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A Refiection on Homeric Dawn in the Parodos of Aeschylus, Agamemnon
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 11 February 2009
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Aeschylus' account of the sacrifice of Iphigeneia in the Agamemnon has elicited an extraordinarily wide range of interpretations–a critical response which, in its veryproductivity, may signal a central aspect of the description itself. While more recent explications have been profitably informed by research in cult and ritual, there remains, I would like to suggest, an important literary possibility which merits consideration, particularly in a text where so much has been shaped from a close and profound engagement with the Homeric tradition. The description of the sacrifice (Ag. 228–47) is forcefully carried by enjambement from one stanza into another by the sheer weight, as it were, of the force that crushingly silences, βίαι χαλινὦν τ᾿ άναύδωι μ⋯νει (238). In the midst of much that is dark and difficult to construe, the composition yields a sudden effusion of colour, a striking trail of saffron. The sense of concealment, of a figure enveloped or enshrouded, which has been suggested by the phrase πέπλοισι περιπετή (233), opens on to an image of unfolding, the falling spread of a robe caught in itsflow towards the ground, κρόκου βαφάς δ ⋯ς πέδονχέουσα (239).
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References
1 It is assumed here that Iphigeneia's robe is indeed at least the literal referent in both phrases, an interpretation to which the argument for traditionalassociations in the language will, it is hoped, lend support. For the robe see e.g. Lebeck, A., ‘;The Robe of Iphigenia in Agamemnon’, GRBS 5 (1964), 35–41Google Scholar, and The ‘;Oresteia’: A Study in Language and Structure (Washington, DC, 1971), pp. 80–6Google Scholar. While a review of the numerous publications on this subject is beyond the scope of this paper, one especially important point, frequently overlooked in a number of interpretations and reconstructions, should be noted: the aspect of the verb χέουσα. χέουσα is not an aorist but a present and thus, significantly, does not mark a completed action, as has been pointed out by Lloyd-Jones, H., ‘;The Robes of Iphigeneia’, CR n.s. 2 (1952), 132–5, p. 135Google Scholar.The text cited throughout this study is D. Page's 1972 OCT edn. Unattributed translations are from Lloyd-Jones's, Oresteia (Englewood Cliffs, NJ, 1970).Google ScholarFraenkel's, E. edition of the Agamemnon (Oxford, 1950)Google Scholar is abbreviated throughout as Fraenkel.
2 “The Robe of Iphigenia in Agamemnon”, pp. 38–9.
3 In Clytemnestm's opening lines (264–6) words which echo the Chorus (261–3) include: εύάγγελος, εὐφρόνης, πεύσηι έλπίδος τοώς(269) may recall τορ⋯ν (254), while γένοιτο (264) may echo έπεί γένοιτ᾿ (252).
4 Poulet's, G. phrase in Études sur le temps humain (Paris, 1952–1968)Google Scholar.
5 Commentators cite, for this relation, Hesiod, Theogony 124, Ṋυκτός δ αύτ Ạίθήρ τε καίḢμέρη έξεγένοντοOnemight note within the Theogony, Dawn (Eos) is distinguished from Day (Hemera) and has a different parent, Theia (371–4). In the Agamemnon it is specifically ‘;Eos’ (in the Attic form έως for ήώς 265) who is now the daughter of the night. This possible change in the relations established in Hesiod's Theogony would be matched by another: Aeschylus similarly makes the Furies daughters of motherNight (cf. e.g. Eum. 321–2, 791–2 = 821–2); for this latter difference see. Solmsen, F., Hesiod and Aeschylus (Ithaca, NY, 1949), pp. 178–81Google Scholar, and, in general, Ramnoux, C., La Nuit et les enfants de la nuit dans la tradition grecque (Paris, 1959)Google Scholar. Unlike Eos krokopeplos, the Furies are dark-robed(Eum. 353; cf.Cho. 1049, Eum. 370). From Hesiod, Night as mother also has the potential to produce kaka, including Death and Strife(Theog. 211–32).
6 The phrase is from James, William, Principles of Psychology (New York, 1890), v. 2, p. 78, where it is argued that ‘;every perception is an acquired perception’Google Scholar.
7 Joyce's phrase in A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man: 'The phrase and the day and the scene harmonized in a chord. Words. Was it their colours? He allowed them to glow and fade, hue after hue: sunrise gold, the russet… through the prism of a language many–coloured and richly storied.’.
8 Cf. e.g. Sideras, A., Aeschylus Homericus: Untersuchungen zu den Homerismen der aischyleischen Sprache (Gottingen, 1971). Sideras, p. 205, cites II. 5.734–5 as the Homeric model for Ag. 239CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
9 Wallace, F. E., Color in Homer and in Ancient Art:Preliminary Studies (Northampton, Mass., 1927), p.51Google Scholar.
10 Lorimer, H. L., Homer and the Monuments (London, 1950), ch. 6 (336–405), pp. 377, 389Google Scholar. It might be noted that tragedy tends to generalize the traditional epic term peplos by often using it in the plural (hence πέπλοισιTπεριπετή, 233) (see Lorimer, p. 389).
11 Penelope's weaving, for example, is described as ήελίω έναλίγκιον ήέ σεληνη, Od. 24.148;at Od. 19.234 Odysseus' robe is λαμπρός Cf. II. 6.293–5, Od. 15.105–8.
12 The Odyssey achieves a gentle effect in terms of these relationswhen dawn(Ḥώς έϋθρονος) awakens the young girl Nausikaa, who is described as εΰπεπλος (Od. 6.48–9).
13 See West, M. L., in his edition of Hesiod, Works and Days (Oxford, 1978), p. 383Google Scholar, for Eos as ‘;one of the very few identifiable Indo-European deities in the Greek pantheon’ cf.Boedeker, D. D., Aphrodite's Entry into Greek Epic (Leiden, 1974), p. 72; on Eos in generalGoogle Scholar, see also LIMC, s.v. (v. 3, pt. 1, esp. pp. 748–9) andMugler, C., Dictionnaire historique de la terminologie optique des grecs (Paris, 1964)Google Scholar, s.v. έος ήώς.
14 The quotation is from Irwin, E., ‘The Crocus and the Rose: A Study of the Interrelationship between the Natural and the Divine World in Early Greek Poetry’, in Gerber, D. E.(ed.), Greek Poetry and Philosophy (Chico, Calif., 1984), 147–68, p. 158.Google ScholarLeumann, M., on the other hand, regards the Homeric epithets for dawn as ‘konkret-anschaulich’ in their reference to the natural phenomenon of daybreak, reflecting ‘;die alte Naturanschauung’ (Homerische Worter (Basel, 1950), p. 18 n. 9)Google Scholar.
15 See Scholia Graeca in Homeri Iliadem, ed. .Erbse, H (Berlin, 1969–1988), on II. 8.1 (v. 2 p. 297)Google Scholar and on II. 1.477 (v. 1, p. 134). The same explanation is repeated and elaborated by Eustathius, Commentarii ad Homeri Iliadempertinentes, adfidem codicis Laurentiani editi, ed.Valk, M. vander (Leiden, 1971–1987), 693.46–56 (v. 2, pp. 509–10). CfGoogle Scholar. also Eustathius, Commentarii ad Homeri Odysseam, adfidem exempli Romani editi (Leipzig, 1825; repr. Hildesheim, 1960), 1429 (v. 1, p. 76). Also interesting in this relation also is Eustathius’ comment on the term ήριγένεια Нώς λέξεως μέν οϋν Нριγένεια ρηθμναι καή ή τόν όρθρον γεννώσα μάλιστα δέ, παθητικια ό τήςλέξεως οχηματσμος, ώς Ţ Тριτολένεια γεννητικός δηλαδή; η μέν άπό βασιλικού γένους(1430). OnEos erigeneia in Homer see alsoAustin, N., Archery at the Dark of the Moon: Poetic Problems in Homer's ‘;Odyssey’ (Berkeley, 1975), p. 92; cf.Google ScholarKober, A.E., The Use of Color Terms in the Greek Poets (Geneva, NY, 1932), p. 60Google Scholar, and Wallace (n. 9 above).
16 For the close association of βαφή and colour in later work, see Aristotle's περί χρωμάτων (On Colours), where it is maintained that the earth is naturally white, but seems coloured because it is dyed (791al.4–6: καί ή γή δ έστί λαφήν πολύχρονς φαίνεται) Throughout the treatise, colour in the natural world is explained in terms of the analogy with artificial dyeing.
17 Hence LSJ, s.v.βαφή ‘the saSron-dyed robe’ (for the plural πέπλοιοι 233, see n. 10 above). On the motif of dyeing cf. e.g. Ag. 960, είμάτων βαφάς 1121, κροκοβαφής Cho.1013,πολλάς βαφάς… τον ποικίκματος and see Ferrari, W.,‘;La parodos dell Agamennone’, Ann. d. R. Sc. Norm. Sup. di Pisa: Lett., St. e Fil., set. 2, 7 (1938), 355–99, p. 393Google Scholar, andHiltbrunner, O., Wiederholungs-und Motivtechnik bei Aischylos (Bern, 1950), pp. 62–3Google Scholar.
18 Joyce's phrase in Ulysses.
19 See e.g. Treu, M., Sappho (Munich, 1968), p. 225Google Scholar, and Clay, J.S.,‘;Sappho's Hesperus and Hesipd's Dawn’, Philologus 124 (1980), 302–5; cfCrossRefGoogle Scholar. Davison, J.A., From Archilochus to Pindar (London, 1968), p. 246 n. 1Google Scholar, and Fraenkel, E., ‘;Vesper adest’, JRS 45 (1955), 1–8Google Scholar.
20 Nux philia is almost an allusion to the term for night, eu-phrone; cf. the collocation at 805–6, ούδ άφίλως εϋφςων.
21 For ύψερεφής with δώμα see II. 5.213, 19.333, Od. 4.15, 4.46, 7.85, 7.225, 10.111, 13.4–5, 15.424, 15.241, 15.432, 19.526; one might compare οίκονύψόροφον έέ (φψ)Od. 5.42, 5.115, 7.77; cf. ‘;cover with a roof’ (LSJ).
22 Cf. Ag. 355–61Google Scholar; for the sense of στεγανου (358, a ‘;covering’ net), see Fraenkel, v. 2, pp. 188–9: ‘;The adjective…carries the notion, roughly, of a horizontal roof-life or lid-like covering.’ Fraenkel's cites Thuc. 3.21.4 for the sense ‘;at night, for a shelter against rain’.
23 Here one might mention one transposition, where the saffron, that first of several great strokes of colour in the trilogy, is unexpectedly reworked. Later in the play, within a context which includes a number of disparate echoes of the Iphigeneia scene (cf. e.g. έν πέπλοιοιν 1126) the rays of dawn and the saffron of daybreak are dispersed in the late reflection of evening, the departing light of mortal life, as some of the suggestive implications of the scene of sacrifice, a dawn compounded with death, are forcefully intensified: έπί δέ καρδίαυ έδραμε κροκοβαφής σταγών,άτε καί δορί πτωσίμποις |βιου δύντος αύγαίς And to my heart runs a drop of saffron dye, | the drop that for men who fall by the spear | accompanies the rays of life's sun as it sets' (1121–3; cf. 254, μνορθρον άύγαίς in the Chorus's anticipation of daybreak at the outset of the play). One might compare such a transposition with Sappho's reworking of the traditional epithets for dawn:' But now she is pre-eminent among ladies of Lydia, like the rosy-fingered moon after sunset [ώς ποτ᾽ ⋯ελίω δύѵτος ⋯ βροδοδάкτѵλος μήѵα], Surpassing all the stars; its light extends…', etc. (Sappho, fr. 96 (L-P)). The later passage in the Agamemnon confirms the previously implicit association of dye with blood, which is not to say that καόκον βαφάς 239 should be understood to mean ‘;blood’ asGarvie, A. F.succinctly comments on the phrase in his edition of the Choephori (Oxford, 1986)Google Scholar, it ‘;denotes Iphigenia’s robe but connotes blood' (p. 332). Cf. Vickers's, B. comment in Towards Greek Tragedy: Drama, Myth, Society (London, 1973)Google Scholar, ‘her robes hang downwards as a proleptic analogy with the flow of her blood, a movement which is familiar from many vase paintings’ (p. 428 n. 13).
24 Rosenmeyer, T.G., The Art of Aeschylus (Berkeley, 1982), p. 121. CfGoogle Scholar. Conacher, D.J., Aeschylus' ‘;Oresteia’ A Literary Commentary (Toronto, 1987)Google Scholar, who describes the words as ‘cryptic’ (p. 62 n. 30).
25 Gadamer's, H.-G. phrase in ‘Philosophy and Poetry’, in Bernasconi, R.(ed.), The Relevance of the Beautiful and Other Essays, tr. N. Walker (Cambridge, 1986), 131–9, p. 136Google Scholar; cf. Vemant, J.-P., ‘;Entretien’, Magazine litteraire, 06 1986, p. 96Google Scholar; ‘;En effet, la tragedie marque un changement considerable sur le plan des formes litteraires. II n'y a plus un poete qui chante ses histoires, mais un spectacle…’.
26 See Fraenkel, v. 2, p. 137.
27 I should like to thank the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada for their generous support of the research upon which this study is based.