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Blood or Fate: A note on Choephori 927
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 11 February 2009
Extract
The line in question occurs towards the end of Orestes' final exchange with Clytemnestra, after her attempts at self-defence have all met with rebuttal.
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References
1 Blaydes, F. H. M., edition with commentary of Aeschylus' Choephori (Halle, 1899)Google Scholar. Blaydes, also notes his proposal in Adversaria in Aeschylum (Halle, 1895), p. 266Google Scholar, but in neíther place does he give any supporting argument. No previous argument for αἶμα in this line is mentioned in the appendix to the G. Vitelli-N. Wecklein edition of Aeschylus (Berlin, 1885). Dawe, R. D. reports the suggestion in his Repertory of Conjectures on Aeschylus (Leiden, 1965)Google Scholar, but to the best of my knowledge it has received no further attention.
2 Most editors follow Pauw in emending κ⋯νες' γ'ὅν to ἔκανες ὃν.
3 See Elmsley's footnote to p. 88 of his edition of Euripides', Medea (Oxford, 1818; p. 75Google Scholar in the Leipzig, 1822 edition); he is followed by Blass, Murray, Page, Rose, Sidgwick, Smyth, and Wilamowitz. Elmsley's conjecture is based primarily on a parallel in Aristophanes, Thesm. 158: σοὔπισθεν from σοι ⋯πισθεν, and he notes the rarity of this crasis. Indeed, there seems to be no other evidence, and the Aristophanic parallel disappears if we assume σοὔπισθεν to represent σου ὔπισθεν. Groeneboom and Mazon therefore follow Headlam in preferring crasis to σωρ⋯ζει or σῳρ⋯ζει (see Headlam, W., ‘Some Passages of Aeschylus and Others’, CR 17 [1902], 248)Google Scholar. The parallel here is Headlam's ὡρν[ι]θο[κ]]ται with crasis for ο⋯ ⋯ρνιθοκλ⋯πται (a ᾃπαζ) at Herodas 6. 102, but this is not evidence for Attic. Nor does Lucius, A. cite any Attic examples of crasis for οι ο in his dissertation De Crasi et Aphaeresi (Strasbourg, 1885)Google Scholar.
Given this paucity of evidence, alternative conjectures abound. But none seems to me more plausible than Elmsley's.
4 μ⋯ρος, like αἶσα, can mean destiny or portion, but in Aeschylus it consistently means death. See Fraenkel, E. in his commentary on the Agamemnon (Oxford, 1950)Google Scholarad 1146 and 1600.
5 Aeschylus, , Cho. 77, 369, 647, 927Google Scholar, Pr. 104, Supp. 80, 215, 545, 673; Sophocles, , Ajax 256Google Scholar, Trach. Ill; Euripides, , Andr. 1203Google Scholar, Supp. 623–5. αἶσα also occurs in Kannicht/Snell TrGF fr. ad. 279h, attributed to Euripides by Hommel, H., ‘Euripides und der Tod’, Euripides, Wege der Forschung 89 (1968), 124–53Google Scholar (= Epigraphica 19 [1957], 136–64Google Scholar).
6 On the etymology of αἶσα see Bianchi, U., Dios Aisa (Rome, 1953), pp. 1–8Google Scholar, Chantraine, P., Dictionnaire Etymologique (Paris, 1968)Google Scholar, Frisk, H., Griechisches Etymologisches Worterbuch (Heidelberg, 1954–1972), v. 1Google Scholar, Lief. 1 s.v., Krause, W., ‘Die Ausdriicke fur das Schicksal’, Glotta 25 (1936), 143–52Google Scholar, Nilsson, M. P., Geschichte der griechischen Religion, p. 362Google Scholar, and von Wilamowitz-Moellendorff, U., Der Glaube der Hellenen I (Berlin, 1931), p. 352Google Scholar.
7 The literature on the Greek concepts of fate is enormous, and concentrates on the Homeric poems. For an extended discussion of αἶσα in epic, see Bianchi, , op. cit., especially pp. 1–47Google Scholar; my understanding of the word is particularly indebted to his observations. Dietrich, B. C. takes a somewhat different point of view in his Death, Fate, and the Gods (London, 1965), pp. 249–60, 276–7, 339–40Google Scholar; his book usefully includes a section on modern scholarship on fate in Homer, pp. 179–93. See also Leitzke, E., Moira und Gottheit im alten griechischen Epos (diss. Gottingen, 1930)Google Scholar, and the works by Krause, Nilsson, and Wilamowitz cited in note 6.
8 There is virtually no evidence outside tragedy for the word's usage specifically in Attic, αἶσα is not common in funerary epigrams, where it might have been expected, and most occurrences are late and non-Attic. The single example of αἶσα I have found in a fifth-century Attic inscription adds little to our understanding of the word; see Peek, W., Griechische Vers-Inschriften i (Berlin, 1955)Google Scholar, no. 95 (= Kaibel, G., Epigrammata Graeca [Berlin, 1878Google Scholar, repr. Hildesheim, 1965], no. 87 and G. Pfohl, Greek Poems on Stones I (Leiden, 1967), no. 117). In this paper I have made use of Homeric as well as tragic evidence. It cannot, of course, be argued that because a particular usage of αἶσα does not occur in Homer it could not occur in Attic tragedy. But especially given the word's rarity in tragedy it is necessary to consider Homeric usage in order to dismiss the possibility of borrowing.
9 As both Bianchi, (op. cit., pp. 42–3)Google Scholarand Nilsson (review of Bianchi, , Gnomon 26 [1954], 480)Google Scholar observe, αἶσα is the subject of an action in Homer much less frequently than is μοῖρα. For further examples of αἶσα as agent, see Homer, Od. 11. 61 and the inscription cited in note 8.
10 The only explicit example I have been able to find – and its exact sense is debatable – is Iliad 16. 707–9, where Apollo says to Patroclus:
οὔ ν⋯ τοι αἶσα
σ⋯ ὑπ⋯ δουρ⋯ π⋯λιν π⋯ρθαι Tρώϰων,
οὐδ' ὑπ' 'Aϰιλλ⋯ος, ὃς περ σ⋯ο πολλ⋯ν ⋯νε⋯νων.
If we take τοι here as the emphatic particle, Apollo is making a comment on αἶσα in the larger sense; Lattimore, R. (The Iliad of Homer, Chicago and London, 1951)Google Scholartranslates, ‘it is not destined | that the city of the proud Trojans shall fall before your spear | nor even at the hand of Achilleus, who is far better than you are’. But αἶσα is commonly found in Homer with the dative of the person whose destiny is in question (see Bianchi, , op. cit., pp. 24–5, n. 5Google Scholar), and we could translate ‘it is not your destiny that Troy fall by your spear, nor yet at the hand of Achilles’. If this line includes Achilles' hypothetical taking of Troy in Patroclus' destiny, it might be argued that we have here a parallel to the usage of αἶσα in Choephori 927. But the line does not read ‘it is not your destiny that Troy fall to Achilles’, and in the paratactic style of the epic the addition of Achilles does not make his destruction of Troy part of Patroclus' αἶσα. Dietrich, (op. cit., p. 249)Google Scholar says of this passage ‘Apollo tells Patroclus that it is not his aisa to sack Troy, nor that of his much superior companion Achilles’, and argues that here as generally in the formula αἶσα ⋯στι the fate of a particular person is practically identical with the ‘impersonal’ νοῖρα that governs events (pp. 249–50).
11 Bianchi, , op. cit., p. 45Google Scholar, as part of a general discussion on the differences between αἶσα (on the one hand) andμοῖρα and μ⋯ρος (on the other); cf. also p. 21.
12 αἶσα is also associated with but not identified with death in Kannicht/Snell fr. ad. 279h, cited above in note 5; see Hommel's, translation and subsequent remarks (op. cit., pp. 129, 137)Google Scholar.
13 Tucker, T. G., edition with commentary and translation of the Choephori (Cambridge, 1901)Google Scholarad loc. (cf. Hermann's suggestion of ⋯πουρ⋯ζει, followed by Dindorf and Weil); Verrall, A. W., edition with commentary and translation of the Choephori (London and New York, 1893)Google Scholarad loc. Tucker's emendation (in any case unexampled) seems, like Hermann's, weakly motivated in the context. On Verrall's see note 19 below.
14 There is a passage in the Agamemnon which appears to speak of μοῖρα affecting μοῖρα (1025–6), but its meaning is much debated, and none of the likely interpretations appears to me to provide a true parallel; see Fraenkel, E. (op. cit.) and Denniston, J. D.-Page, D. L., Agamemnon (Oxford, 1957)Google Scholarad loc.
15 The word αἱμα appears fifty times in the Oresteia. By contrast, it appears only thirteen times elsewhere in Aeschylus, five in the Seven Against Thebes, four in the Suppliants, and four in the fragments.
16 For this observation on the uses of αἶμα in metaphor (and for many other useful comments on this paper) I am indebted to Professor C. J. Herington.
17 I have argued the link between the image of conception and the dream birth at slightly greater length in a forthcoming paper, ‘Orestes as Fulfillment, Teraskopos, and Teras in Aeschylus' Oresteia'. R. Fagles and W. B. Stanford, in the introductory essay to Fagles’ translation of the Oresteia (New York, 1975)Google Scholar, suggest a link between the image of fertilization in the Agamemnon and Orestes' later arrival and vengeance, described as a new birth, but no one to my knowledge has made the connection between image and dream explicit. See also Lebeck, A., The Oresteia: A Study in Language and Structure (Washington, D.C., 1971), p. 130Google Scholar.
18 The scholium notes the proverbial language. Rose, H. J., A Commentary on the Surviving Plays of Aeschylus II (Amsterdam, 1958)Google Scholar, Thomson, G., The Oresteia (edition with commentary, 2nd ed., Prague, 1966)Google Scholar, and Verrall (op. cit.) comment on the presence of Agamemnon's tomb in relation to line 926.
19 See Verrall's commentary (op. cit.) adloc. Verrall cites as a parallel Pr. 355, συρ⋯ει ø⋯βον, but there the subject is the monster Typhon, which might be expected to hiss, whereas here neither subject nor object naturally goes with συρ⋯ζει. αἶμα may indeed provide a likelier subject for this verb than does αἶσα, given the association of blood and snake and given the various activities blood performs in the trilogy. But τ⋯νδε μ⋯ρον – a specific death – is not a true parallel to the (ø⋯βον of the Prometheus passage or even to the suggested reading ø⋯νον; both of these are general. Elmsley's emendation is still to be preferred, though a reading of αἶμα may open the way to further speculation.