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Euripides, Troades 95–7: Is sacking cities really foolish?

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 February 2009

David Kovacs
David Kovacs
Affiliation:
Center for Hellenic Studies, Washington, D.C.
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Extract

Rem tene, the elder Cato advised the aspiring orator, verba sequentur. The advice applies equally to the textual critic. Of those who have attempted to emend, repunctuate, or defend this passage, few seem to have been troubled by any doubts about the firmness of their grip on the res, the precise point Poseidon is making. The usual view of what Poseidon means is that those who sack cities are foolish because such an act results in their own subsequent destruction, presumably because they desecrate temples and thereby offend the gods. Poseidon's words are cited as encapsulating the ‘moral’ or ‘lesson’ of the play, that the destruction of others and their cities brings the victor no advantage but only his own ruin, that the sacking of cities is always and everywhere an act of criminal folly. Yet there are several features of the lines themselves that are hard to square with this reading, and the context, Poseidon's monologue and his dialogue with Athena, suggests a slightly different view of the lesson to be read from the coming destruction of the Greeks.

Type
Research Articles
Information
The Classical Quarterly , Volume 33 , Issue 2 , December 1983 , pp. 334 - 338
Copyright
Copyright © The Classical Association 1983

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References

1 This is the clear tenor of most translations: ‘Wie töricht sind die Menschen! Städte reissen/sie nieder, Gotteshäusern bringen sie/Verödung und der Ahnen heil'gen Gräbern/und gründen nur des eigenen Glückes Grab’ (Wilamowitz); ‘That mortal who sacks fallen cities is a fool,/who gives the temples and the tombs, the hallowed places/of the dead, to desolation. His own turn must come’ (Lattimore); ‘Insensé le mortel qui détruit les cités et livre à l'abandon les temples et les tombes, asiles saints des morts: sa perte s'ensuivra’ (Parmentier). We might also cite the explicit comments of Parmentier (the Notice to his Budé edition, p. 10), Pohlenz, , Die griechische Tragödie 2, 372Google Scholar, and O'Neill, E. G. Jr, ‘The Prologue of the Troades of Euripides’, TAPA 72 (1941), 318Google Scholar.I cite the following by author's name: Diggle, James, Studies on the Text of Euripides (Oxford, 1981)Google Scholar; and West, M. L., ‘Tragica’, BICS 27 (1980), 15Google Scholar.

2 e.g. by Lee, K. H., Euripides: Troades (London, 1976), 79Google Scholar.

3 See, for example, , A.Pers. 809–12Google Scholar, Ag. 338–42, and Hdt. 8. 109. O'Neill (above, n. 1), 303, tries to read overtones of sacrilege into ⋯ρημ⋯α in 26. The article abounds in unsupported fancies of this kind.

4 Perdrizet, Paul, ‘Le temoignage d'Eschyle sur le sac d'Athènes’, RÉG 34 (1921), 74–9Google Scholar, tries to interpret δαιμ⋯νων ἱδρ⋯ματα at Pers. 811 as a reference to the tombs of the dead. But see Dale, A. M. on Alcestis 1140Google Scholar.

5 Ducrey, P., Le traitement des prisonniers de guerre dans la Grèce antique (Paris, 1968)Google Scholar.

6 This is a puzzling passage on any view: in 961–6 the servant implies that Eurystheus cannot be killed because of a peculiarly Athenian decree, while Eurystheus himself appeals to ‘the laws of the Greeks’; in 1010 the material relevance of πρ⋯θυμον ⋯ντα is not easy to see, nor indeed the relevance of 1009–11 to the whole argument. Quite possibly all Eurystheus means is that once he has been promised his life, it is not permissible for his captors to go back on their word.

The only other passage I know of (not cited by Ducrey) which might indicate divine hostility to the massacre of enemies is A. Ag. 461: τ⋯ν πολυκτ⋯νων γ⋯ρ οὐκ ἄσκοποι θεο⋯. But the context does not suggest that either gods or men feel anger at the destruction of the Trojans. The citizens (456–7) are angry because of the loss of Greek life, while the gods appear to be jealous of overly great success (cf. 468–70 and 464). Probably it is not as killers but as too fortunate that such men attract the gods’ notice. Certainly excessive good fortune is what the Chorus deprecate with the words μ⋯τ' εἴην πτολιπ⋯ρθης (472), as the correlative deprecation of excessive bad fortune shows. It is noteworthy that neither Fraenkel nor Denniston–Page cites any parallel for the idea that the killing of enemies in the course of war or its aftermath, apart from those specially under a god's protection, incurs divine condemnation.

7 There is, of course, mention of Greek sacrilege in the prologue, notably Agamemnon's failure to respect Cassandra's virginity, granted to her by Apollo, but this will not be any concern of Poseidon's. The reference to Priam's corpse lying next to the steps of Zeus Herkeios' altar probably connotes a sacrilege by Neoptolemus, : cf. Proclus' summary of the Iliupersis (Allen, 107)Google Scholar and Ilias Parva, fr. xvi (Allen, 134)Google Scholar. Again, that is not Poseidon's affair. The point of φ⋯νῳ καταρρεῖ (16) is not, I think, sacrilege but ritual impurity: cf. νοσεῖ τ⋯ τ⋯ν θε⋯ν in 27. But there is no indication that Poseidon's temple has been outraged, even supposing that 16 refers to sacrilege.

8 Surprisingly few critics have noted that Poseidon, on the usual view, is speaking out of character. Conacher, D. J., Euripidean Drama (Toronto, 1967), 135–6Google Scholar, rightly finds 95–7 an incongruity in the prologue.

9 Other Euripidean examples are Hip. 395–7, Hec. 311–12, 592–8, 813–19, and, though formally distinct, Andr. 324–8. In prose, see, for example, Xen, . Hell, 1Google Scholar. 7. 28.

10 See the variorum edition published by , A. and Duncan, J. M., Euripidis Opera Omnia (Glasgow, 1821), v, 611Google Scholar. (I owe this reference to Diggle.)

11 Diggle, 59. Page, cited there, interprets the passage in the same way. W. Headlam, who repeated Blomfield's conjecture in ignorance that it had already been made (JPh 23 [1895], 287Google Scholar), is even more puzzlingly laconic than Blomfield. He too notes that sacrilege did not always accompany the sack of a town, though how far this line of reasoning took him is impossible to say.