Heracles and Other Plays: Heracles: Iphigenia: among the Taureans: Helen: Ion: Cyclops Book

I liked Alcestis better than I had expected; then again there's also more comedy in this play than I had gathered - there's a fantastic scene in there where a slightly drunk Heracles confronts a manservant - and it is also Heracles who saves the day. The special blend of tragedy and comedy gives this play a really unique quality. Hospitality is an important theme here; Admetus was rewarded (conditional) postponement of death by Apollo because of his hospitality, and it is again his unflinching hospitality that makes Heracles feel obliged to rescue his wife, Alcestis, who has offered to die in his place, from Hades.

Following this is the bloody carnage of Heracles, where Heracles arrives in Thebes to save his wife and children from being killed by the tyrant Lycus, but suddenly goes completely mad (due to Hera's scheming of course) and ends up killing them himself. Finally subdued by Pallas Athena before he gets to kill his (human/adoptive) father Amphitryon as well, Heracles eventually wakes up bound to a broken column of his collapsed house. After discovering what has happened he wants to kill himself. What ultimately holds him back from that are his strong connections of friendship with both Amphitryon and Theseus (who has showed up to fight Lycus on Heracles side, but too late for that). As Edith Hall notes in the Introduction: "In myth and cult Heracles was the universal Best Friend, the divine figure with whom the Greeks associated the advanced capacity for loving non-kin." Here, it is friendship that saves Heracles from taking his own life, though (obviously) not from grief. The play ends with Theseus taking Heracles along to Athens, something which ultimately results in the establishment of his hero cult there.

In Children of Heracles, his children (he had many) together with Iolaus and Alcmene (Heracles' mother) have taken refuge at the temple of Zeus in Marathon, fleeing from Eurystheus of Argos, who wants them all put to death by stoning, and here threatens war on Athens, represented by Demophon, if he does not get his way in this. He (of course) doesn't, because their case for refuge is valid. Yet at the same time Demophon faces the possibility of war, and the somewhat erratic behaviour of the refugees proves challenging as well. It is a situation which we can find parallels to also today e.g. in a family of asylum seekers, with a similar valid case for protection, but which also can have more unforeseeable consequences. In a more humorous scene between Iolaus and a servant, the elderly Iolaus brings dedicated weapons and armour out of the temple and, together with the servant, heads to the battle-site - and is mysteriously rejuvenated on the way there. The play ends on a rather ominous note: Alcmene wants Eurystheus, who has been taken hostage in the ensuing war, to be killed and thrown to the dogs. Killing a prisoner of war is against the law of Athens (where this last scene is set) but she nevertheless manages to convince the Chorus to go along with this. --- It is a more complex play than the other ones in this selection; from the Introduction: "Nearly everyone involved in the action undergoes a sudden metamorphosis, whether in nature, status, or situation." The text is also to a degree incomplete, though it is impossible to say how much of it is missing, except that there's clearly a part lost at the very end.

The satyr play Cyclops is a hilarious twist on the scene from the Odyssey. Here Odysseus and his crew arrives at an island where the satyrs are already slaving for the Cyclops, and together with them manages to get away from the island by getting the Cyclops drunk and then blinding him - "wine is a formidable opponent", as the Chorus (of satyrs) taunts him afterwards. Earlier in the play there's a symposium-like scene where this Cyclops i.a. also proves himself to be a bit of gourmet, picking out first "the two who were the fleshiest and best nourished" - and he doesn't eat men raw as he does in the Odyssey; he cooks them first. It is clear that he has gotten excessively drunk when he drags the old, balding Silenus (calling him a Ganymede) into his cave, obviously intending to rape him. When it comes to the actual blinding, the satyrs show themselves to be cowards, but together with his men, Odysseus blinds him - the satyrs keep the blinded Cyclops distracted (at a safe distance) until everyone is out of the cave - and they eventually all escape.

I very much appreciated the sober introduction by Edith Hall, who comments on Euripides' modern popularity, that one reason for this "is that his supple and multifaceted works easily adapt to the agendas of different interpreters. Euripides has been an existentialist, a psychoanalyst, a proto-Christian ... an idealist and humanist, a mystic, a rationalist, an irrationalist, and an absurdist nihilist... [and] pacifist feminist." - It is doubtful whether Euripides himself would have been comfortable with any of these modern adaptations. And, what regards Euripides' supposed "religious radicalism", Hall notes that the tragic performances nevertheless were "framed by the rituals of the Dionysia, and ritual fundamentally informs tragedy's imagery, plots, and songs..." - This translation by Robin Waterfield (as well the notes by James Morwood) clearly aims to stay true to Euripides' original text, while still being very readable, and it also notes where the extant text is spurious or corrupted - ultimately leaving you to make up your own mind about Euripides' plays (the majority of which are lost). This volume contains a great selection of them; what binds them together is of course the theme of Heracles, which Euripides was noted for in his time. The comedy which is masterly blended with tragedy in Alcestis is picked up again with full force in Cyclops; and there is as well the fact that tragedy was always followed by satyr play at the Dionysia. - I have only praise for this volume, and can highly recommend it.




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