1. My warmest thanks go to Richard Hunter and Pat Easterling who read and commented on early drafts of this piece. Oral versions were presented at Nottingham and Oxford and have profited from the insights of all those who participated in the discussion, but I am especially grateful to Alan Sommerstein, Oliver Taplin, Edith Hall, Niall Slater and Angus Bowie. I dedicate this essay to my Nottingham student Oginia Tabisz, whose courage and determination are for me a constant source of inspiration. Unless otherwise ascribed, translations of Greek passages quoted are my own.

2. Zeitlin, F.I., ‘Travesties of Gender and Genre in Aristophanes’ Thesmophoriazusae’, in Foley, H.P. (ed.), Reflections of Women in Antiquity (New York and London 1981), 169–217Google Scholar; ead., ‘Mysteries of Identity and Designs of the Self in Euripides’ Ion’, PCPS 35 (1989), 144–97Google Scholar; Foley, H.P., ‘The Masque of Dionysus’, TAPA 110 (1980), 107–33Google Scholar; Segal, C.P., Dionysiac Poetics and Euripides’ Bacchae (Princeton 1982)Google Scholar; Goldhill, S., Reading Greek Tragedy (Cambridge 1986)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Bowie, A.M., Aristophanes: Myth, Ritual and Comedy (Cambridge 1993)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Seaford, R., Reciprocity and Ritual: Homer and Tragedy in the Developing City–State (Oxford 1994)Google Scholar.

3. See de Marinis, M., ‘Toward a Cognitive Semiotic of Theatrical Emotions’, Versus 41 (1985), 15Google Scholar.

4. See primarily Delcourt, M., Hermaphrodite: Myths and Rites of the Bisexual Figure in Classical Antiquity, tr. Nicholson, J. (London 1961), 1–16Google Scholar; Gallini, C., ‘II travestismo rituale di Penteo’, SMSR 34 (1963), 215ff.Google Scholar; Leitao, D.D., ‘The Perils of Leukippos: Initiatory Transvestism and Male Gender Ideology in the Ekdusia at Phaistos’, ClAnt 14 (1995), 130–63Google Scholar.

5. I borrow the phrase from Zeitlin, F.I., ‘Playing the Other: Theater, Theatricality, and the Feminine in Greek Drama’, in Winkler, J.J. and Zeitlin, F.I. (eds), Nothing to Do with Dionysos? Athenian Drama in Its Social Context (Princeton 1990), 87Google Scholar.

6. For Sophocles’ Philoctetes as reflecting Neoptolemus’ ephebic initiation see Vidal–Na–quet, P., ‘Sophocles’ Philoctetes and the Ephebeia’, in Vemant, J.P. and Vidal–Naquet, P. (eds.), Myth and Tragedy in Ancient Greece, tr. J. Lloyd (New York 1988), 161–79Google Scholar (earlier version first published in Annates, ESC [1971]). Now the objections to Vidal–Naquet’s reading are too well known to be reiterated here. However, Sophocles’ play clearly reflects some kind of ‘transition’ from a sheltered boyhood existence to the assumption of adult responsibility and, even if no such thing as a fully–fledged system of ephebic training—and therefore ephebic initiation ritual—existed in fifth–century Athens (a proposition neither fully proven nor disproven yet), an initiatory reading of this tragedy would not lack a contemporary frame of reference. Classical male could have easily associated Neoptolemus’ ‘passage’ with other coining of age ceremonies, such as the Apaturia (enrolment in the father’s phratry), a festival sharing a variety of initiatory elements with the institutionalised form of ephebeia that we know from later sources, such as the Ath. Pol. For a good statement of the ‘moderate’ position on this issue, see J.J. Winkler, ‘The Ephebes’ Song: Tragoidia and Polis’, in Winkler and Zeitlin (n.5 above), esp. 31 and cf. Bowie’s discussion (n. 2 above),. 49ff.

7. This by no means should be taken to imply that ritual is not in itself ‘theatrical’. Spectacle is indeed an inherent part of ritual (cf. Seaford [n.2 above], esp. 270 n.154), and the terminology of can be found at the core of such major initiatory sequences as the Eleusinian mysteries, where the whole culminates in a blessed sight (cf. PI. Phdr. 250b ); see further Lada–Richards, I., Initiating Dionysus: Ritual and Theatre in Aristophanes’ Frogs (Oxford: forthcoming 1999), ch. 2Google Scholar. However, whereas ritual ‘spectacle’ as incorporated by theatrical imagery serves drama’s overriding aim of entertaining its audience, spectacle as part of a ritual performance seeks primarily to be efficacious, i.e. to effect major transformations on the natural order, the consciousness of the participants, the relation between this world and the next, etc.

8. The nature of this analogy has been eloquently expressed by E. Rohde, Psyche: The Cult of Souls and Belief in Immortality among the Greeks ⁸. tr. W.B. Hillis (London 1925): ‘…the art of the actor consists in entering into a strange personality, and in speaking and acting out of a character not his own. At bottom it retains a profound and ultimate connexion with its most primitive source—that strange power of transfusing the self into another being which the really inspired participator in the Dionysiac revels achieved in his .’ However, this is as far as similarities can go, for a variety of reasons, but primarily because the deepness of the actor’s transformation in the theatrical and ritual frames differs; see, e.g. Simon, B., Mind and Madness in Ancient Greece (Ithaca and London 1978), 147Google Scholar, on theatre as demanding ‘a certain degree of absorption, while ritual demands a much greater degree of relinquishing the self, and cf. below, 11(b).

9. For the principal stages of ‘separation’, ‘limen’ and ‘aggregation’ in rites of passage see the pioneering work of van Gennep, A., The Rites of Passage, tr. Vizedom, M.B. and Caffee, G.L. (London 1960; first edn. Paris 1909)Google Scholar.

10. Turner, V., The Forest of Symbols: Aspects of Ndetnbu Ritual (Ithaca and London 1967), 93Google Scholar.

11. Cf. e.g. Schechner, R., ‘Performers and Spectators Transported and Transformed’, in Between Theatre and Anthropology (Philadelphia 1985), 123Google Scholar; Bristol, M.D., ‘Carnival and the Institutions of Theatre in Elizabethan England’, English Literary History 50 (1983), 649CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

12. Vidal–Naquet (n.6 above), 171 with n.90.

13. In a metatheatrical perspective again, one may profitably compare Euripides’ instructions to his Kinsman/actor in the ‘internalised’ plot of Aristophanes’ Thesmophoriazusae (see e.g. Muecke, F., ‘Playing with the Play: Theatrical Self–Consciousness in Aristophanes’, Antichthon 11 [1977], 52–67CrossRefGoogle Scholar, and Zeitlin [n.2 above]) or Dionysus’ arrangement of the gruesome proto–festival of Pentheus’ death on Mt. Cithaeron in the Bacchae (see e.g. Foley [n.2 above]).

14. A suggestion for such a reading is also to be found in J. Kittmer’s interesting paper, ‘Sophoclean Sophistics: A reading of Philoktetes’, MD 34 (1995), 15Google Scholar: ‘…we now see that Odysseus stands in the same relationship to Neoptolemos…as does the to actor….’ However, Kittmer never really shows in his piece in what precise way his view of the Odysseus vs. Neoptolemus relationship is, as he puts it, ‘complementary’ (ibid., n.27) to Vidal–Naquet’s approach. For some insightful remarks on the self–consciousness of theatrical acting in the False–Merchant scene see now Easterling, P.E., ‘Form and Performance’, in The Cambridge Companion to Greek Tragedy (Cambridge 1997), 169fCrossRefGoogle Scholar.

15. The realities of Greek stage–production suggest that the roles of villains, such as the parts of tyrants, belonged indeed to the left–overs of each troupe’s repertoire and were played by third–rate actors, the tritagonists (see e.g. Dem. 19.247: ‘For of course you are aware that, in all tragic dramas, it is the enviable privilege of third–rate actors to come on as tyrants, carrying their royal sceptres’): no leading actor wished to incur the audience’s hatred by impersonating the abominable, anti–democratic citizen. See Plut. Lys. 23.4: ‘And just as in tragedies it naturally happens that an actor who takes the part of some messenger or servant is in high repute and plays leading rô1es, while the one who bears the crown and sceptre is not even listened to when he speaks…’ (tr. Perrin); cf. Ghiron–Bistagne, P., Recherches sur les acteurs dans la Grèce antique (Paris 1976), 160Google Scholar.

16. Cf. Turner (n.10 above), 99f.

17. Blundell, M.W., Helping Friends and Harming Enemies: A Study in Sophocles and Greek Ethics (Cambridge 1989), 185 n.7CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

18. See Bowie (n.2 above), ch. 5.

19. See PL Euthd. 277e: ‘you must now imagine you are listening to the first part of the sophistic mysteries ().’

20. Or. 12.33 For the strongest possible expression of ritual ‘surrendering’ of oneself see Pentheus’ address to Dionysus/the Stranger in Eur. Bacch. 934 ( ‘There! adorn me! For I am truly dependent on you’), where Pentheus’ final overcoming of his reluctance to enter the Dionysiac sphere takes the form of a total dedication of his ‘self to the divine initiator’s hands.

21. Cf. Vidal–Naquet (n.6 above), 170. On the mythical level, the best exemplification of initiatory is the foundation legend of the Apaturia festival, a tale of deceit; see primarily Brelich, A., Guerre, Agoni e Culti nella Grecia Arcaica (Bonn 1961)Google Scholar; Vidal–Naquet, , The Black Hunter: Forms of Thought and Forms of Society in the Greek World, tr. Szegedy–Maszack, A. (Baltimore and London 1986)Google Scholar, with a list of sources in 123 n.15; Winkler (n.6 above), 20–62, etc. On the level of ritualised transitions to manhood, the clearest illustration of deceit and stealth ‘in practice’ can be sought in the famous cadet–training of Sparta, the krypteia.

22. See e.g. Soph. El. 56 (’so that we can bring to them a pleasant story with our lying tales ’, on the deceptive tale of Orestes’ death); Trach. 436f. ( [i.e. do not try to deceive me]); Aj. 188 ( [i.e. ‘tell crafty tales’] with Jebb, ad loc).

23. More specifically with respect to Neoptolemus’ tricky hunting of the bow, it is interesting to note that in philosophical praises of oratory and hunting–imagery can also lend itself to metaphors for the enthralment or beguiling of the listener’s . As an extremely vivid passage in Lucian indicates (Nigr. 36f.), the speaker may be cast in the role of an archer (), while the soul of his addressee can be conceived of as the hunting–target ().

24. See e.g. PI. Min. 321a; Isocr. 9.10f.; schol. Soph. Aj. 864, where an actor is said to have guided the spectators and beguiled their souls through his delivery ().

25. See Gorgias, DK 82 B 11.8: ‘if it has been logos who persuaded and tricked her soul ()…’; the link has been suggested by Rose, P.W., ‘Sophocles’ Philoctetes and the Teachings of the Sophists’, HSCP 80 (1976), 84Google Scholar.

26. See primarily Segal, C.P., ‘Gorgias and the Psychology of the Logos’, HSCP 66 (1962), 99–155Google Scholar; most recently, cf. Bierl, A.F., ‘Dionysus, Wine, and Tragic Poetry: A Metatheatrical Reading of P. Köln VI242 A = TrGF IIF 646a’, GRBS 31 (1990), esp. 365–69Google Scholar.

27. Similar multiply disguised echoes can be detected in the Aristophanic Euripides’ accusation of the comic Aeschylus in the agon of the Frogs: ‘But first of all it is him I shall expose/by showing what a rogue and an impostor he was/and by what tricks he used to deceive his audience ()’ (908–10), a passage which acquires a much richer set of connotations if read within the context of fifth–century literary debate; see Lada(–Richards), , ‘Empathic Understanding: Emotion and Cognition in Classical Dramatic Audience Response’, PCPS 39 (1993), 98fGoogle Scholar. (with notes). For another occurrence of dndxri meaning dramatic illusion in Old Comedy, see P. Köln VI 242A, line 20 (, ‘now I have been rolled into deceits’), where, as Bierl (n.26 above), 385 argues: ‘The comic poet, or the speaker representing comedy, notes in the first person that he has been rolled or has rolled himself into illusion.’

28. See primarily Barish, J., The Antitheatrical Prejudice (Berkeley, Los Angeles and London 1981)Google Scholar. And, of course, belongs to the vocabulary of artistic fiction ever since Hesiod’s ‘lies which look like truths’ (, Theog. 27) and the Homeric Odysseus’ lying tales in Ithaca.

29. The exiled hero himself constantly draws attention to his condition as a pitiful spectacle: ‘Do not leave me thus alone, abandoned, living in the midst of such ills as you yourself see () and have heard about’ (470–72).

30. See e.g. 169, 317f., 759f., 1074f.

31. Cf. Soph. Aj.121–26, OT 1186–95.

32. As a condition of affectively generated feeling, the nature of the felt by Neoptole–mus bears close affinities to Plutarch’s description of theatrical spectators as ‘infected by the passion ()’ conveyed through the voices of people ‘who have suffered ()…and have been captured beforehand by opinion and deceit’ (Mor. 17d).

33. See Lada(–Richards) (n.27 above).

34. Cf. PI. Phlb. 48a (‘when, in the midst of joy, they weep’, ).

35. This play exploits to the full the semantic field of , in both its emotional (66, 86, 368, 806, 1011) and physical (734, 792, 827, 1326, 1378f.) dimensions; in 339f. effectively condenses both physical pain and psychological distress. Moreover, what is very interesting to note is the change in the use of the term before and after Neoptolemus has come thoroughly into contact with the full misery of Philoctetes’ painful life. Whereas at the beginning of the play, the boy can use lightheartedly, either in order to convey feelings of discomfort and unhappiness (e.g. 86 ‘those words that are painful on the ear…’, ) or in order to refer to a fictitious response to insulting deeds (‘and full of pain [] I said’, 368), the word gains its full meaning of emotional torture only through the progressive witnessing of Philoctetes’ sufferings.

36. Cf. 1011: ‘who is obviously already in the grips of bitter suffering…’ (). For the degree of emotional torture which can be conveyed through the terms and one may compare Agave’s reaction to the spectacle of Pentheus’ severed head in Eur. Bacch. 1282: ‘I see the greatest , wretched me’ (cf. 1260).

37. Nussbaum, M.C., ‘Tragedy and Self–Sufficiency: Plato and Aristotle on Fear and Pity’, Oxford Studies in Ancient Philosophy 10 (1992), 122Google Scholar.

38. See Lada–Richards (n.7 above), ch.2, in relation to Dionysus’ initiation in Aristophanes’ Frogs.

39. The state of our extant evidence points towards the conclusion that the ‘mystic drama’ of Demeter and Kore was only staged on a representative, that is, a purely symbolical level by the officials of the Eleusinian Sanctuary, especially the ‘High Priestess of Demeter and Persephone’. The initiands, correspondingly, would only have been able to participate in the empathi–cally, i.e. to identify with the protagonists’ emotions, passing from the sorrow of the Mother’s loss through the turbulations of the search to the supreme joy of Persephone’s recovery; see Lada–Richards (n.7 above), ch.2. Cf. Dowden, K., ‘Grades in the Eleusinian Mysteries’, RHR 197 (1980), 426CrossRefGoogle Scholar: ‘And in the process the mystai would be deeply affected and something of the attraction of Eleusis might be understood.’

40. For in Eleusis see primarily the aetiological account in Horn. h. Dent. 194–201 as well as late artefacts, such as the Lovatelli urn and the Torre Nova sarcophagus; cf. Richardson, N.J., The Homeric Hymn to Demeter (Oxford 1974), 211–13Google Scholar; Burkert, W., Homo Necans, tr. Bing, P. (Berkeley, Los Angeles and London 1983), 267 with nn. 11–12Google Scholar. For possible reflections of the ritual in literature see Ar. Clouds 254ff. (with Bowie [n.2 above], 117), Frogs 911–20 (with Bowie [n. 2 above], 247f.).

41. In the Platonic Euthydemus (277d–e) Socrates has recourse to the imagery of the Cory–bantic in order to illustrate Cleinias’ extreme bamboozlement and confusion by the pressing questions of his interlocutors, the sophists Euthydemus and Dionysodorus.

42. See e.g. (895), (969), (974).

43. For the anthropological background see Myerhoff, B., ‘Rites of Passage: Process and Paradox’, in Turner, V. (ed.), Celebration: Studies in Festivity and Ritual (Washington DC 1982), 113Google Scholar; cf. V. and E. Turner, ‘Religious Celebrations’, ibid. 202.

44. Sometimes the ‘Odyssean’ self is uppermost (e.g. 925f.); at other times the ‘Achillean’ self commands his response (e.g. 965f. and the ending scenes); elsewhere there are strange fusions (e.g. 915f, combining Achillean straightforwardness with Odyssean expediency: ‘You must sail to Troy,/to the Achaeans and the fleet of the Atreidae’).

45. Cf. e.g. the case of ephebic initiatory rites performed around the sanctuary of Artemis Orthia at Sparta. The multitude of masks excavated in the sanctuary precinct does not seem to have revealed the secret of its use. However, if one accepts Vernant’s hypothesis as at least a possibility (see now Vernant, J.P., Mortals and Immortals: Collected Essays, ed. Zeitlin, F.I. [Princeton 1991], ch. 13Google Scholar; cf. Vernant and F. Frontisi–Ducroux, ‘Features of the Mask in Ancient Greece’, in Vernant and Vidal–Naquet [n.6 above], 199f.), these strange objects would provide an excellent example of liminal role–playing: masks of warriors or sometimes realistic studies of the human face would have impressed upon the neophytes the visage of their future integration into the society of adults; faces of old women, of bestiality and of deformity on the other hand, would have offered to them the opportunity to explore successively ‘every aspect of marginality and strangeness, assuming every possible form of otherness, learning how to break rules so as the better to internalise rules that they would thereafter have to keep’ (Vernant and Frontisi–Ducroux, 200).

46. For the twofold meaning of and similar qualifications in the play see e.g. Knox, B.M.W., The Heroic Temper: Studies in Sophoclean Tragedy (Berkeley, Los Angeles and London 1964), ch. 5Google Scholar; Blundell (n.17 above), 191f, 199f., etc.

47. Fieldwork in a variety of traditional societies reveals that ritual liminality is almost inextricably interwoven with ‘an attitude of mind that is interpretive, self–reflexive, self–conscious’ (Myerhoff [n.43 above], 117; cf. Turner [n.10 above] and V. and E. Turner [n.43 above]). In other words, one of the primary aims of initiation is to ‘encourage liminaries to ponder’ (V. and E. Turner, 205), to re–examine their conceptions of cultural givens, societal mechanisms, and so forth.

48. For a detailed discussion see Lada–Richards (n.7 above), chs. 5–8.

49. In a broad anthropological perspective it is almost impossible to dissociate emotion from cognition, initiatory from initiatory . Liminality relies on the intensity of in order to induce upon the neophyte an active cognitive state of reflection. For a detailed discussion of the initiand’s in Eleusinian and Dionysiac mystic see Lada–Richards (n.7 above), ch.2. As for initiatory , a passive form of learning primarily associated with the transmission of the ritual and verbal secrets of mystic cults is well substantiated in a variety of sources. For example, sacred knowledge which can or cannot be acquired lies at the core of the Dionysiac mysteries, such as reflected in Euripides’ Bacchae (see esp. Bacch. 73, 472–74; cf. a Hellenistic inscription from a Dionysiac sanctuary at Halicarnassus [SEG 28, 841] inviting the reader to join the rites ‘in order that you may know the whole logos’; see Burkert, , Ancient Mystery Cults [Cambridge MA and London 1987], 153Google Scholar n.14), while books seem to play a prominent role in ‘private’ initiations into orgiastic cults (see e.g. Dem. 18.259, 19.199; cf. Zuntz, G., Hermes 91 [1963], 234Google Scholar n.3 citing evidence for the role of the [reader] in certain cults; for books and special knowledge in mystic rites, see Burkert, op. cit., 69–72 [with notes] and West, M.L., The Orphic Poems [Oxford 1983], 24–26)Google Scholar. Furthermore, the author of the Derveni papyrus seems to deplore the failure of some initiands to attain knowledge (col. xx) as a result of the inefficiency and irresponsibility of the various ‘craftsmen’ of private mysteries; see now Obbink, D., ‘Cosmology as Initiation vs. the Critique of Orphic Mysteries’, in Laks, A. and Most, G.W. (eds.), Studies on the Derveni Papyrus (Oxford 1997), 39–54Google Scholar.

50. However, insofar as the Sophoclean play is concerned, even Neoptolemus himself is not presented as a clear–cut Diodotus figure: his argument in lines 92Sf. (‘Justice and interest make me obedient to those in authority’) is close to the spirit of many a Thucydidean speaker of the period of the war, especially to that of Cleon in the historical context of the debate I have chosen as my primary example: ‘If you go along with my opinion, you will do in relation to the Mytileneans what is both just and advantageous ()’ (Thuc. 3.40.4); cf. Win–nington–Ingram, R.P., Sophocles: An Interpretation (Cambridge 1980), 288 n.31CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

51. See primarily Ober, J., Mass and Elite in Democratic Athens: Rhetoric, Ideology, and the Power of the People (Princeton 1989), ch.4Google Scholar.

52. For a survey of Odyssean characterisation see Blundell, , ‘The moral character of Odysseus in Philoctetes’, GRBS 28 (1987), 307–29Google Scholar. A rare exception in the use of negative terminology is Nussbaum, , ‘Consequences and Character in Sophocles’ Philoctetes’, Philology and Literature 1 (1976–77), 25–53CrossRefGoogle Scholar. For some very perceptive, even if brief, remarks see also now Bowie, A.M., ‘Tragic Filters for History: Euripides’ Supplices and Sophocles’ Philoctetes’, in Pelling, C. (ed), Greek Tragedy and the Historian (Oxford 1997), 60fGoogle Scholar.

53. Cf. Winnington–Ingram (n.50 above), 282.

54. Cf. Nussbaum (n.52 above) 31f.

55. See, e.g. IG ² 1176.26 (); Isocr. 18.61 (‘we were so zealous for the city’s welfare, that…’); see further Whitehead, D., ‘Competitive Outlay and Community Profit: Philotimia in Democratic Athens’, C&M 34 (1983), 55–74Google Scholar.

56. See Ober (n.51 above), 167.

57. See e.g. 67, 1069, 1243, 1250, 1257f., 1293f.

58. Except, of course, if ‘justice’ and ‘injustice’ are measured in ‘Calliclean’ terms, in which case Philoctetes has been rightly eliminated as the weaker element in a community of stronger warriors.

59. See Easterling, P.E., ‘Philoctetes and Modern Criticism’, ICS 3 (1978), 36Google Scholar.

60. See primarily Goldhill, ‘The Great Dionysia and Civic Ideology’, in Winkler and Zeitlin (n.5 above), 118–23. Bowie (n.52 above, 59f.) makes a strong case for the ‘abnormal, inhuman position’ and ‘individualistic attitude’ of Philoctetes by tracing the intertextual links of the Sophoclean figure with Homer’s Polyphemus and the Iliadic Achilles. Moreover Bowie stresses the importance of Philoctetes’ sacrilegious transgression on to Chryses’ sacred precinct (ibid. 57).

61. See now Bowie (n.52 above), who reads the play in the light of the historical events surrounding the expulsion and recall of Alcibiades: ‘So, for the audience, watching or reading the Philoctetes has something of the quality of trying to understand Athenian politics.’

62. As idealised, of course, by the polis’ own civic discourse.

63. Consider e.g. lines 756f., where to Philoctetes’ appeal, ‘But, come, pity me’ (), Neoptolemus gives an answer which immediately transmutes into pro–social action: ‘What am I supposed to do?’ (;—cf. also 761). Philoctetes’ reply in its turn is actually a demand for practical help: ‘Don’t betray me through fear’ (, 757). And, in general, Philoctetes’ plea for pity is always very strongly linked with the demand for an alleviating response, ranging from the simple granting of a human voice (227–29) to the granting of the trip back home.

64 See Lada(–Richards), , ‘“Weeping for Hecuba”: Is it a “Brechtian” Act?’, Arethusa 29 (1996), 87–124Google Scholar.

65. Cf. Brecht, B., The Messingkauf Dialogues, tr. Willett, J. (London 1965), 27Google Scholar, on the ‘traditional’ type of audience which simply ‘borrows its heart from one of the characters involved’.

66. See Brecht, , Brecht on Theatre: The Development of an Aesthetic, ed. and tr. J. Willett (London 1964), 44Google Scholar.

67. Among many anthropological studies see Bruce Kapferer’s ‘Turnerian’ understanding of rituals as able to ‘achieve transformations in experience, identities and action for those who gather to them, both within the performative organisation of the rituals themselves and in the contexts of meaning and action which extend around them’ (‘Introduction: Ritual Process and the Transformation of Context’, Social Analysis 1 [1979], 3). This is particularly important with respect to rites of passage, ‘whose execution is explicitly held to bring about change’ (Houseman, M., ‘The Interactive Basis of Ritual Effectiveness in a Male Initiation Rite’, in P. Boyer (ed.), Cognitive Aspects of Religious Symbolism [Cambridge 1993], 207CrossRefGoogle Scholar), as they remould and remodel the initiand into a completely different persona. Cf. Schechner (n.11 above), esp. 127.

68. Schechner (n.11 above), 125f.

69. Schechner, , ‘From Ritual to Theatre and Back: The Structure/Process of the Efficacy–Entertainment Dyad’, in Essays on Performance Theory 1970–1976 (New York 1977), 125Google Scholar.

70. Schechner (n.11 above ), 125.

71. Even so, Neoptolemus’ should not be conceived of as immutable and static. By the play’s end, the Achillean ‘breed’ to which the boy returns has dynamically evolved, becoming richer in both emotional experience and maturity of judgment.

72. The remainder of this section incorporates material from my article ‘“Estrangement or “Reincarnation”? Performers and Performance on the Classical Athenian Stage’, Arion iii ser. 5.2 (1997), 66–107.

73. See 56f.: ‘When he asks you who you are and whence you came,/say you are Achilles’ son; as far as this one is concerned, you don’t need to tell a lie.’

74. True to his Achillean upbringing, Neoptolemus is very sensitive to the notion of (cf. 108, 906, 1228, 1234, 1248f.: ‘Having made a shameful () mistake, I seek to rectify it’), and this is the principle by which Philoctetes appeals to him so pathetically in line 929: ‘are you not ashamed beholding me…’ ( cf. 475f.).

75. Cf. Knox (n.46 above) 123f.: ‘In all he (i.e. Neoptolemus) does and says…the constant reference to the name of Achilles will remind us (and him) of the tradition he has betrayed and prepare our minds for his return to it….The figure of Achilles, invoked so repeatedly throughout the play, is the measure of Neoptolemos’ fall from heroic virtue and the ideal to which he must in the end rise again.’

76. See, most importantly, his reference to the reaction of the Achaeans when he first arrived at Troy: ‘swearing that they saw Achilles, long dead and gone, alive once again’ (357f.).

77. Cf. Taplin, O., ‘The Mapping of Sophocles’ Philoctetes’, BICS 34 (1987), 69Google Scholar, on ‘Neoptolemus’ choice of lives, the “Odyssean” or the “Achillean”’.

78. Cf. Knox (n.46 above), 121.

79. See Winnington–Ingram (n.50 above), 288.

80. See Pohlenz, M., ‘Die Anfange der griechischen Poetik’, in Dörrie, H. (ed), Kleine Schriften II (Hildesheim 1965), 436–72Google Scholar.

81. .

82. Cf. the nice formulation of O’Higgins, D. (‘Narrators and Narrative in the Philoctetes of Sophocles’, Ramus 20 [1991], 44Google Scholar): ‘In the Philoctetes…we watch Odysseus prepare a mask for Neoptolemus at the beginning of the play—but the extent to which he has created and can control the enigma underneath the mask is forever unknowable.’

83. Weidkuhn, P., ‘The Quest for Legitimate Rebellion: Towards a Structuralist Theory of Rituals of Reversal’, Religion 7 (1977), 167CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

84. Leach, E.R., Rethinking Anthropology ² (London 1966), 135Google Scholar.

85. Douglas, M., Purity and Danger: An Analysis of the Concepts of Pollution and Taboo (London 1966), 97CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

86. Brelich, , Paides e Parthenoi, i (Rome 1969)Google Scholar; Jeanmaire, H., Couroi et Courètes: Essai sur l’éducation spartiate et sur les rites d’adolescence dans I’antiquité hellénique (Lille 1939)Google Scholar; Vidal–Naquet (n.21 above).

87. Cf. Panath. 214, where Isocrates repeats that the Lacedaemonians ‘regard those who stand first in such crimes (i.e. wrong–doing [] and stealing []) as the best among their youths and honour them the most’.

88. In the Ionian cities (see Hdt. 1.147), it is the festival of the Apaturia, commemorating an archetypal exemplum of , which provides the model for the inversional values marking the threshold of the passage to maturity; see primarily Vidal–Naquet (n.21 above).

89. Cf. again Panath. 214, where Isocrates stresses that the ephebe is only ‘seeking through such practices to school himself in virtue’; see further Vernant (n.45 above), 240.

90. Turner (n.10 above), 100.

91. Vernant (n.45 above), 225.

92. See esp. 1259f. and 1255f., a threat of physical assault.

93. See Vidal–Naquet (n.6 above), who, following the lead of Wilamowitz, qualifies Neop–tolemus’ attitude ‘in military terms’ as ‘desertion’ (173).

94. Vernant (n.45 above), 220.

95. See Vidal–Naquet (n.6 above), 173.

96. See Vidal–Naquet (n.6 above), 174f., on the implications of Phil. 1434–37.

97. Cf. Winnington–Ingram’s (n.50 above, 301 f.) insistence that the two endings should be read in the light of each other: ‘It would contradict…the whole artistry of Sophocles, if the “second ending” deprived the “first ending” of all its value.’ Cf. Goldhill (n.60 above), 121.

98. I intend to elaborate on Neoptolemus’ disturbing decision in separate work.