Domande esame Filologia magistrale

Easterling - Anachronisms in Greek tragedy

1. Who is Pat Easterling?

Pat Easterling is an English classical scholar, recognised as an expert on the work of Sophocles. Easterling was the first woman to chair the Council of University Classical Departments as a Regius Professor of Greek. Easterling's works are concentrated mainly on Greek tragedy.

2. Summarise the modern debate on the meaning of anachronism in Greek tragedy.

The modern debate on anachronisms in Greek tragedy is often depicted as irrelevant and misleading. Ehrenberg said that it was mistaken to distinguish between mythical and quasi-historical features on one hand and contemporary and thus anachronistic on the other. So, anachronisms were the rule and not the exception in the fifth century.

3. What is David Bain’s approach to anachronism?

His approach was an attempt at imaginative recreations of the Homeric world and had a sense based on their knowledge of Homer, Cyclic epic and lyric poetry, of the kind of world the heroes inhabited, and with this they tried to fully recreate it and at the same time dramatise the issues, problems and themes of their contemporary society.

4. Which passages in Aeschylus’ Agamemnon show that he was aware that the world of the heroes was different from his own?

Freakel analyses that when Iphigenia is described as singing the paean after dinner in the father's halls and Clytemnestra as attending Agamemnon in the bath, these are features of heroic life, not of the life of fifth-century Athens.

5. What was the content of the Danaid Tetralogy of Aeschylus?

The contents of the Tetralogy were the issues of political power and responsibility.

6. In the Suppliants the language of Athenian democratic institutions is combined with the language of monarchy. Explain.

The Chorus at 370 ff uses the words: throne (θρόνοισ) and nod (the single vote act), which are explicit language of the monarchy, with the language of democracy, so “you are the city” / σύ τοι πόλισ and “you are the people, a magistrate subject to no scrutiny” / σὺ δὲ τὸ δάμιον. πρύτανισ ἄκριτοσ. So the figure of democracy is stressed in comparison to monarchy and the willingness to build a new democratic consciousness, also based on the new views of politics in Athens with Pericles.

7. Why was the figure of the king in Greek tragedy chameleon-like?

The king in Greek tragedy is chameleon-like because he impersonates more political figures at once: as the model of all that was un-Greek, the oriental absolute ruler like Xerxes in Persae, the ideal first citizen who typified all that Athenians most valued about themselves and their traditions, most commonly the role expected of Theseus, and as an odious tyrant, the personification of everything they most abhorred.

8. Could Homeric heroes write?

It is commonly said that they could not write, but we have two fragments of the Iliad: 168 ff and the passage of Book VII, 175 ff. In the first one Bellerophon carried a folded tablet from King Proetus to his father-in-law, which is usually associated with a form of alphabetism or a first example of Linear B for contemporaries. But in the second passage of Book VII, in which it is decided who will face Hector in a single combat, it is clear that they are using symbols and not a clear system of writing.

9. Name some tragic passages where the characters use writing.

In the Supplices, Pleasgus is writing a message conveyed in a letter with his own openly expressed promises. Or in the Prometheus Bound, Prometheus tells the Ocean Nymphs that one of the gifts to human beings was the putting together of letters. In the Trachiniae we have a tablet on which Heracles wrote down the text of an oracle given to him at Dodona. Also Phaedra’s letter, in Hippolytus, is an example.

10. According to Easterling, the contrast between the Homeric model and tragedy is not simply an anachronism, for at least three reasons. Explain.

According to Easterling, the contrast between the Homeric model and tragedy is not simply an anachronism because:

• The writers of the fifth century had more access to Homeric poetry than us, and the epic tradition was more extensive and varied, and most of the tragedies are inspired by and took their themes from it. So the past of the heroic model is seen by them as an authentic past or part of their history.
• We are not sure that tragedians read the two notorious passages in the same way as we incline to do. Also, in the Alexandrian period there was a theme of discussion based on whether the Iliad used an alphabet or not.
• Despite the free use in tragedy of references to writing and writing materials, there is no mention of books in the extant plays. So, for tragedians, writing books would be intrusive, too sharply suggestive of the modern world.

11. Why are references to tragedy and theatre in tragic texts so vague?

It is considered by them that the use of terms like τραγωδια, θεατρον, δραμα is too “modern”, so they used instead, like Euripides, the words “tale, muse, bards, songs”. The word τραγωδια and all allusion to it is left to comedians, to use that as a way to create a funny anachronism.

12. Name some passages from Homer and tragedy where the characters discuss trade and the exchange of goods. Why do tragedians avoid references to coined money, and what do they use instead?

They avoided references to coined money because it was not a reference to heroic society, so words like drachmas are like τραγωδια and βιβλιον, too anachronistic and too modern to add, and it would destroy the heroic atmosphere.

Some examples are in Antigone, when Creon attacks Tiresias for his mercenary motives, and in Euripides’ Electra, when Orestes asks the old man why he is scrutinising him so closely, “as if looking at the stamp on silver”.

Frazer

1. Who was James George Frazer?

He was a Scottish classicist and founder of social anthropology. He was particularly interested in myth, folklore and religion. His main studies were The Golden Bough, Commentary on Pausanias, Apollodorus and Ovid’s Fasti comments.

2. Why is his work important?

His work is particularly important for his analysis in The Golden Bough of spiritual beliefs, practices and institutions of cultures worldwide. He recognised in the history of mankind a progression from magic to religion to science.

3. Who was the Rex Nemorensis?

Rex Nemorensis is the King of the Grove. He was unique among Roman priests: an escaped slave who acquired office by killing his predecessor. He challenged him by plucking a branch from a particular tree in the grove. The king figure died at harvest time and was reincarnated in the spring. So the Rex is viewed as a god of the sun and as a symbol of rebirth that can be seen in most ancient myths.

4. What are the most important ancient sources of information about the Rex Nemorensis?

The most important sources of information about Rex Nemorensis were from the Aeneid by Virgil, Strabo, Pausanias, Solinus and Suetonius, and Ovid, in Fasti.

5. What is the connection between the myth of Orestes and