Euripides

In recent years, one of the two fully preserved ancient Greek tragic plays of disputed authorship, "Rhesus", traditionally attributed to Euripides, has been the object of a quite lively scholarly interest. The rather extreme number, for the standards of classical philology, of four published commentaries in 10 years, by Athanasios D. Stefanis, [Euripides’]: "Rhesus", Athens: Academy of Athens, 2004, Arne Feickert, Euripidis: "Rhesus", Frankfurt: Lang, 2005, Vayos Liapis, A Commentary on the "Rhesus" Attributed to Euripides, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012, and Almut Fries, Pseudo-Euripides: "Rhesus", Berlin: De Gruyter, 2014 (two of them in English), and one forthcoming by Marco Fantuzzi (also in English), tangibly prove the great vogue this drama enjoys nowadays. Its doubtful nature, as far as the fusion of tragic and comic elements is concerned (see further Burnett, Directions in Euripidean Criticism: A Collection of Essays, Durham: Duke University Press, pp. 13–51, 177–88, 1985), and, most of all, its controversial authorship and date still render it a riddle—even though its non-Euripidean origin is widely accepted. Our research is an attempt to unveil the authorial status of this play, employing traditional and non-traditional authorship attribution techniques. In fact, as it will become clear in the course of this work, the latter kind of methodology allows us to approach the author of "Rhesus" in a way that was not even thought possible until the present day.

Il faut sauver la tragédie grecque de toute la gnose philosophique et tragique qui l'accable depuis près de trois siècles. Il faut la sauver de notre conception moderne de la littérature et du théâtre. Il faut la sauver de nous-mêmes pour la retrouver ailleurs, très loin, dans les lieux les plus improbables : le nô japonais, la messe catholique, la psychanalyse freudienne… À moins qu'elle ne soit déjà plus nulle part.
Car la tragédie est aussi introuvable que le tombeau d’Œdipe, ce tombeau que Sophocle prit pour thème de sa pièce ultime, laquelle est également la dernière tragédie grecque connue.
Avec Œdipe à Colone pour fil conducteur, ce livre raconte l’histoire édifiante d’une incompréhension à laquelle nous sommes voués. Il révèle les incroyables trahisons et mutilations dont ces chefs-d’oeuvre furent les victimes et propose en retour quelques thèses - ou hérésies – susceptibles de bouleverser non seulement notre vision de la tragédie, mais notre conception même de la littérature et de ses pouvoirs – sur les lieux, les corps et les dieux.
Nul détour n’est aujourd’hui si troublant ni si salutaire.

Ausgehend von den vv. 218ff. der Iphigenie bei den Taurern zeigt der Beitrag, wie in dem Drama die tragische Dimension des menschlichen Daseins als eine unwirtliche zu Tage tritt. Diese offenbart eine wirtliche Ökonomie, die diesem Dasein ein Fundament geben kann, das nicht zunächst nach dem ausgerichtet ist, was recht und billig erscheint, sondern, allem voran, im sinnstiftenden Reichtum eines tragischen Schicksals wurzelt, das dem Menschen sein Eigenes und Freies zu gewähren vermag.

Crises--such as COVID-19, the Great Recession, and 9/11--are often triggered by low-probability, high-consequence events. Tragedy can help us model the impact of the highly improbable because tragedy is the art form that dramatizes low-probability, high-consequence events. In this book chapter, I demonstrate how tragedy dramatizes the highly improbable in Aeschylus' SEVEN AGAINST THEBES, Sophocles' OEDIPUS REX, and Euripides' BACCHAE. By looking at theatre from the perspective of chance and uncertainty, we may increase our awareness of how risk works in both art and in life, and, in so doing, protect ourselves by becoming antifragile.

In his Poetics Aristotle dismisses Iphigenia’s characterisation as inconsistent. Why does the eponymous heroine of Iphigenia at Aulis change her mind and decide to die willingly? This central question has preoccupied not only classical scholars, but receiving artists, too. How Iphigenia’s change of heart in portrayed on stage and screen affects the audience’s response to the character. Is Iphigenia a victim or a heroine (or a mixture of both)? The Greek-Cypriot filmmaker Michael Cacoyannis believed he enjoyed a special relationship with Euripides, but his interpretation was shaped by political events in Modern Greece and Cyprus in the 1960s and 70s. In his film Iphigenia (1977) the ancient tragic heroine was recast as a young girl who sacrifices herself for Greece. In Cacoyannis’ anti-war interpretation of Iphigenia’s choice she is both heroic, and the victim of male power games and irredentist ambition. Cacoyannis’ Iphigenia is a heroine of her time, as much as she is a refraction of her ancient predecessor.

Even while he was imaginatively limited by a static model of the psyche and expressively limited by the conventions of classical aesthetics, Euripides is able in Hippolytus to depict psychological phenomena that analysts would name, classify, and study two millennia later. He shows us the tragic but to his mind inevitable consequences of excessive desire and excessive self-regard, consequences enacted by characters who have no means of surmounting their own psychological framework. While appreciating the concepts of fate and character that underlie the play, we may view its action as an allegory for psychic conflict that is never directly depicted in it; the characters are symbols or avatars of particular given psychological conditions with unexplored and unrepresentable geneses.

O objetivo deste artigo é, a partir da observação de uma recepção, pela tragédia Ifigênia em Áulida, de Eurípides, da Ilíada de Homero e do Agamêmnon, de Ésquilo, procurar demonstrar em que medida e sob quais aspectos essa tragédia euripidiana se articula no entrecruzamento de uma tradição homérica, sobretudo iliádica – silenciosa a respeito do sacrifício da filha de Agamêmnon – e uma herança da tragédia esquiliana, em que não apenas se narra o sacrifício de Ifigênia, mas também se evidenciam suas amargas consequências.

Starting from the observation of the reception of Homer’s Iliad and Aeschylus’ Agamemnon in the Euripides’ Iphigenia at Aulis, this paper aims to show that this Euripidean tragedy articulates itself between a Homeric tradition –which is silent about the sacrifice of Agamemnon’s daughter– and a heritage of the Aeschylean tragedy, in which there is not only the narrative of Iphigenia’s sacrifice but also of its dreadful consequences.

Women's mobility is central to understanding cultural constructions of gender. Regarding ancient cultures, including ancient Greece, a re-evaluation of women's mobility within the household and beyond it is currently taking place. This invites an informed analysis of female mobility in Greek myth, under the premise that myth may open a venue to social ideology and the imaginary.

Female Mobility and Gendered Space in Ancient Greek Myth offers the first comprehensive analysis of this topic. It presents close readings of ancient texts, engaging with feminist thought and the 'mobility turn'. A variety of Olympian goddesses and mortal heroines are explored, and the analysis of their myths follows specific chronological considerations. Female mobility is presented in quite diverse ways in myth, reflecting cultural flexibility in imagining mobile goddesses and heroines. At the same time, the out-of-doors spaces that mortal heroines inhabit seem to lack a public or civic quality, with the heroines being contained behind 'glass walls'. In this respect, myth seems to reproduce the cultural limitations of ancient Greek social ideology on mobility, inviting us to reflect not only on the limits of mythic imagination but also on the timelessness of Greek myth.

Cfr. collegamento https://amzn.to/39KqePH
Il presente documento contiene un saggio della parafrasi e del commento del testo euripideo delle Supplici, che comparirà nel volume di prossima pubblicazione :
  LE TRAGEDIE TEBANE – Volume II
  Sofocle. Antigone - Euripide. Supplici
Già pubblicato il volume :
  LE TRAGEDIE TEBANE – Volume I
  Euripide. Fenicie – Eschilo. Sette contro Tebe
Il mio personale progetto è la pubblicazione in tre volumi delle parafrasi - con commento ed introduzione - alle tragedie tebane.

Comparison of ancient accounts of the myth of Actaeon shows that, while the nature of his offense differs markedly between sources, the form of his death is stable throughout antiquity. This chapter uses observations from Nick Lowe and Ada Neschke-Hentschke about the paradigmatic functioning of myths to consider how the inevitability of Actaeon’s end could be harnessed to lend specific narrative colouring to retellings. It uses Ovid’s account of Actaeon in the Metamorphoses to examine the broader ancient tradition, arguing that the identification of Actaeon by name functioned in a meta-poetic manner to hasten his death, and that the inevitability of this death brought with it implicit consideration of the workings of justice in the mythic story-world.

ARISTOTLE, says Butcher, “mentions Euripides some twenty times in the Poetics, and in the great majority of the instances with censure”. One is a bit surprised to find such an inaccurate statement coming from so celebrated a scholar. The Poetics does refer to Euripides and his place directly and indirectly nineteen times in all (or twenty, if one counts the second occurrence of his name in xiii. 6, 1453a 29) out of which only seven involve somewhat adverse judgement on Aristotle’s part. “The great majority of the instances”, far from being censorious or critical are approbatory, sometimes even appreciative. Hence, the misconception so widely publicised by Butcher needs to be removed and a thorough study of Aristotle’s attitude towards Euripides is called for, not only in reference to the Poetics, but to the Rhetoric as well, which makes this essay a critique of Butcher, too, simultaneously.

Ulisse è il campione della ragione che trionfa in Occidente, l’eroe dell’intelligenza e dell’avventura. Ma la sua figura non è univoca nella tradizione antica. Le maschere del mito greco parlano di altre ragioni, di passioni irriducibili, di colpe che l’eroe non ha pagato. E di una giustizia che non si lascia iscrivere nella legge condivisa.
Ulisse che calunnia; Ulisse, infido e vigliacco in battaglia; Ulisse che corrompe; Ulisse che tradisce; Ulisse che sacrifica una fanciulla affinché soffino venti favorevoli alla partenza da Troia; Ulisse che seduce e abbandona; Ulisse, il reduce, che fa strage di giovani a Itaca. Capitolo per capitolo, la luce tocca personaggi femminili e maschili – compagni di impresa in guerra e in viaggio, madri e figlie, padri e figli, dee e mortali. Nauplio, Teti, Aiace, Neottolemo, Ecuba, Polissena, Calipso, Nausica, Eupite – figure ai bordi della narrazione maggiore, travolte e stravolte nella loro vicenda mitica dal genio contorto di Ulisse. Dalle fonti antiche emergono le loro voci che, in concerto, compongono un grave atto d’accusa contro l’eroe.

Il libro è disponibile su: https://bit.ly/Contro_Ulisse_Salerno_Editrice_2021

La traduzione dell'Edipo a Colono di Sofocle è un'avventura straordinaria, ed emozionante. Non solo perché con questa tragedia Sofocle chiude idealmente la vicenda terrena ed umana di Edipo, vicenda ch'egli aveva già narrato - limitatamente alle tragedie che ci sono pervenute - prima nell'Antigone, quindi nell'Edipo re. Ma anche, e soprattutto, perchè questa tragedia ci avvicina, come nessun'altra, all'uomo Sofocle, e in particolare a quel dialogo intimo che ogni uomo, e Sofocle in particolare, intrattiene con la morte, nell'attesa della propria morte. E Sofocle, ormai novantenne, sapeva di non dover attendere ancora a lungo per fare esperienza di quest'incontro.
Il personaggio di Edipo - in esso è naturale vedere lo stesso poeta - ingigantisce progressivamente nel corso della tragedia: è un percorso opposto a quello che Sofocle aveva delineato nell'Edipo re. Il vecchio dal passo incerto che incontriamo all'inizio della tragedia, guiderà egli stesso Teseo al luogo nel quale si compirà misteriosamente la sua eroizzazione. L'uomo che nel prologo si rivolge che timore e rispetto all'abitante di Colono, si rivolgerà da pari a pari al re di Atene, ed infine assurgerà tra gli dei.
Condivido, qui, una parte di quest'avventura: la traduzione del prologo (1-116) e della parodo (117-253). Il testo di riferimento, così come le note, sono quelli dell'edizione di Jebb.
La traduzione è 'ragionevolmente letterale', e le note sono limitate ad alcuni commenti grammaticali che possono aiutare il lettore nella comprensione del testo.

Este texto objetiva, inicialmente, levantar alguns aspectos sobre o reconhecimento (anagnórisis) entre Electra e Orestes à luz da Poética de Aristóteles; num segundo momento, refletir sobre o espaço construído onde se passam tais cenas. A cena de reconhecimento entre Electra e Orestes é-nos proporcionada pelos três trágicos cujas peças chegaram completas até nós: Ésquilo (Coéforas), Sófocles (Electra) e a tragédia homônima de Eurípides (Electra).

Courtney J. P. Friesen explores shifting boundaries of ancient religions by way of the reception of a popular tragedy, Euripides’ Bacchae . As a play staging political crises provoked by the arrival of the “foreign” god Dionysus and his ecstatic cult, audiences and readers found resonances with their own cultural moments. This dramatic deity became emblematic of exuberant and liberating spirituality and, at the same time, a symbol of imperial conquest. Thus, readings of the Bacchae frequently foreground conflicts between religious autonomy and political authority, and between ethnic diversity and social cohesion. This cross-disciplinary study traces appropriations and evocations of this drama ranging from the fifth century BCE through Byzantium not only among “pagans” but also Jews and Christians. Writers variously articulated their religious visions over against Dionysus, often while paradoxically adopting the god’s language and symbols. Consequently, imitation and emulation are at times indistinguishable from polemics and subversion.

La poesía y sus efectos para el alma fueron motivo de reflexión para dos grandes filósofos de la época clásica griega: Platón y Aristóteles. Así pues, el presente taller busca desentrañar, en un análisis crítico, las visiones platónica y aristotélica que se pueden desglosar en la tragedia Hipólito de Eurípides.

The text of the Athenian tragedies, preserved to our times, originates from the edition drawn up at the turn of the 3rd and 2nd century BC. for the famous Alexandria Library by Aristophanes of Byzantium. His aim was to recreate the author's version of the dramas and to unify the versions in circulation against spoils threatening the text during its transmission.

The Aristophanes’s edition was not the first undertaking to preserve and compose the works of three great Athenian tragedians. The Alexandrian works on the corpus of tragedies, from which the Aristophanes project grew, was a continuation of the research on the tragedy undertaken in Athens in the second half of the 4th century BC.

This book attempts to reconstruct the fate of the legacy of Aeschylus, Sophocles and Euripides in the first two centuries since the creation of the works.

The author argues that the earliest studies on the tragedy contributed to the formation of philology as a scientific discipline no less than the study of the text of Homer's poems.

The suppression of the Bacchanalia in Rome 186 BCE was the first major religious persecution in Europe. The essay provides a new analysis, referring to the political theory of Eric Voegelin. It shows that the suppression was a reaction of the Roman commonwealth to a cult which challgenged the meaning of political existence within the republic. Ultimately, the Bacchanalian affair is a collision of two types of religiosity, the political religiosity of the public cult and the orgiastic and apolitical religiosity of the Bacchic underground. Both types are based on particular religious experiences, the experience of gods preserving and fostering the political community and the experience of a god promoting the fulfilment of bodily desires. As the essay shows at the example of Euripides’ Bacchae, the worship of Bacchus-Dionysus had always represented the apolitical dimension of human existence; already in the ancient myths the “alien god” appears as the enemy of rulers and politicians. Finally, this reconsideration of the Bacchanalia helps to understand why the early Christians were likened to the Bacchants.

The occasion for this collection of papers is the centenary of the publication of "The Scholia on the Aves of Aristophanes" by John Williams White (Boston-London 1914), a book that played a seminal role in setting the debate on the circumstances, manner and era of the birth of scholiography in the Greek milieu. This issue includes an Introduction by F.M., eight contributions by Italian scholars, Conclusions by Antonietta Porro, 18 pp. of Bibliography and two Indexes. Ancient authors and works concerned are (scholia on) Homer, Aeschylus, Aristophanes, mathematical Greek treatises, John of Scythopolis’ commentary on the Corpus Dionysiacum, Latin scholia to Virgil.

Die "Bakchen" sind das eindrucksvollste literarische Zeugnis über den Dionysoskult in klassischer griechischer Zeit und tragen deshalb maßgeblich zum Dionysos-Verständnis späterer Zeitepochen bei.

Die Auseinandersetzung mit Euripides' "Bakchen" zeigt, dass der Konflikt zwischen Mensch und Gott besonders auf raumsemantischer Verortung des Dramas ausgefochten wird. Theben und das Kithairongebirge sind den beiden Antipoden Pentheus und Dionysos zugeordnet. Die Stadt Theben steht für ethische Rechtmäßigkeit und soziale Ordnung, der Κιθαιρών für das Verbotene, Unzugängliche und moralisch Verpönte. Mit Entwicklung der Handlung öffnet sich Pentheus’ Blick in die Peripherie seines Umlandes. Sein Loslösen leitet den dionysischen Triumphzug in Theben ein. Dort steht der von Pentheus abgeriegelte Raum, der σηκός, der Semele geweiht ist, für die Omnipräsenz des Gottes. Dionysos kehrt in seine Geburtsstadt zurück, ohne je ganz abwesend gewesen zu sein. Im Gegenzug vollzieht sich der dionysische Sieg im Moment der größten Distanz von Pentheus zu seiner Stadt Theben.

Die entsetzliche Szenerie im Κιθαιρών wird durch den Nachbericht des Boten mythisiert und verleiht den dionysischen Orgien den Nimbus von Sakralität und Exklusivität, die sich besonders von ihrer Schwebe zwischen μῦθος und λόγος nährt. Dem Botenbericht haften zwei Merkmale für unsicheres Erzählen an, die den dionysischen Wahn als ein Mysterium ausweisen. Dionysos muss letztendlich unbeschrieben, wild und ungezähmt bleiben – auch innerhalb des Mediums der Poesie.

This study analyses the cinematic version of Euripides´ play The Trojan Women by the Greek director Michael Cacoyannis, a film-maker who payed special attention in adapting classical texts both for the theatre and the big screen. His recreation of Euripides’ tragedy, influenced by the Vietnam War and the dictatorships in Greece and Spain, brings to life and reinforces the message of the original text transforming the cinematic camera into an effective tool to denounce the abuses of power committed against their fellow humans.

"Résumé
Les dieux des autres ne sont pas simplement d’autres dieux. En accord avec cette conviction, Hérodote met la divinité oraculaire libyenne Ammon de Siwa en relation avec les dieux royaux Amon de Thèbes et Zeus de Dodone. Cet article part du texte d’Hérodote pour étudier, d’une part, la diffusion et le succès religieux autant que politique de Zeus Ammon dans les traditions grecque et macédonienne des Ve et IVe siècles av. J.-C., puis pour les comparer, d’autre part, avec la signification nouvelle que le dieu acquit à l’époque d’Alexandre et de ses successeurs en Égypte, les Ptolémées.

Abstract
The gods of the others are not simply other gods. In compliance with this belief, Herodotus puts the Libyan oracular divinity Ammon of Siwah in relation with the royal gods Amun of Thebes and Zeus of Dodona. This paper starts from Herodotus’ text to study, on one hand, the spread of religious and political success of Zeus Ammon in the V and IV centuries’ Greek and Macedonian tradition, before to compare them, on a second hand, with the new significance that the god acquired at the time of Alexander and his successors in Egypt, the Ptolemies."

The aim of this essay is to rebuild the score of the musical fragment of Eu-ripides's Orestes (Vienna Papyrus, G 2315), based on the analysis of preserved notes and according to Ancient Greek music theory. This reconstruction takes advantage of the fact that these notes belong to the Doric enharmonic scale of Damon (contemporary of Euripides), transmitted by Aristides Quintilianus. Probably, this music was composed by Euripides himself and, in spite of its brevity and its fragmentary state, it is surely the best source to approach the sound of the Greek music in the classic period. This essay is accompanied by the interpretation of the rebuilt musical fragment, using the tuning of enharmonic genus from Archytas with numerical precision. Along with this, it also aims to show that the dedication of the Pythagoreans to study the music numbers was not a mere speculation, empty of musical content, as we are often told, but it generally responded to the attempt to systematize, with the greatest mathematical accuracy, the tuning of the different scales used in the music of their time.

ΙΠΠΟΛΥΤΟΣ – ΠΕΝΘΕΑΣ: Η άρνηση του υπερβατικού και η τραγική καταστροφή Στον Ἱππόλυτο και τις Βάκχες, μια τραγωδία της πρώιμης και μια της όψιμης παραγωγικής φάσης του Ευριπίδη αντίστοιχα, αποκαλύπτεται το εύρος της σκέψης και των προβληματισμών του μεγάλου τραγικού και αναδύονται ιδέες που ίσως δεν είναι κυρίαρχες στα πιο " ορθολογικά " έργα του αλλά μας βοηθούν να σκιαγραφήσουμε ένα ολοκληρωμένο πορτραίτο του δημιουργού. Και στα δύο έργα τον πρωταγωνιστικό ρόλο κρατούν ευγενείς νέοι με πολλά χαρίσματα, που όμως εμφορούνται από υπερβολική αυτοπεποίθηση, υπέρμετρη πίστη στις αρχές τους, μονολιθική και αυθαίρετη τάση χάραξης κανόνων συμπεριφοράς, αντιμετώπιση του κόσμου και της ζωής μέσα από παρωπίδες, πολλά καταπιεσμένα συναισθήματα και πεισματική αρνητικότητα απέναντι σε υπερβατικές μορφές, όπως η Αφροδίτη και ο Διόνυσος. Στο επίκεντρο της δράσης τοποθετούνται επίσης δύο θεότητες, που αποκαλύπτονται μπροστά μας με όλη την ομορφιά αλλά και τη φρικαλεότητα της λατρείας τους, με όλο το μεγαλείο αλλά και τη μικρότητα της ψυχής τους, με όλη τη γοητεία αλλά και την απεχθή συνάμα όψη τους.