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An interpolated song in Euripides? Helen 229–52*
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 23 February 2012
Extract
Euripides may not have been a darling of the ‘gallery’ during his lifetime, but once he was dead he became a classic, to be read, performed—and imitated. Aristophanes' half-serious attempts to show up the ‘depravity’ of Euripidean tragedy had no lasting effect: the many revivals of his plays from the fourth century onwards suggest that later audiences appreciated the purely sensuous appeal in Euripides' verbal dexterity, his rhetorical flourishes, his distraught characters on the brink of madness and self-destruction, no less than the iridescent beauty of his lyric imagery. In particular, the far-fetched melodramatic outpourings in his solo arias must have had a special appeal, their kaleidoscopic rhythms and lush phraseology blending in with the Euripidean monodist's stock in trade, self-pity. At the Athenian theatre of Dionysus, solo arias were felt to be so quintessentially ‘Euripidean’ that Aristophanes included monody in the ‘diet’ with which his ‘Euripides’ claims to have educated the audience's taste (Ran. 944). We have no way of knowing if Athenian theatre-goers really became the sophisticated connoisseurs of fine poetry whom Aristophanes' Euripides wished for. We may surmise, however, that by the early fourth century, as long as Helen and Iphigenia sang an aria which sounded loosely ‘Euripidean’, it did not matter that the said aria had not actually been written by Euripides.
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References
1 It seems significant that his fourth victory (with Bacchae, Alcmaeon and Iphigenia at Aulis) was posthumous.
2 Consider the parados of IA or the same play's third stasimon: in the first case, the later poet(s) padded out the existing Euripidean material (164–230) by grafting on a further couple of strophic pairs (231–76) + an epode of sorts (277–302); in the second case, a singularly drab epode (1080–97) was surprisingly deemed worthy to crown one of Eur.'s most exquisitely beautiful strophic pairs (1036–79).
3 Cf. Barrett's excellent note on Hi. 738–41, especially p. 302; cf. also Ion 1058–1071, with Diggle's note in Euripidea: Collected Essays (Oxford 1994) 19–20Google Scholar. Further examples of this kind of interpolation can be found at, e.g., Ale. 929, Andr. 483, 1223, Su. 1002, El. 1193, Tr. 206, 291a, 540, 554, 808, 1329, Or. 141–151.
4 Other than Dodds' note ad loc., see especially Diggle, Euripidea 460–1.
5 There is a good case for deleting two lines in Helen's monody at 348–85: 366 †ἅχεά τ' ἄχεσι δάκρυσιν ἔλαβε πάθεα a superfluous and incomprehensible excrescence, that looks like a botched attempt at contriving an effect such as αύνοχα δάκρυα πάθεσι πάθεα, μέλεσι μέλεα (172–3); 379 ὄμματι λάβρωι αχῆμα λεαίνης† deleted by Dingelstad (on the line's many problems, cf. Dale and Kannioht ad loc.; Diggle, Euripidea 180).
6 We should nevertheless keep an open mind about Hec. 73–8, which might be pre-Alexandrian.
7 Cf. C. W. Willink, PCPS n.s. 36 (1990) 182.
8 Zuntz, G., An Inquiry into the Transmission of the Plays of Euripides (Cambridge 1965) 251–2Google Scholar. I do not quote footnotes.
9 Euripides the Rationalist (Cambridge 1895) 231–60Google Scholar.
10 Dihle, A., Der Prolog der Bacchen und die antike Überlieferungsphase des Euripides-Textes (Heidelberg 1981) 92–7Google Scholar.
11 On which see Willink, , CQ 40 (1990) 77–99CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
12 Barrett, ed. Hi. p. 46.
13 Dale, A. M., The Lyric Metres of Greek Drama (2nd ed., Cambridge 1968) 93Google Scholar.
14 Stinton, T. C. W. ‘Pause and period in the lyrics of Greek tragedy’, CQ 27 (1977) 34CrossRefGoogle Scholar = Collected Papers on Greek Tragedy (Oxford 1990) 319Google Scholar.
15 Note that A. Eum. 526 ff. corresponds with ἐ ς τὸ πᾶν σοι λέγω, | Зωμὸν αἴδεσαι Δίκας, | μηδέ νιν κέρδος ἰδὼν κτλ (538 ff.), whereas Hel. 230, as part of an ἂστροΦον, does not have the excuse of corresponding with a line that ends with obvious sense pause.
16 Euripidea 424 n. 18.
17 Hermann's interesting transposition of 240 and 241 would give νῦν δέ μοι πρὸ τειχέων | αῖμα δάιον Φλέγει | θούριος μολὼν Άρης thereby causing ΦλέΥει to ‘echo’ at the end of the second line of each stanza.
18 Cf. Mastronarde, comm. Ph., p. 214 n. 1.
19 Note the difference at S. Trach. 212–14, where there is change of metre (2 ia ||B 6 da catalectic), and where the adjective separated from its noun is almost a noun in itself, referring back to Apollo in 1. 209: βοᾶτε τἀν όμόσπορον, ||B Άρτεμιν Όρτυγίαν, έλαΦαβόλον, άμΦίπυρον κτλ.
20 Presumably examples such as these led Barrett to remark (on Hi. 752–7) ‘this device of the apostrophe is one that in the lyrics of Eur.'s later plays becomes an overworked mannerism’.
21 The breuis in longo at Ph. 676 disappears with Willink's καὶ σέ, τὸν προμάτορος | <πόρτιός> ποτ' ἔκγονον. I am grateful to Sir Charles for communicating this conjecture in advance of publication.
22 This is probably immaterial, since whether the metrical context is aeolo-choriambic, iambo-trochaic or even dochmiac, breuis in longo and hiatus are permissible only at the end of a syntactical period or when a break in the sense justifies a pause. Stinton's attempt to exempt dochmiacs from this rule (‘Pause and period’ (n.14) 46 = Collected Papers 334–5) was exploded by Diggle (Euripidea 213).
23 See Studies on the Text of Euripides (Oxford 1981) 52–4Google Scholar.
24 Diggle's list of tragic examples of ‘cr + tr’ in Euripidea 424 n. 19 is questionable: Hel. †352† (corrupt text; neither Dale nor Kannicht divides so as to give ‘cr + tr’); Hel. 358 (introduced by Diggle's conjecture); Ph. 655b~674b (the diaeresis of ια in 655b is anomalous; a possible solution would be Musgrave's εὐείλοισι in 674b, giving ‘cr + pa’, as at Hel. 353a); Ba. 578 and 584 (better analysed as lecythia).
25 I cannot explain away εὐπρύμνου νεώς at IT 1000 and 1357. However, Euripides uses the word ναῦς twentyeight times in this play; he can be forgiven for the involuntary carelessness of applying the same epithet to the same noun twice. πλάτη appears seven times in Helen, three times, as we have noted, with the same epithet. The aliquando dormitat excuse is less plausible.
26 That is to say, it is an instance, but may be said to count for less.
27 Craik, comm. Ph., pp. 245 ff.
28 Diggle deletes 1650–5 and 1667b–8a, following Willink and F. W. Schmidt respectively. Other deletions recorded in the OCT apparatus are: 1653 (Nauck), 1653–4 (Harberton), 1668b–9a (olim Herwerden), 1672 (suspectum habuit Wecklein), 1678–9 (del. Schenkl; 1679 iam Hartung).
29 Professor Diggle observes that the play would finish neatly at 1669 with the expression Ζεὺς γὰρ ὧδε βούλεται: suspicions have been voiced against most of what follows and it would be no loss to have it all out.
30 Cf. Euripidea 233, n. 13.
31 Cf. e.g. Ale. 79–85 ἀλλʼ ούδέ Φίλων πἑλας <ἔστ> oύδείς, | ὃστις ἃν εἴποι πότερον Φθιμένην | χρὴ βασίλειαν πενθεῖν ἢ ζῶσʼ | ἔτι Φῶς λεύσσει Πελίον τόδε παῖς | Άλκηστις, έμοί πᾶσί τʼ ἀρίστη | δόξααα γυνὴ | πόσιν είς αύτῆς γεγενῆσθαι.
32 A. S. Owen, comm. Ion, p. xxxix.
33 Cf. h. Cer. 5–8, Mosch. Eur. 63–9.
34 I owe this important point to an anonymous referee.
35 M. McDonald's explanation is not particularly convincing: ‘it is clear that Egypt is a wealthy land… so ἅνολβος must mean unhappy rather than unwealthy. The land is unhappy because it makes Helen, who has been seized from her native land, unhappy’ (Terms for Happiness in Euripides (Göttingen 1978) 189Google Scholar).
36 See Breitenbach, W., Untersuchungen zur Sprache der euripideischen Lyrik (Stuttgart 1934) 218–20Google Scholar. I have changed Nauck's line numbers to Diggle's.
37 One might legitimately ask here whether πότνια is not an adjective, rather than a noun.
38 This example is not listed by Breitenbach, working from Nauck's edition (μᾶτερ bis MBVaAFPPrR; XZTt3: semel HCGKLS).
39 Not listed by Breitenbach (ἕριν ἕριν Page: ἕρις ἕριν L).
40 Three instances, but, as Breitenbach notes (216), Euripides uses the anadiplosis of nouns in the vocative almost four times as much as of nouns in the accusative (ten examples, three of which ἕριν ἕριν).
41 Cf. Diggle, Euripidea 505.
42 Professor Diggle draws my attention to the following attestations provided by TLG CD ROM: Hesiod. fr. 10(a) 87; AP 1. 589.4; 7. 602.4; Nonnus 15.80, 33.204, 36.335; Oppian, Hal. 4. 626, 5.192; Cyn. 4.192; Greg. Naz., Carm. mor. p. 762.5, Carm. de se ipso p. 1314.15, Carm… ad alios p. 1553.4 (Migne); Qu. Smyrn. 1. 357, 1.385, 8.11, 14.78.