Elpis and Eros

The Classical Review http://journals.cambridge.org/CAR

Additional services for The Classical Review:

Email alerts: Click here Subscriptions: Click here Commercial reprints: Click here Terms of use : Click here

Elpis and Eros

F. M. Cornford

The Classical Review / Volume 21 / Issue 08 / December 1907, pp 228 - 232 DOI: 10.1017/S0009840X00180321, Published online: 27 October 2009

Link to this article: http://journals.cambridge.org/abstract_S0009840X00180321

How to cite this article: F. M. Cornford (1907). Elpis and Eros. The Classical Review, 21, pp 228-232 doi:10.1017/ S0009840X00180321

Request Permissions : Click here

Downloaded from http://journals.cambridge.org/CAR, IP address: 138.251.14.35 on 29 Apr 2015 228 THE CLASSICAL REVIEW

ELPIS AND EROS. Sophocles, Antigone 599 and 795. of Oedipus a light was spread abroad, down in its turn is it swept and smothered by vvv yap cerâTas wrep dust of a murderous storm from the nether 600 pi£as rira.ro dos Iv OJSiirov gods, blindness of speech and avenging Kar av vai owia 6t5>v rSiv vzpripwv madness.' afw. KOI'IS, Thus the metaphor of storm is retained in a \6yov r avota KOX pev5>v epivvs. new form no longer merely metaphorical, but IN the first strophe of this chorus, Ate", symbolic, which yet corresponds point for the curse that moves down the lineage of point with the previous image. In the Labdacus, is compared to a surge, which, strophe the curse is compared (1) to a wave blown by the ocean blasts of storm from the (2) passing over the dark abyss under the sea, north, overruns the dark depth under the (3) from which it rolls up black, smothering sea (epeôs va\ov) and rolls up from the ooze, (4) to cast it on the shore where it abyss black ooze upon the moaning shores breaks. Here, in the antistrophe, it is where it breaks. The opening lines of the compared (1) to the dust-storm (2) sweeping antistrophe maintain the suggestion of storm from the dark abode of the gods under the and wreck; woe falling upon woe of the earth, (3) from which it carries the blinding, dead, as wave follows upon wave. Some deadly madness of avenging Ate, which god wrecks them, and there is no release. eclipses the reason of the accursed, and so Then follow the words above quoted, (4) by causing the fatal act, sweeps down and about which so much difficulty has been smothers the last light of hope. The word felt. How can the v veprepwvKara/jia. is singularly expressive; for its two Otmv, the handful of dust due to the nether meanings—' mowing down' and ' sweeping £ gods and flung by Antigone upon the blood- (dust, etc.) over' (x p<"v d/ujjo-as KOVIV, over a stained corpse, be said to ' mow down' corpse, Anth. P. vii. 241)—fit, respect- the light of hope which has dawned above ively, the metaphors ' root' and ' light,' the last root of the house of Oedipus ? How though the second meaning is, of course, can it be called \oyou r avoid, KO.1 pevatvonly suggested. What is common to both ipivvs, a blindness of speech and avenging seems to be the sweeping movement of the madness ? arm. The simple truth is that it cannot. So it By the use of this second image Sophocles is suggested that we should read KOTTU and gains an artistic advantage. The dust-storm try to forget that it means a ' cleaver' or which screens Antigone at her second visit to ' chopper.' But what Greek ever spoke of the the body of Polyneices (415 ff.)appears—a t gods of the underworld using a chopper least to the modern reader—as an artificial to mow down a light? The metaphor is device, ' a dramatic necessity, to account for monstrous, and—what is nearly as bad— Antigone reaching the corpse unobserved' inharmonious. It is utterly out of keeping (Jebb ad loc). But to the poet and to an with the storm metaphor of the strophe. audience who shared his associations it is These absurdities all arise from the a symbol of the smothering blindness which assumption that oivia KOVIS means the dusovertaket s her at the very moment of her thrown by Antigone upon the bloody corpse fatal act. It is a Otia vdo-os (421) the of Polyneices. But KOVIS has another meaning, phrase used of the madness of Ajax (Aj. which not only suits the immediate context 186). It is the appropriate vehicle of the here, but gives a fresh significance to a Erinys who embodies the curse. As critical incident earlier in the play. KoV« supernal deities are clothed in cloud, the may mean a dust-storm (as in Aeschylus underworld powers are shrouded in the dust Suppl. 186 it is used of a cloud of dust). of earth. ' Now when above the last root of the house The Athenian Dikaios, before Salamis, THE CLASSICAL REVIEW 229 saw a huge dust-stcrm moving from Eleusis, correction or not, must convey the sense and heard from inside it the Iacchos hymn. which comes so naturally to a modern mind : He inferred that disaster was coming upon love is at least as strong as, if not stronger Xerxes' host: OeZov rb tpOeyyo/tevov air than, the unwritten moral laws, and triumphs 'EAcuaivos ibv es Ti/iu>pi7]v 'AOrjvaiouri. If over them. But is this assumed meaning the dust-storm sweeps down (Karaa-Kî/rg, cf. compatible with the context ? Antig. 418, GKufirTov oipdviov axos) towards Eros, the unconquerable, ' draws aside for the Peloponnese, the land army is threatened; their ruin the unlawful thoughts of the if towards Salamis, the fleet will perish. The righteous' (dSticovs, by the way, is not dust and the voices rose aloft in a cloud and 'proleptic'; acts such as Antigone's are at one were borne towards Salamis. Herod, viii. 65. and the same time both against human law and divinely righteous). This first line refers The chorus goes on to speak of the chiefly to Antigone, the second to Haemon : delusion (Apate) of Ate" which steals over the both are drawn to their death by Eros. But victim in the forms of far-roving Elpis and to Haemon Eros-Apate" comes as a fascinating of Eros whose dreams are winged (airara influence ("//.epos) from the eyes of the bride 2 Kovov6 OdXa/xov ] Tqvh' 'AvTiyovrjV announces the entrance of Haemon : avvrovo-av. We are to imagine Antigone as fading in the darkness, till she is hardly ap' d distinguishable from the dim, pale shape rrji of Kore", of Persephone, who is also Thestno- raXiSos rJK€i jxopov 'Avnyovys phoros: 630 a 7r d T a s \€êv ; ' In the night where thine eyes are as moons Jebb's version, ' bitter for the baffled hope are in heaven, the night where thou art, of his marriage,' gives the superficial meaning Where the silence is more than all tunes, only. Haemon is under the delusive spell where sleep overflows from the heart.' of Eros which draws him to his death as surely as Antigone's 'passion for the The resemblance lends a cruel point to impossible' (A/ujxaimv epas, 90) is drawing Creon's words at 885 her to the bridal bed of Hades. If we bear this significance in mind, it may K iyu>, throw some light on another famous difficulty, aeT€ fiovrjv cpr]ft.ov, e*T« XPV 8avew in the Eros chorus : fir iv TOUIVTQ £5>(ra rvfifievew o-reyjy ij/itTs ya-p ayvol TOVTTI ryvSe T-qv KOpijv ' 791 orepi/o-€Tat. crri Aei/Sof AN. u> Tu/tôs, S> vvfieiov . , . vet/cos avSpwv £vvaifiov ? ' For we are pure as touching this viKa 8' tvapyijs fiXc^dpotv ifnepos evXtKTpov Maiden, this Kore"; but this is certain—she shall lose her sojourn in the light'—as vvficpaSy TG>V /ieyaXo)!/ TrapeSpos hf dpâts Persephone lost her yearly sojourn in the OtfryJav a/iaôs yap t/imu£ci #e6s 'A dp bride of Death. Compare 1204, wpos \166- 6tMV. 'it is a power enthroned in sway orpojTOv Koprjs vv/ufrfiov "AiSou. beside the eternal laws'; and to assume Antigone, then, becomes (as it were) that the phrase, whether it needs verbal Persephone; and as the darkness grows 1 A discussion of these conceptions will be found 2 Cf. in the previous scene, 760: in my Thucydides Mythistoricus, p. 184 and ch. xiii. Kp. ayere rh fittros, &s KOT' ij/ijuaT* avrlica See also Dr. Headlam (in Cambridge Preelections, Tra 1906), from whom I first learnt to study these mythi- At. ov cal associations. 23° THE CLASSICAL REVIEW about her, only the light of her eyes is still language of the mysteries sing to Alcestis clearly seen (crapy^s); and from them comes (746) : ei 8t TI KOKCI I ir\tov tor' ayaOols, the ' clear image of loveliness' which passes TOVTIDV fuereôvo-' | "AiSou into the lover's vision. Plato (Phaedrus, That Sophocles cannot have written Trdp 250 D Seivovs yap av irapeixev «?pTas (^ iv a p x a-' s seems to me nearly certain, if we p6vr](TK), el rt TOIOVTOV lavnjs evapyes ti8 pupil of the eye takes its name in Greek, apx<£s would suggest 'assessor in (the Latin, and Hebrew (icopr], pupula, pupilla, archon's) office.' One might as well address fltt^N' little man, apple of the eye). Love, in a serious lyric, as 'paymaster ' An observer looking into a person's eye general.' Suspicion has centred on the word can see in the dark central spot an image of irapeSpos, for metrical reasons which are in- himself reflected there. This is dwelt on by conclusive ; but to me appals seems more in Plato (?) Alcib. i. 132 E KOX T<3 6<£0aA/i 6a\fj.6v TO Trpoo~anrov i/jupalveTai iv TJJ a stronger point than his feeling for poetry. Kwr avriKpv oij/ei ioo-irtp ev fcaiwrpa), o 8rj nal We are more likely to go right, if we follow Koprqv KaXov[i€V, etSwAov ov TI TOV c/ij8Xewovros. up the train of association started by This image of B, mirrored in A's eye and f/iepos. seen there by B, was by many regarded as Of the scientific theories of vision, while the essential objective equivalent of the some made the image in the pupil an essen- psychic fact that A sees B, just as if it were tial factor (Democritus), others made more an image on A's retina, not in the pupil of of the ray of fire which was supposed to 1 A's eye.' It is clear from Plato's Phaedrus stream from the eye. There was, for instance, that this eiSuXov was not merely employed in the theory probably held by Alcmaeon, a physical theory of love, but was itself the Pythagorean physician, that the eye, poetically conceived as an Eros—a winged through-its diaphanous membranes, reflects sprite passing from the beloved and entering (avravyei) the light and all illuminated the lover's soul through the eye. Hence objects; and there was Plato's theory known ' Eros' in the Cratylus is derived from «r- to his successors as o-wavyeia (Timaeus, 45). ptiv, ' Himeros ' from U/xevos pit. It is perhaps worth while to suggest that the When we remember this theory of vision, true reading in our passage may be TWV and remember also that Eros to Haemon is /AcyaXcov irapeSpos iv avyais tfeayMov. The ApatS, we see that Love must be conceived Thesmoi are half personified ; and the word as working with, and not as overriding, the avycu, with its double sense of ' radiance' Great Thesmoi, which are not the laws of the and ' eyes,' carries on the image of the ffdAis, transgressed by Antigone, but the previous line in what seems to me a greater laws of the other world,2 which she Sophoclean manner. Further it provides obeys—the laws which bind the righteous to (what is otherwise wanting) a word in the unlawful acts ; and that the victory of Love immediate context, to which e/«rTriptolemus sits beside the Thesmophoroi. refer and makes nonsense. But with avyaU In the Alcestis, the chorus using the we get sense. The goddess whose invincible smile plays in that delusive light is the 1 Beare, Greek Theories of Elementary Cognition,Great Mother, Aphrodite, who, as the mystic p. 9 note. knows, is also Adrasteia, Dike, Ananke, 3Cf. /. 4SI whose pillar of light binds the firmament in V tivoiisos TS>V Ki.ru 6 THE CLASSICAL REVIEW 231

cosmicharmony (Plato, Rep. 616, Empedocles, Wisdom herself, 17 2o<^ta. <£epiav Kal Trjv liraip-qv rov epo/j.€vov 17 0e6s av 6pOS>% KOXOLTO ... 81' o^rep Kal OvpavCrj, TroAvvp-ft, ^>tAop.pei8r)s 'ApoSiT>], (rvveaTiv airy 6"A1817S (roôs u>v, vvv 8e avrijs 7TOJToyev«, yevireipa Ota, <$>i\onra.wv)(e, o-ep-vij, €KKXIVOV(TI TO ovofxa. . . toon <&tpt 8e re KOCT/XOV Aphrodite, as Earth-Kore,3 melts into Kal Kpareeis Tpur&Giv /xoipZy, yewas Be TO. iravra Persephone: /tocpa Be, 0ijo-iV (a Gnostic), tori oo"o"a T' ev oipav£ eon /cat ev yatij 7roAvKap7ra> TO. pvcmripia TO T>}S Ilepore^dv^s K<£TO), irepl a*> «v TTOVTOV T£ fivOia, (re/i.vr) BaKôto irapcSpe,. . . fiv(rrr)piZeus and the more ancient religion of Gaia—is KOC\TJ, TnjXiLBris' 17 8' ^y^craa'ât apiary used by Sophocles as a symbol, and much a\pevwv 'EpivvsMeyaXiov. ©eo-p.5v, and WpeSpos. The very To civilisation and social order they are order of these last words is so contrived that rebellion and anarchy. In the counsels rZv MeyaAoiv irdptSpos is completed in our of Zeus, they are Ate, a storm of blinding thoughts by ®ea>v before we reach the ©eoyxah', dust, a smothering ooze in the wave. But which confirms the completion by hinting to the religious and to the artist they are at ®e6p(ov. And these Thesmoi are the Wisdom; and blessed were those sons of underworld analogue of the Themis who is Erechtheus, who not only drew down from irapeSpos of Zeus. We recall the address the shining ether above them (the ether to Zeus in the Ate" chorus (609) : ay^pms of Zeus) their sustenance of intellectual aoiaSe xpdva> Suvaaras ica-reêis 'OA.vp.jrov | and the laws of golden Harmonia, the music p.app.apdeo-0-av atyAav. This celestial brilliance, of due measure and orderliness and civil like the sunlight which another poet calls right, but also received up from the Great the sight-rays of the eye of Heaven—cy*/ta Mother, with the winds and the flowers, yap aWepo'S aKap;aTov o-eAayeiTat fnapftapiats iv

' An hunger of passions unknown, • For this subject see J. E. Harrison, Prolegomena Strong Loves of all godlike endeavour to the Study of Greek Religion, p. 641. 4 Hippol. Ref. v. 8, p. US, 76=Diels Fragm. der Whom Wisdom shall throne on her 1 2 Vors. , Parrn. (dub.) 20. throne.' 5 The lines which immediately precede this chorus are: 1 Festschrift fur Gomperz 1902, Z>er Gedanken- STTOIS jiXaoiin TS

us, Ar. Clouds 285 (a mystical passage vfi.€0~i TrepteXaySe TTJV KVKXoreprj KOprjv ', wpos by the way)—has, if my conjecture be right, TO ovojxa T^S (coprjs xprjtrdnevos ITOH/TIKUS rats its analogue in the underworld, as the fire ' 666VKU<; ' avrl TS>V vfudvw.2 Probably there are in Plato's Cave is the analogue of the sun1. many places in lyrical poetry which would And this reminds us, finally, that the become clear to us, if we knew of these word aiyai is associated with the blaze mystical word-plays and could fill in the of light of the mystic in-oimCa, as in the associations which the poet is careful only context of the passage already quoted from to suggest remotely. the Phaedrus (250 c), tiSai/wva (pdo-fmra The following paraphrase may suffice to fivovfievoi re Kal eiroirrevovTes iv avyrj KaBapa, illustrate the suggested interpretation : KaOapol OVTCS ... : Republic 54° A wp6s reAos ' 'Tis thou dost pluck aside, for its ruin, the T^Sr) aKTiov Kal avayKaarcov avaKAiWiTas TXJV heart whose righteousness is wrong ; 'tis thou rijs S>?blood; and victory is to the love-light clear- : 516 A (of emerging from the Cave) shining from the eyes of a Bride well-wed,— 7rpos TO ^fis eXOoi, a v y r/ s av e^ovra TO. to the consort throned in radiance of the /leara opav oih" av ev SvvaaOai rSsv vvv Queenly Laws; for therein plays the delusive Xtyo/iivtav aXrjdtav. Sophocles himself in thesmile of a Goddess unvanquished, the Ajax (70) mentions the sight-rays ey> Kal irapet T$ n\oiruvi Tiiv AIKT)V Kal Kara Kopr} Kocr/iov means ' Eye' or ' Virgin of the World.' Teis v6\eis Thy vo'fiov, tva d fii/ Smalms 4Phanes-Priapus, iroiac &./ta

~~HIPPOKLEIDES' DANCE.~~

IN the Classical Review for September be objected that, though Hippokleides might (Vol. xxi. No. 6, page 169) Mr. A. B. Cook have gone on to give an example of Theban comments on this passage (Hdt. 6. 129). dancing, there are at least equal grounds for He suggests that the third dance in which presuming that the third dance was the result Hippokleides indulged, to the great disgust of personal inspiration, as indeed seems to be of his host, was a recognised Theban dance. suggested by the way the incident is narrated He supports this view by the contention that in Herodotus. Again the vase-fragment which as the first dance was Laconian and the Mr. Cook reproduces appears to represent a second Attic, so there is reason to suppose gentleman about to turn a somersault. It is that the third was Theban, and further that surely slender evidence for the contention Theban vases bear out this view. But it may that Hippokleides in putting his head down