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The Battle of the Sexes in Euripides' Ion

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  04 July 2014

Francis M. Dunn
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Extract

Euripides' Ion has suffered from the attempt to find in the play an overriding message or moral. Verrall and his successors saw the Ion as an attack against Apollo and organized religion; Wassermann and Burnett argue that it defends orthodox piety; Grégoire and Loraux view it as a hymn or lament on Athenian national pride; and Knox and Gellie respond that the Ion is pure comedy with no deeper meaning. There is of course some truth to each of these interpretations, but it does not follow that the play's ‘real meaning’ lies somewhere in between them. I suggest that we read the Ion not as an abstract argument but as drama, and in particular as a social comedy whose ‘meaning’ lies not in an underlying message but in the action itself and in the conflicts among the play's characters, human and divine, male and female, foreign and Athenian.

Such conflicts, in this play at least, focus attention upon the role of the gods, the place of foreigners in Athens, and relations between men and women. Of these three subjects, the first two have dominated discussion of the Ion, both by those who find them central to the play's religious or nationalistic theme, and by those who consider them incidental to the play as comedy. I shall first show that the third area of conflict — relations between men and women — is equally important in the Ion and reflects an important issue in contemporary Athens. Second, I shall argue that the gender issues raised somewhat provocatively in the first half of the play are upstaged by the melodramatic excitement of the second half. And I shall suggest, in conclusion, that although it is only one of many social and family conflicts in the drama, the battle between the sexes shows how the Ion raises important and difficult questions without becoming an ‘issue play’.

Type
Research Article
Information
Ramus , Volume 19 , Issue 2 , 1990 , pp. 130 - 142
Copyright
Copyright © Aureal Publications 1990

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References

1. Attacks against Apollo: Verrall, A.W., The Ion of Euripides (Cambridge 1890), xi-xlvGoogle Scholar, followed by Murray, G., Euripides and his Age (New York 1913), 118–24Google Scholar, and Norwood, G., Greek Tragedy (Boston 1920), 238–40Google Scholar. Orthodox piety: Wassermann, F.M., ‘Divine Violence and Providence in Euripides’ Ion’, TAPA 71 (1940), 587–604Google Scholar, and Burnett, A.P., ‘Human Resistance and Divine Persuasion in Euripides’ Ion’, CP 57 (1962), 89–103Google Scholar; cf. vindication of the god in Whitman, C.H., Euripides and the Full Circle of Myth (Cambridge, Mass. 1974), 100–3CrossRefGoogle Scholar and Rosivach, V.J., ‘Earthborns and Olympians: the Parodos of the Ion’, CQ 27 (1977), 284–94CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Athenian patriotism: regarded as an encomium by Delebecque, E., Euripide et la guerre du Péloponnèse (Paris 1951), 225–44Google Scholar, and Grégoire, H., Euripide, vol. 3 (Paris 1959), 155–72Google Scholar; as an appeal for unity by Walsh, G.B., ‘The Rhetoric of Birthright and Race in Euripides’ Ion’, Hermes 106 (1978), 301–15Google Scholar; as a lament for Athens by Loraux, N., Les enfants d’ Athéna, 2nd ed. (Paris 1984), 197–253Google Scholar. Comedy: Knox, B., ‘Euripidean Comedy’, in Word and Action (Baltimore 1979), 250–74Google Scholar, and Gellie, G., ‘Apollo in the Ion’, Ramus 13 (1984), 93–101; cfCrossRefGoogle Scholar. Kitto, H.D.F., Greek Tragedy, 3rd ed. (London 1961), 311–29Google Scholar. Another ‘message’ is the limitation of human reason: Wolff, C., ‘The Design and Myth in Euripides’ Ion’, HSCP 69 (1965), 169–94Google Scholar, at 173 and 187–90, and Forehand, W.E., ‘Truth and Reality in Euripides’ Ion’, Ramus 8 (1979), 174–87CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Quotations below follow the Oxford Classical Text of J. Diggle (Oxford 1981) except where noted; translations are my own.

2. Conacher, D.J., ‘The Paradox of Euripides’ Ion’, TAPA 90 (1959), 20–39Google Scholar, tries to reconcile comedy, theological satire and political propaganda; Rosenmeyer, T.G., The Masks of Tragedy (Austin 1963), 120f.Google Scholar, defines the play as theological romance; Seidensticker, B., Palintonos Harmonia (Göttingen 1982), 211–41CrossRefGoogle Scholar, sees it as a blend of comedy and tragedy.

3. This subject has been mentioned in passing by Vellacott, P., Ironic Drama (Cambridge 1975), 121–23Google Scholar, and more fully by Loraux (n.l above), 203ff. and 223ff. The latter, however, sees the play as ‘a tragedy of Athens’ dealing with Apollo’s usurpation of Creusa and the Acropolis.

4. Cf. Vellacott (n.3 above), 89: ‘This is not to say that he wrote with the purpose either of undermining belief in gods or campaigning for women’s rights; rather, he wrote to mirror the whole spectrum of life and belief.’

5. Tro. 962; Supp. 798f., 812, 817ff., 943, 1031f.’; cf. Helen 833f.: ‘(HELEN). I shall be married by force, poor me! (MENELAUS). You’d be a traitor. You make force an excuse.’ On Suppliants, see Detienne, M., ‘Les Danaïdes entre elles ou la violence fondratrice du manage’, Arethusa 21 (1988), 159–75Google Scholar; on the Danaïd trilogy, cf. note 8 below.

6. D.G. Garrison, ‘Rape in New Comedy’, unpublished paper delivered at the 1983 Meeting of the APA, 3, notes the comparable status of the Eunuch as ‘the only Roman adaptation [of New Comedy] to admit the emotional distress of the victim’.

7. Prometheus 735–40, 894–900. On Helen, see e.g. Agamemnon 681–98. Gorgias is the first to entertain the possibility of sympathy for Helen’s violent treatment (11.7), but this is in a deliberately paradoxical speech. For the view that women such as Helen were asking for it, see Herodotus 1.4.

8. See Agamemnon 399–402 on Menelaus; Helen 1301–37 on Demeter; Prometheus 862–64 on the murder of the sons of Aegyptus, and discussion in Garvie, A.F., Aeschylus’ Supplices: Play and Trilogy (Cambridge 1969), 163–204Google Scholar. The rape of Cassandra is likewise condemned as a sacrilege against Apollo, Trojan Women 43f.

9. Aristophanes treats rape rather lightly (Lysistrata 160–63) and equates its reversal with reversal of the social order (Ecclesiazusae 465–71). The orators, however, generally regard rape as reprehensible (Lysias 1.32, Isocrates 4.114, Demosthenes 19.309).

10. Wassermann (n.l above), 589f.; Burnett (n.l above) 90,97; Rosivach (n.l above), 291; and Lloyd, M., ‘Divine and Human Action in Euripides’ Ion’, A&A 32 (1986), 33–45Google Scholar, at 37; a more sympathetic view also in Vellacott (n.3 above), 88.

11. Harrison, A.R.W., The Law of Athens, vol. 1 (Oxford 1968), 30–36.Google Scholar

12. Lysias 1.30–33 and Harrison (n.l 1 above), 34f. For a challenge to this usual interpretation, see Harris, E.M., ‘Did the Athenians regard seduction as a worse crime than rape?’ CQ 40 (1990) 370–77.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

13. It does not follow that Athenian men never dwelt upon these issues. Lysias, for example, seems as surprised as we are that rape incurs a smaller penalty than seduction (1.32).

14. I do not follow Diggle’s deletion of 578–81.

15. Preserving the MSS reading against Diggle’s emendation.

16. Harrison (n.l 1 above), 9ff., 108ff., 132ff.; Aristotle, Athenian Constitution 43.4.

17. Preserving L’s athemitas against Bayfield’s athemitos.

18. Hesiod, Works and Days 67, 78; cf. Theogony 590ff.

19. Arthur, M.B., ‘Cultural Strategies in Hesiod’s Theogony: Law, Family, Society’, Arethusa 15 (1982), 63–82Google Scholar; on Pandora at Athens, see Loraux (n.l above), 75–117.

20. Esp. 206–18, 987f, 1528f; discussion in Mastronarde, D.J., ‘Iconography and Imagery in Euripides’ Ion’, CSCA 8 (1975), 163–76Google Scholar, and Rosivach (n.l above).

21. Other similarities include the appearance of Apollo’s priestess and the description of Apollo’s shrine as surrounded by Gorgons (224); cf. Whitman (n.l above), 77, and Lloyd (n.10 above), 45.

22. Zeitlin, F.L., ‘The Dynamics of Misogyny: Myth and Mythmaking in the Oresteia’, Arethusa 11 (1978), 149–84Google Scholar, at 149 and 173.

23. Cf. Knox (n.l above), 258f.; Seidensticker (n.2 above), 215–22.

24. Cf. Seidensticker (n.2 above), 235f.

25. On Delphi, see Thucydides 1.118, 123 and cf. Delebecque (n.l above), 234 and 237ff. On foreigners, see sources in Walsh (n.l above), 308. On related issues, as Walsh observes, Athenians were more generous, making provisions for resident aliens, and perhaps granting citizenship to children of mixed marriages.

26. Meredith, G., ‘An Essay on Comedy,’ in Comedy, ed. Sypher, W. (Garden City 1956), 3–57Google Scholar, at 15.

27. An earlier version of this paper was delivered at Rollins College in February 1989. My thanks to the audience there, and to the reader for Ramus.