Change of date for next meeting of Legendum

Salve!

The date of the next meeting of Legendum has been shifted to the 18th of May. The venue has not changed so I look forward to seeing you all there to discuss Petronius and his work The Satyricon.

Vale!

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Trimalchio and the Domus Aurea

It has been suggested by some scholars (most Notably P.G. Walsh in the introduction to his 1997 OUP Translation of The Satyricon) that the figure of Trimalchio in Petronius’ Satyricon could be a parody of the Emperor Nero himself.

 The figure of the ostentatious dinner host, a money grubbing freedman who came out good, a sort of bulbous and ageing Essex wide-boy dripping with gold and surrounded by tacky expensive trappings of the nouveau riche ‘arriviste’ into Roman high society, is most likely a composite figure comprising Petronius’ pet gripes with the mores of the day: the relatively recent but rapid rise of wealthy freedmen in the accelerating turbo capitalist frenzy of the early principate, the arrogant and overbearing dinner host with no real friends only paid hangers on and other sycophants who are willing to put up with his ignorant boorishness for the free food and wine, the cruel and arbitrary treatment of his slaves by a tyrannical and bullying master, the pretence to culture and learning (bungled references to poetry, mixture of high and vulgar entertainments) and a belief that by buying art a little bit of its cachet rubs off on the purchaser, the superstition and thoughts of mortality that succeed in undermining the hollow superiority of the arrogant rich. Plus ça change indeed.

One cannot be sure exactly how much of Nero is in this picture but as chief ‘wit-meister’ and party arranger, Petronius would no doubt have been given some free license to send up even the Emperor himself...within limits. Even for Petronius with his pristine intellect and imagination it must have been quite a delicate high wire act. How much could you lampoon an Emperor like Nero and get away with it? Perhaps in the end he didn’t, and he committed suicide for reasons unrelated the machinations of his arch rival Tigellinus. A joke might have gone too far or a characterisation that hit a bit too close to the bone, might have caused Nero to tire or become murderously envious of his wit. Nero fancied himself as a performer and would brook only so much upstaging at his expense.

Perhaps with the figure of Trimalchio we have the social problems anthropomorphised rather than actual traces of the characters who personified this sort of behaviour. The host of the rather lurid banquet at the heart of the Satyricon is a curious figure over and above the obvious comedy. Is there a hidden symbolism in his name? Tri-malchio = Thrice King, or thrice Powerful, the ruler of the Underworld, the world of men and a god/daemon of the ether as well?  There were many three-in-one figures that abounded in mystery religions of the time, Hermes Trismegistus, the trinity theology of early Christianity had emerged from the same Mediterranean and gnostic melting pot of the times. Petronius is probably sending up superstition and cult practices here too.

Indeed he leaps off the page as a veritable but flawed Falstaffian King of Fools, a troubled master of ceremonies, lurching from faux camaraderie to violent threats at the drop of a jewelled wine cup. With Trimalchio, it’s a mixture of wild party and hall of judgement, where you could as easily receive a mention in his will, or be writing your own out in front of him.

Debauchery and brutality merge as the trembling chefs lustily hack open the dishes in front of the wine sodden crowd, offering up choice titbits from among the freshly roasted offal that has slopped out from the steaming supine carcass…animal of course but you can’t help thinking that it could be you on the platter at Trimalchio’s merest sozzled whim. Food as theatre.

All of which brings me to the location of the feast. Of course, the setting in the Satyricon is the luxurious if somewhat tacky villa of the rich freedman himself – but what of the literary or symbolic location, the location/s in the minds of the readers?  Could there be any parallel suggested with the Domus Aurea of Nero? After all, part of his legacy is Emperor as party animal sans pareil and this building project had the primary aim of entertainment – all night debauchery no less.

The dates of construction of this mighty pleasure complex the Neronian rus in urbem must be placed somewhere between the great fire of Rome in 64 CE and Nero’s suicide on 68 CE, so it’s just possible that the Satyricon would have been making the rounds of elite Roman libraries at this time, if we accept Walsh’s dates of composition for somewhere around 65 CE.

The Domus Aurea was located in regione III Isis et Serapis at the heart of the city on the smoking ruins of the aristocratic houses destroyed in the fire on the Palatine Hill and near the Esquiline near the site of the future Coliseum. It is suggested by some scholars that the building and grounds covered an area of about 1.2 square kilometres. The extensive complex of domed halls and hidden niches were awash with expensive white marble, ivory rendering and inlaid precious stones as well as copious amounts of gold leaf (hence the name the building quickly came to be known by). There were several innovations, mosaics were set into the ceilings, concrete was used more ambitiously to render arches and the curving domed ceilings and there was a rotating ceiling in the central dome operated by slaves. The moving ceiling had stars and other celestial images painted upon it to imitate the moving heavens to amaze the revellers far below. It must have been quite a sight – enough to make Trimalchio gape skywards and drop his half eaten boar’s foreleg.

There are many similar features described on a smaller scale in Trimalchio’s house, the frescos, inlays, the trick collapsing ceiling. For me this is a parody mirror-image of the great pleasure palace itself. I can almost imagine, Petronius giving a private reading of his work at the Domus Aureum so that the guests could laugh at the humorous contrast between the truly godlike decorations they were surrounded by and the paltry pretentious fare on display at Trimalchio’s cena. This would have been satire in the role of disguised and witty praise by comparison; in effect the same sort of thing Seneca would have been trying to do by his careful political scriptwriting for the young emperor; to show Nero in the best possible light even if it was through the tricky medium of praising by faint damnatio! Finally the wine soaked guests would have been showered by rose petals –one guest is even rumoured to have choked to death under their sheer number – an image that could easily have come from the Satyricon’s pages of excess and grotesquery.                                                                                                        

Salve!

The Satyricon - Menippean Satire or 'Alterum Genus'?

And you thought Apuleius was a bit saucy!

The Satryricon of Gaius Petronius Arbiter 27-66 CE is a fragmentary but kaleidoscopic work portraying the more salacious side of Roman life. It comes across as a deep down and dirty rollercoaster ride through the gamut of players on the roman urban stage during the tumultuous and fear drenched times of the Emperor Nero. Petronius is very likely the author although it is not totally certain, but it’s hard to imagine who else than the chief ‘style guru’ for Nero himself would have had the varied experiences alluded to in the text and the high level of education and literacy as well as wit to exploit such ribald and outrageous subject matter.

We meet the ex-gladiator Encolpius, his less than reliable ‘mate’ and rival in love Ascyltus, and the golden locked teenage object of their affections, Giton as they rumble their way through the streets of a Greek town in Campania (possibly Puteoli) on various escapades. The novelesque action of the text is interrupted and interlaced with speeches or mock poetry declamations, deliberately bad parody orations and blasts of verbal hot air as everything and everyone becomes a target for Petronius’ wickedly incisive invective.

Very early on, in introductions to translations of the texts and essays about the Satyricon, the reader will come across the central debate about this text. Is it an example of Menippean satire or, as Quintilian famously described the alternatives to the Menippean style, ‘alterum genus’? It is first necessary to look at the term Menippean satire and to try to decide whether the satyricon easily fits into this category. Finally I will try to decide what if any genre it does fit into or if it is a one-off unique and impossible due to its fragmentary nature to pin down.

The term Menippean Satire is in fact not a description that would have been recognised by the ancients and is a relatively recent invention. It is first introduced as a descriptive term for a certain kind of satire by Justus Lipsius in 1581 in his work ‘Satyra Menippea Somnium Lusus in Nostri Aevi Criticos’. The term also appears in a French political pamphlet of 1594 edited by Jean Leroy and with Pierre Pithou as one of its contributors entitled Satire Menippée. The term gathered momentum amongst renaissance writers and continued on through the history of literary criticism of classical works until modern times where it discussed by two leading critics on the 20^th Century., Northrop Frye in his book ‘Anatomy of Criticism’ 1957 and Mikhail Bakhtin in his work ‘Problems of Dostoyevsky’s Poetics. I shall come back to these two major exponents of current thinking on Menippean Satire. But first, why Menippean?

Menippus was a 3^rd Century BCE Greek Cynic thinker and parodist whose works are lost apart from very tiny fragments but is known to have influenced Lucian of Samosata as well as Terentius Varro (116-27 BCE) who wrote Saturarum Menippearum libri CL or Menippean Satires in 150 books. This work is sadly lost but from it and other references we do know that he was an authority on Satire.

 

 It is through Lucian’s mention of and conscious imitation or parody of the Greek parodist that we can determine the Menippean style.

The form is long, usually in prose and uses indirect satire as opposed to satire in the first person to parody or otherwise send up various attitudes and behaviours of the times. This is in distinct contrast to the more ad hominem type of satire in which individual figures or groups are satirised.  Aristophanes would be a good example of this latter style in which actual persons are satirised (e.g. Socrates in The Clouds).

It is also useful to consider the comments of the 4^th Century CE Grammarian Diomedes. In his work Ars Grammatica III he gives us the following definition of satire:

Satura dicitur carmen apud nos Romanos, nunc quidem maledicum et ad carpenda hominum vitia archaeae commoediae charactere compositum, quale scripserunt Lucilius et Horatius et Persius; sed olim quod ex variis poematibus constabat satura vocabatur, quale scripserunt Pacuvius et Ennius.

 

‘Satire was termed a verse form among the Romans which has become in recent

times abusive and written in order to censure the vices of men in the manner of

ancient comedy, as written by Lucilius, Horace and Persius  but in former times

satire was a name given to a verse form made up of a variety of shorter verses

such the types written by Pacuvius and Ennius’

Diomedes doesn’t really make our immediate task any easier for us: he omits Menippus from the above list of definitive authors and focusses on early Roman satire in particular. He goes on to give no less than four possible derivations of the term satire. They are:-

1.       From the creature satyr, since satires contain the kinds of things that such comical and lascivious beasts would utter.

2.       Derived from satura the term for abundance and from an early celebratory ritual dish full of first fruits offered to the Gods by primitive or rustic folk. A sort of harvest festival.

3.       Or a kind of sausage called Satura filled with many varied ingredients, implying a hotchpotch type of narrative.

4.       Finally from the term satura meaning a law or codicil containing many provisions on a single Bill with the implied sense of a compendium of ideas or themes.

 

So although Diomedes has perhaps given us too much information at the risk of Tantalus like, removing the definition of Menippean satire ever further away, he is nonetheless useful as the only serious example in antiquity where the term satire has been looked at in detail as part of an attempt at a clear definition. The fact that he doesn’t really succeed is beside the point! At least he has given us plenty of food for thought – a bit like Trimalchio with his dormice rolled in honey and poppy seed!

 Coming back to the moderns, Bakhtin (1970) in his study of Menippean Satire as a genre drew up a list of 14 characteristics by which the genre could be recognised. They are:

1.       A presence of the comic element far greater than that which occurs in the Socratic Dialogue.

2.       A freeing up of historical limitations, of the demands of verisimilitude, and a ‘liberté exceptionelle de l’invention philosophique et thématique.

3.       The recourse to the fantastic, with a purely ideal or philosophical intention, that is, in order to investigate, provoke and test the idea of the philosophical truth of the wandering sage.

4.       A mixture of philosophical and symbolic dialogue with a ‘naturalisme des basfonds outrancier et grossier’ , that probably goes back to the first Menippean authors (cf. Bion of Borysthenes)

5.       A notable philosophical universalism, a meditation on the world carried to the limit, and, after all, a reflection on the ‘ultimes questions’.

6.       Development of action on three levels, or in three spaces, earth, Olympus and the underworld, and the presence of the ‘dialogue sur le seuil’.

7.       Experimental fantasticality, that is, observation from an unusual standpoint, for example from the heights, of phenomena that, from this perspective, acquire other dimensions.

8.       Moral and psychological experimentation, which translates into the epic and tragic monism, through the representation of uncommon and abnormal psychic states: manic-depressive dementia, double personality, extravagant fantasies, bizarre dreams, passions that border on madness, suicides, etc.

9.       A taste for scandalous scenes, for eccentric behaviour, for altered intentions and manifestations, for everything that is an affront to decency and the etiquette of a given occasion.

10.   A preference for violent contrasts, for oxymorons, for abrupt transformations, for unexpected reversals, for the majestic and for the base, for the elevation and the fall, for unexpected approaches to distant and varying objects and every kind of combination.

11.   The occurrence of the elements of social utopia, namely in dreams and on journeys to inexistent countries.

12.   The abundant recourse to genres which could be called ‘intercalaires’, like novellas, letters, the discourses of orators and, among others, the symposia, and mixtures of prose and verse, which are generally employed with a certain humour.

13.   ‘le plurystylisme et la pluritonalité, stemming from a new vision of the word as literary material, a vision that had been perpetuated through a dialogic current in literary prose.

14.   Opting for socio-political actuality, which, in treating ideas of the moment, confers a dimension of the ‘journalistique’ on the genre.

 

One is tempted to note that with such an extensive shopping list available to the would-be genre technician, could anything not be described as Menippean Satire? Jesting aside there are some flaws to this approach to the creation of a set of criteria by which one can make such genre judgements.

 The key problem is that  Bakhtin is not a classicist per se and such a list and what it implies could be accused of taking quite disparate Greek and Roman texts to justify a modern theory potentially unrelated to the ancient world setting or thought system. The texts are very often separated in time and decontextualizing those texts and using them in such a decontextualized state to build a unified genre is too fast and loose to provide any accuracy in our quest to decipher the meaning and import of Petronius work for the readership of its own time. There is a danger of making a false unity where there could be none, at least in the context of the original reception of each work. Perhaps Bakhtin and Northrop are less concerned with the ancient context and are looking for a definition which is more relevant for critics of modern texts in a satiric vein.  Whatever the case may be, caution is advised with such methods.

It’s already clear to me from reading the first seventy or so pages of the Satyricon that many of Bakhtin’s criteria are present, but I get the strong impression that Petronius is quite radically subverting the Menippean tradition. Not only are some elements missing (I mention this because it is not clear from Bakhtin how many of the points on the list need to be present for a definition of Menippean satire) but the use of such elements seems to idiosyncratic rather than representative of more easily identifiable Menippean works. For example the use of realism in the satyricon, the low class accents and authentic dialects seem to clash with point 2 of Bakhtins list. There is no constructive message of a social utopia (point 11) of the sort that we can find in other satirical texts such as Seneca’s Apocolocyntosis.

What we have then with the fragmented text of the satyricon is a fully fleshed out high definition balls-to-the-wall lurid representation of the whole spectrum of romans at play, the carnival of life with its sexual antics, crazy drunken revels, laughing fits, crying jags, high times, low times, often seen through the lens of intoxication or hangover. And on top of that the pseudo-moralizing bellyaching.  But even as the narrator is sending up the ridiculous ostentation of Trimalchio’s dinner party, guffawing into the sleeve of his toga at his expense, I can’t help feeling that the narrator at the same time is enjoying being a part of the events as well as sending it and himself up at the same time for being there.  There is no Menippean message or utopian salvation, life is just one long crazy party, with unpleasant interruptions of Fortuna’s unfairness and the baseness of man (but hardly from amoral point of view as if to say. Humans are pretty dire creatures and I am one too!). There is also at times a sort of ‘brotherhood of the cups’ where all present lose themselves in the sheer exuberance of the moments and obey the eternal injunction of ‘carpe diem’ as Trimalchio’s silver articulated skeleton sprawled out on the dining table glitters ominously.

As you read the Satyricon it will be interesting to see if you can discover any strong tendency to classic Menippean satire a la Bakhtin, or as I suspect it’s a sui generis one-off – due to its highly eloquent and skilled subversion and inversion, even of any set of criteria which would seek to pin this fragmentary yet highly compelling work down.

Salve!

Apuleius - The Apologia

Salve!

May the Gods forgive me for such a hiatus. The current author in the sights of Legendum couldn’t be any more of a radical departure from the austere fare we have been enjoying of late.

Apuleius (125-180 CE), a distinguished writer, orator and would-be Platonist philosopher was a native of North Africa, most probably a native Berber and son of a leading figure in the town of Madaurus in the Roman province of Numidia. His chief fame derives from the Golden Ass (or Metamorphoses), perhaps the only extant Roman novel – although since we don’t really have any other novels or novel type texts from the same era, it’s a term which for me has some diificulties. Nevertheless I think that we are in for a treat with this tale of magic, adventure and mystery. You thought Magical Realism was South American in origin…well you may have to think again.

Apuleius

He is the author of a number of other works, in particular the Apologia and the Florida. The former of the two works is the record of a declamation or defence speech delivered by Apuleius himself as a vindication against the accusation of magic or more accurately the use of magic charms rituals and philtres in order to obtain the hand of a rich matron in marriage. The Apologia can be found online relatively easily and I thought it useful to dip into these works to gain some more background on the author as well as a feel for the 2nd Century milieu in which he flourished. I have just finished the Apologia and about to embark upon an investigation of the Florida before tackling the Golden Ass, but I am going to focus on the Apologia for this introductory blog post.

The Apologia (or A Treatise on Magic as it is often known) gives an insight into Apuleius and his character as well as his dextrous use of quotations from Homer, Plato and many other classical authorities to illustrate and add colour and conviction to his expostulations. From my cursory reading of the text he comes across as an educated and most eloquent and witty defender of his reputation as well as that of his wife Pudentilla. However, it is also fair to say that he is at times verbose, slightly priggish and a bit of a show off.

Despite these character traits it is clear that his case is a strong one and on the face of it he appears to have been the relatively innocent victim of a vindictive case brought against him out of jealousy and rivalry. What we have before us in the final shape of the text is surely not a verbatim transcript of the speech as given in court with its dramatic flourishes and stage directions rather a skilful melange of the actual defence speech prepared by Apuleius before delivery plus his notes and embellishments and the official transcript of the recorder. One can imagine Apuleius in his well-appointed and rather smart little tablinum, stylus in hand, relishing the success and pondering over a phrase, or quotation with which to enhance his work.

The twin arts of the skilled rhetor and the auctor have been expertly blended to create a tour de force not only of self justification but also as some scholars assert but also of damnatio or counterblast against his would be accusers. As in the middle ages, both the crime and accusation of witchcraft was a very serious matter and it must have been a great risk to bring such a case against an individual. In the ancient world there is at least one attested case of crucifixion of a malicious accuser of sorcery. Apuleius clearly won his case as his later activity proves. The fate of his accuser is not known, though at one point Apuleius mentions that 10 years exile from the city might have been appropriate.



Late 3rd Century Theatre at Sabratha in Libya

The Apologia is a good place to start to get an idea of Apuleius the man and his style, which is often quite humorous despite the deadly serious nature of the trial. He employs ridicule and exaggerated expression to dismantle his opponent’s arguments and almost overreaches himself hence the humour of literary excess and hyperbole – overegging it for a future audience or readership perhaps. He has a habit on occasion of getting carried away, three or four examples where one would suffice to drive home the point. You get the sense upon reading this text that Apuleius quite likes the sound of his own voice and the display of his learned erudition as a Platonist and a natural scientist...a sort of long haired Numidian amateur Leonardo occasionally whipping out his pocket mirror to admire his rather handsome and dashing appearance, or as he would have us believe, to follow the advice of Socrates and look at his own image to hold it up to 'philosophical examination'. I bet he mussed his hair up with just a touch of panache (and possibly pomade for the ladies) before entering the court that day!

With the Apologia we get a taste of the eloquence and the slightly purple efflorescence of the skilled advocate...who could make us believe almost anything with his erudite 24 carat narration. Something we will doubtless be able to trace in the fantastic arabesques of the Golden Ass.

Vale!

Electra Unchained

I have concentrated on reading the Sophocles version and the translation I have worked with is that of Hugh Lloyd Jones (Loeb Classical Library – Harvard 1994). It is clear that the dramatist has focussed all the serious attention on Electra in this version.  Electra seems more fleshed out than the Aeschylus incarnation taking centre stage but also with very human flaws and ambiguities – it’s not all black and white and this could be said of the other characters too, particularly the pietas scenes of and libation prayer to Apollo of Clytemnestra l.634 ff.

 But the paradox at the heart of this depiction is that she is a rebel but apparently one supporting male values. She is a transgressor but in the end all this wild flouting of a woman’s traditional role results in nothing more than resuming her place in the house of Atreus as a potential noble wife. Could she be both at the same time and be a satisfying character to an ancient audience? Or is this Sophocles playing with female emancipatory urges within the secure trope of the male heir (Orestes) resuming the reins of control and order in the end?

The play opens with Orestes and the Old Slave arriving in Argos in the early hours. The purpose of this interchange is to introduce the plan of faking Orestes death in a chariot race (a significant literary and mythic echo of the death of Myrtilus) and announcing it to the palace while he and Pylades his faithful sidekick prepare to kill Clytemnestra and Aegsithus while disguised as urn bearers of Orestes’ ashes. Orestes then leaves the stage not to reappear until the end – from now on the action focusses upon Electra and her transgressive acts of mourning and plans for revenge.

The chorus of Argive women are initially neutral and react cautiously to Electra’s outbursts of grief countering her transgressive outbursts by warning her that excessive mourning is inappropriate. The metre of anapaestic dimeter lends a chanting marching even drum-like warning to their words:

l.233-235 ‘all’oun eunoia g’audo

                  mater hosei tis pista

                  me/tik/tein s’a/tan a/ta/is

 

                   ‘Well, I speak as a well-wisher

                  Like a mother-in-law in whom

                  You can have trust, telling you

                  Not to create misery by means of misery’

 

       

However, they gradually warm to her cause and end up endorsing her acts outrageous as they are. Electra justifies her excessive mourning as an expression of respect and ‘pietas’ to the unjustly slain dead (her father Agamemnon). She also bewails her lot as having lost her rightful place as a noble woman in the palace of Argos.

 

 The chorus plays an interesting intermediary role or referee between Electra and her sister Chrysothemis who portrays the obedient daughter willing to compromise as a survival strategy under the new regime of the usurper Aegisthus. Her speech reveals her as an appeaser in Electra’s eyes.

l.335 ff

‘But as things are I think that in time of trouble I must lower my sails, and not seem to perform some deed, but do them no harm; and I would like you to follow suit.

‘but if I am to live in freedom, I must obey those in power in everything.’

Moreover in l.378 Chrysothemis warns Electra of Aegisthus and Clytemnestra’s plans for her should she continue her rebellious attitude:

‘all’eksero soi pan hoson katoid’ego

mellousi gar s’ei tode me lekseis goun,

entaitha pempsein entha me poth’heliou

phengos prosopsei,’

 

‘Well, I will tell you all I know!

If you do not leave off these lamentations,

They plan to send you to where you shall no longer see

The light of the sun,’

 

Electra is having none of this appeasement and remains resolute, almost reckless in her defiance of Aegisthus, daring him to come and dare to do what he is planning. It transpires that Chrysothemis is on her way to Agamemnon’s tomb to offer libations.

 

The libations are in fact an idea of Clytemnestra, prompted by dreams/nightmares, in which Agamemnon returns from Hades and plants his staff beside the hearth which grows into a fruitful bough. Fearing an adverse portent, Clytemnestra out of guilt tries to appease the dead. Here we see Sophocles painting a sympathetic picture of the queen trying to make amends with an act of piety.

 

Next we have Electra’s confrontation with Clytemnestra and one of the key themes at the centre of this play – that of justice and piety or rather the conundrum where one individuals pious act can be another’s outrage and revenge lust, and the justifications that opposing sides have for their acts. The two sides are both with their fault lines and we have a very blurred and ambiguous tone with Sophocles, making for a deeply fascinating drama with issues that still burn in our psyches to this day. How much evil is acceptable to preserve a life? The State? Is any kind of bloodshed justified whatever the reason? Is the best course expedience and to tow the official line? Do we trust the state to uphold justice? Or to take things into our own hands when the need arises and is most pressing?

 

 

There is no clear winner in the ensuing war of words: Both put their cases eloquently but with their own biases. We hear of the ‘real’ reason for Iphigenia’s sacrifice – Agamemnon had angered Artemis by slaying a stag in her sacred grove and uttering a blasphemy to boot. It was divinely ordered slaughter…so for Electra that makes it alright unlike Clytemnestra’s slaying of her father, an act of lust and greed, mere human directives as matched against those of the gods – the highest evil and arrogance and therefore deserving of scorn and revenge.  There is another interesting aspect to these interchanges – they often have the tone of a teenage daughter railing against the hypocrisy of her parents – subtle and endearing overtones of generation gap which those of the audience with young grown up daughters would surely have identified with!

 

This is one of the endearing fascinations of the play, how through Sophocles imaginative and dextrous lines Electra displays so many different emotional and psychological levels of engagement as a headstrong young woman with the various characters, all the time holding our attention – she mesmerises as a convincing figure burning with righteous indignation and fury one minute, sobbing her heart out the next and finally bursting with joy when Orestes, deus ex machine like, reveals his true identity and brings her out of the pit of despair. She is a glittering multi-faceted jewel of young womanhood and at one point it looks almost as if Orestes wants her to rule with him by his side, her passions and freedom totally unrestrained…and yet…and yet the slightly unclear ending has Orestes and Pylades marching Aegisthus off to the hearth inside the palace to his doom…to restore male order to the house of Argos. The chorus end with the lines:

 

l.1508 ff:

 

‘ho sperm’ Atreos, hos polla pathon

di eleutherias molis ekselthes

tei nun hormei teleothen’

 

            ‘Seed of Atreus, after many sufferings

             you have at last emerged in freedom,

             made complete by this day’s enterprise!’

 

The seed of Atreus although referring to both Electra and Orestes seems to imply a male lead in its masculine allusions. Where does this leave Electra? Is she a transgressor merely to enable the male order to reassert itself – to return to a subservient role and married off to a noble suitor to continue the status quo of the palace? I think Sophocles felt that he had to cap her freedom with Orestes finishing off the deed as if to contain the dangerous excess of a young woman breaking the bonds of convention in her quest for justice. Within the confines of the drama it is exciting for Sophocles to explore the female energy unleashed in its various guises but as if to close the lid again upon such dangerous and transgressive thoughts and deeds he must have had the overriding impulse to contain and control such dangerous and potentially revolutionary energy or at least channel it into safer male agendas.  So although I personally don’t think of Electra as a ‘male order bride’…I do think that she has been ‘disarmed’ and rendered harmless to men at the end of the drama, for unchained, she would be too strong.

 

Euge!

Troy on Radio 4

Andrew Rissik - Troy, http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b007jv52 from @BBCRadio4Extra via BBC iPlayer Radio

The History and Early Textual Scholarship of Sophoclean Manuscripts

The 1994 Loeb publication of Sophocles (Ajax-Electra-Oedipus Tyrannus, Edited and translated by Hugh Lloyd-Jones) contains as part of its introduction to the works an interesting digression on the texts themselves and how Sophocles has come down to us from the Classical era. I thought it would be worthwhile to provide a brief summary.

Ptolemy III Euergetes
 

The plays were originally composed and performed in the 5th C BCE. It is not entirely clear at this very first stage how many manuscripts would have existed. There must have been a few copies and the master copy of Sophocles’ own hand and perhaps the winning plays might have been deposited at a shrine or temple archive. Whatever the case is the plays were performed again throughout the 4th C BCE and the number of manuscripts must have increased with this activity. As they circulated the texts began to be amended and variants appeared according to the predilections of the particular theatre group or dramatist. This came to a head when the orator Lycurgus (396-323 BCE) issued a decree at some time between 338 and 326 BCE ordering an official copy of all the great tragedians be made and that all future performances should not deviate from this text. 
At the beginning of the 3rd C BCE Ptolemy I established the Library at

Alexandria and scholars were sent out to collect the works of the foremost Greek authors for archiving and classification for further study. Galen refers to Ptolemy Euergetes I (regnat 247-222BCE) who borrowed an official copy of Sophocles from the Athens in return for a security of 15 talents of silver – a huge sum of money for that time. For example during the Peloponnesian War, a 200 man trireme crew would be paid 1 talent or a month’s work – I suppose that for highly trained ancient marines it was probably a decent wage, especially if you take into account that it would been a dangerous job including combat duties on an ad hoc basis!
 In modern money it would be 12,000 pounds so a deposit of 180,000 pounds was pretty substantial amount to leave with the Athenian Treasury. He must have thought it a steal since that is effectively what he did when he failed to return it and forfeited the deposit. This text was duly housed in the Alexandrian Library and became the next link in the chain, the basis for an edition of the text of Aristophanes of Byzantium (c. 257-180 BCE). However, it is likely that even this ‘official’ version was probably already a modified text with the interpolations and amendments of the era in which it was transcribed (late 4th –early 3rd C BCE).

The Great Library at Alexandria
 

It is at this point that we start to see the appearance of ancient scholarship on the work as a text with a commentary on Sophocles by Aristarchus (c. 216-144 BCE). In the Roman era, specifically during the reign of Augustus, Didymus ‘Bronze Guts’ (ca. 63 – 10 BCE?) came out with a variorum edition; essentially a mish-mash of different scholars material. He was a complier of the Aristarchus school and although not particularly original in his approach is valuable for his scholia on Sophocles. A much potted version of this work survives in later Byzantine manuscripts (scholia). 
Greek (Hellenistic ) scholarship continued on in much the same way with copies of the plays as well as commentaries and compilations of previous scholars works until some point in the 3rd C AD, when the versions were whittled down to a selected canon of  seven plays each of Aeschylus and Sophocles and ten of Euripides. The other texts and versions of plays start to become very rare after this date.
Byzantine scholarship seems to go through a dark age between the 7th and 9th Centuries CE and it is very probable that not much copying went on and the study of Sophocles petered out for a while. There is one exception; in the 9th C one manuscript of the seven plays was transcribed from the old uncial writing into the new-fangled (for the time!) miniscule script. There are about 200 medieval manuscripts and the majority of these contain only three plays of a later selection, Ajax, Electra and Oedipus Tyrannus. Only three of the manuscripts come from this first Byzantine period of scholarship which lasted from the 9th C until 1204 when the crusaders of the Fourth Crusade ‘liberated’ Constantinople.

Manuscript in Greek Uncials

Adrianus Turnebus
 

One manuscript of the above period is the famous Laurentianus 32.9 (from the mid-10th C CE), preserved in the Laurentinian Library in Florence, known as ‘M’ in editions of Aeschylus and as ‘L’ in Sophocles texts. Apart from Laurentianus 31.10 (K) from the latter half of the 12th Century, the remaining Byzantine manuscripts are from periods later than the Crusader conquest. Of these there are various groups and it is here where the versions start to fan out into various trees.  The key groups are: - the Roman Family (r) and the Paris Family (a). Other manuscripts from the Paleologan Period (c.1261-c.1350) are known as ‘p’.
Modern texts of the 7 plays of Sophocles are based upon the medieval manuscripts occasionally supplemented with details from papyrus fragments (e.g. P.Oxy.2180 from the 2nd C CE)
We finally move into the print age with an indifferent Aldine edition (Aldus Manutius) in 1502 but the first decent edition was that of Adrianus Turnebus (Paris 1552-3) who based his text on manuscript Paris Gr. 2711, containing a recension of the Byzantine scholar Demetrius Triclinius; not the most accurate version but a step in the right direction.

From this time on there are more and more impressions in Europe and the first English printed edition was that of Peter Elmsley in 1823 based on Laurentinian manuscript L. The latest scholarly edition based on the latest and most accurate research is the Oxford text 1990 by Hugh Lloyd Jones and N.G. Wilson.
I cannot help but speculate on what might have been had Ptolemy III Euergetes returned the manuscript to its rightful place in the Athens treasury instead of ‘permanently borrowing’ it. What if anything at all of Sophocles would we have been left with? A sobering thought indeed!
Euge!