The End of Sophocles' "Electra" Calder, William M Greek, Roman and Byzantine Studies; Fall 1963; 4, 4; ProQuest pg. 213 The End of Sophocles' Electra William M. Calder III ENDS OF TRAGEDIES are peculiarly susceptible to neglect. One thinks of the Oedipus Tyrannus, for example, or of the Trachiniae: who does speak the final words? There is already a useful dis­ sertation "On Ends,"! but the subject is by no means exhausted. The exodus of Sophocles' Electra is one of the dramatist's finest efforts. The scene centers on Aegisthus, who enters alone at verse 1442. He is ego­ tistical, unfeeling, and cruel (notice especially the thrice-repeated u€ in 1445). Only in Creon of Oedipus Coloneus has Sophocles created a more complete villain. A preliminary dialogue with Electra is meant to reveal the character of Aegisthus and provides opportunity for some memorable ambiguities on the part of Electra. Then, at 1465, the central door of the scaenae frons is opened to reveal the deuter­ agonist, Orestes, and the parachoregema, Pylades, with the shrouded corpse of Clytemnestra on the ekkyklema or, as Pickard-Cambridge would prefer,2 on "a simple bier ... not any elaborate machinery." Aegisthus instructs Orestes to remove the veil and expose the corpse. Under a terrible guise of respect Orestes replies (1470-71): " , f1' Y' , " ,~" \ \ ' , aVTOS" av aUTa~' OVK Ep,OV TOO. al\l\a UOV J TO TaiJO' opav TE Ka~ 1TPOa7JYOPE'iv c/>tAwS". So the Laurentianus, approved by Kaibel and Jebb, and there is a tradition3 for the impossible c/>[AoS". Purgold's c/>{AovS", approved lately by Dain-Mazon, is preferable. Palaeographical daring is minimal. cp[AovS" is neatly parallel to TaiJO' and provides a fine chiasmus. The irony is all the better. cptAovS" is plural under the influence of the parallel 7aiJO' and because c/>{A7Jv would give all away, while cptAov would be un­ true. For Aegisthus, c/>tAovS" is the generalizing plural masculine; for 1 F. Mayerhoefer, Ober die SchlUsse der erhaltenen griechischen Tragodien (Erlangen 1908). The following editions will henceforth be cited by author's name: L. Campbell, Sophocles, edited with English Notes and Introductions, vol. II (Oxford 1881); A. Dain and P. Mazon, Sophocle, vol. II (Paris 1958); R. C. Jebb, Sophocles, the Plays and Fragments, Part VI: The Electra (Cambridge 1924); and G. Kaibel, Sophokles Elektra (Leipzig 1896). 2 A. W. Pickard-Cambridge, The Theatre of Dionysus in Athens (Oxford 1946) 110-11l. 3 cplAos 4>AL"- (Dain-Mazon). 213 214 THE END OF SOPHOCLES' ELECTRA. those that know, it means Orestes and Pylades. Aegisthus agrees: "\Vhy, you give good advice and I shall follow it." Then a problem (1472-3). au 8i, " , 1" K"' ' '\ U 1T'OV KaT OLKOV fLOL f\VTaLfl,V7JaTpa, Ka"f.t. Without argument Kaibel interpreted the words as addressed to Orestes ("verlangt er von Orest"), rather than, as regularly, to Electra .. Adams has independently revived this view.4 One is tempted. It is Orestes who answers the command. It is Orestes who reasonably would be expected to be informed on the matter, for he has just entered from the palace. Yet the emphatic use and position of at) followed immediately by antithetical 8€ imply a change of the person addressed. Is it likely that even Aegisthus would address an unknown man, presumably a companion of Orestes and a foreigner, so ab·· ruptly 7 Adams' English softens the Greek ("And you, sir, if Clytem·· nestra is perchance within, summon her"). There is no difficulty in Orestes' interrupting to answer a question put to his sister. Sophocles uses the device again in spirited dialogue at Trachiniae 431, where Lichas has addressed a question to the queen, Deianeira; but the old man rudely interrupts and answers for her. Campbell was regrettably wrong in holding at 1474 that Orestes withdraws the veil and not Aegisthus. Such an interpretation not only emasculates one of the finest scenes in Greek tragedy; it is methodo·· logically intolerable. At 1470 Aegisthus was ordered "You lift the veil. yourself." Nowhere in the text is the command either remanded or refused. A critic must not assume a stage action which contradicts the words of the text, and for which no independent evidence exists. oLpm, T{ A~vaaw; cries Aegisthus. Then, not by an answer but by two other questions, Orestes replies with the vexed TLva rP0f3E'i; T{V' &:YVO~LS'l; literally translated by Jebb, "Whom dost thou fear 7 Who is it that: thou dost not know 7" As Kaibel well observes, TLva rPof3~L; answers oLpm; TLV' &:YVO~LS'; answers TL '\~vaaw;. The problem is, to whom does the interrogative pronoun TLva refer, Clytemnestra or the speaker,. Orestes? It is normal to apply the pronoun to the queen, but Camp·· bell's contrary view deserves defense. Unhappily, he simply stated it: without argument, and after Jebb it has been uniformly discarded. Yet: it is superfluous to inquire "Do you fear Clytemnestra? Do you 4 S. M. Adams, Sophocles the Playwright (Toronto 1957) 79. WILLIAM M. CALDER III 215 not recognize her?" Of course Aegisthus recognizes her-hence his horror. It is Orestes whom he hesitates in recognizing. The antithesis between 'rL, what, and 'rLva, whom, is intentional. Tt refers easily to the neuter corpse, Ttva to a living person. David Grene's "Something you fear? Do you not know the face?" does not represent the Greek. Aegisthus' next question shows how he has interpreted Orestes' queries. "Amidst what men (TtVWV TrOT' av8pwv) have I fallen?" He does not say "What has become of my wife?" which would logically follow if he had understood Orestes as asking "Don't you recognize Clytem­ nestra?" He continues in this thought; for his next words (1479-80) are, "It can only be Orestes who addresses me," The situation recalls Trachiniae 1141-42, where Heracles, once Hyllus has mentioned the name Nessus, never thinks again ofDeianeira.5 So here, once Aegisthus sees that his wife is dead, he never thinks of her again-only of his own plight, as he confronts the avenger, Orestes. A bit of unrecorded stage action may have made Orestes' questions at 1475 clearer.6 Aegisthus may have looked at Orestes (not the corpse) when he said, "Alas, what do I see?" Or he may have put his hand to his sword and so motivated the enquiry "Whom do you fear?" Such an action would have clarified the ambiguity of our written text. The final lines of the play invite elucidation. At 1507 Orestes [o11o\\1s Aegisthus into the palace. Pylades must go in with them: as para­ choregema he is attendant on the deuteragonist, whose exit provides sufficient motivation for his own, and in the course of the play he is never on stage without Orestes. The ekkyklema presumably with­ draws. Pace Wunder, Kaibel, and recently Schadewaldt7 (who has Electra follow the three in, turn about, and close the door !), the pro­ tagonist remains on the stage. There is neither indication nor motiva­ tion for an exit. Electra did not witness the first murder and need not the second. Without ever indicating the protagonist's exit, Jebb renders ch a7TEpfL' 'ATPEWS' (1508) "0 house of Atreus" (cf Grene, "0 race of Atreus" 5 This passage is well interpreted by A. J. A. Waldock, Sophocles the Dramatist (Cambridge 1951) 88; contrast the sentimentalism ofW. C. Greene, Moira 2 (Cambridge 1948) 153 and C. H. Whitman, Sophocles (Cambridge 1951) 119 Ca fantastically gross Heracles, interested solei y in himself"). 6 lowe this suggestion to Dr B. M. W. Knox. The line would become what Denniston­ Page (on A. Ag. 1264ff) would call "one of the few places in Tragedy where the meaning of the words is obscure without visual aid; and it is not clear what stage-directions should be 5U pplied." 7 Sophokles, die 'J'ragiidiel1, ed. W. Schadewaldt (Hamburg 1963) 256. 216 THE END OF SOPHOCLES' ELECTRA and Pohlenz, "0 Atreus' Geschlecht"). If words of this meaning were recited while the protagonist was present in front of the chorus, the effect of delivery could be ludicrous. If the protagonist has exited and the stage is empty, the chorus must be supposed to address actor(s) within the stage building. So Schadewaldt, "0 Same des Atreus! Wie bist du ... hinausgelangt ... ," applying U7TEP/L' to a single person (whether Orestes or Electra we are not told), Mayerhoefer (p. 33), who specifies Orestes, or Kaibel, interpreting das Gesehwisterpaar. This would be unusual at the end of a Greek tragedy. There is a simpler solution. The protagonist remains on scene facing the chorus until 1510, the last line of the play,S and then exits alone into the palace while the chorus and fluteplayer exit down the right par ados to the asty. The motivation is simply that the play is done. It would never occur to the audience that Electra was hurrying off to watch the murder. One should render JJ U7TEP/L' , A'TPEW<;, "0 Offspring of Atreus" Cef Wilbrant's "Kind Agamemnons", possibly to avoid Same, not tolerable on the nineteenth century German stage) and re­ strict to Electra. The singular, "offspring" or "child," applied to per­ sons is common in tragedy,9 not least in Sophocles. Compare, e.g., Philoetetes 364, 582, 1066, where Neoptolemus is addressed CfJ U7TEP/L' 'AXLAAEwS'. Indeed, there is no instance in Sophocles where the voe·­ ative of u7TEp/La is applied to an actor offstage. EAW8€pLaS' (1509) is now obvious as well as effective. Earlier Electra had called herself a slave (814, 1192, cf 189ff) She is no longer. For /LOALS' I prefer Dain·· Mazon's Ii grand peine and Schadewaldt's mit Mtihe to Kaibel's end licit and ]ebb's at last.10 COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY December, 1963 8 Compare A. Wi/brandt, Sophokles' aHsgewahlte Tragodien, ed. 2 (Munich 1903) 343, who suggests that Electra remains on stage until 1510 to eavesdrop ("Electra horcht") and then collapses and writhes before Apollo's Bildsiiule. This romantic staging is curiously similar to the end of Hugo von Hofmannsthal's Blehra of 1904: see H. von Hofmannsthal, Gesam· mette Werke, vol. 5 (Berlin 1924) 178-181. The attempt of F. Ritter, Philologus 17 (1861) 430-· 431, to deny the authenticity of these last verses is not convincing. 9 The usage has recently been discovered to be epic (Hes. Cat., PIFAO 322 A 4: see J. Schwartz, Pseudo-Hesiodeia [Leiden 1960J 273), and the article in LS] must be altered accordingly. 10 I am indebted for various improvements to R. P. Becker and J. A. Coulter of Columbia University and B. M. W. Knox of The Center for Hellenic Studies.