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12. Endings

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 July 2019

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Extract

The final words of Sophocles’ Trachiniae confront modern interpreters with questions of different kinds. First, who speaks the last four lines? The manuscripts give them to Hyllus, Heracles’ son, who has been speaking since line 1264; but the ancient scholia attribute them to the chorus, adding that ‘some’ (τινες) give them to Hyllus. Second, who is the παρθένος (‘maiden’) addressed in line 1275? Iole, the girl with whom Heracles was infatuated and whom Hyllus has promised to marry? Or the chorus, addressed by Hyllus or the chorus-leader?

Type
II Interpretation
Information
New Surveys in the Classics , Volume 44: Sophocles , 2014 , pp. 98 - 105
Copyright
Copyright © The Classical Association 2019 

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References

1 Σ 1275 (Xenis 2010b: 257).

2 See Easterling 1981; Stinton 1986 = 1990: 454–92, 1987 = 1990: 493–507.

3 Hahnemann 1999, citing Aesch. fr. 73b TrGF; quotation from p. 73.

4 Sommerstein 2012b: 22.

5 Easterling 1982 on Tr. 1270. For Sophoclean endings see further Roberts 1988; for tragic endings, Roberts 1987, 1993; and for closure in general, D. Fowler 1989 = 2000: 239–83; Roberts et al. 1997; S. West 2007.

6 Schein 2013 on Phil. 1421–2. For the cults of Philoctetes, especially in Makalla near Croton, see Hornblower 2015 on Lyc. Alex. 911–29.

7 See further Harrison 1989.

8 Winnington-Ingram 1980: 275.

9 Stinton 1986: 84 = 1990: 479; cf. Wright 2005.

10 Boivin de Villeneuve 1718.

11 Goldhill 2014.

12 Dawe 2001 = 2007: 269–85, 2006 ad loc.

13 Finglass 2009a.

14 Kovacs 2009a; Sommerstein 2011; Kovacs 2014.

15 Manuwald 2012; Finglass 2018e.

16 Budelmann 2006; Burian 2009; Finglass 2018e on 1223–1530.

17 Oedipus the King 228–9, 236–43, 417–23, 455–6, 813–20.

18 Cf. D. Fowler 1989: 80–1 = 2000: 244: ‘recent work on the Oedipus Rex has seen its ending as deeply problematic; the final angry squabble between Creon and Oedipus shows that all passion is very far from spent’.