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Curse and Oath in Euripides' Hippolytus

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  04 July 2014

Charles Segal
Charles Segal*
Affiliation:
Brown University
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Extract

Curses and oaths play an interesting and important role in the tragic action of the Hippolytus which is generally overlooked. They dominate two of the play's most powerful scenes, Theseus' imprecation of doom upon his son (885-98) and Hippolytus' defense (1025-31).

I shall begin with the latter passage. Here the hero's solemn oath of self-destruction (ἐξώλεια ) forms a dramatic climax to his denial of the charges against him (1025-31):

Now I swear by Zeus, God of Oaths, and by the soil of the earth that I never touched your marriage-bed nor would have conceived the wish or the thought. May I perish without honour, without city, without home, an exile wandering over the earth, and may neither sea nor earth receive my flesh when I am dead if I have been a base man.

Type
Research Article
Information
Ramus , Volume 1 , Issue 2 , 1972 , pp. 165 - 180
Copyright
Copyright © Aureal Publications 1972

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References

1. For the significance of the speech-silence theme in the play see Knox, B. M. W., ‘The Hippolytus of Euripides’, YCS 13 (1952) 5–16Google Scholar; Segal, C., ‘The Tragedy of the Hippolytus: The Waters of Ocean and the Untouched Meadow’, HSCP 70 (1965) 147–48Google Scholar. The theme of ‘silent witnesses’ is also developed elsewhere: see 646–50 and 692; and ‘witnesses’ in general are an important subject: see 403–04, 971–72. On the whole question of ‘witnesses’ and clarity of inference see Segal, C., ‘Shame and Purity in Euripides’ Hippolytus’, Hermes 98 (1970) 288–91Google Scholar.

2. Thus Diogenes Laertius, 6.38, cites among the ‘tragic curses’ (

) an imprecation to perish ‘without city, without home, deprived of country, a beggar, a wanderer, living a day-to-day existence’ (frag, adesp. 284, Nauck2):

The closest parallel in the extant plays is Euripides, Orestes 1086–88, cited and discussed infra.

3. For purity in the play see my ‘Shame and Purity … ’, (above, note 1) 278–99.

4. For the clash of appearance and reality see Ibid., 288ff. Avery, H. C., ‘My Tongue Swore, But My Mind Is Unsworn’, TAPA 99 (1968) 19–35Google Scholar, especially 25ff.

5. See Barrett, W. S., Euripides, Hippolytus (Oxford 1964) 41–42Google Scholar.

6. Thus Plato, Critias 119 e, speaks of ‘an oath calling down great curses on those who disobey’, . See also Plutarch, Aetia Romana 44 (275 D), ‘Every oath (horkos) finishes as a curse () for perjury’.

7. Among the voluminous literature on oaths and curses the following have been the most helpful: Hirzel, Rudolf, Der Eid, Ein Beitrag zu seiner Geschichte (Leipzig 1902Google Scholar); Kakridis, Ioannes T., ‘APAI’ (Athens 1925Google Scholar), especially 1–45; von Lasaulx, Ernst, Studien des classischen Alterthums, Akademische Abhandlungen (Regensburg 1854Google Scholar), ‘Der Fluch bei Griechen und Römern’, 159–77, and ‘Der Eid bei den Griechen’, 177–207; Latte, Kurt, Heiliges Recht (Tübingen 1920) 61ffGoogle Scholar.; Ott, Ludwig, Beitrage zur Kenntnis des griechischen Eides (Diss. Zürich, Leipzig 1896Google Scholar), with a useful bibliography of older literature, 7ff.; Ziebarth, Erich, ‘Der Fluch im griechischen Recht’, Hermes 30 (1895) 57–70Google Scholar. Stobaeus also devotes two chapters to oaths (27–28), but they are of limited helpfulness. Cf. now Plescia, Joseph, The Oath and Perjury in Ancient Greece (Florida State Univ. Press 1969Google Scholar), which I have, regrettably, been unable to consult.

8. Thus Demosth., De Corona 141, swears that if his oath proves false may he be ‘without enjoyment of all good things’. Cf. also In Neaer. 10, In Conon. 41; Lysias, In Eratosth. 10, In Diog. 13; Andoc, De Myst. 126; Aeschin., De Fals. Legat. 87, In Timarch. 114, Aristoph., Lys. 235–36. It is worth noting that even the most important oaths are often expressed in simple and ordinary terms, like that of the Spartans not to return home until they had captured Messene (Strabo 6.3, 279 C; Polyb. 12.6b.9). The oath can, of course, also contain a positive clause (‘May I enjoy such and such , if …’): see Aristoph., Thesm. 469 and also 350 f.; Lucian, Philops. 27. On the whole question see in general Lasaulx 196–97, Ziebarth 63, Hirzel 137–38 (all above, note 7).

9. The text of Orestes 1086f. has been much discussed, especially the question of reading ‘body’ or ‘blood− () in 1086, but ‘blood’ is probably to be preferred, and the vividness is more suited to the dramatic moment and to the parallel with Hipp. 1030–31: see Vincenzo di Benedetto, Euripidis Orestes, Bibl. di Studi Superiori 51 (Florence 1965) ad loc.

10. See my ‘Tragedy of the Hippolytus’ (above, note 1) 131–32, 160.

11. See Lasaulx 186, Latte 80, Ziebarth 62ff. and especially 66–67 (all above, note 7) for further examples.

12. Aeschyl., Ag. 1097, Sept. 1035, Cho. 280, frag. 253 N2 (Philoct.); Soph., Trach. 1054.

13. Eurip., Antiope 75 (Page, Gk. Lit. Papyri), Ba. 1130. Cycl. 403, Hec. 1072, Hipp. 1239,1343, Med. 1200,1217, Tro. 775, Suppl. 50, frag. 687 N2.

14. Even this phrase has a certain vividness and special force in the Iliad: see my monograph, The Theme of the Mutilation of the Corpse in the Iliad, Mnemosyne Supplement 17 (Leiden 1971) 9Google Scholar.

15. See Barrett (above, note 5) 12.

16. On the problem of the three wishes see Barrett 39–40; Kakridis (above, note 7) 28ff. with the literature there cited and his article, ‘Der Fluch des Theseus im “Hippolytos”,’ RhM 77 (1928) 21–33, especially 28–29, who suggests that it is Euripides’ innovation to have brought the motif of three wishes into the story of Theseus and Hippolytus. See also Kalkmann, Augustus, De Hippolytis Euripideis Quaestiones Novae (Bonn 1882) 48–49Google Scholar.

17. Ex tribus enim optatis, ut scribitur, hoc erat tertium, says Cicero (‘Of the three wishes, this was the third’). Wilamowitz-Moellendorff, U. v., ‘Excurse zu Euripides Medeia’, Hermes 15 (1880) 483Google Scholar suggested that the theme of the three wishes was introduced to bind together the three plays of the trilogy, Aegeus, Theseus, Hippolytus, Kalyptomenos. See also his Griechische Tragödien übersetzt I (Berlin 1899) 100 and Kakridis, Aral (above, note 7) 30. The suggestion seems not very plausible and, in any case, does not account for the carrying over of the motif to the second Hippolytus.

18. Kakridis, ‘Der Fluch’ (above, note 16) 30.

19. So Willy Morel in Bursian’s Jahresbericht 238 (1933) 131.

20. See Kakridis, ‘Der Fluch’ (above, note 16) 27.

21. See Barrett (above, note 5) 334–35; also Kakridis, ‘Der Fluch’ (above, note 16) 32.

22. Barrett (above, note 5) 335.

23. Compare the character of Theseus in Euripides’ Suppliants and Hercules Furens and in Sophocles’ Oedipus at Colonus.

24. The text and translation of 1041 follow Barrett (above, note 5) ad loc, 356–57.

25. Wheeler, Iohannes H., De Alcestidis et Hippolyti Euripidearum Interpolationibus (Diss. Bonn 1879) 62Google Scholar: ‘Non debebat Theseus haec minitans oblivisci preces suas [sic] quibus mortem Hippolytos imprecatus erat’ (‘In making these threats Theseus ought not to have forgotten his prayers with which he called down death upon Hippolytus’). The text of 1049–50 is also uncertain, and both lines have been deleted by various editors, e.g. Murray in the Oxford Classical Texts, 1049 on the grounds that it nearly repeats 898. Barrett ably defends 1049 (ad loc, 357–59), though he follows the scholiast and Nauck in deleting 1050. The repetition 1049 = 898 has an aesthetic function: it underlines the persistence of Theseus’ wrath (we twice hear him dwelling on Hippolytus’ suffering, ‘bilging out a painful life on foreign soil’); it rounds off the agon by bringing us back to the curses which immediately preceded it; and it keeps the human motivation in the foreground by stressing once more the threat of exile over the supernatural doom from Poseidon.

26. The dating of the Oedipus Tyrannus is still a subject of much controversy. R. C. Jebb, in his edition and commentary on the play (ed. 2, Cambridge 1887) xxix-xxx, set the limits as wide as 439–412 B.C. Modern scholars are generally agreed on a date between 429 and 425. The dating to 429, based upon the assumption that the plague presented in the play refers to the plague which broke out in Athens in 430, has been widely favoured, but is by no means generally accepted. For discussion and further bibliography see Wilhelm Schmid in Schmid-Stählin, Gesch. d. gr. Literatur, 1.2 (1934) 361, note 3; Lesky, A, Die tragische Dichtung der Hellenen (Göttingen 1956) 121Google Scholar with note 1, and his A History of Greek Literature 2, tr. Willis and de Heer (London 1966) 284–85. Knox, B. M. W., ‘The Date of the Oedipus Tyranmis of Sophocles’, AJP 77 (1956) 133–47Google Scholar, presents strong arguments for the connection of the O.T. and the plague of 430, but refers the action to its second outbreak in 427–26 and argues for a date in 425. Kamerbeek, J. C., The Plays of Sophocles, IV, The Oedipus Tyrannus (Leiden 1967) 28–29Google Scholar, accepts Knox’s evidence for the plague of 430, but is sceptical about the arguments for 425. Other possible borrowings from the O.T. in the Hipp, have been noted, chiefly in the scenes O.T. 583ff. and Hipp. 1013ff. and in the circumstances surrounding the exits of the respective heroines, Jocasta and Phaedra, to commit suicide: cf. T. Zielinski, Philologus 55 (1896) 523, note 7, and Webster, T. B. L., An Introduction to Sophocles 2 (London 1969) 4–5, 92Google Scholar.

27. The interlocking of human and divine motivation is well discussed by R. Winnington-Ingram, P., ‘Hippolytus: A study in Causation’, in Euripides Entretiens sur l’antiquité classique 6 (Fondation Hardt, Vandoeuvres—Geneva 1960) 171–97Google Scholar.

28. See my ‘Tragedy of the Hippolytus’ (above, note 1) 118–19, with the literature there cited in notes 6–11, 161–62.

29. I wish to thank Mr F. D. Harvey of the University of Exeter (England) for helpful and friendly criticism.