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Euripides, Troades 95-7

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  08 May 2015

M. Dyson
M. Dyson*
Affiliation:
University of Queensland
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Extract

With this reflection on mortal folly Poseidon concludes the divine prologue of Euripides' Troades. This text was printed by Murray with the addition of a comma at the end of line 95, but Diggle accepts Page's emendation I shall argue that the manuscript reading gives perfect sense and that, since it is good Greek, there is no need for emendation.

D. Kovacs has pointed out that these lines make no mention of desecration, for to bring temples into desolation () is quite different from desecrating them. Further, since it is regularly assumed in Greek thought that cities can be sacked without sacrilege, the folly on which Poseidon comments does not consist in a victor's incurring divine punishment simply by the act of sacking a city. I agree with Kovacs on these points and believe that his argument refutes the widely held view that in these lines Euripides is condemning on moral or religious grounds the sacking of cities in general.

Type
Research Article
Information
Antichthon , Volume 25 , 1991 , pp. 27 - 32
Copyright
Copyright © Australasian Society for Classical Studies 1991

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References

1 Murray, G., Euripidis Fabulae 23 (Oxford 1913)Google Scholar; Diggle, J., Euripidis Fabulae 2 (Oxford 1981) 185Google Scholar; the passage is discussed by Diggle in his Studies on the Text of Euripides (Oxford 1981) 59Google Scholar. Page's emendation is accepted also by Barlow, S.A., Euripides: Trojan Women (Warminster 1986) 60Google Scholar.

2 ‘Euripides, Troades 95-7: Is sacking cities really foolish?’, CQ 33 (1983) 334–8CrossRefGoogle Scholar. For a recent statement of the view which I believe Kovacs makes untenable see Biehl, W., Euripides: Troades (Heidelberg 1989) 123Google Scholar: ‘Für Poseidon steht es fest, dass die völlige Vernichtung der Stadt Troja nur als Hybris einzuschätzen ist und daher auch den eigenen Untergang mit Notwendigkeit nach sich zieht.’

3 Kovacs (above, n.2) 336.

4 For example, Orestes appeals to Athena to back his revenge for Agamemnon on the grounds that she helped Agamemnon to obliterate Troy (Aesch. Eu. 457); after the capture of Plataea the Thebans had the defenders slain and the women enslaved, and later built a temple to Hera and made dedications to her with spoils taken from the dismantled town (Thuc. 3.68.3).

5 These details do not here imply a sacrilege for which divine punishment is to be expected, but are a measure of the indifference of heaven: like Poseidon, the other gods are abandoning the city, so that such outrages as these occur. Of course, when the shrine in question belongs to Athena, the supporter of the Greeks, then the situation is entirely different.

6 On invading Plataea the Spartans were careful not to offend the gods and local heroes, to whom King Archidamus appealed in justification of the imminent damage to Plataean land (Thuc. 2.74.2-3); for a similar appeal by Brasidas at Acanthus see Thuc. 4.87.2. However, the destruction of the town by the Thebans made an impact on the Greek imagination, so that, according to Arrian (An. 1.9.6Google Scholar), when Thebes itself was razed by Alexander, people attributed its destruction to divine wrath aroused on several counts, including the seizing of Plataea during a truce, the total enslavement of the city, the un-Greek slaughter of the surrendered and the desolation () of the land in which Greece had won freedom from the Persians. There is ample evidence here of the conviction that care needed to be taken in military operations against another city. During the sack of Thebes some suppliants were slain, but a degree of scruple was shown in razing the city, for Alexander distributed among his allies all the land except for the part that was sacred (), and enslaved all the citizens apart from the priests and priestessess (An. 1.9.9)Google Scholar.

7 Other examples of the combination of temples and tombs are: Lycurgus 8, 97, 147; Aeschines 2.23, 3.156; Plato, , Laws 3.699c7Google Scholar; Eu. Bacch. 1359 (altars and tombs).

8 In this context the word lifts the tombs onto the same plane as the temples and must make the discontinuation of tendance seem all the more appalling, much as in the Ephebic Oath at Athens it underlines the sacredness of the duty of the defence: For due observance of the dead see Wyse, W., The Speeches of Isaeus (Cambridge 1904), on 2.4.5 and 2.46.5Google Scholar. According to Lycurgus, 59-60, a deserter betrays not only the living but the dead by depriving them of their ancestral rights. Plato goes even further in regarding dead ancestors as themselves ‘household gods’; see England, E.B., The Laws of Plato (Manchester 1921), on 4.717b5 and 5.740clGoogle Scholar.

9 For examples in Euripides see Cycl. 579-80; Ale. 439-40; Hipp. 3-4; Tro. 654-5: Or. 1636-7. This use is not discussed by Denniston, J.D., The Greek Particles2 (Oxford 1966)Google Scholar.

10 This consideration rules out as printed by Biehl, W., Euripides: Troades (Leipzig 1970)Google Scholar.

11 See, in addition to our passage, fr. 286.7; IA 1398. In the other example the passive is used metaphorically of a person, Tro. 142; so in the only occurrence in Sophocles. The verb appears not to be found in Aeschylus, Aristophanes, Herodotus, Xenophon and Plato.

12 (Eu. Phoen. 604); (Aesch. Sept. 582-3). In both cases the charge is made against Polyneices by hostile witnesses, Eteocles and Amphiaraus respectively, (Thuc. 7.29.4). The historian expressly stamps the entire episode as one of the notable atrocities of the Peloponnesian War (7.30.3). A similar pronounced restriction of objects to nouns like ‘city’ and ‘land’ is found with the verbs For a rare religious object see Euripides, Andromache 1095: here too the departure from the norm is instructive, for this is a deliberate misrepresentation of the purpose of Neoptolemus' visit to Delphi, designed to provoke the Delphians to attack him. These verbs may take such objects, but do so only rarely and in exceptional circumstances.

13 West, M.L., ‘Tragica IV’, BICS 27 (1980) 15Google Scholar. The proposals of West and Page also import into the text an interpretation which, following Kovacs, I believe to be untenable.