Euripides, Medea; Bloody revenge of the scorned woman

 

So its been a rather productive if uneventful week. I've finished Euripides and have a buffer setup out to late December. Which when you consider I restarted this blog with a buffer of two weeks, is a very nice change. But that will slow down now as I work on the History of the Peloponnesian War, which is a fair bit longer than one of the Greek plays. I'm not sure yet whether it will be one, two or four posts, we will see how long and how much content is in it.

The Story
We meet Medea wailing in anger and sorrow that her husband Jason has taken another wife and in effect divorced her in the process. Jason has married the kings daughter. Medea's anger includes cursing Jason, his new wife and the king himself. The counsel of her friends cannot turn away her wrath and when her children come home her attendant warns them not to come into her sight as she fears for even the sons safety.
Creon the king comes to meet with her and is so scared of her anger against him and his daughter that he sends her into exile. She begs him to let her stay but he is mostly resolute. He does concede to allow her the day to prepare for exile. Once he leaves she plots to kill the three before she leaves but is still of two minds about how to accomplish this, poison or by running them through, she knows if she takes the second road she will not survive the experience.
Jason then comes to meet with her to try and smooth things by  providing for her as she goes into exile with money and introductions to friends of his where she may find refuge. She in her rage refuses the help and his explanation that he was only trying to secure her and his sons future by marrying again of a better station. Still Medea's anger rages on.
Aegeus King of Athens arrives and tells her of his trip to Delphi to consult the oracle about his lack of children. Medea tells him of her exile and gets him to swear an oath that she will find sanctuary in Athens, he does put on one caveat though, that she must get herself to Athens, he will not take her with him.
Medea hatches a plan to kill her husband and the king, Creon, and his daughter with poison, but her plan requires that she also kill her two sons. She organises for the sons to petition the princess to petition the king to allow them to stay in Corinth with their father. As part of this petition she sends them with a gold circlet and a dress for the princess which she laces with poison.
The boys return from the palace and Medea weeps over them, until a messenger comes running in to tell her to leave now.
The messenger recounts the grisly deaths of both the Princess and the King. Medea is joyful at the news, but the messenger is both aghast at her joyfulness and pleading with her to get away before the mob comes to get her. Medea steels herself to do the awful deed of killing her two sons, their cries are heard from inside but the chorus does nothing about it.
Jason arrives to snatch his children away least the vengeful mob, expected with the death of the king and with the killer being their mother, get them . But is informed by the chorus that they are dead. Medea appears on the roof in a chariot sent by the sun with both bodies of the boys and after she and Jason trade insults she departs leaving Jason to his childless fate.

Reflections
What a depressing story, it starts with one tragedy that of a wife put aside  and ends with a mother killing her children. Medea's plan is hatched with little regard for anything but her vengeance, showing the audience both the anger of a woman scorned but also of the tragedy of pursuing a second wife. It does give us some insight also into the process (or lack there of) of divorcing in the ancient Greek world. It seems that for the man it was as simple as to marry another woman, but Medea comments that she could not have chosen to put her husband aside under any situation, it just wasn't open to her as an option. 
We see a very crafty woman in this play, she knowingly get the king of Athens to swear that he will give her sanctuary in full knowledge that she commit multiple acts of murder between him taking the oath and him having to fulfill it. From this I wonder how Aegeus reacts when he realises what he has agreed too, because sanctuary would mean not only that she could live in Athens but that Athens would not turn her over to justice at anyone hand outside of the city's, to borrow a modern term, jurisdiction.
The Princess in the play is the real tragedy, all she has done to deserve such an end is to marry the man the King has prescribed for her. I can't see her having been given any say in the matter, as, from what I know, this is still an age of arranged marriages where Kings and Lords are involved. While Medea is still right to be angry with her for taking her husband, the princess seems to have really gotten a rough deal.

Comparisons
While this is a tragedy like we see in Oedipus or in The Libation Bearers what we have not seen before is a play that starts in tragedy that is not a continuation of another play. And as such this is the first play that does not through events descend into tragedy but rather that starts there and descends but further.
Also unlike the Oedipus saga we do not see the consequences of such abominable acts. Oedipus we see live on dealing with his blindness and wretchedness where as Medea just ends with her flying off in a sun chariot to go and live in Athens as far as we know.
Unlike Ion where Apollo has actions that are a huge part of the story. In Medea we see no real interaction with the gods, save Medea's sun chariot at the end. This makes for a much more human story and yet it is just as tragic.

Have you read Medea, if so what did you think?
Want to read Medea but haven't? Hopefully this inspires you to pick it up.
Get a copy of Medea. 

Euripides, The Bacchantes; I am a god, treat me as such

Its been a week of two distinct sides, on one hand I've been very productive both last week and this week and now have a buffer through to the end of November, on the other hand we buried one of the members of our church after his very sudden passing. This week coming I get a reprieve from the Greek plays and am reading the Edda from my Ad lit list, so I'm looking forward to the change of pace.
We are getting used to being in Tokoroa now and it has been a little over two months. We have chosen a church and joined the local RSA/club so now we have somewhere to go and socialise on a Friday evening, not that we are big drinkers mind you but the company is good.

I have had to re-read this play as too much time had elapsed between when I first read it and when I went to write about it, this is not something I plan to do often. The lists are just too large to spend a double amount of time on something!

The Story
Dionysus arrives in Thebes with the intention of teaching them to worship him as a god. He starts by relaying the story of his birth, how he is the son of Zeus and of Semele. He tells of Semele's death by lightning bolt and how Zeus rescued him from that fate and sewed him up in his thigh as a womb until his birth. He says he will drive the woman of Thebes mad in punishment for the thought that his mother was killed because she claimed she would bear Zeus' son not because Hera was mad. 

Tiresias , the blind seer, arrives and calls for Cadmus and together they, forgetting their old age, discuss joining the revelers giving praise to Dionysus, with dancing. Cadmus' grandson Pentheus, the current king of Thebes arrives and chastises them both for being dressed for the festival, he commands that the mysterious foreigner be brought to him bound and that all worshipers be arrested and bound in fetters. The guards return with Dionysus in tow and after a little discussion with Pentheus, Dionysus being very oblique and not answering questions in a straight fashion, Pentheus orders him to be bound and put in the dark of the stable. Dionysus states that Pentheus will not be able to bind him, but is seemingly bound and placed in the stable. Dionysus then causes the ground to shake and walks out. Pentheus finds him at the gate, after he attempts to attack a apparition of him and in doing so destroys the barn. 

Then a herdsman runs up and tells of what is happening with the women in the woods on the mountain and how they are dancing, have been miraculously provided with milk and wine and honey seemingly by the divine. And how when the men tried to apprehend them they went mad and after the men escaped tore their livestock limb from limb and then continue on to destroy and ravage a couple of towns.

Pentheus then enraged calls for the arming of his troop but Dionysus suggests he goes and spies on the women. Pentheus retreats to make a decision. Pentheus returns out of his mind, as the god had asked for, and with Dionysus' help dresses himself as a woman. They both exit the stage and then a messenger returns and tells the tale of Pentheus death at the hands of his mother, after he climbs a tree to see him better and is betrayed by Dionysus, the woman then tear down the tree and tear him limb from limb. His mother then mounts his head on wand and takes it back to Thebes and proceeds to order a feast for the young lion she has killed barehanded. Her father Cadmus comes to her and helps lift the madness and shows her it is the head of her son. Dionysus returns in his glory as a god and pronounces the fates of the woman of Pentheus' house and that of his father. The women are to be exiled and Cadmus and his wife are to be turned to snakes. The play ends with a comment on the ferocity of the wrath of a god.

Reflections

This is quite an interesting read it is a winding of a story/myth over something that must have taken place at some point. That is that at some point the worship of Dionysus came to Thebes from the east. It is easy as a modern reader to think of the Greek gods as a static group but this reminds us that occasionally the Greeks still borrowed gods from other areas and that their beliefs weren't entirely static. 

The story itself is the basic trope of a god scorned and getting revenge, though it does have its little bit of interesting additions and distractions. One of these is that Dionysus is in what should be his home town and yet because it is his hometown the king thinks he knows better.

It is also interesting to me that we see so much anger and wrath from Dionysus and yet he is the god of, well to borrow a phrase, sex, drugs and rock and roll. This seems to be quite diametrically opposite, yet it cannot cause to much discordance to its original audience or it would not have survived so well.

Euripides has framed Pentheus in a very stubborn and unseeing light and yet it is a bit fantastical from his point of view that a god from the east would come and basically drive half his city mad. If you knew someone died before birth would you really trust a stranger that says he's him and that he is a god? So while it is easy to put Pentheus aside from the way he is portrayed he does actually have something of a point even if he turn out to be wrong in the end.

Comparisons

This is the first time in the Greek plays a god is not automatically in a place of worship. Never before has there been a question on whether a god should have been offered to, whether it happened or not. This automatic regard for the gods says a lot about the mind set of the Greeks at the time of writing. It is not the first time we have seen a god get angry over the lack of offerings or worship for example Poseidon and the tragedy that he heaps on Odysseus in the Odyssey. 

In contrast to Ion also by Euripides where Ion is a demigod at best, where as Dionysus while also being a child of a god and a mortal woman is given the title and power of a full blown god. There seems to be no clue in the text as to why there is the difference and as it is so far the only example of godhood where as there are many examples, Achilles, Hercules and more, where they were just demigods.

Have you read The Bacchantes? If so what did you think of it?

Want to read The Bacchantes but haven't? Hopefully this inspires you to take the time to do so.
Get a copy of The Bacchantes.

Euripides, Helen; A nice ending

Ok so a bit of a disclaimer before you read this weeks post. This post is not my best work. It was written right before my hiatus, and my mental health was not good, and it shows in how terse this post is in places. So why didn't I re-write it you might ask? For two reasons that compound on each other. The first is that I read this over a year ago and do not remember the specifics; the second is that re-reading a book, especially when my lists are as long as they are, represents a time and effort cost that I'm not willing to pay in this case for reasons I have put in the post below. That being said I hope you still get something positive out of this blog post and that it is still illuminating you on the classics.

I'm enjoying getting back into the Greek plays though there is no "canon" as different stories portray the same characters in rather different lights. It is still rather interesting to see these different portrayals. Well we are officially 7 days into spring here in New Zealand but it seems no-one has told the weather. We have just bought a new car which is rather nice, but now I need to clean up the old one to sell and its really cold washing a car at the moment. 

The Story
Helen starts with Helen herself relating her woes. She is at the grave of the previous king of Egypt as a way to escape the advances of the current king of Egypt who wants her as his wife, she on the other hand wants to stay true to her Greek husband who went to Troy in search of her. She explains that it was not her that Hector stole away to Troy but that a god had sent a substitute in her place and that the Trojan war had been for nothing, well at least it had not been for her virtue.
She asks the Kings sister who is a prophetess if her husband Menelaus will ever come to find her and is told that he is coming.
Menelaus then arrives looking much worse for wear as he has been shipwrecked and is wearing only sailcloth. He inquires about seeing the king and asking for aid but is quickly dissuaded of this as the King kills all Greek men on sight. During this he reveals who he is and Helen explains to him who she is and they plot their escape.
It is decided that Menelaus will pretend to be one of his crewmen and announce his death to the King. Helen will then agree to marry the King as long as she can bury Menelaus at sea as is their, somewhat improvised, custom. The King agrees and leaves the preparation to the Greek man (secretly Menelaus). Who includes provisions and weapons as supposed offerings for the dead.
All the preparations for the mock funeral are made and the rest of Menelaus' crew get aboard and once they are out at sea they escape. When the King finds out he is furious as he has also been tricked by his sister who did not tell him of the deception. He instantly wants to kill his sister for her betrayal but is stopped by the messenger who told him of the escape. Then Dioscori appears and tells him he was never to have had Helen and that he should let her go with her husband. He then renounces his anger at his sister and at Helen.

Reflections
To be honest this whole play feels like wish fulfillment on Euripides part (which is a large part of why I didn't think it was worth re-reading). The idea that Helen had not gone to Troy and could then sail off into the sunset with her true husband undefiled seems too good to be true. And whether true or not Helen would still have come home to Greece with Menelaus, whether by recapture in Troy or by this fanciful meeting in Egypt.
Also the idea that Helen has been allowed to deny to marry the King for a long 10 years seems also a little far fetched when he is an absolute ruler. In saying that we do see her clinging to the burial of the previous King for protection so there must have at least been the threat of force.

Comparisons
This play gives a very different view of Helen than we have seen in the actions of other in the Iliad. She there is portrayed as complicit in the marrying and going with Paris to Troy and being the reason for the whole war against Troy. By contrast in this play she is portrayed as the chaste wife waiting for the return of her husband and denying herself to all others. Menelaus is also portrayed here as a rescuer but also as a schemer rather than as a warrior as we see him in the Iliad.

Have you read Helen? If so what did you think of it?

Want to read Helen but haven't? Hopefully this inspires you to take the time to do so.
Get a copy of Helen.

Augustine, City of God 1B; Why the Philosophers are wrong

First Post Back! And it's great to be here. It's currently Sunday night and I'm just reactivating all the accounts associated with this blog, mainly Email and Twitter. Just trying to get back into the swing of things. Its Fathers Day here today but that doesn't make it that much different from most Sundays, (I know the USA has a different date for Fathers Day, but at least New Zealand and Australia is today. I'm unsure if other countries have different days).

This is the second post in a series of four on Augustine's City of God, feel free to go back and read the first City of God 1A; Why the Pagans are wrong. In hindsight it possibly should have been a 22 part series but that would have taken nearly 2 years to post at one a month! And I didn't feel like getting that bogged down in one book... I will learn from the experience.

The Story

Book VI

In this book Augustine take the Roman idea (as it is published by Varro) that the religious is broken into three parts, the 'fabulous', the 'natural' and the 'civil', and piece by piece shows the folly of it.  First the 'fabulous' or that pertaining to the theater, he show that for the gods to be accepting of the offering of the theater that they must be no gods at all for the plays portray them in scathing light and without dignity for all the people to laugh at and be entertained by. He then moves on to put together a proof that the 'civil' division in fact is no different to the 'fabulous'. He shows that the offerings and rituals make as little sense as the plays as they also do not honour the gods, and that for some they require a man to be out of his mind to partake in them in the first place. He rounds this all off by pointing out that for the multitude of gods none is said to give eternal life and that it is still just the Christian or True God that gives this.

Book VII

Augustine continues with his dissection of the Roman religion by further looking into the section civil (which he has already offered proof is the same as the fabulous). He shows by various examples that Verro's explanation of the "select" gods (as he call them) is inconsistent at best and unintelligible at worst. He does so by giving various examples of how the king of the gods Janus should not be considered as king as he is not most powerful or relevant but rather that because the position of "selectness" is one of luck and fortune that fortune herself should be head of the gods.

He continues for there to explain how many gods have been ascribed supposed dominion of a given area and how Verro never finds a satisfactory argument to explain this. Augustine then concludes that the select gods can not be that great as they have their very dominions usurped by "trivial" gods.

Augustine finishes the book by turning back to what he calls true religion, that is faith in Jesus Christ, explaining the need to worship the creator not the created.

Book VIII
This book moves on from Verro to instead delve into the world of philosophy. While over the course of the book Augustine deals with a variety of schools of philosophy he pays special attention to the Platonist as he regards them as the closest to Christianity. They profess that logic dictates a singular creator god but do not go any further than this to arrive at "true" religion.
This then dovetails onto a discussion about demons, first that they can not be by there very nature the messengers of the gods as some philosophers would have it. That is to say if the gods are aloof from humanity they could not intermingle with the demons either. He then posits that even if the gods are in the gods are in the ether and, demons in the air and man in the realm of the ground, it does not follow that demons are above humans because they have no hope of doing or being good which has been established to be the basis of happiness.
Augustine ten surges on into a proof of the gods that the pagans worship especially those they make idols to, are really just demons. He even goes to quote Hermes of Egypt with his view that the man made gods are just an expression of disobedience and incorrect belief from the true God.

Book IX
Augustine continues with his discussion of the demons as mediator between man and God and again refutes it. This time he uses the example of Jesus Christ as the true mediator in that he was divine in character and mortal in body, but that even with the death of his mortal body he was bought back to life. He finds Christ a much better mediator in that his divine nature makes interrelating with God possible and fruitful but also that he understands our struggles. He also goes on to expound on how the demons react to the Christ and how it shows their depravity and incapacity for the mediation that the Platonist claim.

Book X
This book moves onto the writings of Porphyry, one of the later Platonist. Here he focuses on the soul, and its providence. This mainly consists of arguing against the ideas that the soul after death returns as a beast, as Plato himself supposed and of the idea that it returns from paradise to another human. He takes the view that for blessedness to be obtained one must know that it will be eternal so the idea of forgetting the misery of the mortal body and then desiring to return to mortal form seems both ludicrous and ill conceived.
Augustine also continues to discuss the truth of eternal life with God, and of Christ as the mediator and only way to achieve this blessedness. As well as using the final book of Part 1 to summarize the nub of his arguments.

Reflections

Book VI

It is interesting that the Romans conceptually broke down their religious practices. The 'civil' or the practices of the city are the most intriguing, it seems to acknowledge that the practice of the people differ from how the gods are worshiped in their own temples. While Augustine does not compare this directly to Christianity there is this underlying sense that Christian worship is more consistent.

The other thing of note is that even some Romans, and Augustine quotes them at length, disputed the civil and fabulous parts of the religion as unprofitable and over sensationalized.

Book VII

Augustine does a thorough job of pointing out the inconsistencies in the Roman religious pantheon. It is interesting that he chooses to use so many examples to poke not just one hole but many into the rationality of the Roman gods as a whole. He even goes so far as to go back to what Verro took as first principles and in doing so undermines his whole theory of how the pantheon both works and is constructed. From Augustine's focus on Verro I must conclude that Verro's work is both well known, widely know and well accepted in the roman public and academic sphere.

Book VIII
It is interesting to see Augustine argue from the very principles of the pagan philosophers and religious writers, that there is one true creator God and that all other gods are man made and therefor nothing more that carved images possessed by Demons. I wonder if this is the origin of the understanding that the gods of the pagans were just deceiving Demons or if this was already an established idea. It is also interesting to see, at least by reference, a pagan that understands that the pagan gods are man made and as such are a poor replacement for the true God.

Book IX
At first it seems like Augustine is going to repeat parts of the previous arguments, as he repeats some of the disputation of the idea that demons go as a mediator between the gods and man. But as he continues we see that he was just setting up a foil with which to contrast the true mediation of the Christ. In many ways he does not add a lot to his arguments other than this exposition of the mediation of Christ. Everything else of this book he has already proven in greater detail in the previous book.

Book X
Augustine in the act of summarizing the work so far spends a lot more time on the gospel of Christ than we see in previous books. His short introduction of what follows in part 2 shows that there will be a great shifting in focus from arguing against the beliefs of the world to more of a focus on Christianity, though I do not really expect to see an end to his arguments I just expect them to move to false doctrine rather than external beliefs.
It is interesting, and Augustine makes this point, that the later Platonist Porphyry, while seeming to hold Plato in high esteem, still dares to disagree entirely with his teacher on the point of what happens to human spirits after death. He seems to regard the idea that they would become the spirits of beasts to degrading and yet he posits that we come back again as humans from paradise. 
This idea of reincarnation I am used to associating with more eastern thought and religion, it makes me wonder if it was influenced by the thought coming out of the sub continent or if it was arrived at by its own means. And after a little research it seems that the answer to that very question is much debated with one side listing the similarities of the philosophers to the yogis of India and the other stating that we know where Plato traveled and it was further west not east. So I guess this one is a mystery.

Comparisons

At this point the only real comparisons to be made are with different parts of the City of God with itself. As I mentioned in the previous post on this book I have not got far enough through my BC list to have read the Philosophers being referenced by Augustine in this work. As such I look forward to reading Plato and Socrates and getting my own read on their philosophy and how it is flawed or well thought out in places.
The second half of this part seems far removed from the content of the first half which focused more on Christian thought and around what was happening in the empire at the time of its writing, while this half has been entirely focused on the religions, and I count Philosophy as one of them, of the secular Romans of the empire.

Have you read The City of God? If so what did you think of it?

Want to read The City of God but haven't? Hopefully this inspires you to take the time to do so.
Get a copy of The City of God.

Another new start

 

Hello again, to all of you who are still here. I know it has been a while, but this is a project that, while it may get put down from time to time is burnt into my brain and something I always want to come back to.

So here we go back into these crazy lists of literature, mainly ancient but intermingled with the only the slightly less ancient AD literature list. The plan is still to post the  AD literature list once a month and weekly book updates from the BC list. So tomorrow there will be a post from the AD literature list, ongoing this will be the first Monday of the month but for this first one its tomorrow.

A few changes you will notice, my husband and I have decided that due to both cost and space restrictions I am going to start working with ebook copies of these classics. This means no more pictures of the books in the blog posts as I will no longer have books to photograph. I still like to have a picture at the top of the post so you will be seeing a lot more of my owl avatar which was put together for my by my good friend and artist Anna O'Dea.

Just to update you all, my husband and I have moved to Tokoroa (New Zealand). It was sad to say good bye to Hamilton, which for both of us was our university town, in saying that, it is only a little over an hours drive and we keep finding reasons to drive back, it's something we are working on. With this move and job change my hubby is no longer driving trucks but rather planning truck loading and scheduling for his new employer.

That's about it for an update, and re-commencement. Wish me luck, I do not have as big of a buffer as I would have hoped for but at least I've finished City of God.