1. By ‘visible type’ I mean the identifying qualities of a character that one can witness in his actions, significant gestures, deportment, dress and intimate setting (i.e., the objects and architectural or geographical spaces associated with him). See Worman, N., ‘Odysseus Panourgos: The Liar’s Style in Oratory and Tragedy’, Helios 26 (1999), 35-68Google Scholar, esp. 36-45, and cf. Jones, J., On Aristotle and Greek Tragedy (Oxford 1962), 29-46Google Scholar; Halliwell, S., The Poetics of Aristotle (Chapel Hill 1987), 139-43Google Scholar; Gill, C., ‘The Character-Personality Distinction’, in C. Pelling (ed.), Characterisation and Individuality in Greek Literature (Oxford 1990), 11-31Google Scholar, esp. 5-7 and n.15; D.A. Russell, ‘Ethos in Oratory and Rhetoric’, in Pelling, op. cit., 197-212, esp. 198f. In tragedy metonymic usage often emphatically traces these details, making a character even more visible, in effect, since such contiguities call up concrete images of shape and colour to further delineate his given type. See further below.

2. E.g., Ath. 1.21d; Philostr. VA 6.11. Pickard-Cambridge, A.W., The Dramatic Festivals of Athens², rev. J. Gould and D.M. Lewis (Oxford 1968), 177-80Google Scholar, points out that Julius Pollux, the second-century CE source, refers only rarely to actual plays, and may have relied on Hellenistic sources for his general remarks. Pickard-Cambridge also notes the limitations of the visual evidence, although he frequently makes use of it in his discussion (180-209). Csapo, E. and Slater, W.J., The Context of Athenian Drama (Ann Arbor 1995), 256fCrossRefGoogle Scholar., point out the prejudices of even contemporaneous sources, and thus argue that only artifacts provide dependable evidence.

3. Some of Sophocles’ plays clearly indicate such distinctions (e.g., Philoctetes, Oedipus at Colonus), although he is generally considered to be much less interested in visual effect. This is often inferred from Aristotle’s silence regarding Sophocles when he discusses excessive use of spectacular effect: Seale, D., Vision and Stagecraft in Sophocles (Chicago 1982), 13Google Scholar; cf. Pickard-Cambridge, , The Theatre of Dionysus in Athens (Oxford 1946), 51Google Scholar; Arnott, P., Greek Scenic Conventions in the Fifth Century B.C. (Oxford 1962), 113fGoogle Scholar.; Taplin, O., The Stagecraft of Aeschylus: The Dramatic Use of Exits and Entrances in Greek Tragedy (Oxford 1977), 477-79Google Scholar. On Phil., see Worman, , ‘Infection in the Sentence: The Discourse of Disease in Sophocles’ Philoctetes’, Arethusa 33 (2000), 1-36CrossRefGoogle Scholar.; on OC see Edmunds, L., Theatrical Space and Historical Place in Sophocles’ Oedipus at Colonus (Lanham MD 1996), 52-56Google Scholar.

3. Loraux, N., The Experiences of Tiresias: The Feminine and the Greek Man, tr. P. Wissing (Princeton 1995; orig. Paris 1989), 117Google Scholar.

4. Loraux (n.3 above), 117.

5. The word κόσμοо often designates the grandness of one’s garments and/or mental make-up (e.g. Ion 834; Med. 576; Andr. 147, 956; Hipp. 631-32); cf. also the use of πоικίλος(e.g. Aesch. Ag. 923-26, Soph. Phil. 130, and esp. Euripides Med. 300, 1159, Andr. 148, 937, IA 526, Hec. 133). κόσμος is employed at a significant juncture in the Her.; cf. n.27 below.

6. Cf. Eur. Ion 832-34: (‘Ah, how I hate these devious types who concoct injustice and prettify their chicanery’), and Med. 576: (‘you’ve decked out these arguments very well’). S. Goldhill (introduction in Goldhill, S. and Osborne, R. [eds.], Performance Culture and Athenian Democracy [Cambridge 1999], 4f.Google Scholar) notes this ambiguity in relation to skhēma.

7. A cognate of χαράσσω (‘engrave’,‘stamp’), χαρακτήρ was used with the advent of currency for the stamp on a genuine coin; the term’s original meaning thus carries with it this concern with determining the genuine article.

8. Med. 519, Hec. 379, HF 659; cf. El. 368f. A Lesbian inscription typical of the early fourth century that legislates against the dilution of gold shows a similar worry that a gap may open up between the actual worth of the material and the stamp that should mark it as genuine (IG XII.ii.1; Schwyzer 619 [Dialectorum graecarum exempla epigraphica, 1923]). Compare Theognis’ (‘a counterfeit and thieving disposition’, 965), and similarly at 119f.: (‘The problem of counterfeit gold and silver is quite manageable, Cyrnus, and easy for a wise man to work out’).

9. By ‘proxemic elements’ I mean textual references to objects situated near and/or handled by a given character, significant details of his intimate surroundings, as well as proximate relations among characters—all of which may have been reflected in the staging. See Elam, K., The Semiotics of Theatre and Drama (London 1980), 62-69CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Edmunds (n.2 above), 24f.; and Lateiner, D., Sardonic Smile: Nonverbal Behavior in Homeric Epic (Ann Arbor 1995), 105-36CrossRefGoogle Scholar, for an enlightening discussion of these elements in the narrative setting. Issacharoff, M. (Discourse as Performance [Stanford 1989]Google Scholar; orig.‘Space and Reference in Drama’, Poetics Today 2 [1981], 211-24CrossRefGoogle Scholar) draws useful distinctions between mimetic and diegetic space (i.e., references in the dramatic text to space on and off stage, respectively). Euripides makes extensive use of both in demarcating Heracles’ transformations. Since this discussion is most concerned with the intersection of text and staging, I use ‘referential’ to designate details in the text that would have had concrete referents on stage.

10. E.g., Barlow, S., ‘Sophocles’ Ajax and Euripides’ Heracles’, Ramus 10 (1981), 112-28CrossRefGoogle Scholar.; cf. Hartigan, K., ‘Euripidean Madness: Herakles and Orestes’, G&R 34 (1987), 126-35Google Scholar, who compares the Orestes. Both studies focus on the more abstract aspects of the madness and violence in these plays, whereas I am primarily concerned with the visual imagery.

11. Again, the comparison to Orestes in Euripides’ play is useful here.

12. See Burkert, W., Homo Necans: The Anthropology of Ancient Greek Sacrificial Ritual and Myth, tr. P. Bing (Berkeley 1983), 51-56Google Scholar, on the mourner’s degradation of his own body and ritual sacrifice to honour the dead body he mourns. Foley, H., Ritual Irony: Poetry and Sacrifice in Euripides (Ithaca 1985), 152-67Google Scholar, discusses the perversions and restorations of ritual that structure the play, although she does not mention mourning ritual. Seaford, R., Reciprocity and Ritual: Homer and Tragedy in the Developing City-State (Oxford 1994), 379-81Google Scholar, argues that the costuming imagery’s ritual implications have particularly to do with mystic transitions. I do not focus in this discussion on rituals of any sort and their relation to this tragedy, although I agree that they contribute importantly to its structure and imagery. I mean merely to indicate here that the visual symmetry seems to imitate this feature of lamenting the dead.

13. The mechanics of the ekkuklēma have special significance in this scene, in that its revealing wheels extrude the hero’s entrapment within his circle of slaughter and his defensive tent. Jebb, R.C. (Sophocles, pt. 4: The Ajax [Cambridge 1896]Google Scholar) and Kamerbeek, J.C. (The Plays of Sophocles, vol. 1. The Ajax [Leiden 1963]Google Scholar) think that the mechanism must have been used; Stanford, W.B. (Sophocles: Ajax [Cambridge 1958]Google Scholar) does not (following Pickard-Cambridge [n.3 above]). The linguistic arguments for its presence seem most compelling: ϊδεσθε (351) and (347) both make little sense without the viewing of the slaughter. Stanford makes a rather vague reference to the chorus (and audience) being able to see behind Ajax into his tent, and compares Philoctetes’ cave, which is not really parallel (Neoptolemus describes the interior, but the audience does not need to see it, as Philoctetes is not inside at the time).

14. On the deictic functions of pointing verbs and pronouns, see Bühler, K., Theory of Language: The Representational Function of Language, tr. D.F. Goodwin (Philadelphia 1990), 103-36CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

15. Kamerbeek (n.13 above, ad 351-53) thinks that the imagery is symbolic of Ajax’s seething emotions, but the whirlpool effect that the hero describes most emphasises how he has become caught in the vortex of his anger. Again, the audience can actually see the shape of the trap especially suited to the devolution of his character.

16. Seale (n.2 above), 153-57.

17. Note that Heracles fears a similar naked vulnerability when he discusses his reduced stature with Theseus at the end of Euripides’ play (γυμνωθεíς 1382).

18. (‘…since no one who is also a friend would endure to look upon him spurting up black blood from his nose and the bloody blow from his own slaughter,’ 916-19). Cf. Cohen, D.,‘The Imagery of Sophocles: A Study of Ajax’ Suicide’, G&R 20 (1978), 25-36Google Scholar, on the visual imagery of Ajax’s sword and body; and Segal, C.P., ‘Visual Symbolism and Visual Effects in Sophocles’, CW 74 (1980), 125-42Google Scholar, on the covering pattern (the sword with his body and his body with the cloak).

19. Cf. Dem. 45.68-69, where he declares that his opponent’s outer form (skhēma) is nothing but a ‘shield’ (problēma) for his character (tropou); see Goldhill (n.6 above), 4.

20. For the connection between προβολά and πρϳβλημα, see Kamerbeek (n.13 above), ad 1218 and 1219, who cites Plato Tim. Rose, P., ‘Historicizing Sophocles’ Ajax’, in B. Goff (ed.), History, Tragedy, Theory: Dialogues on Athenian Drama (Austin 1995), 59-90Google Scholar, at 70, comments on this use of πρϳβλημα as a means of ‘interpellating’ the audience into Ajax’s ideology, and notes that this allegiance echoes Thucydides’ description of Athenian democracy as one only in name (i.e., in reality rule by the best/big men).

21. Seale (n.2 above, 173) has argued that the presence of Ajax’s huge corpse on the stage for the entire second half of the play reinforces the sense in which his body may still serve as a defence for his family, and Burian, P. (‘Supplication and Hero Cult in Sophocles’ Ajax’, GRBS 13 [1972], 151-56Google Scholar) has likened its sacralised status to the altar of suppliants.

22. Heracles cannot, of course, at this point forestall the violence that his family suffered; rather, he imagines drawing it on to his own body, as if this carefully matched form of penance (cf., e.g., 240-46, 319f. and 1148-52) might be a fitting retribution for his acts.

23. Theseus notes the feminine quality of his posture ( 1412); cf. Soph. Track. 1062 (). Loraux (n.3 above, 116-39) has explored the extent to which Heracles spans the poles of virility and femininity, while I. Lada-Richards, in a discussion of Aristophanes’ Frogs, points out that he shares this feature with Dionysus (Initiating Dionysus: Ritual and Theatre in Aristophanes’ Frogs [Oxford 1999], 18-25Google Scholar).

24. On the complexities of philia in the play cf. Adkins, A.W.H.,‘Basic Greek Values in Euripides’ Hecuba and Hercules Furens’, CQ 16 (1966), 193-219CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

25. On Athens as a ‘performance culture’ see Goldhill, S., ‘The Audience of Athenian Tragedy’, in P. Easterling (ed.), The Cambridge Companion to Greek Tragedy (Cambridge 1997), 54-68CrossRefGoogle Scholar; cf. also Goldhill’s introduction in Goldhill and Osborne (n.6 above).

26. Burnett, A.P., Catastrophe Survived: Euripides’ Plays of Mixed Reversal (Oxford 1971), 159-62Google Scholar, notes that while this opening is typical of suppliant dramas, the ensuing disagreements and precipitous donning of funeral garb are not. Cf. also Halleran, M., Stagecraft in Euripides (London 1985), 80fGoogle Scholar.

27. Note the repetition in this passage not only of περιβάλλω and its cognates but also of κοσμέω/κóσμος the word group highlights the elaborate quality of the drapery that parades their calamity and portends a violent end.

28. von Wilamowitz-Moellendorf, U., Euripides Herakles, vol. 1.2 (Berlin, 1959/1895), ad 348ffGoogle Scholar., argues that the ode has the quality of a thrēnos.

29. E.g. Arrowsmith, W.S., The Conversion of Herakles: An Essay on Euripidean Tragic Structure (Diss. Princeton 1954Google Scholar); Shelton, J., ‘Structual Unity and the Meaning of Euripides’ Herakles’, Eranos 77 (1979), 101-10Google Scholar.; Barlow, S., ‘Structure and Dramatic Realism in Euripides’ Heracles’, G&R 29 (1982), 115-25Google Scholar.; Padilla, M.W., ‘Heroic Paternity in Euripides’ Heracles’, Arethusa 27 (1994), 279-302Google Scholar.

30. The hero similarly honours (άγάλλει, 379) Artemis with his killing of the hind, so that this kind of pleasing adornment also has violent associations in the ode.

31. (‘he was veiled in the fire-red hide, having drawn the beast’s dreadful jaws over the back of his flaxen head’, 361-63); echoed by 1202, 1226, 1231. Cf. also Heracles’ feathered arrows tipped with the poisonous blood of the centaur and the woodland club that resembles the centaurs’ own weapons.

32. This is a Pindaric image, and would have added to the audience’s apprehension of the ode as praise poetry.

33. Earlier scholars tended to complain about the ‘broken-backed’ structure of the play and to question the necessity for so unexpected a reversal (the phrase is Murray’s, G., Euripides and his Age [London 1914]Google Scholar); cf. Carrière, J., La composition de l’Heraclès d’ Euripide (Toulouse 1952), 2-14Google Scholar. There have been many attempts to underscore the play’s unity: e.g., Wilamowitz-Moellendorf (n.28 above), 127f.; Sheppard, J.T., ‘The Formal Beauty of the Hercules Furens’, CQ 10 (1916), 72-79CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Chalk, H.H.O., ‘APETH and BIA in Euripides’ Herakles’, JHS 82 (1962), 7-18CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Kamerbeek, J.C., ‘Unity and Meaning of Euripides’ Heracles’, Mnemosyne 19 (1966), 1-16CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Shelton (n.29 above). Some have argued instead for the intentionality of its rift (e.g., Arrowsmith [n.29 above]; Michelini, A.N., Euripides and the Tragic Tradition [Madison 1987], 232fGoogle Scholar.). I am not really concerned to engage this debate here; the important point for my discussion is that the ominous imagery of the drama’s first half prepares the audience for what is to come more insistently and thoroughly than has generally been recognised (but cf. Burnett [n.26 above], 167f).

34. Note that although τò καλλίνκον κάρα is merely periphrasis for Heracles, the head will increasingly become a body part of focus in this scene.

35. Here Amphitryon encourages the veiled Heracles to restrain his ‘lion’s heart’ (, 1211), in a phrase that suggests that his temperament matches his leonine appearance (cf. 361-63, 465f.).

36. Cf. here Tecmessa’s covering of Ajax with her cloak, so that no one may view his bloody corpse (915-19; see above).

37. (‘I have no idea whether to keep or discard these, which as they dangle against my side will say these things’). Bond, G.W., Euripides: Heracles (Oxford 1981Google Scholar), ad 1379, remarks on the eerie echo in προσπίνοντ’ of Heracles’ proxemic relation to his children (cf. , 79; , 986), in that the weapons that killed them dangle close beside the hero’s ribs, the putatively safe harbour that his children sought.

38. A similar match can be seen between Heracles’ earlier agalmata and Theseus’ promise that statues will be erected in his honour (1332). See Padilla (n.29 above), 287-90 on the athlete and praise imagery in the Her.

39. Note that Megara calls these alliances κήδη, the double meaning of which reveals the delicacy of such bonds, as her intermingling of the imagery of marriage with that of death reveals. Thus she deems having Hades as an in-law a ‘bitter burden’ (, 484). Compare also Amphitryon’s reference to the alliance with Creon (), which he says has become the ‘greatest evil’ (35f.).

40. As Aristotle would say: , Po. 1455a22, e.g. (cf. Rhet. 1386a34 and passim in I)

41. E.g., Wilamowitz-Moellendorf (n.28 above), ad 1424; Halleran (n.26 above), 92; Kamerbeek (n.33 above), 5. Mtchelini (n.33 above, 252f. and 257) notes the parallelisms among the moments when this interdependent posture is assumed by the family members and then by Theseus, although without analysing the verbal imagery.

42. There is a crux here, but most of the mss. seem to have some combination of these words; see Bond (n.37 above), ad 445.

43. Cf. again the marital kaloi with which Megara had hoped to bind the house (478).

44. Euripides uses this verb frequently; its use is only significant here because of what follows.

45. The image is foreshadowed by the γοργῶπες eyes of his children to which the chorus draws attention (ϊδετε, 130f.), and Lyssa’s Gorgon status (Γοργǽν, 883). The Gorgon-eyed glance of Heracles’ children at the beginning of the play and of the snakes described near its end (1265-68) show that this fierce creature is already endemic to the family and thus latent in the hero’s nature. Cf. Kamerbeek (n.33 above), 6 and n.2; Padilla, M.W., ‘The Gorgonic Archer: The Danger of Sight in Euripides’ Heracles’, CW 86 (1992), 1-12Google Scholar.

46. See Padilla (n.29 above), 285 and n.16.

47. Bond (n.37 above), ad 868, adduces Dodds’s (ad Ba. 1122f.) comparison to Hp. Morb. Sacr. 10 (, ‘froth discharges from the mouth…and the eyes roll’).

48. Halleran (n .26 above, 89) notes that the ‘announcement of this contraption’ is unusual.

49. Some text is missing here, but the lines that follow suggest the threat (esp. ‘god is wilful, as I towards the gods’, 1243).

50. Hamilton, R., ‘Slings and Arrows: The Debate with Lycus in the Heracles’, TAP A 115 (1985), 19-25Google Scholar, at 24, notes the repetition of this image.

51. Adkins (n.24 above, 215-19) argues thai philia plays an ambiguous role in this final scene.

52. Again, see Goldhill and Osborne (n.6 above).