupt 192
exercise in unjust power politics, names in (See names and naming)
118–27 panhellenic unity, Greek nostalgia for,
war, as indictment of, 104 217
warping of justice in, 108 Peloponnesian War reflected in, 189n2,
wolf imagery in, 117 217, 221
Helen (Euripides), 188–95 postmodern parallels, 228
absence and presence in, 215, 219, 221 sense-perception, doubts about
beauty of Helen as problematic, 196–9, reliability of, 197, 201–4, 208
209 sophists’ doubt about certain knowledge
body, name, and identity in, 203, 207–9 reflected in, 202, 205n51
classificatory issues presented by Theoclymenus
Euripidean tragedies, 20 drama of recognition and deception
commodity/object, Helen as, 193, 219, played out with, 213–16
220 name, significance of, 197
Dioscuri, significance of, 220 Theonoë (Eido)
eidôlon of Helen (See eidôlon in Helen and as counterpart or doubling of Helen,
themes of substitution and 212–13
doubling) name(s), significance of, 197
escapist tendencies of, 188, 189n2, truth in (See truth)
195 war as critiqued by, 195, 209, 211,
female characters’ association with 217–18
duplicity Heraclitus, 26, 151
as commentary on nature of truth, Herington, John, 9n20, 60n70
67–9 Herodotus on divinity of justice, 42
Helen and her eidôlon, 194, 200, 210 heroic values
nature of drama and, 203 Hecuba’s critique of, 118, 118n41,
gods in (See gods) 129n66
Hecuba and Trojan Women compared to, Achilles’ bestiality, 117, 118
188, 195 Polyxena as ironic embodiment of,
homecoming (nostos), nostalgia 126–7, 128–9
expressed as yearning for, 19, 20 kleos in Helen (See kleos or heroic fame
Homer in Helen)
ending of Helen recalling plot of Odyssean vs. Iliadic, 215
Odyssey, 218, 218n93 postmodern nostalgia for, 226–8
Helen in Homer vs. Helen in Helen, Hesiod
193, 199, 202, 203, 220 as divinely inspired, 26, 38
heroic values subverted, 191, 193, equivalence of justice and truth in, 42
195, 211, 219 female characters’ association with
Menelaus in Homer vs. Menelaus in duplicity as commentary on nature
Helen, 205 of truth, 62–3, 66, 69
Odyssean vs. Iliadic kleos, 215, 219 gods as represented by, 21, 24, 26,
Penelope and Helen, parallels 212
between, 202, 202n45, 215n86, justice as divine gift in, 37, 40–1
218n93 nostalgia in, 33, 35
Ion compared, 148–9, 173 Stoics on, 23
kleos or heroic fame (See kleos or heroic truth as divine in, 37–9
fame in Helen) Hippolytus (Euripides), 71–9
246
GENERAL INDEX
aristocratic belief system in, 78, 79, 83, plot of, 71–3
85, 102 recent critical approaches to, 75,
body of Phaedra as signifier in, 64–5, 75n7
86n43, 87, 89, 90, 91 silence as used in, 82, 86–7, 87n47, 88,
curse as ultimate representation of “just 92, 95, 95n69
voice” in, 91 Thucydides compared, 74, 83, 84,
female characters’ association with 97–103
duplicity trial structure of, 72n3
as commentary on nature of truth, truth
64–5 double-edged nature of, 71–3, 76,
by Hippolytus, 87–8 92, 94, 102
Phaedra’s character and, 79–81 failure to recognize other forms of,
revelations undermining assumption 91
of, 96, 96n72, 97 falsehoods masquerading as, 86, 87
gods mythic truth vs. practices of
“double speaking” by, 93–4 deliberation and inquiry, 74, 102
duality of divine discourse, 73n5, opposing truths of Artemis and
78–9, 93–4 Aphrodite, 102
Hecuba mirroring desire for simple History (Thucydides). See Thucydides
justice of, 137n90, 142 homecoming (nostos), nostalgia expressed
homecoming (nostos), nostalgia as yearning for
expressed as yearning for, 20 etymology of nostalgia and, 33
implicit nostalgia, expressions of, 19 as Euripidean theme, 19, 20, 20n48
intellectual revolution in Greek world in Homer’s Odyssey, 33–5
and, 73–5, 76 Homer. See also Iliad; Odyssey
irony in, 91, 95 divine speech as truth in, 35–7
“just voice” in as divinely inspired, 25
assignment of, 77, 90 gods as represented by, 21, 24, 26
dualities set up by concept of, 76, Helen and (See Helen)
97 heroic values of (See heroic values)
house as patriarchal image of, 83–4 justice in, 38
impossibility of finding, 78, 79, moral instruction provided by, 25
95–7 nostalgia in, 33–5
paradoxical treatment of (See Stoics on, 23
“paradoxical treatment of status of subversion of heroic values in Helen,
just voice in,” this entry) 189–90, 193
as second, supplementary voice, 19, Homeric Hymn to Delian Apollo (Hesiod),
72, 73–4, 114 39
as ventriloquized voice of cult of Homeric Hymn to Pythian Apollo (Hesiod),
seers, 73n5 39
yearning for simplicity and clarity of, hyperbolê, 110
19, 71–9, 114
paradoxical treatment of status of “just Iliad (Homer), 24, 124
voice” in, 75–9 divine speech as truth in, 35–7
by Artemis and Aphrodite, 93–4 Helen’s Helen vs. Helen of, 199
by Hippolytus, 87–93 Helen’s subversion of heroic values of,
by nurse, 80, 84–6 189–90, 193, 195, 211, 215, 219
by Phaedra, 79–87 Odyssean vs. Iliadic heroic values, 215,
by Theseus, 70, 89–92 219
247
GENERAL INDEX
image and reality, concerns about Athenian hegemony justified in, 156,
in Euripides’ Greece (See substitution 157, 170, 181, 184, 187
and surrogacy) centrality of Delphic oracle in, 150,
in postmodern world, 225, 225n4 150n9, 153
implicit nostalgia, expressions of, 19 character of Apollo, contradictions of,
intellectual revolution in Greek world. See 146n1, 149, 150–9, 164, 183–7
also rhetoric; sophistry conservative tenor of, 183
Aristophanes’ anxiety regarding, 27, 51, cradle and tokens in, 156, 175–6
52, 53–5 criticism of gods in, 146, 146n1,
Euripides as radical innovator vs. 150–67, 170–2
Euripides as conservative in distortion of meaning of justice by Ion
relationship to, 11–18 and Creusa, 175
Hecuba’s use of rhetoric reflecting, duplicitous nature of Apollo’s oracle in,
123n49, 127–8, 131–4, 134n80, 147, 147n3, 149, 150–6, 168, 177,
136–7, 142–4 183–7
Hippolytus reflecting, 73–6 escapist tendencies of, 148, 156
Ion female characters’ association with
fallibility of human knowledge and duplicity in, 67, 69, 177, 184
judgment dramatized in, 155, 157, female presence, suppression and
160, 170, 171, 175 appropriation of, 153, 170, 176,
skepticism of Euripides’ period 180, 182, 184
reflected in, 152, 160, 186 Gorgon’s blood given by Erichthonius
Socratic dialogue, elements of play to Creusa, 157, 172, 176
resembling, 152, 165 happy ending and comic elements,
language and meaning as object of study effect of, 148, 156
in, 3–5, 27 Helen compared, 148–9, 173
Phoenician Women homecoming (nostos), nostalgia
clash of worldviews in, 8–11 expressed as yearning for, 19,
Eteocles as sophist, 4–5 20
Plato’s anxiety regarding, 51, 52, 58–61 idealized view of gods and oracle
poetic language of older “song culture” expressed in, 158–9, 160
exploited by, 26 irony in, 148, 150, 160, 163, 171, 173,
political implications of, 31–2 174, 185
postmodern parallels to, 10, 223–4 (See naming, power of, 169–70, 173, 176,
also postmodern world, Euripides’ 180, 181
work reflecting) Peloponnesian War and, 148, 162,
problems and conflicts raised by 162n34, 181
Euripides’ use of, 25–7, 42–51, 69–70 phonocentric tradition, subversion of,
widespread anxiety regarding, 149, 158, 165
49–53 plot of, 146–8
Thucydides’ anxiety regarding, 51, 52, postmodern parallels, 228
55–8, 74 skepticism of Euripides’ age reflected in,
transformation from “song culture” to 152, 160, 186
“book culture” (See transformation Socratic dialogue, elements of play
from “song culture” to “book resembling, 152, 165
culture”) Sophocles’ Oedipus cycle contrasted,
Ion (Euripides), 146–50 168n48, 178n68
absence and presence as motif in (See substitution and surrogacy as motif of,
absence and presence) 154, 162–3, 179, 187
248
GENERAL INDEX
Thucydidean parallels with concerns of, truth, equivalency with, 42

148, 161–2, 162n34, 175
truth/duplicity of Apollo and oracle, Kastely, James L., 124, 124n50, 137
155–6, 170, 172, 175, 178–83 kleos or heroic fame in Helen, 188–95
Ion (Plato), persistence of oral culture deconstruction of, 149, 217–22
demonstrated in, 43 final rallying cry and rescue of Helen,
Ionesco’s “La Cantatrice chauve” and 216, 217
Euripides’ Helen, parallels between, Helen’s own reputation, 204, 210,
208n58 220–1
Iphigenia in Aulis (Euripides) Iliad, subversion of heroic values of, 191,
criticism of gods in, 146n1 193, 195, 211, 215, 219
Polyxena in Hecuba and Iphigenia in, Menelaus and, 204–9
128n63, 128n64 Odyssean vs. Iliadic, 215, 219
Iphigenia in Tauris (Euripides) sense-perception, doubts about
criticism of gods in, 146n1 reliability of, 202
homecoming (nostos), nostalgia Theoclymenus and, 215
expressed as yearning for, 19 Theonoë and, 212–13
ironic qualities of Euripides’ nostalgia, 70 unity of word and deed, return to
Hecuba, 126–7, 128–9 heroic ideal of, 216
Hippolytus, 91, 95 Knox, Bernard M. W., 94, 148, 148n4
Ion, 148, 150, 160, 163, 171, 173, 174, Kovacs, David, 16, 16n40
185
Laius, myth of house of, 41
“just voice.” See also under Hippolytus language and meaning
agon between “unjust voice” or feminist theory reexamining, 30
duplicitous argument and intellectual revolution in Greek world
in Hecuba, 104, 142 leading to study of, 3–5, 27
in Phoenician Women, 51 Phaedra’s concern about inherent
divine voice as, 20–5, 38, 78 duplicity of language in Hippolytus,
impossibility of finding, 78, 79, 81
95–7 in Phoenician Women, 3–5
Protagoras’ Antilogoi and, 77n15 law
yearning for simplicity and clarity of Antiphon’s deconstruction of, 50–1
in Hecuba, 105, 142 Hecuba
in Hippolytus, 19, 71–6 nostalgia for absolute moral law in,
semiotic crisis in late fifth century, 131–2, 132n73, 133, 137, 142
nostalgia emerging from, 73–5 trial scene, 140–4
justice Hippolytus, trial structure of, 72, 72n3
in archaic poetry, 37–42 reciprocity, hospitality, and other
debate as means of defining, concerns traditional Greek customs, Hecuba’s
regarding, 43 nostalgic appeal to, 121, 122
intellectual revolution in Greek world use of criterion of probability by,
affecting perception of, 42–51 47–8
Ion’s critique of divine justice, 146–50 Lefkowitz, Mary R., 15
(See also Ion) literacy in Greek world, 9, 10n22, 37n8,
Melian Dialogue and appeals to 42n24, 60, 74n6. See also
considerations of, 113 transformation from “song
Plataean siege and appeals to, 113 culture” to “book culture”
as theme in Hecuba (See Hecuba) Luschnig, C. A. E., 102
249
GENERAL INDEX
male aggression and sexuality linked in nostos. See homecoming (nostos), nostalgia
Hecuba, 109 expressed as yearning for
McClure, Laura, 73
meaning. See language and meaning object/commodity, Helen in Helen as, 193,
Medea (Euripides) 219, 220
critique of traditional Greek misogyny Odyssey (Homer)
in, 65–7 Helen
explicit nostalgia, expressions of, 19 ending recalling Odyssey, 218, 218n93
female characters’ association with Helen of Odyssey versus Helen of
duplicity as commentary on nature Helen, 199
of truth, 61, 65–7 Penelope and Helen, parallels
Melos, reduction of, and Thucydides’ between, 202, 202n45, 215n86,
Melian Dialogue, 17, 112, 112n28, 218n93
113, 119, 120, 123, 131, 148, 161, Helen’s capacity for deceptive mimicry
188 in, 200
memory and truth, perceived relationship Iliadic vs. Odyssean heroic values, 215,
between, 22, 22n51, 36 219
metaphysics of presence, 5–7, 7n17, 40, nostalgia in, 33–5
150, 169, 192 Oedipus cycle (Sophocles), 41, 178n68
modern world. See postmodern world, Olympian Odes (Pindar), 40, 41
Euripides’ work reflecting Olympians and Titans, war between, 41,
Muses, potential truthfulness/duplicity of, 157, 157n24, 159, 177
36, 38n12, 191, 212 Olympic Games, 26
muthos vs. logos. See logos vs. muthos omphalos, Delphic oracle as, 150, 150n9,
Mytilenean Debate, 84, 98–100, 100n76, 153
119 On Truth (Antiphon), 50–1
On Truth (Protagoras), 44n28
names and naming oral vs. written tradition. See phonocentric
in Helen tradition in Western philosophy
body, name, and identity, 203, 207–9 Oresteia trilogy (Aeschylus), 41–2
Helen’s name, wordplay on, 208, 217, Orestes (Euripides), criticism of gods in,
220n101 146n1
reduction of status and significance Owen, A. S., 166
of, 192–3, 197, 203
Ion, power of naming in, 169–70, 173, Palamades (Gorgias), 50n47
176, 180, 181 Pandora, 62–3, 65, 69, 153, 198
navel of world, Delphic oracle as, 150, Parmenides, 24n56, 26
150n9, 153 Peloponnesian War. See also Athenian
Nietzsche, Friedrich, 1, 27, 27n69 empire
nostalgia Euripidean drama exploiting anxiety
in archaic texts, 33–42 about, 69
in Aristophanes, 27, 51, 52, 53–5 Hecuba reflecting issues of, 104, 109,
in contemporaries of Euripides, 52–3 112
etymology of, 33 Helen and, 189n2, 217, 221
in Euripides (See Euripides’ poetics of Hippolytus reflecting issues of, 71, 74
nostalgia) Ion and, 148, 162, 162n34, 181
in Plato, 51, 52, 58–61 Phoenician Women reflecting issues of, 9,
in Thucydides, 51, 52, 55–8 17
250
GENERAL INDEX
plot elements and outcomes reflecting Hippolytus’ paradoxical treatment of

context of, 20 status of voice and, 76. (See also
Thucydides and, 55, 58 under Hippolytus)
Pericles Ion’s subversion of, 149, 158, 165
belief in value of reasoned exchange of in Plato’s Phaedrus, 5, 6–7, 58–60
viewpoints, 29, 45 postmodern nostalgia for oral culture,
Funeral Oration, 10, 45, 100n76, 226 223n1, 224
justification of Athenian empire by, 17 Pindar, 39, 41
Phaedra. See Hippolytus Pippin (Burnett), Anne, 158–9, 169, 204,
Phaedrus (Plato) 213
anxiety about intellectual revolution in Plataea, Spartan siege of, 112, 112n28,
Greek world and nostalgia for old 113
muthos expressed in, 51, 58–61 Plato. See also specific works
criterion of probability critiqued in, anxiety about intellectual revolution in
48–9 Greek world and nostalgia for old
phonocentric tradition in Western muthos expressed in, 51, 52, 58–61
philosophy, conflicts presented by, belief in value of reasoned exchange of
5, 6–7, 51, 58–61 viewpoints, 29
philosophy. See specific schools and criterion of probability critiqued by,
philosophers 48–9
Phoenician Women (Euripides) Euripides’ drama epitomizing discursive
archaic works anticipating themes of, practice of philosophy of, 1
33–42 persistence of oral culture in works of,
Aristophanes’ Clouds compared, 43
53–5 phonocentric tradition in Western
clash of worldviews in, 8–11 philosophy, conflicts presented by,
debate between Polyneices and Eteocles 5, 6–7, 51, 58–61
in, 18 simplicity and justice equated by,
distortion of justice compared to 143
Hecuba, 111 Poetics (Aristotle), 1, 130, 218
earlier philosophical approach to truth poetry
perceived in, 24n56 Creusa’s attack on Apollo as god of,
Eteocles as sophist, 4–5 171–2
phonocentric debate in, 5–8, 60–1, 63 deceptiveness of, in the archaic age,
Plato’s Phaedrus and, 58–61 22n51
postmodern world and, 10, 30, 31, 226, Greek concept of alêtheia defined as
227 truth/absence of forgetfulness and,
simple “word of truth” of Polyneices vs. 22
Eteocles’ sophistry, 3–5 Medea’s critique of misogynistic Greek
Thucydides compared, 55–8 tradition of, 66
phonocentric tradition in Western Muses’ potential for both truth and
philosophy. See also transformation falsehood, 36, 38n12, 191, 212
from “song culture” to “book truth in the archaic age and, 22, 22n51,
culture” 22n52
debate between Eteocles and Polyneices Polydorus. See Hecuba
as exemplifying controversy about, Polyneices. See Phoenician Women, debate
5–8, 60–1, 63 between Polyneices and Eteocles in
Hesiod’s account of Pandora and, 63 Polyxena. See Hecuba
251
GENERAL INDEX
postmodern world, Euripides’ work rhetoric. See also intellectual revolution in

reflecting, 2, 27–32, 223–8 Greek world
clear and simple voice of truth, longing agon between simple “word of truth”
for, 226, 226n5, 228 and, 4, 5, 51, 53, 57, 58–61
“culture wars,” 8, 30, 30n73, 32, 226 concerns regarding use of, 43
debate and rational argument, anxiety female characters’ association with
and doubts about, 223–4, 225–7 as commentary on nature of truth,
deconstruction of law, 50 61–9
escapist entertainment, popularity of, Hecuba and Polyxena in Hecuba,
228 114–15, 118, 123, 123n49, 127–34,
heroic values, nostalgia for, 226–8 134n80, 136, 136n88, 142–4
Hippolytus, 103 Helen and eidôlon in Helen, 195–201
idealistic belief in balance of sophistic “double arguments,” 10, 29,
government, 45 44, 67, 81
image and reality, anxiety regarding, sophists’ boast about ability to make
225, 225n4 weaker cause prevail over the
information age paralleling ancient stronger, 18, 24, 48–9, 53–5
Greek intellectual revolution, 10, Robinson, John Mansley, 44n28, 54n56
223–4
Ion, 185–6 Saussure, Ferdinand de, 5, 192
oral culture, nostalgia for, 223n1, 224 Scarry, Elaine, 107
Phoenician Women, 30, 31, 226, 227 Scodel, Ruth, 135
political implications, 31–2, 225–7, 228 Segal, Charles, 60, 110, 132, 199, 209
skepticism, 28, 29, 186 Seidensticker, Bernd, 148
technological advances, anxiety created “semiotic power” of females, 62
by, 223–4, 228 attempts to control, 194n17
“war on terror” and September 11 in Hecuba, 136
attacks, 31, 32n74, 226–8 in Helen, 194n17, 212, 214
Pratt, Louise H., 48 in Hippolytus, 78
pre-Socratic philosophy, 9, 24n56, 26, in Ion, 176
202 male appropriation of, 153, 177, 180,
presence. See absence and presence 182
Prometheus, 41 Pandora myth, 69
Prometheus Bound (Aeschylus), 41 sense-perception, Helen’s doubts about
Protagoras, 4, 29, 44, 44n28, 45, 77n15, reliability of, 197, 201–4, 208
160 September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks of,
Protagoras (Plato), 45 31, 32n74, 226–8
Pucci, Pietro, 39, 63, 190, 195, 221 Sicilian Expedition, 17, 148, 188, 218
silence in Hippolytus, 82, 86–7, 87n47, 88,
Rabinowitz, Nancy Sorkin, 78, 96, 92, 95n69
153n16, 169, 176, 178, 184, 187 skepticism
radical innovator, Euripides viewed as, blend of skepticism and nostalgia as
11–15 source of Euripides’ tragic power,
Rankin, H. D., 43 1
reciprocity, hospitality, and other certain knowledge, doubts about
traditional Greek customs, Hecuba’s possibility of humans obtaining,
nostalgic appeal to, 121, 122 154, 202
reputation in Helen. See kleos or heroic conservative tendencies of Euripides
fame in Helen counteracting, 15–18, 69–70, 183
252
GENERAL INDEX
Euripidean proclivity for, 1–2 Stoics on poetry of Homer and Hesiod,

gods, doubts about nature, existence, 23
and character of, 12, 128, 148, 152, substitution and surrogacy
196 duping of Theoclymenus in Helen, 214
of postmodern world, 28, 29, 186 eidôlon in Helen (See eidôlon in Helen and
of Protagoras, 44–5 themes of substitution and
semiotic crisis in late fifth century, doubling)
arising from, 73–5 in Ion, 154, 162–3, 179, 187
sense-perception, Helen’s doubts about Symposium (Xenophon), 43
reliability of, 197, 201–4, 208
transformation from “song culture” to Tannen, Deborah, 29
“book culture,” 9, 10n22 Tantalus, 41
Socrates terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, 31,
in Aristophanes’ Clouds, 53–5 32n74, 226–8
movement of Ion resembling Socratic Thalmann, William G., 34, 109, 130
dialogue, 152, 165 theater
in Plato (See Plato, and specific Platonic Euripides’ exploitation of double vision
works, e.g. Phaedrus) and double language inherent in,
in Xenophon’s Apology, 21, 25 61
Solmsen, Friedrich, 19n45, 152n13, Hecuba as “theater of cruelty,” 107–8
167n46 in Helen, 201, 203, 218
Solon, 39, 129n65 in Ion, 163
“song culture.” See transformation from Theogony (Hesiod)
“song culture” to “book culture” female characters’ association with
sophists. See also intellectual revolution in duplicity in, 66
Greek world justice as divine gift in, 38
arguments against sophistry, in Hecuba, “semiotic power” of Muses in, 212
142 Theseus. See Hippolytus
boast about ability to make weaker Thomas, Rosalind, 36n6, 60n72
cause prevail over the stronger, 18, Thucydides’ parallels with Euripides
24, 48–9, 53–5 anxiety about intellectual revolution in
challenge to traditional views of truth Greek world and nostalgia for
offered by, 26 traditional values, 1, 16–17, 51, 52,
democratic tendencies of, 12–14, 55–8, 74
85 conservatism, 15, 17
“double arguments” of, 10, 29, 44, 67, discursive practices, 1
81 importance of opposing speeches, 43
doubt about certain knowledge Phoenician Women and, 17–18
reflected in Helen, 202, 205n51 violation of civilized norms, concerns
Eteocles in Phoenician Women and, 4–5 regarding, 109, 112n28, 113, 119,
feminist theory and, 30 120, 123, 131, 143, 145
Sophocles. See also specific works war, critique of effects of, 17–18,
divinity of justice in, 41–2 55–8
Ion contrasted with Oedipus cycle of, Titans and Olympians, war between, 41,
168n48, 178n68 157, 157n24, 159, 177
Nietzsche on, 27 traditional belief and sophistic relativism,
rhetoric, concern with nature and conflict between
power of, 77 in ancient Greek world (See intellectual
Steiner, Deborah Tarn, 10n22, 55n59 revolution in Greek world)
253
GENERAL INDEX
traditional belief (cont.) poetry in the archaic age and, 22, 22n51,
in postmodern age (See postmodern 22n52
world, Euripides’ work reflecting) postmodern nostalgia for clear and
tragedy. See theater simple truth, 226, 226n5, 228
transformation from “song culture” to
“book culture” Vernant, Jean-Pierre, 91–2
Greek tragedy as final flourishing of
song culture, 25 war. See also Peloponnesian War
historical development of, 12n27 as critiqued in Helen, 195, 209–10, 211,
literacy in Greek world and, 9, 10n22, 217–18
37n8, 42n24, 60, 74n6 Hecuba as indictment of, 104
persistence of oral culture, 42, 69 postmodern parallels with Euripides’
philosophers’ use of poetic language of concerns regarding, 26, 31–2,
song culture, 26 32n74, 226–8
Trojan Women (Euripides), Helen compared Thucydides’ critique of effects of,
to, 188, 195 17–18, 55–8
truth. See also “word of truth” weaving as motif in Ion, 177
alêtheia defined as truth/absence of Wise, Jennifer, 60n70, 61n75
forgetfulness, 22 wolf imagery in Hecuba, 117
archaic poetry and, 22n52, 35–42 “word of truth,” 3–5
debate as means of defining, concerns conflict between rhetoric/interpretation
regarding, 43 and, 4, 5, 51, 53, 57, 58–61
duplicity of gods, 24–5 critique of concept of, 7, 13
female characters’ association with deconstruction of concept of, 7, 31,
duplicity as commentary on nature 32
of, 61–9, 70 divine voice
in Helen absence of, in Hecuba, 104
Greek patriarchal truths espoused in, Delphic oracle’s supposed infallibility
216 and transcendence, 149
sense-perception, doubts about generative power of Apollo’s
reliability of, 197, 201–4, 208 originary word, 180
threats to concept of, 195 inevitable mediation of, 151, 154,
unity of word and deed, return to 185
heroic ideal of, 216 Ion’s movement from sustained
yearning for simple truth, 198, critique to restoration of faith in,
207 149
in Hippolytus (See Hippolytus) naming of Ion and, 169, 180
image and reality, concerns about in Phoenician Women, 3–5, 20–5,
in Euripides’ Greece (See substitution 35–7
and surrogacy) slippage and distortion, subject to, 185
in postmodern world, 225, 225n4 double-edged nature of simple “truth”
intellectual revolution in Greek world used by Theseus in Hippolytus, 92
affecting perception of, 42–51 eidôlon in Helen as threat to, 195
in Ion, 146–50 (See also Ion) heroic fame in Helen undermined as,
justice, equivalency with, 42 190
memory, perceived relationship to, 22, idealized age evoked by concept of, 3,
22n51 33–42, 55
paradoxical status of voice in Hippolytus reputation of Helen as lost form of, 213
and (See under Hippolytus) supposed simplicity of, 3–4, 53
254
GENERAL INDEX
Works and Days (Hesiod) Xenophanes, 26

justice as divine gift in, 37–8, 40–1 Xenophon, 21, 43
Myth of the Five Ages in, 35, 41n19
Pandora’s story, the female’s association Yunis, Harvey, 10n22, 11n24, 47, 47n36
with duplicity in, 62–3, 65, 69
writing vs. oral tradition. See phonocentric Zeitlin, Froma I., 61, 75, 76, 96, 108, 132,
tradition in Western philosophy 137, 151, 185
255
GREEK CITATION INDEX
This index includes line references to Greek in both the original language and in transli-
terated words and phrases.
195–6, 119n42
Aeschylus, Agamemnon 250, 121, 136n88
688–90, 220n101 258, 121
Aeschylus, Eumenides 1–8, 157n24 273–6, 122n47
Aeschylus, Persians 320, 204n48 276, 122
Aeschylus, Suppliant Maidens 382, 306, 124
204n48 337, 121
Aristophanes, Clouds 337–8, 125n53
518–62, 52n52 337–8, 136n88
545–8, 52n52 379–81, 127n58
961–2, 53n55 438, 127n60
1084, 54, 54n57 487, 127n60
Aristophanes, Frogs 560, 128n64
470, 11n26 689–90, 107n9
775, 11n26 798–801, 131n70, 132n73
957, 11n26 814–19, 133n77
971–5 [971–6], 11n26 816, 115n35, 134n80
Aristophanes, Thesmophoriazusae (Women of 834–40, 106n5
the Thesmophoria), 907, 208n57 836–45, 106n4
Aristotle, Poetics 838, 136n87
1452a18–20,130 840, 121, 136n88
1453a29–30,1 841–5, 137n92
1453a30–9,218 862, 138n93
1454a4–9,162n35 863, 138n93
Aristotle, Politics 1254a15–17, 14n33 866, 138
Aristotle, Rhetoric 1377b20–1378a19, 1129, 141n98, 144
123n49 1187–91, 131n71
1187–94, 142n100
Euripides, Antiope, Nauck fragment 189, 1200, 143
44n30 1206–7, 144
Euripides, Hecuba 1246, 144
123–7, 112n29 Euripides, Helen
256
27–9, 196n24 1572, 216

33, 220 1594, 217
35–6, 210, 210n65 1603–4, 188, 188n1
72, 201 1673, 220n101
72–5, 201n39 1674, 217n89
73, 201 Euripides, Heracles 655, 75n10
74, 201 Euripides, Hippolytus
117–22, 201n41 23, 93
119, 202 47, 93n60
121, 202 161–2, 79n22, 80
138, 214 292, 85
140, 220, 220n100 380–4, 80n23
198, 210 381–5, 81n24
199, 204 384, 81n25
262–3, 210n69 385–7, 81n26
262–6, 198n29 386, 82
263, 198 393–7, 82n31
270, 210n67, 219 405, 93n60
362, 219 411–12, 83n34
453–4, 205n50 418, 83n35, 83n36
485–96, 206n53 423, 93n60
561–3, 208n57 436–8, 84n37
577, 207 486–9, 85n39
588, 209, 209n59 489, 93n60
609, 210 505, 85n42
611, 210, 210n64 585, 81n25
615, 210n66, 219 612, 92n59
641–3, 211n70 616–17, 95n69
704–10, 209n62 687, 93n60
705, 200 716, 86
730–1, 14n33 717, 93n60
785, 215n85 768, 83n36
817, 215n85 890, 90
864, 215n85 925–6, 82, 90
948–50, 211n71 925–7, 75n10
964–5, 211n71 925–31, 72n2
1002, 213 926, 76
1013–16, 213n76 930, 91
1042–3, 211n71 944, 91
1050, 215 972, 90
1052, 215 995, 95n67
1097–1100, 199n35 1022–7, 89n50
1100, 172n59 1028, 93n60
1134, 219 1034–5, 89n51
1148–50, 214n82 1055–6, 91
1151, 189n2 1076, 89
1288, 215 1267, 91
1289, 215 1288–9, 92, 92n58
1528–9, 216n87 1299, 93n60
257
Euripides, Hippolytus (cont.) 1541–3, 178n67

1310, 91 1561, 177n64
1321, 77n17 1569, 179
1322, 91 1571–8, 179n69
1364–7, 95n68 1585–8, 179n69
1365, 94 1590–4, 180n70
1423–30, 96n72 1619–22, 183n79
Euripides, Ion 1621, 183n80
5, 150 1622, 183n80
6, 150, 158 Euripides, Iphigenia in Aulis
6–7, 158n25 1211–14, 126n54
69–71, 147n3 1400–1, 128n64
69–73, 147n3 Euripides, Iphigenia in Tauris
70, 147n3 1234–82, 157n24
252–4, 161n32 1259–82, 157n24
253, 161 Euripides, Medea
254, 161 410, 172n58
270, 162 410–20, 66n88
311, 164n38 516, 75n10
367, 152n12, 165 516–19, 65n86, 127n59
436–51, 166n42 Euripides, Orestes 175, 204n48
442, 161 Euripides, Phoenician Women
442–3, 161n33 469, 4
443, 161 469–72, 1n1
470–1, 165n41 471, 4
528–37, 168n47 472, 4
535, 169 499, 4
536, 147n3 499–502, 1n1
643–4, 183n81 500, 5n8
661, 169 524–5, 17n41
662, 169 1494, 18n44
854–6, 14n33
1090–8, 172n58 Gorgias, Encomium on Helen DK 82B11,
1277–8, 172, 172n59 133n79, 211n71
1282–90, 174n60 Gorgias, Palamedes DK 82B11a, 50n47
1286, 176
1324, 162 Heraclitus, fragments
1354, 176 DK 22B93, 151n10
1357–60, 175n61 DK 22B101a, 202n44
1368, 169n50 DK 22B107, 202n44
1410, 177 Hesiod, Homeric Hymn to Delian Apollo
1417, 177 132, 39n15
1429, 177 Hesiod, Theogony
1512–15, 169n50 22–35, 38n12
1534–6, 147n3 27, 24n57, 38n12
1535, 147n3 27–8, 24n57
1535–6, 178n65 31–2, 38n11
1536, 177n64 Hesiod, Works and Days 60–82,
1537, 146n2 88n48
258
Homer, Iliad Sophocles, Electra 515, 204n48

2.484–93, 36n5 Sophocles, Philoctetes 777, 204n48
3.399–412, 199n35
5.445–53, 190n7 Thucydides, History
6.357–8, 217n89 1.22.1, 11n24
9.410–16, 190n4 1.22.2–4, 202n44
12.231–50, 9n21 3.82.2, 109n19
22. 226–305, 24n58 3.82.3, 110
3.82.3–4, 110, 110n24
Pindar, Nemean Odes 1.33, 204n48 3.82.4–5, 56n61
Pindar, Olympian Odes 3.83.1, 1n1, 57
6.66–7, 40n18 3.83.1–2, 57n64
8.42–4, 39n17 3.83.2, 56n62
Plato, Gorgias 473b10–11, 48n40 3.84.2–3, 101n78
Plato, Phaedrus 4.57, 112n29
274e6, 6 5.105, 162n34
278d9–e1, 59n68
Protagoras, On Truth DK 80B1, 44n28 Xenophon, Apology 12.1–13.4, 21n50
259
ENGLISH CITATION INDEX
Aeschylus, Prometheus Bound 1031.3, 41 550, 127n59

Aristophanes, Clouds 971, 146n1
896, 53 979, 146n1
898–9, 53 981, 146n1
900–1, 53 1245–6, 146n1
903, 53 Euripides, Hecuba
904–6, 53 29, 115
961–2, 53 36–7, 115
969, 53 37, 117
970, 53 45–6, 117
995, 53 45–8, 130
1009–14, 55 49–51, 106n6
1009–21, 54 55–8, 116
1079–82, 54 58–9, 106n6
1083–4, 54 59–67, 116
1090–1104, 54 74, 117
1361–76, 55 80, 117
1484–1504, 55 90–1, 117
Aristophanes, Frogs 96–7, 117
771–6, 12 126–7, 125
860–4, 12 132, 117
891, 12 132–3, 118
948–50, 13 134–5, 125
952, 12 141–3, 117
971–6, 11 169–71, 117
1056–8, 61n77 205–10, 118
1069–73, 12 220, 119
1070, 64n84 225–9, 119
1109–14, 12 228–9, 120
1155–7, 61n77 229–331, 120
236, 120
Euripides, Bacchae 25–31, 154n17 239–41, 121
Euripides, Electra 255–9, 121
373–9, 19n46 265–70, 122
260
273, 121 1018, 139

273–6, 122 1019–21, 143
281, 117 1023, 140
282–5, 122 1030, 140
293–5, 123 1128, 140
306–8, 108, 119 1129–31, 140
306–10, 124 1137, 109
309–21, 118n40 1160–7, 141
337–9, 125 1182, 143
345–9, 126 1187–8, 142
355–66, 126 1187–94, 142
374–5, 126 1191, 142
378–81, 127 1199–1201, 144
438, 127 1206–23, 144
439–40, 127 1207–8, 144
486–7, 127 1233, 144
489–91, 128 1238–9, 142
550–2, 128 1243–5, 144
554–60, 128 1265, 144, 145n102
562–70, 129 1267, 144
577–80, 129 1275–7, 144
583–4, 131 Euripides, Helen
626, 107 9–10, 197
689–90, 107 11, 197
714, 131 13–15, 197
749–50, 114 21, 196
788, 131 27–9, 196
798–801, 131 27–36, 193
801, 132 38–41, 196
808–9, 128n64 42–3, 203
814–19, 133 43, 193
816, 134 46–8, 196
821–35, 135 66–7, 68, 199n32, 203,
836, 136 209
836–45, 106 72–5, 201
837ff, 136 74–5, 200n36
840, 121, 126 115–16, 201
841–5, 137 117–22, 201
850–63, 139n96 118, 202
853–64, 118n40 119, 207
854–63, 138 121, 202
864–9, 138 138, 214
868–89, 128n64 160–1, 203
874–5, 139 196–9, 193, 203, 204
877, 139 224–7, 204
883–4, 139 248–51, 204
902–4, 139 249–51, 193
1000–1, 140 260–1, 198
1006, 140 262–3, 198, 209
261
Euripides, Helen (cont.) 999, 212

262–5, 198 1005–6, 196
270–1, 210, 219 1011–12, 212
287–92, 202n45 1013–16, 213
291, 215 1028–9, 212
362, 189n3 1056, 213
383, 209 1087–9, 214
391–6, 204 1099–1100, 193, 199n32, 203
453–4, 205 1121–4, 214
470, 206 1122–4, 189n3
485–96, 206 1134, 214
487–8, 193 1149–50, 214
494, 207 1155–60, 218
501–4, 207 1205, 215
502, 204 1220, 189n3
554, 207 1243, 214
557–81, 208 1246, 215
559, 200n36 1280–4, 215
561–3, 208, 208n57 1288–9, 215
569, 207 1294, 215
582–6, 208 1528–9, 216
587, 209 1603–4, 188, 216
588, 68, 193, 199n32 1621, 194
592, 204 1648–9, 217
593, 193 1652–3, 193
594–6, 204 1653, 217
603, 189n3, 211 1667, 217
604, 221 1670–5, 217
608–11, 210 1680–3, 216
608–15, 189n3 Euripides, Hippolytus
614, 210, 219 1–2, 93
619–20, 210n68 21–2, 72n3, 93
641–3, 211 22–8, 93
665, 211, 221 99, 93
706, 211 102, 93
707, 189n3 131–40, 79
718, 211 161, 79
749–51, 189n3 161–9, 80
751, 211 162–3, 79
792, 212 291–2, 77n13
808, 211 292, 80, 84
823, 207 297–300, 80
830, 212 311, 93n61
845, 189, 211 317, 80
884–6, 193 350–2, 86
914, 213 352–61, 80
918–20, 206 353, 93n61
940–3, 212 368, 93n61
993–5, 212 380–4, 80, 85
262
385–7, 64, 81 971–2, 92n57

388–90, 77n13 972, 72n3, 90
390–1, 82, 99 986–7, 92
393–4, 95n69 1022–4, 72n3, 96
393–7, 82 1022–7, 89
399, 83 1034–5, 89
401, 83 1036–7, 72n3
403–4, 72n3 1055, 72
411, 83 1055–9, 96
411–12, 83, 101 1057–9, 89
413–14, 83 1060–4, 89n52
413–18, 83 1074–5, 72n3, 89
436, 84 1076–7, 72n3
436–8, 84 1077, 89
437, 84 1078–9, 90
437–43, 84 1080, 90
442, 85 1090, 89
467–76, 84 1091, 88
471–2, 85 1134–5, 78
486–7, 101 1283–5, 93
486–9, 64, 77n13, 85, 99 1286–9, 72n3
490–1, 85 1288–9, 92
500–2, 85 1298–9, 72n3, 77
505, 85 1307–8, 72n3
505–6, 72n3 1307–9, 77
520, 86 1307–12, 73
520–4, 86 1320–2, 72n3
612, 89n52, 92 1321–2, 77, 91
616, 65, 80, 87, 90, 127n59 1324, 92
619–23, 87 1334–5, 72n3
631–5, 88 1336–7, 96
645–8, 90 1337
646, 88 1404, 94
653–4, 93n61 1420–2, 94
656, 95n69 1428–30, 78
657–8, 88 1449, 72n3
685–7, 86 Euripides, Ion
730, 89 1–2, 157
731, 95 5–7, 150
764–775, 83 6–7, 150, 158
877, 89, 90 10–11, 156, 158
887–90, 91n53 15, 157
893–8, 91n53 22, 157n24
925–31, 19, 70, 72, 137n90 29–36, 157
943–5, 72n3 47–8, 157
956–7, 92 67–8, 155
960–1, 72n3, 92n57, 96 69–71, 158
967–70, 90 74–5, 169
971, 77n13 74–6, 157
263
Euripides, Ion (cont.) 880, 170

91–2, 158 881–6, 171
95, 159 883, 171
115, 159 887–8, 171
118, 159 900, 164n39
187, 159 907–912, 171
189, 159 910, 153
196–200, 159 912, 151
209–11, 159 941, 158
223, 159 999, 176
225, 160 1003, 157
241–3, 160 1010, 176
249–51, 160 1071–2, 171
250, 172 1090–1105, 171
252–4, 151, 161 1181–1209, 172
265, 162 1271, 172
275, 162 1277–8, 172
309, 164 1282–90, 174
311, 164 1286, 175
321, 163 1314–17, 175
330, 163 1324, 175
338, 163, 164n39 1357–60, 175
354, 160 1403–4, 167n46
355, 164 1409, 176
359–360, 163 1415, 167n46, 176
360, 163 1444, 176
365, 153 1488, 177
366, 164 1523–7, 177
367, 153 1532–3, 177
370–2, 164 1535–6, 178
385, 163 1537–8, 146
423–4, 165 1541–2, 147, 178
429–52, 152 1555, 180
436, 166n44 1556, 178
436–51, 166 1558, 178
439–40, 151, 166 1558–9, 153
442–3, 161 1560–2, 148
442–51, 166n43 1562, 178
449–51, 167 1565, 178
470–1, 165 1571–8, 179
476, 165 1574, 181
517–675, 167 1582–7, 170
527, 167n46 1585–8, 179, 181
528–37, 168 1589–93, 180
533, 184 1595, 155, 181
551, 184 1601–3, 184
685, 151, 170 1605, 181
774–5, 170 1607, 185
876–80, 151 1610–11, 183
264
1614–15, 148, 183 8.51, 178n68

1620–2, 183 Hesiod, Homeric Hymn to Delian
Euripides, Iphigenia in Aulis Apollo 132, 39
878–89, 146n1 Hesiod, Homeric Hymn to Pythian
1211–15, 126n54 Apollo 252, 39
1375–6, 128n63 Hesiod, Theogony
1520–31, 128n63 27, 66, 212
1540–1613, 128n63 28, 38
Euripides, Medea 29–32, 38
410–20, 66 31–2, 38
492–5, 19 39–40, 38
516–19, 19 81–7, 38
516–19, 65 86, 38
836–45, 19 360, 41
Euripides, Orestes 404, 41
417, 146n1 613–14, 41
595–6, 146n1 729–32, 41
1668–9, 146n1 Hesiod, Works and Days
Euripides, Phoenician 78, 62
Women 106–212, 35
433–4, 22 221, 38
469–72, 2 224, 38
475, 22 225, 38
481–3, 22 238–41, 40
491–3, 3, 22 251, 38
494–5, 3 256–62, 37
499–502, 2 260, 38
500, 43 262, 38
507, 16, 17 267–9, 40
509, 16 278–85, 40
515–17, 45 Homer, Iliad
524–5, 17 2.1–36, 24
525, 16 2.484–7, 191n9
1494, 18 2.484–93, 36
1555–8, 18 6.343–8, 199
Euripides, Suppliant Women 747–50, 6.344, 199
218n90 6.355–8, 200
9.318–20, 124
Gorgias, Encomium on Helen, DK82B11, 9.443, 58
133 24.525–33, 24n55
Homer, Odyssey
Heraclitus, fragments DK 22B93, 1.57–9, 33
151 1.96–324, 24n58
Herodotus, Histories 1.215–16, 185n90
1.31–3, 129n65 4.141–6, 200
2.123.1, 202n44 4.145, 199
7.139–44, 9n21, 149n8 4.240–64, 200
7.142, 178n68 4.250–8, 121n45
7.152.3, 202n44 4.277–9, 200
265
Homer, Odyssey (cont.) Sophocles, Oedipus at Colonus 279–81, 42

5.82–4, 33
8.487–91, 36n6 Thucydides, History
17.483–7, 24n58 1.21, 46, 58
18.251–5, 202n45 1.22, 46
19.107–14, 34 1.22–3, 47
19.124–8, 202n45 1.22–4, 47
23.177–80, 215n86 1.23, 97
1.76, 119n43
Pindar, Olympian Odes 2.40, 11, 45
1.64–5, 41 2.46, 88n49
6.66–7, 40 2.63, 17
8.42–4, 39 3.36, 100
8.46, 39 3.37, 98, 99
Plato, Apology 17c, 143 3.38, 88n49, 98
Plato, Gorgias 3.40, 99, 119
456a, 45, 134n80 3.45, 57
473b, 48 3.52–68, 112
Plato, Ion 535e, 43 3.67, 143, 143n101
Plato, Phaedrus 3.68, 113
271c, 59 3.81, 100, 110
272d–e, 48 3.82, 56, 100, 109, 111, 113
274e, 58 3.83, 56, 57, 101, 113
275a, 6, 7, 59 3.84, 18, 57, 101
275b, 59 5.82, 162n35
275d, 7 5.84–116, 112
275d–e, 59 5.87, 120
276a, 7, 59 5.89, 120
277a, 59 5.90, 123
278d–e, 59 5.91, 17
Plato, Protagoras 5.95, 17
318e–319a, 45 5.104, 132
Plato, Republic 338c, 107n7 5.105, 162
Plutarch, Life of Alexander 14.4, 5.116, 113
149n8
Xenophon, Apology
Shakespeare, King Lear 3.4.106–8, 12.1–13.4, 21
108n14 21e3–22c8, 25
Shakespeare, Midsummer Night’s Xenophon, Oeconomicus 7.22,
Dream 5.1.16, 222n105 141n99
Sophocles, Ajax 479–80, 126 Xenophon, Symposium 3.5, 43
266

Poética de La Nostalgia

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euripides and the poetics of nostalgia

Branded by critics from Aristophanes to Nietzsche as sophistic, icono-

Gary S. Meltzer was Assistant Professor of Classics and Humanities at

Cambridge University Press

© Gary S. Meltzer 2006

This publication is in copyright. Subject to statutory exception and to the provision of

First published in print format 2006

isbn-13 978-0-511-24948-8 eBook (EBL)

isbn-13 978-0-521-85873-1 hardback

1. The “Just Voice” and “Word of Truth”: Divine

2. The “Just Voice” as Paradigmatic Metaphor

3. The Body’s Cry for Justice in the Hecuba 104

4. The Voice of Apollo and the “Empire of Signs”

5. Where Is the Glory of Troy? Heroic Fame in the Helen 188

Bowles, Tristan Bradshaw, Kate Mertes, Shana Meyer, Bill Stoddard,

To help specialists, scholars, and those with some knowledge of Greek

R eviled by critics from Aristophanes to Nietzsche as sophistic,

The combination of romantic longing for a simple, clear voice of

The debate over the kingship of Thebes in the Phoenician Women

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of truth” (muthos tês alêtheias, 469) is universally recognized (495) rests

original or transcendental signified, is . . . absolutely present outside a

cannot answer questions on its own (275d; 276a), exponents of writing

a bridge for understanding, to provide identity (as a “like” or “equal”

As Athens began to evolve from a “song culture” into a “book

of their worship. Rather, an interpenetration of worldviews must have

debated” (Thucydides, History 2.40).24 Yet in spite of this confidence

I taught them all these knowing ways

characters as mistresses, slaves, maidens, and nurses, who previously

political struggles in society as to who should have access not simply

process, to remind men of their mortal limitations.” The drama does

virtue” (524–5).41 Here the brazen redefinition of value terms reflects

The brothers’ failure to resolve their conflict peacefully and their

The expression of nostalgia, a word whose root meaning in Greek

As for introducing ‘new divinities,’ how could I be guilty of that merely in

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We see Polyneices appealing to divinely sanctioned forms of speech

Polyneices’ “word of truth” reflects the power of divinely sanctioned

Although certainly not rational or logical in a modern sense, Greek

The archaic Greek portrayal of the gods as duplicitous, contentious,

stability provided by the mythological worldview. In the new world,

detachment and nostalgia, accounts for much of Euripides’ dramatic

to local level. The practice of “double arguments” initiated by the

Our determination to pursue truth by setting up a fight between two sides

But even as Western culture relies on debate and on the hermeneu-

cause prevail over the stronger only increases this skepticism, as do

instead of language that privileges the male (“humanity” in place of

characters, we yearn for a clear, reliable voice or sign by which we can

THE “JUST VOICE” AND “WORD OF

A s we have seen, Polyneices’ “word of truth” evokes an ideal-

‘Lady, no mortal man on the endless earth could have cause

Odysseus’ comparison, which foreshadows his recovery of his rightful

authority in the well-ordered home and polity.” The “enchanted pic-

Tell me now, you Muses who have your homes on Olympos.

The miraculous qualities of divine (or divinely inspired) speech to cap-

In a demonstration of the “metaphysics of presence” that avoids the

who engage in these forms of discourse are rewarded, whereas those

of Aeschylus) and the story of Croesus in Herodotus. The justice of

still played a large part in this culture’s transmission of history, knowl-

of rhetoric such as Gorgias and Protagoras affirmed that the use of

As Bassi argues, “In the absence of verbatim sources, Thucydides makes

approximation of the truth than do poetic or romantic accounts. The

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