1. Polydoros as euphemistic title of Hades, Soph. Ant. 1200; Polyxenos of underworld Zeus, Aesch. Supp. 157–58. See further Schlesier, Renate, ‘Die Bakchen des Hades: Dionysische Aspekte von Euripides’ Hekabe’, Métis 3 (1989), 111–35CrossRefGoogle Scholar; 113 n.2.

2. All textual references are cited from the Oxford Classical text, ed. Diggle, J. (Oxford 1984)Google Scholar.

3. This confusion is already noted by the scholiast ad 521. See among other critics, Méridier (Budé edition [Paris 1956]), 173–74, and Conacher, Desmond, Euripidean Drama: Myth, Theme and Structure (Toronto 1967), 151CrossRefGoogle Scholar n. 14, for discussion.

4. For a useful review of the evidence, see Meridor, Ra’anana, ‘The Function of Polymestor’s Crime in the Hecuba of Euripides’, Eranos 81(1983), 13–20Google Scholar at 13–14.

5. On the topic of Euripides’ inventions, see Conacher(n.3 above), 147–51, and Michelini, Ann, Euripides and the Tragic Tradition (Madison WI 1987), 131–35Google Scholar, with relevant bibliography.

6. The cavalry host he is said to rule is nowhere in evidence even though he will call upon them for help (9; 1088–90).

7. These tents are called domoi and dōma, 59, 665, 980, 1038, 1049, 1053, 1149; oikoi, 174, 178, 1019, 1040; also stegai, 1014, 1179. The typical term for tents is skēnē, 53, 99, 733, 1289, 1293 or skēnēma, 616.

8. On the delineation of public and private spaces in the play, see Chalkia, Irene, Lieux et espace dans la tragédie d’Euripide (Thessaloniki 1986), 198, 200Google Scholar.

9. On her entrance after the terrors of her nocturnal vision, Hekabe also makes appeal to the lightning of Zeus along with her invocation of dusky night and the Earth (Khthōn), mother of black-winged dreams (68–71).

10. See also the excellent article of Renate Schlesier (n. 1 above) which was published during the course of writing this essay. We both agree as to the Dionysiac elements of the play. Where we differ most fundamentally is first in the fact that my interest lies in the theatrical uses of the Dionysiac conventions, the specific contexts in which they are found and the conditions necessary for their deployment. Second (and as a corollary of the first), I see the resort to Dionysiac language and action as metaphorical and not as an indication of any real ritual, as Schlesier does. I will refer to her points more individually as we proceed with the analysis of Dionysiac elements in Thrace.

11. See also [Eur.] Rhesos 970–73.

12. Michelini (n.5 above), 113.

13. The term karkhēsia (1261), to designate the height of the ship’s mast, is a rarely used word (cf. Pind. Nem. 5.51). This lexical meaning is secondary and is derived, by reason of its shape, from its likeness to a particular drinking vessel (narrower at the waist than at the top or bottom). The word may therefore carry a faint Dionysiac allusion. The comic poet, Epikrates, makes a pun on the two meanings (fr. 10 Kock).

14. Kisseus as Hekabe’s father first in Euripides, and used as epithet of Apollo in connection with bacchant seercraft in Aesch. fr. 341. See Schlesier (n. 1 above), 112 n.3. For fuller discussion of the problems of Hekabe’s patronymic, see Méridier (n.3 above), 172 n.1. In Iliad 16.718, we learn that Dymas was her father who lived in Phrygia, while Kisseus was the father of Theano, wife of Antenor (Il. 11.221). Theano nursed the bastard son of Antenor with the same care as for her own children (Il. 5.69–71) and she is the priestess of Athena who greets Hekabe and her women when they come to the temple with their offering of the peplos (Il. 6.297–300), an important scene which we will discuss more fully below. The scholiast on Hek. 3 makes Hekabe daughter of Dymas or of the river Sangarios, and thinks that Euripides invented this lineage. Méridier insists that the genealogy is an older non-Homeric tradition; see further his arguments and evidence.

15. Reckford, Kenneth, ‘Concepts of Demoralization in the Hecuba’, in Burian, P. (ed.), Directions in Euripidean Criticism (Durham 1985), 112–28Google Scholar at 114, and see his bibliography, n.1.

16. See the general remarks of Burnett, Anne, ‘Medea and the Tragedy of Revenge’, CP 58 (1973), 1–24Google Scholar at 1. Reckford (n. 15 above), 118: ‘We cannot help conniving at this victory. It is (let us admit it) exhilarating as well as horrifying.’

17. Wintry: Aes. Per. 494–97, 501 ff.; Eur. Alc. 67; snowy: And. 215, Hek. 81, 710, Kyk. 329; winds: Rh. 440, Kyk. 329. Gold: Alc. 498, Hek. 25–27, Rh. 303, 305, 382–85, 439, 921f. See further Chalkia (n.8 above), 196–97.

18. E.g. Strabo 470f., but he is using as his sources Euripides (Palamedes) and Aeschylus (Edonians, part of the Lykourgeia trilogy, frr. 57,58) to demonstrate similarities between Phrygian and Thracian worship of Dionysos. For the evidence see Chalkia (n.8 above), 197, and her discussion of Perdrizet, P., Cultes et mythes du Pangée (Paris/Nancy 1910), 36ffGoogle Scholar. Some influential scholars in the past maintained that Dionysiac worship originated in Thrace and migrated to Greece (e.g. Rohde, E., Psyche, 8th ed., tr. Hillis, W. B. [New York 1925], 253–81Google ScholarPubMed, and Farnell, L., Cults of the Greek States [Oxford 1909], v.85–133Google Scholar) but this theory is, of course, long outdated.

19. Il. 6.130–41 with schol., Eumelos (fr. 10 Kinkel), Soph. Ant. 955–65, Apollod. 3.5.1, Hyg. Fab. 132, 242, Serv. ad Aen. 3.14, Diod. 3.65.5–6, Nonn. 21.166, and others.

20. The detail of Achilleus’ golden armor (110) may perhaps also be a relevant allusion to the Iliadic Glaukos-Diomedes episode.

21. The details of Hekabe’s visit to Athena’s temple are repeated three times for emphasis: in Helenos’ first instructions to Hektor, Hektor’s transmission of the message to Hekabe, and in the fulfillment of the command by the women in the temple (Il. 6.86–95, 269–76, 286–310).

22. Cf. too the earlier reference the chorus makes to the weaving of the peplos for Athena in her native city at Athens (466–74), a first clue perhaps to alert us to this later allusion. In the Iliad, the peplos that is chosen is of Sidonian manufacture, brought by Helen from across the seas (6.28–91); here the robes are admired as being examples of Edonian skill (1154–56). In each case, the precious character of the peplos is due to its exotic provenance. Additionally, we might also recall (n. 14 above) that Kisseus in Iliad 6 was not the father of Hekabe, as in this play, but of the priestess of Athena, Theano, who received the peplos.

23. It is significant too that Diomedes tells this story. It is his murderous aristeia that occasions Helenos’ instructions to Hektor to go into the city with the express purpose of bidding the women to offer the peplos to Athena, since in the absence of Achilleus, Diomedes has become ‘the strongest of all the Achaians’, possessed by a madness for battle (Il. 6.96–101).

24. Schlesier (n.1 above), 129, also suggests that the disputed passage in Hekabe’s narration of her dream which refers to ‘a dappled fawn slain in the bloody claws of the wolf’(90f.) would, if genuine, allude not only to the imminent sacrifice of the innocent Polyxena but to the previous slaughter of Polydoros by Polymestor, a wolf-man like Lykourgos.

25. This transference may be signalled in the text by Talthybios’ coment that it is not Zeus but Tychē that oversees all (488f.). Hekabe picks up the reference when, in response to Agamemnon’s question, ’What woman was ever so dustukhēs as you?’ she answers: ‘No one, unless you mean Tychē herself (785f.).

26. Note the emphasis on words of trephein and trophē (20, 232, 424, 599, 1134, 1181, 1212, 1224).

27. Schlesier (n.1 above) overlooks this precise correspondence in giving the reasons for Lykourgos’ and Polymestor’s banishments.

28. Schlesier (n.1 above) does not note the earlier allusion to the sun that prepares the way for the direct reference to Orion. This version of Orion’s story is known from Hesiod 148a M-W (= Ps-Erat. Cat. 32). For full citations and discussion, see Fontenrose, Joseph, Orion: The Myth of the Hunter and the Huntress (Berkeley 1981), 5–32Google Scholar, and Massenzio, Marcello, ‘Cultura e crisi permanente: la “xenia” dionisiaca’, SMSR 40 (1969), 27–113Google Scholar at 42–49, and see further the references in Schlesier, 132 nn.59–61.

29. Diggle obelizes kunēgetēs.

30. Schlesier (n.1 above), 130, would compare the bacchants to the Titans who used sharp instruments to kill Dionysos. The play earlier alludes to the battle of Zeus and the Titans in the first choral ode (473–75), but from Titanomachy to the Titans’ killing of Dionysos is still a very long leap and requires a shift from one context (Hesiodic) to another (Orphic), even though Thrace, of course, was also the stage for Orpheus in Aeschylus’ Lykourgeia and his fate was dramatized in the second play of the trilogy (the Bassarides).

31. Serv. Verg. Aen. 3.14, commenting on the passage in which Aeneas discovers the spirit of Polydoros in the plant he had first tried to uproot, relates that ‘Lykourgos began to cut off Dionysos’ vines and, driven mad by the gods, cut off his own legs’. Apollod. 3.5.4 gives a somewhat different version:‘Lykourgos in his madness thinking his son was a vineshoot, struck him with an axe and killed him, and when he had cut off his son’s extremities, he was restored to sanity.’ In Hyginus (Fab. 132), Lykourgos denies that Dionysos is a god, gets drunk, wants to rape his own mother, and tries to cut down the grape vines (alternatively, he is driven mad and kills his own wife and son), while in Fab. 242 he is included among other mythic figures who kill themselves. Blind, mad, or inebriated: all three are states of altered perception and all take place within the context of the introduction of viniculture. For this argument and for further discussion of this Dionysiac resistance myth, see Massenzio (n.28 above), 60–82. For the Homeric myth, see Aurelio Privitera, G., Dioniso in Omero e nella poesia greca arcaica (Rome 1970), 53–84Google Scholar. In addition to the typical motive of sexual trangression that accounts for blindness as a punishment, the mythic variants suggest other reasons that are germane to the case of Polymestor. I will return to this point later.

32. Athamas is another example. In a long post-Euripidean drama which was the basis of Pacuvius’ tragedy Iliona, Polymestor through a mistake killed not Polydoros but his own child, Deipylos. See further Schlesier (n.1 above), 113 n.8.

33. On hunting in the Bakkhai and Dionysiac images of beast, hunter and hound, see, for example, the remarks of Segal, Charles, Dionysiac Poetics and Euripides’ Bacchae (Princeton 1982), 32–33Google Scholar.

34. Schlesier (n.1 above), 117–19, argues for a real Dionysiac sacrifice from the fact that Hekabe, upon discovering her son’s body (1) describes the sight in quasi-mystic language as ‘unspeakable, not to be named, beyond all wonder, unholy and unbearable’ (arrhēt’ anōnomasta, thumatōn peraloukh’ hosi’ oud’ anekta) and (2) uses terms that suggest Polymestor’s ritual slaying and mutilation of the corpse (hōs diemorasō khroalsidareōi temōn phasganōilmelea toude paidos, ‘how you divided his flesh, cutting the limbs of this child with an iron sword’, 716–20). Schlesier deduces this first ‘sparagmos’ from the mode of Hekabe’s revenge which, as she suggests (125–26), must reply directly to Polymestor’s earlier ritual outrage of Polydoros’ body. The language indeed has a ritual and even Dionysiac coloring, but a literal rendition (unmarked in the text) would actually undermine the case against Polymestor, who is condemned precisely because he has not respected the rights of xenoi (715) and has killed the child entrusted to his care for the vilest of reasons, not because he has carried out some Dionysiac rite.

35. See n.61 below.

36. Dionysos and Pentheus, both enemies and doubles, provide the model in the Bakkhai, but the case holds true for the Herakles in the symbiosis between Lykos and Herakles. The Ion, with its many Dionysiac references, also flirts with this construct in the relations between Kreousa and Ion, and I would also argue that other divinities can take the place of Dionysos to effect these exchanges, such as Aphrodite in the Hippolytos and the further role of the Gorgon’s blood in the Ion. See F. Zeitlin, ‘The Power of Aphrodite: Sexuality and the Boundaries of the Self in Euripides’ Hippolytos’, in Burian (n.15 above), 52–111, 189–208, and ‘Mysteries of Identity and Designs of the Self in Euripides’ Ion’, PCPS 215 (1989), 144–97Google Scholar.

37. I have only charted the actual uses of the verb piptō-pitnō and its cognates. Obviously, the change in status from high to low, royalty to slavery, pride to humiliation, is a theme that runs throughout and involves a concomitant shift between raising and lowering the body. We find it powerfully expressed in Hekabe’s first entrance where the old woman’s typical need of support to raise her up and guide her steps dramatizes her fallen and helpless state (59–67). Talthybios’ later exhortation to Hekabe to raise herself up from her prone position on the ground in order to hear his news of Polyxena’s death reenacts the theme in miniature, momentarily reversing Hekabe’s prostrate attitude of grief to celebrate the noble heroism of her daughter (486–500). Polyxena’s refusal to lower herself to supplicate Odysseus belongs to the same register of symbolic values (cf. 339–41), where piptō would be countered by language such as hairō, anistemi, and orthos, also found in the play. On the other hand, the notion of raising and lowering is also echoed in what the women do to Polymestor in the tent, when to help his children he keeps trying to raise his face and move his hands, and the women grip him by the hair and keep him forcibly restrained (1162–67). We will return to this scene.

38. The translation of the lines above is that of Tierney, Michael, Eruipides: Hecuba (Dublin 1946), 119Google Scholar. Antlos is the questionable word in this passage since it normally means bilge water in the ship and not the sea itself. The problem is that alimenon, ‘without a harbor’, is a more appropriate adjective for ‘sea’ than for bilge water. Antlos as bilge, however, is a good Homeric word (as elsewhere), and in one case in the Odyssey, the mast and the tackle break off and fall into the antlos (Od. 12.410) and in another a woman, struck by Artemis’ arrow, actually meets her death by falling into it (Od. 15.479). The difficulty may stem from the idea of combining the idea of a sea journey (which needs a harbor) with a fall into water (which might be of either kind). It does not matter a great deal for my purposes, but it is worth recalling that the woman in question in the Odyssey was the perfidious nurse of Eumaios who stole him away from his royal family to be sold into slavery, when she sailed off with Phoenician sailors, and was thus punished by Artemis in this peculiar way. Again we note a reversal of gender roles, but the fact that both the nurse and Polymestor failed in their duty as trophoi and did so because of motives of personal gain might well justify a Homeric echo in this choral description. I will shortly demonstrate that the figure of Polymestor also has ties with the Odyssey.

39. Almost all commentators stress this point with varying degrees of vehemence. See most recently Conacher (n.3 above), 152–54; Luschnig, C. A. E., ‘Euripides’ Hecabe. The Time is Out of Joint’, CJ 71 (1976), 227–341Google Scholar at 232; Daitz, Stephen, ‘Concepts of Freedom and Slavery in Euripides’ Hecuba’, Hermes 99 (1971), 217–26Google Scholar at 222; Michelini (n.5 above), 172; and above all, Nussbaum, Martha, ‘The Betrayal of Convention: A Reading of Euripides’ Hecuba’, in The Fragility of Goodness (Cambridge 1986), 397–422Google Scholar at 414–17. Some resist on more technical grounds: Gellie, George, ‘Hecuba and Tragedy’, Antichthon 14 (1980), 30–44CrossRefGoogle Scholar at 41–43; Meridor, Ra’anana, ‘Hecuba’s Revenge: Some Observations on Euripides’ Hecuba’, AJP 99 (1978), 28–35Google Scholar at 33–34; and Adkins, A. A., ‘Basic Greek Values in Euripides’ Hecuba and Hercules Furens’, CQ 16 (1966), 193–219CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

40. Dio Chrysostom reports what may or may not be an earlier lyric tradition (Or. 33.59 = PMG fr. 965.1) that ‘as a climax to all her terrible misfortunes, the Erinyes made Hekabe into a dog with blazing eyes. And when she poured her brazen cry from hoary jaws, Ida gave ear and sea-girt Tenedos and all the wind-swept crags of Thrace’. According to Nicander (cited by schol. ad 5), it was in seeing her city in flames and her husband dying that Hekabe threw herself into the sea and was changed into a dog. According to the scholiast on Lykophron 1181 (in whose version the Hekabe-Hekate connection is explicit, 1174–88), she would have been stoned after the taking of Troy by the Greeks who were irritated with her laments. Saintillan, Daniel, ‘Le discours tragique sur la vengeance: remarques sur la complèmentaritè des Charites et des Erinyes dans le mythe et la tragèdie’, in Cahiers du groupe interdisciplinaire du thèâtre antique (Montpellier 1987), 179–96Google Scholar at 193 and n.37, argues for an implicit identification with an Erinys, who is often represented in the form of a dog with a gorgon eye (e.g. Eur. Or. 260–62, Soph. OC 84, etc) and bases his interpretation on the lyric fragment cited above but without considering Kassandra’s prophecy that associates Hekabe with Hekate. Loraux, Nicole, Les mères en deuil (Paris 1990), 76Google Scholar and n. 122, refers to Semonides’ characterization of the dog as automētor to account for the maternal element of Hekabe’s transformation. ‘The bereaved mother,’ she says, ‘has fulfilled her destiny.’ The one powerful Homeric referent for a ‘burning gaze’ is the anger (kholos) which Agamemnon in the play immediately takes to be the motive of Polymestor’s as yet unidentified attacker (1118). In the Iliad one can be possessed of mēnis, but more generally anger is called kholos and sometimes menos: one would like to quench anger (Il. 9.678); it makes the eyes blaze as with a gleam of fire (selas, Il. 19.16; cf. 1.104), and a serpent’s fiery gaze (drakōn … dedorken) is due to its terrible anger, as given in the simile that describes Hektor awaiting Achilleus with unquenchable menos in his heart (Il 22.93–96). It is worth remarking that for the Romans the dog was the proverbial symbol for anger (cf. Cic. Tusc. 3.26.63, where Hecuba is mentioned by name, and Tusc. 4.21). Interestingly enough, Stoic sources (Sen. de ira 1.2.3–4 and especially Lact. de ira dei 17) discuss the quality and dynamics of anger (as motivated by the desire to repay wrong unjustly suffered: ad nocendum ei qui nocuit aut nocere voluit) in terms that are appropriate to the development of Hekabe in our play. For texts and discussion of the Ovidian version, see Néraudau, J.-P., ‘La metamorphose d’Hécube (Ovide, Métamorphoses, XIII, 538–575)’, BAGB (1981), 35–51Google Scholar.

41. Nussbaum (n.39 above, 411–14), dicusses the motif of eyes and vision in ways very different from my own.

42. See Jouanna, J., ‘Realité et théâtralité du rêve dans I’Hécube d’Euripide’, Ktema 7 (1982), 43–52Google Scholar, for an interesting discussion of the theatricality of Polydoros’ dream visitation in the prologue and its relation to traditional Homeric representations of dream experience.

43. I prefer the scholiast’s interpretation that the diptukhon stolisma refers to Polymestor’s weapon and garment, although modern commentators suggest the phrase must mean the two javelins he carries, as this is what Homeric heroes do (cf. Il. 3.18; Pind. Pyth. 4.79). See Méridier (n.3 above) ad loc, n.4.

44. See, e.g., Eur. And. 406, heis pais hod’ ēn moi loipos ophthalmos biou (‘this one child was for me the remaining eye of life’), and cf. 418 (the child is the psuchē). With the recovery of Ion, Kreousa exclaims that ‘the house no longer looks upon the night but gazes up at the light of the sun’ (Eur. lon 1466f.). A corrupt line of Aeschylus’ Septem seems to equate two eyes with two children (782).

45. This is how Hadley, W. S., The Hecuba of Euripides (Cambridge 1904)Google Scholarad loc, explains the paradox.

46. For the most recent discussion of Greek ideas about vision and sight, see Simon, Gêrard, Le regard, I ‘ìtre et I’apparence (Paris 1988)Google Scholar.

47. See Zeitlin, ‘Power’ (n.36 above), 92–94.

48. Nussbaum (n.39 above), 411–13, interprets this refusal of gaze in different terms.

49. For an overview of the mythic causes for blindness, see Buxton, R., ‘Blindness and Limits: Sophokles and the Logic of Myth’, JHS 100 (1980), 22–37CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

50. Oidipous does not use the language of aidōs and aiskhunē although the sense of shame is clear enough in his words. Mythically speaking, blinding would have been an appropriate penalty for incest with his mother, in that he saw what he was forbidden to see. Indeed the fact that he uses her brooches as the instruments of his blinding suggests that she would have been the more likely agent of the deed, as the Hekabe also attests; cf. Ant. Lib. 5. (Cf. also the historical case reported by Herodotos [5.88] of the Athenian women’s use of their brooches to stab the single survivor of a battle against the Argives and Aeginetans.) Oidipous, however, extends the range of what he can no longer look upon to include his father, children, city, images of the gods, and the citizens of Thebes, in keeping with the issues of the play and the representation of his character. In Oidipous’ desire to be blind even in death, see Loraux, Nicole, ‘Voir dans le noir’, Nouvelle Revue de Psychanalyse 35 (1987), 219–30Google Scholar.

51. See, e.g., the discussion of King, Katherine, ‘The Politics of Imitation: Euripides’ Hekabe and the Homeric Achilles’, Arethusa 18 (1985), 47–66Google Scholar, although I cannot follow her in all her conclusions.

52. Odysseus offers the counterexample of another Greek nomos, that of giving honor to heroes, which he concedes may involve a charge of amathia, but while Hekabe is demanding her rights under Greek (Athenian) law as a slave, Odysseus reframes the argument as a distinction between Greek and barbarian usage (326–31).

53. Polymestor is called the ‘most impious host’ (anosiōtatou xenou), who did the most impious deed (ergon anosiōtaton, 790, 792); he is not eusebēs, not pistos, not hosios, and not dikaios as a xenos (1233–35). There is irony, of course, in Hekabe’s earlier questioning of the Greeks’ resort to human sacrifice (anthrōposphagein, 260) and Agamemnon’s subsequent indignant remark to Polymestor that ‘guest-kiling [xenoktonein] may be an easy thing for you but is deemed a disgrace [aischron] among Hellenes’ (1247f.). But, as we know, Agamemnon argued against the sacrifice of Polyxena in the public debate, even though he was motivated by his liaison with Kassandra rather than by high-flown moral principles (120–28).

54. See the arguments of Meridor (n.39 above) on the legal merits (and language) of her actions as a necessary corrective to a more generally held view that Hekabe’s actions are ‘impious’ and ‘unjust’, judgments which the text never substantiates. Strictly speaking, repayment of two for one is an old Greek notion (cf. Hes. WD 709–11) and codified in laws about theft in Athens (cf. Demos. 24.114f.) and elsewhere. See further the discussion of E. Fraenkel, Aeschylus Agamemnon (Oxford 1962) on Aesch. Ag. 537 (dipla eteisan), 2.273–75. Our text is only concerned with the principle of dikēn didonai and with the crime of murder rather than theft, not with the number of Polymestor’s children. I have raised the question more rhetorically than literally so as to explore the implications of Euripides’ double plot which has Hekabe lose not one but two children, each by a different hand and for a different motive.

55. See, e.g., the summary of Michelini (n.5 above), 132 and n.3.

56. Ibid. 134; cf. also Conacher (n.3 above) and Reckford (n.15 above).

57. See, e.g., Conacher (n.3 above), 162, and Tierney (n.38 above), xvii-xviii.

58. For the most recent round, see the arguments of Seaford, Richard, ‘The Date of Euripides’ Cyclops’, JHS 102 (1982), 161–72CrossRefGoogle Scholar, who rejects D. F. Sutton’s arguments (summarized in The Greek Satyr Pby [Meisenheim am Glan 1980]) about structure and text that would link the Kyklops with the Hekabe, and proposes instead a pairing with the Orestes of 408.

59. A limited parallel may be seen in the fact that important references to Menelaos in Aeschylus’ Agamemnon, 674–80, have no direct bearing for that play, but are taken up, it is presumed, in the satyr play, the Proteus.

60. Cf. 142, 205f, 526, and 90f. (if genuine).

61. The Herakles is the best case in point: supplication, followed by the preparation for a purificatory sacrifice, which turns into a full blown Dionysiac scene when Herakies becomes himself a ‘bacchant of Hades’ and slays his wife and children.

62. The scholiast remarks: ‘Leaves are cast on Polyxena’s body as though she had won a victory in the games: this was the homage offered to victors.’ Cf. Pind. Pyth. 14.240,9.123–24, and see the remarks of Méridier (n.3 above), 203.

63. Neoptolemos’ hands are mentioned only in connection with the golden goblet which he takes and raises to pour the libations (527, 528).

64. Hekabe’s immediate response to Talthybios’ report of her daughter’s death bears an interesting resemblance to this scene: ‘I know not where to look [blepō] amid my ills, so many, all around; if I grasp [hapsomai] one of them, another stops me, and then another grief summons me thence, in a relay of ills that pile upon ills [diadokhos]’ (585–88). Once again, the metaphorical language of an emotional state is translated into an active reality: personification is transferred to actual persons.

65. On the associations between defloration and sacrifice, see especially Loraux, Nicole, Tragic Ways of Killing A Woman, tr. Forster, A. (Cambridge MA 1987), 31–65Google Scholar; on those between sacrifice and marriage, see Foley, Helene, Ritual Irony: Poetry and Sacrifice in Euripides (London 1985), 68–102Google Scholar, and in general, Burkert, W., Homo Necans, tr. Bing, Peter (Berkeley 1983), 58–71Google Scholar. Polyxena as korē. 46, 222, 394, 522, 537, 566; as parthenos. 151, 355, 545, 554, 612; as numphē: 352,416,612.

66. Michelini (n.5 above), 172–73.

67. In her search for those who could interpret her vision, she also includes her other child noted for his seercraft, Helenos.

68. Polymestor foretells the future (and is also not believed) just as Kassandra will do in Euripides’ subsequent drama, the Troiades, when she comes forth at the outset as a raving Bacchant and bride of death. See the entire discussion of Schlesier (n.1 above), 113–19, 135.

69. Schlesier (n.1 above), 119

70. I agree with Daitz (n.39 above) and Michelini (n.5 above) that these last two lines should be retained. Diggle contra.

71. On no account should kenon, the manuscript reading, be changed to xenon, as Nauck and Diggle have it.

72. Cf., e.g., Eur. Hipp. 538 and fr. 136.

73. Tarkow, Theodore, ‘Tragedy and Transformation: Parent and Child in Euripides’ Hecuba’, Maia 36 (1984), 123–36Google Scholar at 134, also understands the import of Hekabe’s argument about the kharis due to her through her daughter’s liaison, and views it as the sign of Hekabe’s belief ‘in the transference of obligation from generation to generation’ and ‘the equivalence of value of any family member for any responsibility or duty’. But he insists that this is a form of exploitation in the service of self-interest and claims that Hekabe suffers the anguish she does because ‘such beliefs are at odds with the way in which the world operates’. Tarkow makes a genuine contribution to the study of the play in his discussion of the obsessive references to children and lineage in the play (pais, teknon, and the use of patronymics) in contexts far beyond what the subject matter requires. But his often excellent analysis is marred, in my opinion, primarily because he, like so many others, structures his argument around the contrast between Hekabe’s ‘moral collapse’ and Polyxena’s ‘moral purity’, which he takes as an ironic invalidation on Hekabe’s part of the significance of bonds between parents and children (or between generations), without either specifying Greek notions about the reciprocal nature of these relations or the qualities attributed to the maternal role. He thus converts the theme of children into a discussion about what they are supposed to represent (innocence, hope and progress) and reduces the moral tensions and dramatic intricacies of the play into a homily, a ‘sad lesson’ that teaches us that in hard and inconstant times, the continuity of familial relations fails to serve as a measure of ‘constancy and permanence’ or to sustain the idea of a ‘hereditary nobility’. It seems to me that the lesson of the play, if any, demonstrates to men, like the Medeia does, just how significant the bonds are between parents and children and that men destroy or ignore them to their own peril.

74. Polymestor will later plead speciously that he killed Polydoros to give kharis to the Greeks as his allies (1175), a point which Hekabe refutes (1201,1211) and in which Agaememnon concurs (1243). For an important recent discussion of the theme of kharis in the play as it pertains to the management of tragic drama, see Saintillan (n.40 above), who emphasizes first, the double meaning of kharis as eunoia (benevolent attitude with its corollary, gratitude) and hēdoriē (the attraction of pleasure) and second, the absence of a ‘good’ peithō (such as Athena’s in the Oresteia) to mediate between kharis and timōria (revenge). See also Conacher (n.3 above), and for a political analysis of kharis in an Athenian context (and with reference to this play and the Oresteia), see Oliver, James H., Demokratia, the Gods, and the Free World (Baltimore 1960), 92–117Google Scholar.

75. See also Schlesier (n.1 above), 115, for a different and more Dionysiac reading of this phrase that, as we know, is primarily associated with death, sleep and eros.

76. See Loraux (n.40 above), 79, for a fine discussion of the physical intimacy between a mother and her children, especially her daughter.

77. We have already discussed most of these references to the body. In addition to the special emphasis given to eyes and hands, the many references to knees occur within the suppliant context, as might be expected. The foot, however, is also prominently featured as (1) a formal framing device at the beginning, climax and end, and as (2) a special motif that links Hekabe with Polymestor. At the end of his prologue, the ghost of Polydoros prepares us for the entrance of his mother by announcing his intention to withdraw, ‘to get out from underfoot’, as he says (ekpodōn khōrēsomai, 52–54). At the climax of the play, Hekabe comes forth again, and echoing his words and gestures (ekpodōn apeimi kapostēsomai), she prepares us this time for the exit of blind and furious Polymestor from the interior of her tent (1054f.). In both these exits, the emphasis falls on the gait, the placement of the foot. There we saw Hekabe, crossing the threshold, struggling to remain upright, trying to hasten her ‘slow-footed steps’ and needing support (53, 65f.; cf. 169, ‘o wretched foot’, and 812, 837). Here Polymestor comes out in front of the audience, ‘blind and with blind foot’, and goes before us with ‘four-footed gait, putting a hand in the foot’s track’ (1057f.), listening for the ‘stealthy footfall’ of the women so he can find and catch them (1070f.; cf. 1039, ‘you will not flee with swift foot’). Earlier he had claimed to Hekabe: ‘I was just leaving, raising my foot and your servant fell in with me’ (965), and he subsequently inquires: ‘Why did you send for my foot from the house?’ (977). In the closing lines of the play, his turn will come to be ekpodōn, but only now as taken by force at Agamemnon’s orders and removed permanently from the scene (1282). This will happen, however, only after his prediction of Hekabe’s climb ‘with her foot’ to the top of the ship’s mast, herself transformed now into a dog ‘with fiery gaze’ (1264f.).

78. See Loraux’s discussion (n.40 above, 76) of this three-fold pattern in her discussion of mothers in mourning.

79. In her last dirge, Hekabe in the Troiades bewails the fact that Priam was cast out unburied and, as the chorus adds, ‘dark, holy [hosios] death covered his eyes in unholy slaughter [anosiais sphagaisin]’ (1313, 1315f.), but he is made the symbol of Troy itself and its violation, and his burial does not become an issue in this play (or in the Hekabe either where Priam’s death is mentioned by the ghost in the prologue [21–24] as a sacrifice as his own altar, performed by Achilles’ murderous son).

80. It is beyond the scope of this paper to discuss the ways in which this play is made to serve as the ‘prehistory’ or ‘aetiology’ of the Oresteia. For remarks on these parallels, see Tarkow (n.73 above) and for further discussion of Agamemnon’s role, see Meridor (n.4 above). I would merely mention that the fate that is forecast for Agamemnon and Kassandra is predicated on the sexual bond between them that here leads Agamemnon to give this Trojan mother her freedom to act. But the sacrifice of Polyxena which, on the basis of this same relation, he would have been willing to prevent, bears with it ironic traces of that other sacrifice of a daughter which he himself as her father carried out at public behest. In the Oresteia, Klytemnestra will react as a wife to Agamemnon’s return with his new love, Kassandra, but also and above all she responds with an avenging anger as the mother who has lost her daughter. It is worth also pointing out that the Aeschylean echoes begin in earnest from the second stasimon that precedes Agamemnon’s entry on to the stage (659–66). The Troiades is much more detailed about the disasters that await the Greeks when they leave Troy, including Odysseus as well as Agamemnon, but (Kassandra’s prophecies there are not contingent, as such, on the events of the play which are still to come.

81. Michelini (n. 5 above), 170, and see too the remarks of Burnett (n. 16 above).

82. See also the remarks of Loraux (n.40 above), 57–65 and 75–76, on the dangers mourning mothers pose to the body politic and the significance of their maternal ties.

83. On the position of Dionysos in many of his myths as a xenos, either a stranger or a guest, and its important implications for understanding the power of the god, see Massenzio (n.28 above), 71ff. and 110–13. In brief, he argues that the series of myths which relate the advent of Dionysos among men belong to a single system of acculturation with three major elements: (1) the acceptance of a new god, (2) the acceptance of a new type of agriculture (the vine), whose product, when used correctly, serves as a ‘cultural instrument of social relations’ that requires (3) the acceptance of relations between non-kin and indeed facilitates such relations. Hence, Dionysos the xenos—both a stranger and a guest, the one who gives gifts and must be received in turn—stands at the heart of a complex system of reciprocal exchange. The logical outcome of the refusal of the god and his gifts is a retaliation that takes the form of some autodestructive action within the family. In this Dionysiac perspective, Polymestor’s offense against xenia assumes a more profound meaning as does the mode of retaliation, both in Hekabe’s reception of him inside her tent as a form of xenia and in the revenge she exacts upon his children in return for his failure to show the xenia of trophē for hers. See also the text quoted in n.85.

84. Critics have uniformly overlooked Polymestor’s responsibility for rearing the child (for references see n.26 above) and hence judge Hekabe’s famous remarks at the news of Polyxena’s death concerning nature and nurture, the shameful and the noble (591–602) not only as a eulogy for Polyxena but also, as Reckford (n.15 above), 118–19, puts it, ‘a funeral oration for herself … eulogizing the nobility that she must lose while still living’. Reckford goes on: ‘What is really tragic is the inner death of the being who was called Hecuba. She suffers what Polyxena escaped, a kind of rape.’ See also, for example, the conclusions of Tarkow (n.73 above) and Michelini (n.5 above), 141. This is not to deny the importance of this passage in the contrast established in the play between Hekabe and Polyxena nor to eclipse the questions raised about Hekabe’s actions and status, but to place the emphasis once again on the dynamics of the plot and its cultural patterns and the ways in which the semantics of the text obstruct a recourse to facile moral judgments.

85. Aelian (VH 13.2) recounts an anecdote that perfectly demonstrates Dionysiac mechanisms of cause and effect in the relations between self and other, whereby the violation of xenia protocols leads to an autodestructive retaliation upon the self and its own: Makareus, a man of Mitylene, was a priest of Dionysos, gentle and affable in outward respects but in reality the most impious (anosiōtatos) of men. A stranger/guest (xenos) came to him and gave him a quantity of gold as a deposit entrusted to his care. Makareus dug a hole in the inner recesses of the shrine and buried the gold there. In time the xenos returned and asked for the gold back. Makareus brought him inside as though to give back the deposit but slaughtered (Katesphaxe) him instead, and having dug up the gold put the xenos there in its place. He thought he could escape the god’s detection just as he had fooled the others. But matters turned out otherwise. A short while later, the trieteric festival of the god was held, and he offered sacrifices with great magnificence. And while he was busy with the Dionysiac celebration (bakkheian), his children, two in number, were left inside the house and, imitating (mimoumenoi) the father’s sacred offices (hierourgian), came to their father’s altar where the offerings were still burning. The younger child stretched out his throat and the older one, who had found a sacrificial knife (sphagida) that had been overlooked, killed his brother as a sacred offering hiereion). The folks in the house raised up a shout and the mother, hearing their cries, leaped up (exepēdēse), and seeing the one child a corpse and the other still holding the bloody knife, snatched up a half-burnt piece of wood from the altar and killed this child in turn. The news came to Makareus who abandoned the rites (tēn teletēn) and rushed into the house (eisepēdēsen) in haste and anger (thumōi), and with the thyrsos he was still carrying, killed his own wife. The story ends with the revelation of the deed, Makareus’ confession under torture, as a result of which he died, and the one who was slaughtered (sphageis) unlawfully was honored publicly with burial at the god’s behest. In this way, Aelian concludes, Makareus paid ‘a not blameworthy penalty’, as the poet [Homer, Il. 4.160f.] says—with his own head, that of his wife, and those of his children besides.

86. I owe grateful thanks to S. Georgia Nugent, Simon Goldhill and David Quint who, as always, have proven to be discerning and exacting readers.