IPHIGENIA AT AULIS: MYTH, PERFORMANCE, AND RECEPTION by George Adam Kovacs A thesis submitted in conformity of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy Department of Classics University of Toronto © Copyright by George Adam Kovacs 2010 Abstract Iphigenia at Aulis: Myth, Performance, and Reception George Kovacs Doctor of Philosophy Department of Classics University of Toronto 2010 When Euripides wrote his final play, Iphigenia at Aulis, depicting the human sacrifice of Agamemnon’s first child that allowed the sailing of the Greek expedition against Troy, he was faced with several significant mythographic choices. Of primary concern was the outcome of the sacrifice: there existed a strong tradition in early sources that mitigated the sacrifice by effecting a divine rescue by Artemis, usually with a deer being left in her place on the altar. The extremely troubled textual history of our script – the play was first performed posthumously, and we do not know in what state Euripides left the text – means that we cannot be certain which tradition Euripides actually chose to follow, sacrifice or rescue. Depicting Iphigenia as a willing victim, however, must have been Euripides’ own innovation. This dissertation explores the ramifications of that self-sacrifice and contextualizes this play within a tradition of mythographic evolution and reception. Chapter 1 surveys the history of criticism of the text, itself a mode of reception, and also examines trends in Euripidean criticism in the modern period, limited until recently by the textual issues. Chapter 2 considers instances of the Iphigenia legend before Euripides’ play. The parodos of Agamemnon, the first source to express the sacrifice in terms of human suffering, receives special attention. Chapter 3 seeks to understand audience reception at the moment of first performance through three different critical lenses: thematic (self-sacrifice was a recurring motif in Euripides’ work), socio-political (by considering the recurring Panhellenic sentiment deployed in the play’s rhetoric), and dramaturgical (by treating the spatial dynamics of the ii performance as a point of intertextual contact). Chapters 4 and 5 examine reception of the sacrifice story in antiquity (in the Hellenistic and Roman periods), a process which reveals much about the position of Greek tragedy in the popular imagination following the fifth century. The final chapter brings to bear considerations of adaptations of the play into new genres and new media since the advent of the printing press, all of which open up new possibilities for the creators of these adaptations and the story they wish to tell. iii Acknowledgements Although it is my name on this dissertation, many hands had a part in its making. Martin Revermann, my supervisor, understood the shape and scope of this project long before I did. It is no understatement that, without his guidance, imagination, and patience, this thesis would not exist. My committee members Jonathan Burgess and Alison Keith supplied copious comments, improving this work at all levels, from structural to grammatical. Even before I began the process of writing, I have benefited immensely from both in my time at Toronto. Victoria Wohl read the final draft as internal reader, while Felix Budelmann of Magdalen College, Oxford, served as the external appraiser. I look forward to integrating their insightful comments as I develop this project further. I am also indebted to Brad Inwood for years of solid advice, both academic and professional. C. W. Marshall and Ian Storey have both supervised my work at other institutions in earlier stages of my academic career. Neither has ever stopped teaching me; it is my expectation – and hope – that they never will. I owe much gratitude also to the other Marshalls, Dr. Hallie and Jonah. I have received a great deal of support and encouragement from my fellow graduate students. In the Department of Classics at Toronto, Marie-Pierre Krück, Kathryn Mattison, Sebastiana Nervegna, Tim Perry, Eirene Seiradaki, and Donald Sells all provided, at the appropriate times, criticism, support, sympathy, and beer. Massey College provided me for many years with a supportive and stimulating community, but I must single out my Walmer colleagues Ela Beres, Sapna Sharma, and Simon Watson, who I fear most often felt the burden of my anxieties. I have never been able to adequately thank my parents Keith and Laura for all that they have done for me, and I cannot here. I owe them so much. I will ever be able to properly thank my brothers, Ben and Roy, for all they have done to me either. At Trent University my colleagues Martin Boyne, Hugh Elton, Rodney Fitzsimons, Sean Lockwood, Jennifer Moore, Ian Storey, and Jackie Tinson have never failed in the past two and a half years to provide an open and collegial environment. The Classics Drama Group at Trent has been a vital part of my life for over a decade. It has both instilled in me a iv love of the Classics and provided the most immediate means possible of expressing that love. It means a lot to see that process recurring in my own students, of whom I am very proud. Finally, Janet Bews, Doug Bruce, and Desmond Conacher showed me that Classics can be enjoyed for a lifetime by wonderful people. They have passed on but, as dear friends of the Department of Ancient History and Classics at Trent University, all three have portraits in the department’s memorial cabinet which, by a quirk of the gods and the supervisors of Trent’s physical resources, stood in my office. It was under their watchful gaze that I finished the first complete draft of this thesis. v Table of Contents Chapter 1: Approaches to the Text..........................................1 The Philological Approach 2 The Literary Approach 21 Aristotle 22 Interpretations of Euripides 25 The Character of Agamemnon 31 Beyond the Literary Approach: Recent Interpretations 37 Chapter 2: The Iphigenia Myth before Euripides...............47 Hexameter Sources 49 Melic Poetry 61 Iphigenia in Cult 64 Tragedy 72 Visual Evidence 85 Conclusions 91 Chapter 3: The Play in its Original Context........................93 Euripides and the Virgin Sacrifice 94 Panhellenist Sentiment 112 Theatrical Instantiations 122 Topography 123 Exits and Entrances 130 Proxemics and Gesture 135 Chorus 144 Conclusions 160 Chapter 4: Classical and Hellenistic Receptions................163 Tragedy in The Fourth Century 167 Visual Evidence and the Megarian Iphigenia Bowls 175 Chapter 5: Roman Receptions.............................................197 Ennius 197 Lucretius 206 Ovid 210 The House of the Tragic Poet 214 Chapter 6: Modern Appropriations....................................220 Erasmus, Lady Jane, and St. Paul’s 222 Racine and his Legacy 231 Gluck and Opera 236 The Academic Playhouses 239 Cacoyannis and his Films 243 Contemporary Stagings 249 Conclusions 256 Bibliography..........................................................................259 vi List of Figures Figure 2.1: A possible sacrifice (Iphigenia or Polyxena). 86 Boston MFA 6.67. Image from Vermeule and Chapman (1971) Plate 71. Figure 2.2: Black-figure lekythos showing Iphigenia 89 led to the altar, c. 470 BCE. Palermo, Mus. Reg. NI 1886. From Kahil (1990). Figure 2.3: Iphigenia being dragged toward the altar for sacrifice, 91 430-420 BCE. Kiel Univ. B 538. From Kahil (1990). Figure 4.1: Apulian volute-crater by or close to 177 the Ilioupersis Painter, 370-355 BCE. London BM F159. Figure 4.2: Megarian Relief Bowl showing five early scenes 182 from IA, early 2nd century BCE. New York, MMA 31.11.2. Figure 4.3: Megarian Relief Bowl with five more scenes, 183 early 2nd century BCE. Berlin, Staatl. Mus. 3161. Figure 4.4: Relief bowl with images possibly from 184 Euripides’ Autolycus. Figure 4.5: Scenes from Odyssey 22 with text. 185 Berlin Staat. Museum 3161n. Figure 4.6: Apulian volute-crater depicting elements of 187 Euripides’ Hippolytus, third quarter of fourth century BCE. London BM F279. Figure 5.1: Pompeiian Fresco in the House of the Tragic Poet, 215 1st century BCE. Naples, Mus. Naz. 9112. vii Chapter 1: Approaches to the Text Euripides’ final play, Iphigenia at Aulis is about a sacrifice. It is about a young woman who goes willingly to her death to allow a military expedition of aggression for which she has no responsibility against a foreign foe in which she has no real investment. And yet in her death, this young woman finds a nobility that the kings and warriors around her cannot. The origins of this story are unknown, but early accounts denied this death by substituting, quite literally, an animal sacrifice for the human and rewarding the young maiden with immortality. Tragedy, on the other hand, embraced that discomfiture, dwelt upon it, and enhanced it by creating a human Iphigenia, one who understood the price she was paying and had a sense (correct or otherwise) of the consequences of her own actions. There is of course more than one way to understand a text: as literature, as performance, as manifesto, as artefact. The key text of this study, Euripides’ Iphigenia at Aulis, is no exception. The purpose of this opening chapter will be to rehearse, in brief, the history of two distinct branches of scholarship on Iphigenia at Aulis, each of which has yielded up a myriad of different interpretations. First is the long standing question of the text, the authenticity of which (at least in its parts) has been subject to close scrutiny since the eighteenth century. This is the philological approach. The other is the more recent phenomenon of engaging with the play as a piece of dramatic literature, which only really found its footing following the Second World War, late even for the study of Euripidean drama. This distinction of the two competing modes of analysis articulates a significant breech in the field of Classical literature, a tension which traces its roots at least as far back as Nietzsche and Wilamowitz.