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HECUBA SUCCUMBS: WORDPLAY IN SENECA'S TROADES
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 11 January 2019
Extract
Hecuba's grief upon learning of Hector's death in Hom. Il. 22.430‒6 and in the presence of his corpse later on in Il. 24.747‒59 seems to foreshadow the queen's miserable fate in the aftermath of the fall of Troy. In the subsequent literary tradition, the character of Hecuba ends up merging with the destiny of her city: as Harrison points out with reference to Seneca's Troades, Hecuba, the Latin counterpart of Greek Hekabe, functions as a metaphor for the fall of Troy (118), even represents the fallen Troy itself (128). In turning into an exemplar of maternal grief, she also comes to embody the vicissitudes of fortune. In these pages, I am interested in exploring a possible wordplay on the queen's name in Seneca's Troades, which may have originated, as I suggest, from Hecuba's distinctive posture in Euripides’ diptych Hecuba and Trojan Women (for convenience's sake I will employ the Latin form of the name throughout these pages with the exception of a few passages, in which the Greek form ‘Hekabe’ will be used in order to bring to the fore an etymological connection I will discuss below).
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- Copyright © The Classical Association 2019
Footnotes
I would like to thank Marco Fucecchi, Andreas Michalopoulos and Damien Nelis for reading a previous draft of this article and the referee for CQ for giving advice on it.
References
1 See Harrison, G.W.M., ‘Seneca and the fall of Troy’, in Harrison, G.W.M. (ed.), Brill's Companion to Roman Tragedy (Leiden, 2015), 118‒50CrossRefGoogle Scholar, especially at 137‒43. He considers Troy more than just an evocative setting: the city is a proper character in the play (138). The link between the queen and her city is also underlined by the ‘active’ role Hecuba has in the destruction of Troy: cf. Eur. Tro. 919‒20, in which Helen accuses Hecuba of being the origin of all evils, since she gave birth to Paris. Cicero (Div. 1.21.42) refers to the famous prophecy of the fire-brand, quoting from Ennius, Alexander, fr. 18 Jocelyn: the fax ardens Hecuba has dreamt of will turn into the exitium Troiae, pestis Pergamo. Cf. also Sen. Tro. 40 meus ignis iste est, facibus ardetis meis (Hecuba is speaking). On the death of Troy as the death of a place as well as a cultural entity in Euripides’ Hecuba, cf. Croally, N.T., Euripidean Polemic. The Trojan Women and the Function of Tragedy (Cambridge, 1994), 192Google Scholar. Dugdale, E., ‘Hecuba’, in Lauriola, R. and Demetriou, K.N. (edd.), Brill's Companion to the Reception of Euripides (Leiden, 2015), 100‒42CrossRefGoogle Scholar offers a detailed survey of the figure of Hecuba across literature and art; cf. also Foley, H.P., Euripides: Hecuba (London, 2015)Google Scholar.
2 Cf. McAuley, M., Reproducing Rome: Motherhood in Virgil, Ovid, Seneca, and Statius (Oxford, 2014), 261‒2Google Scholar and Hopkinson, N., Ovid Metamorphoses Book XIII (Cambridge, 2001), 23Google Scholar.
3 See Fantham, E., Seneca's Troades (Princeton, 1983)Google Scholar, ad loc.; cf. also McAuley (n. 2), 261 n. 14.
4 On the question of the models of Senecan tragedies, cf. Stevens, J.A., ‘Etymology and plot in Senecan tragedy’, SC 13 (2002), 126‒51Google Scholar, at 127‒30 and passim with further bibliography; cf. also Dugdale (n. 1), 110. With regard to mater audito stupet, Hinds, S., ‘Seneca's Ovidian loci’, SIFC 9 (2011), 5‒63Google Scholar, at 41‒2 argues that, despite the fact that Hecuba's collapse reactivates the memory of Eur. Hec. 438‒40, there is strong lexical connection with Ov. Met. 5.509 mater ad auditas stupuit, in which another mythological mother grieves for her daughter, Ceres for Proserpina (both Proserpina's and Polyxena's perverse marriages are connected with death).
5 As Andreas Michalopoulos has kindly pointed out to me, there may be at this point an etymological play on the queen's name toying with the opposition of πέλας (‘near’) vs ἑκάς (‘afar’, ‘far off’) underlying Hekabe's name. A similar ex contrario wordplay may also be spotted in Eur. Tro. 37‒8 πάρεστιν Ἑκάβη quoted above.
6 On Hecuba's presence and silence during Poseidon's prologue, cf. Montiglio, S., Silence in the Land of Logos (Princeton, 2000), 189‒90Google Scholar.
7 Euripides’ Trojan Women was produced after the Hecuba (around 412 b.c.e., whereas Hecuba apparently dates to the late 420s b.c.e.; cf. Foley [n. 1], 4).
8 She is likely to appear veiled on stage (cf. Montiglio [n. 6], 189) so as to recall a cadaver wrapped in a shroud. In Euripides’ Hecuba she covers her head with her cloak (cf. 487).
9 On this, cf. especially Nussbaum, M.C., The Fragility of Goodness. Luck and Ethics in Greek Tragedy and Philosophy (Cambridge, 2001), 396‒421CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Interestingly, Ovid's narrative on Hecuba's transformation into a dog is effectively prepared by an animal simile, in which the queen is compared to a lioness bereft of her suckling cub (leaena, Met. 13.547). Cf. also Hom. Il. 24.212‒14, which gives us a savage picture of Hecuba wishing she could devour Achilles’ liver. On the queen's metamorphosis, see now Battezzato, L., Euripides Hecuba (Cambridge, 2018), ad 1252–95Google Scholar.
10 As in Eur. Tro. 378‒9 (κεῖνται); in Hom. Il. 24.758 Hecuba employs this verb to refer to Hector's body lying in the palace after Priam's rescue.
11 Cf. LSJ s.v.
12 On this, cf. e.g. Telò, M., ‘Per una grammatica dei gesti nella tragedia greca (I): cadere a terra, alzarsi; coprirsi, scoprirsi il volto’, MD 48 (2002), 9‒75Google Scholar.
13 See B. Goff, Euripides: Trojan Women (London, 2009), 43‒4.
14 See Di Benedetto, V., Euripide. Troiane (transl. Cerbo, E.) (Milan, 1998), 27‒32Google Scholar. Cf. the closing lines of Eur. Tro. 1327‒30, in which Hecuba points to the weakness of her limbs. She calls her foot ‘old’ in 1275.
15 Chantraine, P., Dictionnaire étymologique de la langue grecque (Paris, 1968), 327Google Scholar.
16 Cf. Stoevesandt, M., Homers Iliad, Band IV, 6. Gesang (Berlin, 2008), 102Google Scholar, who, besides the usual etymology, suggests a connection of the name Hekabe with Artemis-Hekate, given her transformation into a bitch, which was a sacred animal to the goddess Hekate.
17 Stevens (n. 4), 126 and passim.
18 See Ernout, A. and Meillet, A., Dictionnaire étymologique de la langue latine. Histoire des mots (Paris, 1967)Google Scholar; Maltby, R., A Lexicon of Ancient Latin Etymologies (Leeds, 1991)Google Scholar.
19 On this, cf. Michalopoulos, A., Ancient Etymologies in Ovid's Metamorphoses: A Commented Lexicon (Leeds, 2001), 65‒6Google Scholar and 110‒11. He also refers to the Greek sources recounting the queen's transformation. Cf. also Hopkinson (n. 2), 186 (commenting on line 551, he points to bilingual wordplay on the name of Polymestor, referred to as artificem).
20 In O'Hara, J.J., True Names: Vergil and the Alexandrian Tradition of Etymological Wordplay (Ann Arbor, 1996)Google Scholar there is no wordplay or etymological interpretation linked to Hecuba's name. Paschalis, M., Virgil's Aeneid: Semantic Relations and Proper Names (Oxford, 1997), 89Google Scholar points to the cluster formed by incumbens and Hecubam in Verg. Aen. 2.514‒15 with reference to the queen's protective role towards Priam, paralleling that of the laurel (on this cf. also further). Pavlock, B., The Image of the Poet in Ovid's Metamorphoses (London, 2009), 56‒7Google Scholar makes the fascinating suggestion that Ovid creates his own etymology for Hecuba by means of the adjective maesta in Ov. Met. 13.570‒1 ueterumque diu memor illa malorum | tum quoque Sithonios ululauit maesta per agros. maesta, being related to the verb maereo, conjures up the name of Maera, the dog who revealed to Erigone the location of her father's corpse, mentioned by Ovid in Met. 7.362. On Maera and Hecuba, cf. also Lycoph. Alex. 334, in which Hecuba's metamorphosis is announced through the mediation of Maira, the Greek name of Erigone's dog.
21 Troy represents the ruined city par excellence. iaceo is used also e.g. at 54 regni iacentis and at 550 Troiam iacentem (cf. also Ov. Met. 13.505 iacet Ilion ingens). This verb is recurrent in the play. Keulen, A.J., L. Annaeus Seneca Troades (Leiden, 2001), 86Google Scholar also quotes Verg. Aen. 2.624‒31, especially 624‒5 tum uero omne mihi uisum considere in ignis | Ilium along with Austin's comment on the Senecan rewriting: ‘Seneca improves upon the idea’.
22 Also, in the prologue, Hecuba ties up the image of Troy with that of Priam by employing different inflections of the verb sto: […] quo stetit stante Ilium (31).
23 By contrast, Ovid's mens refuses to succumb to misfortune: Tr. 4.10.103 indignata malis mens est succumbere […].
24 On the aspect of true and false etymologies, on how false connections may produce a poetic truth and on whether etymologies were recovered by ancient readers, see Stevens (n. 4), 130‒1. It is generally accepted that distinctions between short and long syllables in wordplay are ignored by Latin writers: see Ahl, F., Metaformations. Soundplay and Wordplay in Ovid and Other Classical Poets (Ithaca/London, 1985), 56Google Scholar.
25 Cf. Ingram, J.K., ‘Etymological notes on Liddell and Scott's lexicon’, Hermathena 7 (1881), 105‒20Google Scholar, at 111, who opposes the comparison between cubo/*cumbo and keimai proposed by Liddell‒Scott, which he considers wrong (by contrast, Lat. quies likely stems from the same root as keimai). On the verbal pair cubo/*cumbo (the latter only in compound forms), the nasal infix originally expressed the dynamism of the verbal process, the so-called infectum, so that cubo, being a perfectum, signifies ‘to be lying down’ (on this, cf. e.g. Traina, A., Propedeutica al latino universitario [Bologna, 1998 6], 150Google Scholar). The Proto-Indo-European origin of *kub- is uncertain: cf. Vaan, M. de, Etymological Dictionary of Latin and the Other Italic Languages (Leiden, 2008), 152Google Scholar.
26 Cf. Stevens (n. 4), 131.
27 As Di Benedetto (n. 14), 255 n. 313 observes in commenting on loaded aural effects in lines 1291‒2 of Euripides’ Trojan Women (Troy as a polis has written its destiny of death in its own denomination owing to the iterated presence of the sound -ol- related to a morpheme signifying destruction), ‘ricerche di questo tipo sono facili, e perciò vi si indulge troppo: ma il fenomeno ha un fondamento reale’.
28 On this, cf. Horsfall, N., Vergil Aeneid 2. A Commentary (Leiden, 2008), 388Google Scholar. It is worth mentioning that the same verb is employed in the present form at 493 procumbunt … postes with reference to Pyrrhus’ assault on the main entrance.
29 Cf. Ov. Met. 13.281‒2 Achilles | procubuit; on Ovid's use of this verb with reference to the event of people's death, cf. Bömer, F., P. Ovidius Naso. Metamorphosen XII‒XIII (Heidelberg, 1982)Google Scholar, on Met. 12.292, at 106. Virgil too employs it with this meaning in Aen. 2.426 (cf. also Catull. 64.389 procumbere tauros). In Aen. 2.624‒33 Aeneas compares the fall of Troy to the collapse of an ash-tree (on this, see Nelis, D., ‘Vergilian cities. Visions of Troy, Carthage and Rome’, in Fuhrer, T., Mundt, F. and Stenger, J. [edd.], Cityscaping. Constructing and Modelling Images of the City [Berlin, 2015], 19‒45Google Scholar, at 36).
30 On this, cf. Conte, G.B., The Poetry of Pathos. Studies in Virgilian Epic (ed. Harrison, S.J.) (Oxford, 2007), 28CrossRefGoogle Scholar and 183.
31 On this, cf. n. 20.
32 Assonance seems accidental in Hyg. Fab. 91.1.1 Priamus Laomedontis filius cum complures liberos haberet ex concubitu Hecubae Cissei siue Dymantis filiae.
33 In fact, etymology and plot share a deep connection, as Stevens (n. 4), 136 and passim argues in discussing examples of wordplay in Seneca's plays.