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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 11 February 2009
The issue of the recognition scene in Euripides' Electra, if not as ‘eternal’ as the controversy over the relative dating of the Sophoclean and Euripidean plays of that name, is certainly recurrent. After Eduard Fraenkel's resurrection of the problem at the end of his great commentary on Aeschylus' Agamemnon, the contributions of Hugh Lloyd-Jones and the late Godfrey Bond seemed to have settled the case in favour of authenticity. But soon after, David Bain and then M. L. West, G. Basta Donzelli and finally David Kovacs, all writing in the same journal, raised some new and awkward questions, which, at the very least, require more in the way of answers than they have yet received. The last word, as the saying goes, has not yet been spoken. In this article I try to provide the last word—no, that would be too much to expect, but further reflections on the issue—yes. In particular, I try to set the matter in a wider context, seeking analogies (both dramatic and extra-dramatic) for what, if w. 518–44 are Euripidean, the playwright may have been aiming at in this particular scene. Such analogies should be important, for scholars have generally by contrast stressed the uniqueness of the recognition scene: ‘in the extant remains of Greek tragedy we have indeed nothing’, says Bond, ‘comparable to the Electra parody’.
1 Appendix D of Aeschylus' Agamemnon (Oxford, 1950), vol. Ill, pp. 815–26. Dover's claim (in his Introduction to his commentary on Aristophanes' Frogs, p. 37, n. 77) that ‘the hypothesis of... Fraenkel that Euripides’ Electra contains an interpolated satire on a passage interpolated in Choephori rested on unrealistic assumptions about Athenian attitudes to tragic drama' may well seem (especially in the light of the articles listed in n. 4 below) both premature and complacent.
2 ‘Some alleged interpolations in Aeschylus' Choephori and Euripides’ Electra', CQ 11 (1961), 171–84 = Academic Papers [I], pp. 335–52.
3 ‘Euripides’ parody of Aeschylus', Hermathena [H. W. Parke Festschrift] 118 (1974), 1–14.
4 BICS 24 (1977), 104–16 (Bain); and 27 (1980), 17–22 (West), 109–19 (Basta Donzelli); and 36 (1989), 67–78 (Kovacs). Further bibliographical information in Vögler, A., Vergleichende Studien zur sophokleischen und euripideischen Elektra (Heidelberg, 1967) p. 168, n. 107.Google Scholar
5 Bond (n. 3), p. 3. So too, for example, Gilbert Murray in his translation of the play (London, 1893), p. 91: ‘no parallel for such an artistically ruinous proceeding [i.e. the relevant scene as usually interpreted, that is, as a criticism of Aeschylus] is quoted from Greek tragedy’. Note Kovacs's reminder ([n. 4], p. 68) that ‘what is unique in an author is not ipso facto spurious’. For a useful survey of recurrent motifs in ancient recognition scenes in general see Cropp's commentary on Eur. El. 487–698 (pp. 134f). Terence Cave, Recognitions: A Study in Poetics (Oxford, 1988) examines the theme in the widest possible context.Google Scholar
6 Bain (n. 4), pp. 105f.
7 For ‘
used of immediately preceding events’ see, for example, Soph. Tr. 1121 with my note ad loc.
8 For Euripidean examples of this, see Solmsen, F., Hermes 69 (1934) 391 ff. = Kl. Schr. 1. 159ff. Compare the false anticipation of Aegisthus' murder at Aesch. Cho. 554fF. discussed below in Section III. Pindar sometimes leads us to expect the traditional form of the myth and then presents us with a revised version (e.g. Pyth. 3.27ff.), thus offering two incompatible versions of the same story (cf. n. 54 below).Google Scholar
9 Bain (n. 4), pp. 106–9; Kovacs (n. 4), pp. 70–7 respectively
10 West (n. 4), p. 21, n. 22.
11 But there are further difficulties: see n. 14 below.
12 Kovacs (n. 4), p. 72.
13 I am using somewhat flippant language here, of course, in an attempt to emphasize the point I am making. But that the Old Man in particular and this portion of the Electra in general have comic affinities seems clear. See, for example, Bond (n. 3), pp. lOf. I note in passing that Electra's apparent demolition of the Old Man's inferences from offerings at the tomb, inferences the sequel shows to be perfectly correct, would, if genuine, form a parallel to w. 871 ff. of Sophocles' Electra. In that scene, Chrysothemis brings her sister news of fresh libations, garlands, and a lock of hair at their father's tomb, and infers Orestes' return. Electra, with far more apparent justification than her Euripidean counterpart (since she has just heard the Paedagogus' lying account of their brother's death) rejects any such outcome, but, ironically, Chrysothemis is right. Both passages display a formidable heroine easily but erroneously quashing the entirely legitimate deductions of a weaker, secondary figure, and it would be extremely plausible if one passage were inspired by a wish to contrast with the other. That generalization has, of course, been extended to the entire two dramas (Euripides bringing out more explicitly than Sophocles the moral dilemmas of matricide; or Sophocles choosing to handle them more implicitly), though ignorance of their relative dating precludes a definitive interpretation. (For a recent assessment of the differences between the Euripidean and Sophoclean treatments see, for example, Halporn, J. W., HSCP 87 [1983], 102f.)Google Scholar
14 Kovacs's penetrating analysis ([n. 4], pp. 75–7) of the difficulties (cf. n. 11 above) in 545ff. actually has the surprising result of undermining the point he makes about the Old Man's attitude in 547ff. He argues that the likeliest solution for 545–6 is slight emendation of, and another lacuna after, 546, so that Electra completed an expression of the possibility that ‘one of the 
sent by Orestes took pity on Agamemnon's tomb and cut his own hair, or perhaps... brought an offering of hair to this land from Orestes’. But if 545ff. originally did run along those lines, then Electra's language is quite incompatible with the notion that Orestes has returned, and this would constitute another reason for the Old Man not to hint at that notion in what he says at 547ff.
15 Bond (n. 3), p. 6. The following quotations are from p. 8. Observe that Mastronarde in his note on Eur. Phoen. 751–2 (a passage often compared to ours: see below, p. 396) expresses the view that the criticism of Aeschylus in that couplet is ‘captious’ to a degree. I presume this was the point intended by Porson in one of the earliest examples extant of this interpretation of the passage, his 1792 Praelectio in Euripidem: ‘hunc locum [i.e. S. C. T. 369ff.] cum imitari se posse non speraret Euripides, frigido ioco in Phoenissis irridet’ (Adversaria [Cambridge, 1812], p. 7).
16 I refer to Pindar, who in Olympian 1 notoriously revises the traditional version of the myth of Pelops which represented that hero as served up as a meal for the gods by his father Tantalus. The gods were at first ignorant of the fact, and, when they realized it, refused to eat, and Pelops was restored to life in a magic cauldron (minus a shoulder, absent-mindedly eaten by the grieving Demeter). To explain away this traditional version, Pindar ingeniously invents the idea that it was concocted by neighbours jealous of the truth (i.e. that Pelops had been abducted by Poseidon). But the language Pindar uses when he summarizes the neighbours' concocted tale is extraordinary (Ol. 1.47ff.):
. In these lines the gods consciously devour Pelops as an act of pure gourmandise (
[49], 
and 
[51]: see Gerber's commentary ad locc., where the verbs in question are said to respectively ‘exaggerate’, ‘enhance’, and ‘emphasize’ the scene's horror) and note especially the implications of 
(50) and 
(‘glutton’ [52]): again see Gerber's commentary ad locc. Pindar is here demolishing, not the traditional version, but an artificially heightened form of it, in which the gods are mere gluttons. And he does this because it is a good rhetorical device to exaggerate the incredibility of an opponent's position, just as Euripides would be doing in the disputed passage, and actually does (or makes Iphigeneia do) with the very myth just cited for comparison at. T. 385ff. cf. esp. 386–8: 
.
17 West (n. 4), p. 20.
18 West as cited in the previous note; Bond (n. 3), p. 8.
19 See especially Newiger, H.-J., Hermes 89 (1961), 422fF. These considerations are not taken into account by Hutchinson (in the Introduction to his commentary on Aesch. S. C. T. pp. xliif. [sic rather than the misprinted reference s.v. ‘revivals’ in the General Index]) in his brisk denial of fifth-century Aeschylean revivals.Google Scholar
20 Bain (n. 4), p. 110.
21 See, for example, Lloyd-Jones, JHS 92 (1972), 195 = Academic Papers [I], pp. 281f. and Sier's and Garvie's commentaries ad loc. Cf. Cropp on Eur. El. 281.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
22 In his commentary on 620. See too his Introduction, p. xxvii: ‘When it comes to forming a plan, he is bankrupt himself, and all constructive counsel has to come from his sister and the Old Man.’ At El. 281 the heroine herself says 
(her as yet unrecognized brother ironically replies 
so within the play as a whole it is only Orestes, of the relevant three figures, who fails to express thus his eagerness for the deed.
23 Bain (n. 4), p. 111. Here is something even more allusive: what I have called ‘the confidentseeming 
’ at Eur. El. 650, recalls Orestes' 
(similarly at line-start) in Aesch. Cho. 514, where the contrasting context underlines the hero's resourcefulness and eagerness to act
24 West (n. 4), p. 19. Cf. Kovacs (n. 4), p. 68: ‘the lines … are written in flawless tragic trimeters, and anyone who tried to show that they could not be by Euripides on the basis of their style would soon cover himself with disgrace’.
25 West (n. 4), p. 17.
26 Denniston (n. 22), p. xxx.
27 Mette's, H. J.Urkunden dramatischer Auffiihrungen in Griechenland (Berlin, 1977), Index s.v. ‘Tragödien und Satyrspiele’ (pp. 209–11) provides no suitable names.Google Scholar
28 Cf. the translation and notes provided by Russell, D. A. in Russell and Winterbottom, Ancient Literary Criticism (Oxford, 1972), pp. 504ff.Google Scholar
29 Bond (n. 4), pp. 9f. following in the footsteps of W. Ludwig's Sapheneia.
30 Bond (n. 4), pp. 9f. The following quotation is from pp. 1 If
31 For which see, for instance, my commentary on Soph. Tr. 498ff
32 See, for example, Zielinski, Th., Tragodumenon libri tres (Cracow, 1925), pp. 73f.,Google ScholarDawe, R. D., PCPS 9(1963),55f.Google Scholar
33 See in particular Zielinski (n. 32), pp. 68–70 and more recently March, J., BICS 36 (1989), 33ff., summarized in her contribution to Euripides, Women and Sexuality (London, 1990), pp. 49ff. Greek literature's tendency to emphasize a given presentation by contrasting it with an alternative, rejected, one emerges very clearly from Il. 24.22ff., where the gods are debating how to rescue Hector's corpse. The possibility of sending Hermes to steal it is raised (v. 24) but dismissed by Zeus (v. 71). The stratagem is obviously Homer's ad hoc invention to emphasize the course of action that is actually decided on (and which does, in a different way, involve Hermes).Google Scholar
34 Bond (n. 4), p. 3.
35 See Appendix below.
36 Bond (n. 3), p. 12.
37 So generally accepted is this view that doxography would be pointless. Mastronarde in his commentary ad loc. observes that ‘there is certainly an intertextual allusion’ to Aeschylus' S. C. T., though he is admirably cautious as to whether the tone is intended as ‘polite … complimentary … or sarcastic’ (see below, p. 401) and he observes that any criticism intended must be ‘captious at best’ (cf. n. 15 above) ‘since Aeschylus himself marks the suspension of action necessary for the pairs of speeches at the outset of the sequence … and the symbolic import of the scene obviously outweighs any interest in chronological realism’. He also observes that the lines also possess a ‘local meaning’, conveying, for example, Eteocles' impatience with military planning
38 
at 753 is somewhat peculiar (see Mastronarde ad loc), because utterers of this phrase in Greek tragedy almost invariably leave the stage very soon afterwards and Eteocles, in the text as it stands, does not. One consideration that might be invoked in explanation is that in other scenes, to be considered shortly, where Aeschylean leisureliness is contrasted with Euripidean speed, a speaker cuts proceedings short with some such phrase as 
(El. 684) or 
(Or. 1240), to which 
might be thought equivalent.
39 Willink's commentary on 1225–8 compares El. 671ff. and Cho. 479ff., while noticing the differences in formal structure between the three passages (irregular in Cho., stichomythic in EL, antilabic in the case of the Orestes). It might be argued that this formal differentiation is another form of ‘literary criticism’ (see below, n. 54) on Euripides' part: in other words, Euripides here transposes Aeschylean lyric (of an extraordinarily interwoven complexity) into terser iambic trimeters, just as he does the reverse at El. 1177ff. 
(note, in passing, how Euripides' reworking here confirms Barrett's deletion of Cho. 994 (see West, Studies in Aeschylus [Stuttgart, 1990], p. 262)). Similarly, Eur. Troades 451ff. transposes into trochaic tetrameters the iambic trimeters of Cassandra at Aesch. Ag. 1264ff. One might compare the archaic technique of metaphrasis, whereby epic hexameters and the like were transposed into different metres and dialect by later poets (cf. Kassel, ZPE42 (1981), llff. = Kl. Schr. pp. 121ff).
40 It may not be irrelevant (see above, n. 22, on El. 663) that, shortly before the reworking of the 
at 1225ff., Orestes' exclamation 
(1100) represents another abuse of the Aeschylean motif. Here it is returned to Orestes; applied, however, not to his mother's impending death, but to the prospect of Menelaus' discomfiture.
41 ‘One could but need not see allusion to Aeschylus at El. 671ff.’, wrote Winnington-Ingram, Arethusa 2 (1969), 139, n. 19.Google Scholar
42 On the symmetrical division of the passage into groups of three lines, see Denniston's commentary on 671–83. It presupposes a large number of conjectured changes of speaker (argued against by Kovacs, TAPA 117 [1987], 263ff).
43 Cf.Tycho von Wilamowitz, Die dramatische Technik des Sophokles (Berlin, 1917), pp. 168f.; Fraenkel, Ed., Beobachtungen zu Aristophanes (Rome, 1962), p. 22, n. 1 (cf. Due seminari Romani di Eduard Fraenkel [Rome, 1977], p. 47). Like Fraenkel and, for example, Lloyd-Jones and Wilson in their OCT (cf. Sophoclea ad loc. [p. 44]) I follow the MSS's distribution of the lines in question. Nauck's attribution of 80–1 to the Paedagogus and of 82–5 to Orestes would, if correct, sharpen the contrast with the Choephori's opening scene: there Orestes insists on spending time eavesdropping on his sister's lament; here he himself would be taking the lead in putting action before such wasting of time.Google Scholar
44 Compare Netta Zagagi's remarks (Tradition and Originality in Plautus [Hypomnemata 62 (1980)], p. 45) on ‘mythological hyperboles’: ‘It seems that Aeschylus and Sophocles preferred using structural forms of a more allusive and disjointed character, whereas Euripides sought modes of expression that would enable him to bring out as clearly as possible the element of hyperbole.’
45 Bond (n. 3), p. 10.
46 Denniston on El. 549 thinks ‘
looks, at first sight, like feeble padding.... But the point may be that the young aristocrats' light and nimble tread is very different from the tramp of the muscle-bound farmers.’ It may be, however, that the phrase is to be explained along very different lines, in the light of passages cited in my note on Soph. Tr. 58. Characters whose appearance on stage is timely (in view of remarks just made by another character) are often said to appear 
or 
(Or. 1550), vel sim.
47 Even Bond ([n. 3], p. 3) refers to ‘smaller pieces of dramatic criticism’, and Bain observes ([n. 4], p. 109) that ‘the kind of reference to other plays elsewhere in tragedy that has been likened to [the Electro's recognition scene] tends to be brief and passing’. Cf. Kovacs ([n. 4]), p. 68.
48 For a list of those plays of Euripides which are known to have shared titles or themes with plays by Aeschylus or Sophocles see Schmidt, Geschichte d. gr. Lit. 1.3.333.
49 Bond(n. 3), p. 11.
50 Gnomon 34 (1962), 742 = Academic Papers [I], p. 198.
51 This is why I find the idea that El. 518–44 is a subsequent interpolation by Euripides himself (West [n. 4], pp. 17,20, taken very seriously by Kovacs [n. 4], p. 67: ‘the best [hypothesis] currently on offer’; p. 77: it ‘covers many of the facts’) so spectacularly unconvincing. As originally put forward by its author (at the meeting of the Oxford Philological Society [in October 1977] at which Bain's paper was first read [cf. p. 113, n. 1 of his article]), it was recommended as a way of ‘having one's cake and eating it’; but the cliche that strikes me as most appropriate is ‘the worst of all worlds’. If Euripides worked in the material before the original performance, then the passage is no different qualitatively from the x number of other passages where, for all we know, he did the same (no different except that here, for some reason, he was obtrusive about it). If Euripides worked in the material after the original and, for all he knew, sole performance (‘as seems likelier’ to West), he did something quite remarkably pointless, since the main function of the criticism of Aeschylus (especially when we bear in mind passages [i]-[iii] in Section IV) would seem to be to draw the audience's attention to his own way of doing things differently.
52 For example by Kurt von Fritz in Antike undmoderne Tragodie (Berlin, 1962), pp. 148f.Google Scholar (cf. Lloyd-Jones, Gnomon 34 [1962], 742 = Academic Papers [I], p. 198) and Fraenkel, Due seminari Romani [n. 43]).Google Scholar
53 So, for example, Dover (n. 1) who talks of Euripides' ‘parody’ of the Aeschylean footsteps scene, and Bond (n. 3) passim, esp. p. 8 (where we also find ‘burlesque’ [already in L. Radermacher's treatment of Euripides' recognition scene, RhM 58 (1903), 549]). I may be indulging in pedantry, but given the pre-existing convention whereby one talks of the ‘parody’ of passages from Greek tragedy by poets of the Old Comedy, this term too, like ‘satire’ (see Dover [n. 1]), seems undesirable. Certainly, if it is in any way responsible for Kovacs's unfortunate idea ([n. 4], pp. 77–8) that El. 518–44 are from a Middle Comedy play on the Orestes theme ‘borrowed’ by a ‘tragic producer in a weak moment … for a fourth-century or later production of the Electra’, the term will have served scholarship ill. For further objections to the use of the term ‘parody’ in this context, see Halporn (n. 13), pp. 114f.
54 The article by Radermacher mentioned in the previous note was entitled ‘Euripides als literarischer Kritik', and ‘dramatic criticism’ is a term that occurs more than once in Bond's article. To be accurate, of course, Euripides would have to be engaging in proto-literary criticism. Cf. n. 39 above. My favourite exemplification (as opposed to labelling) of the sort of effect Euripidean references to Aeschylus would produce can be achieved by adapting Fraenkel's comment (in Beob. zu Aristoph.: see above, n. 43) on the prologue of Sophocles' Electra: ‘Es ist als wenn Sophokles sagte: “ich habe die Choephoren nicht vergessen, aber ich mache es anders”.’ (This is not too different from Denniston's view of Euripides' recognition scene: see his commentary, p. 114 and cf. Gellie, G. H., BICS 28 [1981], p. 4 with nn. 8–9.)Google Scholar A related mode of interpretation (suggested to me by Jaume Portulas) is to suppose that Euripides is confronting the audience with two incompatible ways of telling the same story: this would be not unlike his frequent technique of departing so much in his plot from the traditional story that the audience wonders how a denouement will be possible, only to find the tradition unconvincingly restated at the eleventh hour by dei ex machina or other means.
55 Invoked by Mastronarde on Eur. Phoen. 751f. (see above n. 37). For hostile comment on the general term cf. Kovacs, Mnemosyne 48 (1995), 570, n. 6.
56 Perhaps an analogy from the world of art history may be found enlightening (or at least provoking). Fifteenth-century Florence saw a number of contemporary or near-contemporary artists working at close quarters on a limited number of themes, and one treatment can seem to be a comment on an earlier version. Thus ‘Verrochio's later statue of David seems to constitute a sharp criticism of” the ‘shortcoming in the emotional temper of’ Donatello's notably androgynous and dreamy hero (I quote from Charles Avery, Florentine Renaissance Sculpture [London, 1970], p. 82).Google Scholar
57 An important qualification. Mastronarde (n. 37) has pointed out that Phoen. 751–2 has other ‘local’ functions beside criticizing Aeschylus, and the same is certainly true of the Electra's scene (cf. Bond [n. 3], p. 3: ‘these dramatic and theological aims can easily co-exist with the aim of parodying Aeschylus. Euripides was capable of doing several things at once; that is one reason why we find him difficult.’). I agree with those scholars (e.g. Bond [n. 3], p. 11) who think that characterization of Electra is one of these further functions. Kovacs ([n. 4], pp. 68f.) raises a difficulty when he claims that Electra's remark at 524–6 
constitutes ‘an irrationality’ and a view of Orestes' position that is ‘completely out of touch with reality’. The usual explanation is that of, for example, Denniston ad loc. (‘She cherishes a romantic conception of the ideal hero which is very different from the reality’) and I do not think that Kovacs has disproved this possibility (the contrast between the real and the ideal can be shown to operate as a theme in other parts of the play: see my remarks in G&R 42 [1995], 155). Still, since he himself (p. 68) thinks ‘it too falls short of the proof we require’, I will not pursue the matter further.
58 Kovacs ([n. 4], p. 68) makes rather heavy weather of what would be involved if we accepted that Euripides criticized a play by Aeschylus: ‘something which tragedy normally does not do, admitting its own fictitious character by allowing the world of the audience, which contains other plays in it, to impinge on that of the play they are watching’. How Euripides or any other Greek tragedian could ever have prevented the world of the audience from sometimes so impinging I simply do not see. But what we are faced with is not like, for example, audience address (that phenomenon so notoriously distinguishing tragedy from comedy) which shatters the dramatic illusion: we should not follow those critics who, to quote Halporn ([n. 13], p. 102), ‘have often had the sense that the dramatic illusion itself has been broken and that Euripides is speaking in his own person’. Rather (to sidestep the whole question of tragic allusions to contemporary or recent historical events, itself another hornets' nest) we have something like the issue of the Areopagus reforms in Aeschylus' Eumenidesand it operates on two levels: Electra's criticisms of the three tokens make dramatic sense in their own right (as an expression of character, vehicle for irony, etc.), but gain a further dimension if the audience thinks of the Choephori. Precisely how many of them would so think is an unanswerable question, but one closely related to the sort we have over long years come to live with in the (different but analogous) case of Aristophanes and Old Comedy (see, for example, Dover, 50 Years (and 12) of Classical Scholarship [1968], p. 128 = Greek and the Greeks, pp. 195f, on the issue of how large a proportion of Aristophanic audiences would recognize his parodies).
59 Still less does Eur. Hel. 1165ff., where Theoclymenus begins his rhesis by hailing his father's tomb: 
. This was taken by Winnington-Ingram ([n. 41], p. 131) as ‘a hit at the conventional treatment of locality in the Choephori, where the scene shifts unobtrusively from tomb to palace’. The suggestion strikes me as totally far-fetched.