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The Appearance of Aeschylus' Erinyes

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 January 2009

P. G. Maxwell-Stuart
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Extract

In the Choephoroi and the Eumenides Aeschylus has described curious and repellent characters, composite beings who partake of the nature and appearance of old women, dogs, Gorgons, Harpies, and aged children, creatures of a compound well able to fright and amaze the original audience. But if a modern theatrical director were to ask, ‘What did they look like? How shall I dress them and have them masked?’, it might be too easy to allow his wardrobe mistress a gallop into phantasy, whereas it is almost as easy to give a simple, if less exhilaratingly imaginative, answer. Aeschylus describes the Erinyes as follows:

Choephoroi

like Gorgons, 1048; φαιοχ⋯τωνες, 1049; wreathed about with snakes, 1049–50; with blood dripping from their eyes, 1058.

Type
Research Article
Information
Greece & Rome , Volume 20 , Issue 1 , April 1973 , pp. 81 - 84
Copyright
Copyright © The Classical Association 1973

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References

page 81 note 1 Prolegomena to the Study of Greek Religion (Cambridge, 1922), figs. 45–7.Google Scholar

page 82 note 1 Pickard-Cambridge, A., The Theatre of Dionysus in Athens (Oxford, 1946), 83–4Google Scholar and fig. 11. The date is given by Webster, T. B. L., Greek Theatre Production 2 (London, 1970), 184Google Scholar. Such a date makes the picture worthless, of course, as a record of the original production, which is what concerns me here.

page 82 note 2 Aristotle, , Topica i. 15 (106b)Google Scholar; Metaph. iv. 7. 2. (1011b); Plato, Timaeus 68 c. It is the colour of lead, Galen, , De comp. med. gen. i. 11 (Kühn 13. 409)Google Scholar, or the silvery-blue of the pilot-fish, Oppian, , Hal. v. 68Google Scholar. It is also used, however, to describe a black sheep, Genesis 30: 32, 33, 35. Hesychius' μ⋯λαν as usual covers all.

page 82 note 3 Alexander 4. 2.Google Scholar

page 82 note 4 Ox. Pap. 1800, fr. 1, col. 122.Google Scholar

page 82 note 5 Alexis fr. 1204 (K); see also Forbes, R. J., Studies in Ancient Technology, iii (Leiden, 1955). 92–3Google Scholar. Pseudo-Aristotle, , De Plantis 828bGoogle Scholar, although he adds that the colour is mid-way between λευκ⋯ς and μ⋯λας, which ought to mean ‘grey’; cf. Greek Papyri in the British Museum, i. 121434Google Scholar. Julian, , Orations iv. 138 d.Google Scholar

page 82 note 6 A Commentary on the Surviving Plays of Aeschylus (Amsterdam, 1958), ii. 234.Google Scholar

page 83 note 1 Definitiones 415 aGoogle Scholar; cf. Euripides, , Iph. in Taur. 1095.Google Scholar

page 83 note 2 Phaedrus 256 d.

page 83 note 3 De part, animal, i. 3 (642b33); cf. HA iv. 1 (523b17).

page 83 note 4 vii. 92.

page 83 note 5 Odyssey xvii. 57; xix. 29; xxi. 386; xxii. 398.

page 83 note 6 Herc. Fur. 1039.

page 83 note 7 Odyssey xxiv. 6–7. There is something dog-like, too, about many bats' faces and this chimes in nicely with the function of the Erinyes as trackers for Clytemnestra.

page 84 note 1 Silently, By Night (London, 1966), 66.Google Scholar

page 84 note 2 Allen, G. M., Bats (Cambridge, Mass., 1939), 147.Google Scholar