A Thematic Commentary on Euripides’ Ion Katerina Zacharia Submitted in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Ph.D. University College, University of London 1996 ProQuest Number: 10017294 All rights reserved INFORMATION TO ALL USERS The quality of this reproduction is dependent upon the quality of the copy submitted. In the unlikely event that the author did not send a complete manuscript and there are missing pages, these will be noted. Also, if material had to be removed, a note will indicate the deletion. uest. ProQuest 10017294 Published by ProQuest LLC(2016). Copyright of the Dissertation is held by the Author. All rights reserved. This work is protected against unauthorized copying under Title 17, United States Code. Microform Edition © ProQuest LLC. ProQuest LLC 789 East Eisenhower Parkway P.O. Box 1346 Ann Arbor, Ml 48106-1346 Abstract In this thesis I interpret Euripides' Ion by integrating literary, religious, political, and psychological approaches, and by applying certain modern theories of drama emphasising communication, performance, and the role of the audience. I argue that Euripides exploits the moral ambivalence of divine rape to focus a cluster of problematic contradictions and ambiguities in his audience's attitude to divinity and myth. This issue structures the play's key antitheses: myth/reason, divine/mortal, female/male, religion/politics, force/persuasion, speech/silence, innocence/experience, Delphi/Athens, tragedy/comedy. Chapter One deals with structures of time and space and the construction of plot. It uses the distinction between the 'theatrical world' and the 'dramatic world' to explore the different modes of explanation applied to the same events by characters on the stage and by spectators in the theatre. Chapter Two analyses the figures of Ion and Kreousa in terms of the Athenian myth of autochthony. Both characters experience a transition during the play. Ion from adolescence to adulthood, from Delphi to Athens, from private to public, from lack of identity to double parenthood, and Kreousa from hatred of Apollo to piety, from barrenness to motherhood, from fixation upon the past to hopes for the future. Ion’s successful resolution of the fundamental tensions of the autochthony myth heals Kreousa and permits Athens to found colonies. Chapter Three considers multi-faceted Apollo in the Ion, the ambiguity of divine favour and the equivocality of oracular responses. Euripides skilfully presents the god from different perspectives and with differing degrees of understanding in what is finally an anthropocentric play, where human emotions overrule the god's plan. Chapter Four suggests that the interweaving of tragic and comic elements in the play does not lessen its seriousness and concludes that the play cannot be labelled as anything but a tragedy. CONTENTS Preface .............................................................................................................5 Chapter One Setting the Scene: Time, Space and Plot in the Ion................................9 1.1. Introduction ....................................................................................... 9 1.1.1. The Physical Parameters of the Theatre of Dionysos ....... 9 1.1.2. The Stage Area ...................................................................12 1.2. Conventions of Dramatic Plot and Time ..........................................23 1.2.1. From story-line to dramatic plot ..........................................23 1.2.2. The Structure of Time .......................................................... 32 1.2.3. Anachronisms..................................................................... 36 1.3. Constructing the Space ................................................................... 43 1.3.1. Theatrical Space ................................................................. 43 1.3.2. Dramatic Space ................................................................. 47 1.3.3. Nature of the Delphic evocations ....................................... 82 1.4. The two dramatic settings and the oikonomia of the play ................ 94 Chapter Two The Athenian Foundation Myths and the Ion........................................ 109 2.1. Autochthony ......................................................................................109 2.1.1. Myths of Autochthony ..........................................................109 2.1.2. The Athenian claim to Autochthony ................................... 113 2.2. Ion in the Ion...................................................................................... 122 2.2.1. Repetition and difference ................................................. 122 4 2.2.2. Athenians and Foreigners ................................................... 126 2.3. Kreousa in the Ion.............................................................................135 2.3.1. Repetition and Difference ......................................................135 2.3.2. Kreousa's Monody .................................................................136 2.3.3. Kreousa in Transition ..........................................................160 2.4. The cure of Athens ............................................................................163 Chapter Three Apollo in the Ion..................................................................................................167 3.1. The multi-faceted god ....................................................................... 167 3.2. Oracle and Play ................................................................................170 3.3. Apollo as director? ............................................................................181 Chapter Four The Marriage of Tragedy and Comedy in the Ion...................................186 4.1. Comic elements, elements of comedy .............................................188 4.2. Comic elements, tragic effect ........................................................... 203 4.3. Doublets and doubling, comedy and tragedy .................................. 207 Conclusion.......................................................................................................... 213 Bibliography of Works Consulted ............................................................. 217 Preface The last several years have witnessed a sudden and extraordinary rise in the popularity of Euripides. If his plays once tended to be dismissed as decadent, melodramatic, or untragic, they have come increasingly to seem appealing to modern literary tastes and their vision of the world has in certain regards become more and more an uncanny anticipation of our own. During the past two decades Euripides' Medea, Bacchae and Trojan Women have gone beyond the limits of classical scholarship to become important documents in contemporary culture.^ Moreover, there has been a recent revival of interest in Euripides' latest plays, which were traditionally taken as marking the end of the golden era of classical Greek drama, but nowadays serve as a vehicle expressive of the anxieties of the fin de siècle individual and society - in a sense, Euripides' fin de siècle seems, disturbingly, to anticipate our own. After an absence from the stage of 150 years, the Ion was simultaneously performed ^ For instance, there were three productions of the Medea in 1986 (London; Gate theatre; Young Vic; Lyric Theatre) and two more in 1992 (London: Almeida Theatre; Bucharest: National Theatre, directed by Andrei Serban and followed by the Trojan Women and Sophocles' Electra, which comprised his 'Ancient trilogy'). The Trojan Women was produced by Annie Castledine and Annabel Arden (Théâtre de Complicité) in 1995 at the National Theatre in London and The Bacchae was produced in Peking by the Beijing Opera Actors in 1996. by two theatre companies in the United Kingdom^, along with the Electra, the Orestes, the I.A.^ and the Phoenissae.^ Not only does the play raise permanent issues in a particularly timely way, it also provides useful material for exploring questions about Greek culture and politics that have become interesting for scholars over the last several years. The present dissertation is intended as a contribution to this growing discussion. It takes up and carries further a number of important studies that have appeared recently. But instead of applying to the play the theories of a particular critic or school of criticism, it attempts to work out an original line of interpretation in constant dialogue with previous scholarship. In particular, it develops further Loraux's insights into the ideology of Athenian autochthony^, Zeitlin's analysis of Ion's search for his identity®, the structural analysis of Greek myth^ and the approach of a number of scholars who have stressed the performance aspect of Greek tragedy. But this dissertation not only builds upon the work of these earlier scholars. It also aims to add new elements to the discussion in two ways: first, by integrating these various approaches with one another, so that literary, religious, political, and psychological aspects can 2 London 1994. The first was a production of the Royal Shakespeare Company, directed by Nicholas Wright and took place at the Barbican Theatre. The second was an Anglo-Hellenic production of the Actors' Touring Company, directed by Nick Philippou and performed in the Lyric Theatre. For a review of these two recent productions of the Ion, see Padel, 1996. ® London 1995, 'Agamemnon's Children', directed by Laurence Boswell and performed in the Gate