GOFF, BARBARA E., The Shields of "Phoenissae" , Greek, Roman and Byzantine Studies, 29:2 
(1988:Summer) p.135 

The Shields of Phoenissae 

Barbara E. Goff 

T HE SHIELDS of the Argive attackers in Euripides' Phoenissae 
occupy some thirty lines (1104-40)1 at the beginning of the 
Messenger's speech describing the first inconclusive battle. De­

spite convincing attempts to meet the difficulties presented by these 
lines, wholesale excision has often been proposed as a solution.2 These 
difficulties arise not only from the apparently meaningless symbols 
described on the shields, but also from the problematic relationship of 
the scene itself to the comparable passage in Seven Against Thebes, a 
relationship that the Euripidean lines seem deliberately to obscure 
and contradict. In this paper I want to investigate some of the crucial 
ways in which the scene measures its distance from the 'original' Aes­
chylean text of the Seven, and to suggest that the Euripidean passage 
can be read as the locus of an emphatic and self-aware intertextuality, 
in that its relation to another text or texts is part of what it thus 
advertises as its meaning and as the method of deciphering it. I shall 
proceed to offer interpretations of the individual shields, arguing that 
they signify in relation not only to their Aeschylean precedents but 
also to the central concerns of the present play. 

In contrast to the passage in the Seven, the Euripidean account is 
much reduced and impoverished; by no stretch of the imagination 
does it constitute the centre of the play, as do the Aeschylean shields. 
It is true that some sort of shield scene appears to be anticipated in 
several strategic references made to shields (120, 142,251,576,796, 
1073), and more precisely by the teichoskopia and Eteocles' 
dismissive comment to Creon (751f: lJvofLa 0' (Kcl.O"TOV o,aTp,{3~ 7TOAA~ 
A€Y£LV EX8pWV 1m' aVTo,!> TEtx£O"LV Ka81JfL€VooV). But the scene is just as 
repeatedly rendered impossible, or at least unlikely, by other moves in 
the play that pre-empt its power and significance (we know all along, 
for instance, that the brothers intend to kill each other). And the 
description of the shields is robbed of any possible charge of terror or 
urgency by its postponement until the battle is over and the defeat of 

1 The text used throughout is Murray's OCT (Oxford 1913). 
2 For an account, and refutation, of the arguments for deletion, see D. J. Mastro­

narde, "Are Euripides Phoinissai 1104-1140 Interpolated?" Phoenix 32 (1978) 105-
28. 

135 



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136 THE SHIELDS OF PHOENISSAE 

their owners is known. Even more tellingly, at the end of the 
Messenger's narrative no one on stage makes any comment whatever 
on the shields. Their apparent insignificance is shared by the 
sacrificial death of Menoeceus, which is given a curiously brief notice 
at the beginning of the speech and is then forgotten until the entrance 
of Creon. 

Apart from the dislocation in chronological sequence, the main 
structural difference between the use of the shields here and in the 
Seven is the absence of a reader for their emblems, a semiotician who 
might, on the model of Eteocles, recognise and deactivate their 
threatening images. This absence is part of the persistent displace­
ment in the text of Aeschylean and epic forms;3 it is also symptomatic 
of the political situation at Thebes and a result, I would suggest, of the 
manifest inability of the men of the city-particularly Eteocles-to 
provide a central source of stable authority from which she might 
meet her foes. The Euripidean Eteocles is already acting out the terms 
of his father's curse, and the city struggles with that most extreme 
form of political irresponsibility, civil strife; this situation lends a 
grotesque irony to the Pedagogue's optimistic words in the 
teichoskopia, TO. y' EVOOV aucpaAWS EXEL '7I'OAtS (117). The bankruptcy of 
the city's strategies is further suggested by the fact that the only 
characters who act with civic responsibility are those who are 
excluded from citizenship, namely women and children. 

Eteocles can also be seen to disqualify himself as a reader of the 
shields in his first few words on entering the aY6w with his brother 
(499-502). In reply to Polyneices' claim that the word of truth is 
single and simple (469), Eteocles states that there is an irrevocable gap 
between the EPYOV and the lJvofJ.a, so that there is agreement only about 
the latter and not the former. He may also be suggesting that such 
disagreements about the meaning of words stem from material 
differences between people, in that they disagree when they share 
nothing C;fJ.OtOV or fuov (501). This would have obvious application to 
the situation between the two brothers. But having adopted this rela­
ti vistic position, Eteocles then proceeds to deny it when he produces 
definitions of Tvpavv{s (507f, 524f) and avavopla (509f) for which he 
seems to claim universal validity. He also seems to contradict his 
initial position when he says that AOYOS can accomplish everything 
that u{07}pos might (516f); this cannot happen where there is no 
agreement about the meaning ofwords.4 

3 See H. FOLEY, Ritual Irony: Poetry and Sacrifice in Euripides (Cornell 1985) 112-
32, for a full account of relations of the text to its literary predecessors. 

4 Cf Foley 122f on the positions taken in the a:ywv on language. The metaphor of 
sickness in line 472 is applied also to Oedipus and the city (66,863,877, 1097, 1171). 



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BARBARA E. GOFF 137 

The difference in chronology and the absence of Eteocles are two 
important ways in which the Euripidean shield scene both diverges 
from the Aeschylean and draws attention to that divergence. The 
same processs can be observed in the teichoskopia (103-20 I), one of 
the moments in the play that seem to foreshadow the shield scene. 
The Argive warriors, without their shields, are described in a passage 
that acknowledges its descent not only from Aeschylus but also from 
Homer, and again draws attention to the differences from these 
'originals' that constitute it. The distortion that the new play works on 
its professed models is perhaps a sign of the incommensurability of 
traditional heroic discourse with the sort of war that was engaging the 
attention of the contemporary audience, a war that had become civil 
in the sense that it had split not only Greece but even Athens.s That 
Euripides' heroes are marred by the necessity of acting in the absence 
of appropriate models has frequently been recognised; in her recent 
work on Phoenissae Foley makes productive use of Zeitlin's im­
portant article on Orestes, which she paraphrases (125f):6 

Orestes borrows frantically from a "closet of masks" belonging to 
characters in earlier poetry and drama. Through these masks Ores­
tes tries at one moment to escape from his myth, at another to 
replay familiar roles in a world that has rejected them and whose 
culture is fragmented beyond the point of recovery. The process 
expresses the hero's crisis of identity in a world without paternal 
role models. 

But Foley employs the image of the closet of masks somewhat differ­
ently in her own analysis of Phoenissae, and here I wish to return to 
Zeitlin's formulation and extend it to refer also to the late fifth­
century dramatist's crisis of representation in a world that might seem 
bereft of adequate literary 'fathers'. The absence, or distorted pres­
ence, of appropriate models can be seen not only as an image within 
the plays of Euripides but also, at least in the case of Phoenissae, as a 
condition of their writing. 

Critics have commented variously on the difficulties posed by this 
new and perverse shield scene and its resolute refusal to conform to 

5 Among discussions of the relation of the play to contemporary conditions are J. 
de Romilly, "The Phoenician Women of Euripides: Topicality in Greek Tragedy," tr. 
D. H. Orrack, Bucknell Review 15 (1967) 108-32, and E. Ebener, "Die PhOni­
zierinnen des Euripides als Spiegelbild geschichtIicher Wirklichkeit," Eirene 2 (1964) 
71-79. Language, the vehicle of representation and meaning, is often the first casualty 
of war, as Thucydides suggests in his passage on civil strife on Corcyra (3.82.4). The 
pressure of contemporary events on traditional forms and meanings might be felt 
with especial keenness in the period when Aeschylus' plays were being revived. 

6 F. Zeitlin, "The Closet of Masks: Role-playing and Myth-making in the Orestes of 
Euripides," Ramus 9 (1980) 62-77. 



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138 THE SHIELDS OF PHOENISSAE 

Aeschylean criteria. In 1979 Vidal-Naquet wrote of the scene, "Ya-t­
il un autre sens que celui d'une deconstruction systematique? Tout 
porte a croire en tous les cas que la scene des Sept formait un 
ensemble suffisamment coherent pour qu' Euripide s'acharnat a Ie 
detruire."7 In Foley's view (128), 

Attempts to interpret Euripides' description of warriors, gates and 
shields as symbolic have been notably unsuccessful, and the lack of 
significant pattern becomes a statement in itself .... the speech as a 
whole remains as teasingly inconclusive and unreadable as Amphi­
araeus' blank shield. As in the agon between the brothers, the rela­
tion between signifier and signified and between image and reality 
remains opaque and purely fortuitous. 

I suggest, on the contrary, not that the shield scene is after all quite 
evident and accessible, but that there may be a way of reading the 
shields that has a double alignment and thereby elaborates rather than 
'solves' their complexities and obscurities. On the one hand, an ob­
vious menace can be extracted from each shield-icon, but the image in 
which the menace is expressed is open to a reading that undermines 
the threat. On the other hand, the image on each shield locks it firmly 
into one or more prevailing Theban discourse, but in a way that 
threatens not so much the city's existence as the shield's autonomy. 
The overt hostility of the shields is thus compromised both by their 
unavoidable implication with Thebes and by their self-destructive 
tendencies, in a movement that perhaps can be seen as inscribing on 
each shield the internal fracturing that characterises civil war.8 

The shield of Parthenopeus, which begins the series, also stands 
outside it both because it presents an image with a discursive content 
more obvious than that of the ensuing shields, and because it presents 
a moment of Parthenopeus' own family history, the killing of the 
Calydonian Boar by his mother Atalanta. The (7rlcrrllJ.a is OZlCfLOV 

(1107), a word with a charged history throughout a play that cease­
lessly investigates the deformation of the central OtKOS and its im­
minent destruction. The OtKOS of Parthenopeus itself has a curious 
formation, as he and his mother are its sole members. Both here and 
in Aeschylus, Parthenopeus is consistently described as the son of his 
mother; his father is never mentioned. The exploitation of the moth-

7 P. Vidal-Naquet, "Les boucliers des heros," in Vemant and Vidal-Naquet, My the 
et tragedie II (Paris 1986) 115-48. 

8 Foley 128 suggests that civil strife is indicated primarily by the Potnian horses. 
She quotes Arthur's argument that the assault on the city becomes civil strife through 
the shield devices (M. B. Arthur, Euripides' 'Phoenissae' and the Politics of Justice 
[diss.Yale 1975] 132-34). 



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BARBARA E. GOFF 139 

er's image to substantiate his claim to heroic valor might again suggest 
the hero's crisis of identity in a world without paternal role models. 
And indeed the fathers in this play are all, in their several ways, 
notoriously inadequate: Creon fails his son by his lack of heroism and 
patriotism; Teiresias is blind and weak (au8(v~!; 7raT~p, 837); and 
Oedipus is blind, weak, and as absent as the father of Parthenopeus, 
locked away in his scandalous monstrosity. Only the words of the 
fathers remain to bring death on the sons, as Oedipus' curse does on 
his sons and as Teiresias' oracle does on Menoeceus. Teiresias more­
over enters with the garland that proclaims his previous responsibility 
for the sacrificial death of children in Athens (852-58).9 

Parthenopeus' shield thus discounts his father and seeks to estab­
lish a continuity of action between his mother and himself. We may 
consider this lop-sided, unbalanced oTKo!; as reflecting that of Jocasta, 
whose forced usurpation of the political scene in the face of male 
abdication then finds a less painful parallel in Atalanta's usurpation of 
the hunting function. In Thebes there is no continuity between moth­
ers and sons but rather the opposite, as is shown by the evocation of 
the stories of Antiope and Niobe, as well as of Jocasta. Jocasta's 'real' 
male descendant may be Menoeceus, who evinces her devotion to the 
family and the state, and who acknowledges her breast-milk before he 
goes to his death (986-88). 

The shield's reference to a family relation may have salutary reper­
cussions for Thebes, but the Calydonian Boar Hunt is perhaps not the 
simple sign that the shield would seem to imply. Atalanta's success on 
that expedition led to a series of intrafamilial deaths, including that of 
the youth Meleager at the hands of his mother. Further, the arrows 
that Atalanta uses may recall the curse that Antigone brings down on 
Parthenopeus when she prays to Artemis to kill him (151-53). 

Maternal love is regularly evoked in Phoenissae, not only in the 
person of Jocasta but also in more general references (338, 355f, 
1060f). Maternity, however, is complicated at Thebes by the presence 
not only of Oedipus but also ofautochthony, figured here by the Sown 
Men. Towards the end of the play the theme of YTJPOTpo</>{a arises (in 
connection with Parthenopeus at 1161 f and with the brothers at 

9 This sacrificial death leads to a famous victory (858, ICaAAtvuca ITa ITT(CP7]) in a way 
that can be seen to foreshadow that of Menoeceus. A. J. Podlecki, "Some Themes in 
Euripides' Phoinissai," TAPA 93 (1962) 355-73, explores the theme of the victory 
under the rubric Oedipus kallinikos (367-69), but does not make sufficiently clear 
how the various victories-those of Oedipus (1048, 1729), Menoecus (1059), and 
Eteocles (1253, 1374)-conspire, in the gruesome means by which they are achieved, 
to ironise one another. See also P. Vellacott, Ironic Drama: a Study of Euripides' 
Method and Meaning (Cambridge 1975) 195-98. 



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140 THE SHIELDS OF PHOENISSAE 

1436). The failure of children who die in battle to repay their parents 
for their care is a theme familiar from battle-poetry (e.g. Iliad 4.447f), 
but unlike Parthenopeus, the dying children of Thebes do manage to 
repay their parent, in the perverted terms of their city's imagery, by 
returning their blood to the earth their mother. Menoeceus has no 
mother and so can dedicate himself completely to the land that bore 
him (996); the brothers may be seen to re-enact the mutual slaughter 
of the Sown Men, described at 672-75, and so, despite their destruc­
ti ve intent, make a reparation to the earth similar in some ways to 
that of Menoeceus. 

The feminine figures that accompany Parthenopeus underline the 
equivocation of his name. Foley (118) correctly notes that the name 
does not have the same charge as in the Seven: "Parthenopeus is a 
curly-haired young man with threatening eyes, a tame version of his 
ambiguous Aeschylean predecessor." But throughout the play his 
name has resonances that deserve comment. In the Seven, Partheno­
peus carried a moveable Sphinx on his shield; in Phoenissae the 
Sphinx is herself referred to as 7Tap£JEvos (48, 806, 1023, 1042, 1730). 
7Tap£}(vELa is a 'liminal' state, full of meaning for the future, which in 
itself can be benign or terrifying, both for others and for the 7Tap6(vos 
herself (himself). 7Tap6EvEla sets the Chorus apart and fits them for 
their role in Delphi (224); but it also sets Menoeceus apart and makes 
him the only suitable victim for the opa/Cwv (942-46).10 The 7Tap6(vot 
of Thebes (among them Niobe's daughters, 159) are frequently re­
ferred to as witnesses to and sufferers from the city's history (616, 
655, 1034, 1717, 1737); this emphasis may be related to a project of 
establishing a largely female centre for the play. Teiresias is accom­
panied by a virgin daughter instead of his usual boy attendant, pre­
sumably in order to balance and accentuate the scenes between old 
man and young woman in the teichoskopia and the exodos. 11 

10 The Chorus displays in a positive and benign form all those elements that prove 
destructive to the other characters: virginity, exile, slavery, and dedication to a 
divinity. Their devotion to Delphi balances Apollo's presence elsewhere in the playas 
dispenser of threatening oracles; the defeated opalCwv at Delphi can be seen as offering 
to Thebes an image of hope as well as a galling contrast. Although their status as a 
chorus is not yet completely achieved (236, xopo~ y€vo{p.av lI.4>o~M), they celebrate 
Dionysus in a way that Antigone for instance is at the end unable to do (1754-57), 
and their dancing and singing is a constant comment on the unmusical music of Ares 
and the Sphinx (50, 785-91, 808, 1028, 1499, 1506, 1728; see also Podlecki [supra 
n.9] 369-72). At 823, again in contrast, Thebes rises to the accompaniment of 
Amphion's music. 

II Old and young of either sex are brought into constant conjunction, if not con­
frontation, by this play; the Pedagogue and Antigone, Jocasta and the Chorus (302), 
Jocasta and her sons (528-30), Creon and Eteocles (713), Teiresias and his daughter, 



GOFF, BARBARA E., The Shields of "Phoenissae" , Greek, Roman and Byzantine Studies, 29:2 
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BARBARA E. GOFF 141 

But it is with Antigone that 7Tap(}£V£ta acquires most significance. 
She leaves the 7Tap(}£vwv£s (89) first in order to look upon the enemy 
army, second (1265, 1275) in order to rush upon the very battlefield 
and attempt once more, under far more dangerous circumstances, the 
reconciliation that her mother has already failed to effect. After the 
battle Creon attempts to send her back to the 7rap{}EVwVf!l (as the 
Pedagogue did at 194) in order to await her marriage, but such pas­
sivity is no longer possible for her; instead, she has already called her 
father out of his apartments (1530-38). Deprived by her brothers' 
deaths of any plausible KVPLOS, she must both follow and lead her 
father into exile, relinquishing the customary youthful pursuits of 
dancing, cult activity, and friendship, as well as her marriage to Hae­
mon.l2 Antigone's changing relation to her state of 7Tap(}w£La is de­
ployed to chart her 'growing-up', perhaps the most fraught such tran­
sition in Greek tragedy.13 Foley notes that her act of self-sacrifice 
parallels that of Menoeceus and sees in the joint exile of Oedipus and 
Antigone a source of unambiguously positive action and rhetoric 
(141f).14 Devotion to the values of ritual and of family, she suggests, 
may save the state when its proper defenders have failed it. The plays 
of Euripides are distinguished by an abiding and sympathetic interest 
in women and the young; in Phoenissae, however, we may view their 
self-sacrifice with as much cynicism about the bankruptcy of adult 
male politics as cautious optimism for the salvation of the state. 

In addition to the complex significance of Parthenopeus and his 
shield for the other characters of the play, two further points may be 

Menoeceus and Creon (994f), Oedipus and his sons (1243, 1360), and Oedipus and 
Antigone. Given also the emphasis on relations between child and parent, we may see 
in the drama materialisations of the three terms of the Sphinx's original riddle (child, 
adult, and old man), so that of these three terms, only the first and third are left, with 
a corresponding absence of adult males. This situation obviously has political as well 
as mythical resonances. 

12 It also seems highly likely that in the face of Creon's superior power she re­
linquishes her early intention to bury Polyneices; such a failure on her part would be 
in keeping with the antiheroic temper of the playas a whole. See Foley 130 for 
discussion of this issue and for relevant bibliography. 

13 'Growing-up' is obviously not a single process but one that takes different forms 
depending on the society in which it occurs. Vidal-Naquet's work on the ephebeia and 
related rites provides us with one model: see his articles in Vernant and Vidal-Naquet 
(supra n.7) I, and in R. L. Gordon, ed., Myth, Religion, and Society (Cambridge 
1981). See also H. King, "Bound to Bleed: Artemis and Greek Women," in A. 
Cameron and A. Kuhrt, edd., Images of Women in Antiquity (London 1983) 109-27, 
and T. M. Falkner, "Coming of Age in Argos," CJ 78 (1983) 289-301. 

14 See further Foley 144f on the role of women and children (and the very old) in 
the play. She reaches the conclusion that "Their [the Chorus'] vision does not deny 
that the forces for continuity and for violent disharmony in a community are con­
tinually held in a precarious balance." 



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142 THE SHIELDS OF PHOENISSAE 

made. First, the oracle given to Adrastus likens his sons-in-law to a 
lion and a boar (411). As Tydeus appears later with a lionskin, the 
part of the boar may perhaps be assigned to Polyneices, in which case 
the death ofa boar on the first of the Argive shields does not bode well 
for the expedition. The shield can be seen to ironise itself without the 
intervention of an Eteocles. Second, the Calydonian Boar Hunt itself, 
as an expedition of massed heroes, has obvious relevance for the 
Argive force; but at the same time, it suggests the distance between 
that undertaking and this, which we have already learned to see in a 
sordid and unglamorous light. As so often in the plays of Euripides, 
one heroic myth is introduced to cast doubt on the pretentions of 
another. 

After the expenditure of interpretative labour on the shield of Par­
thenopeus, the intractably blank one of Amphiaraus appears to be a 
mute challenge to the whole enterprise. Polyneices has, in the a:ywv, 
already cast interpretative activity in a discreditable light, for it is 
only the sick, l1oLl<Os AOYOS that needs subtle interpretations and wise 
drugs, whereas the word of truth is single and simple (469-72). 
Polyneices undermines this claim, however, with the various double 
formulations he uses to describe his position: e.g. (272) 7TE7ToLOa P.EVTOL 
p.TJTpl, KOV 7TE7TOLO' Clp.a, and (357) cPpovwv EV KOV cppovwv. His father and 
his present enterprise can only be described in oxymora (377, UKOTOV 
OEOOPKWS, and 431, AV7Tpav XapLV), while at 389, speaking of his exile, 
he insists that a disjunction between word and thing is possible. 
Waging war on his own city,lS his position must necessarily be am­
bivalent, as suggested by the double meaning of a7ToAEua ('lost/de­
stroyed') in 1450. Eteocles' response to Polyneices' strictures is that 
interpretative activity is unavoidable because of the ever-present gap 
between tpyov and lJvop.a. Paradoxically, then, the point of opacity 
that is Amphiaraus' shield may in fact encourage us to persist in our 
task. 

That this is the only shield in Phoenissae identical in appearance to 
its Aeschylean antecedent should alert us to the striking contextual 
differences between the two. In the Seven, Amphiaraus follows Par­
thenopeus as he does here; but there they are fifth and sixth instead of 
first and second as here. The blank shield thus no longer performs the 
function of separating the other shields from the fateful entry of 

15 We might compare Polyneices' position to that of Alcibiades when he speaks of 
his homeland to the Spartans (Thuc. 6.92.4). 



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BARBARA E. GOFF 143 

Polyneices, nor does it establish resonances between being and seem­
ing, depth and surface, as in Aeschylus (591-94):16 

..... 5:::' ') '),.. I \.. 
u~~au OVKf~~VKVKA~. 

, \ ~ ~,' , \ \' <;' (J '\ ov yap uOKELV apLUTOS, aAA €tvaL EAEt 
t:l 8 ~ " \ ~ \ "" \ , tJa ELaV aAOKa uta 'f'PfVOS Kap~OV~EVOS 
't 'r' \ I.' \ f.)\ , f.) , 
E{; 1]S Ta KEova pAaUTaVEL poVAEVlJ-aTa. 

All such speculative activity is absent, for the shield is reduced to a 
marker between iJ{3PLS and uw<ppouvv~ (1112). In the Seven, Amphia­
raus' claim to be, rather than to seem, the best (592) threatened 
retrospectively to deprive the other shields of their meaning; the re­
fusal of the Euripidean shield to signify (which the Messenger equates 
with uwcppouvv~) anticipates the other shields and relegates them to a 
position of arrogant excess. uwcppouvv~ also characterises Amphiaraus 
in the teichoskopia, where he is implicitly contrasted with the hybris­
tic Capaneus (177, 179). He is surrounded by bloody sacrifices (ucpa­

YLa, 174, 1110), which in the teichoskopia are referred to as yfjs 
cJ)tAal~aTOt {)Oal (174), a phrase that suggests the various blood-offer­
ings made to the earth in the course of Theban history. 

The relation of the shield to the prophet himself is also different 
from that in Aeschylus. In the Seven, the emptiness of the shield's 
surface was taken as an image of the depth of the prophet's mind 
(591-94), and this mind was seen in action in his strictures on the 
other warriors. In Phoenissae, Amphiaraus has no function as a 
prophet; his censure of Polyneices is usurped by Jocasta (562-83), 
and his prophecy of his own death simply disappears. His shield is an 
image of his silence, but in place of his oracular voice, the play is 
charged with all the instances of extraordinary language that Theban 
history affords. This history is one of oracles, prophecies, curses, and 
riddles, not to mention the oxymora that are persistently used to 
characterise the Theban figures. 17 In the light of this proliferation, the 
shields can be seen as themselves a kind of riddle, but one that by the 
time of its telling has already shed its significance. 

The blank shield of Amphiaraus in Phoenissae also fails to make 
any claims for the moral status of the prophet, as opposed to that of 

16 See F. Zeitlin, Under the Sign of the Shield (Rome 1982) 155, for Amphiaraus' 
shield in the Seven. 

17 The 'extraordinary' in language as manifested in the play includes the oracles 
given to Cadmus, Laius, and Oedipus, the Sphinx's riddle, the oracle given to 
Adrastus, the prophecy of Teiresias, and Oedipus' prophecy that he will die at 
Athens. Oxymora (not to mention other word-plays) are frequent: see 250f, 377, 431, 
549,569,791,821, 1047f, 1489, 1499, 1506, 1652, 1757. 



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144 THE SHIELDS OF PHOENISSAE 

the other warriors. It does not seem important that Amphiaraus be 
seen as ajust man fallen into evil company, as Eteocles describes him 
in the Seven (597-600, 610-12). Attention is directed away from the 
attackers as individuals, so that not even Polyneices, and certainly not 
Amphiaraus, is allowed to stand out in this scene. The blank shield 
seems to underline this point exactly by being blank, abstaining from 
ontological claims or any further references. The absence of any 
differentiation among the attackers is perhaps an effect partly of their 
being constructed from different elements of their Aeschylean fore­
runners, and partly because the account of them here is bare and 
schematic in comparison with that in the Seven. In Phoenissae the 
attackers are, however, 'seen' on two different occasions, both in the 
shield scene and earlier in the teichoskopia. I would like to consider 
briefly this previous 'viewing'. 

Like the shield scene, the teichoskopia makes great demands on the 
actors' resources and the audience's imagination. There are of course 
formal differences: dialogue as opposed to narrative monologue, char­
acters with personal interests as opposed to the conventional trans­
parency of the Messenger-speech. Both depict people and objects that 
remain offstage-indeed the teichoskopia effectively keeps the at­
tackers offstage, not only by mediating our apprehension of them 
through Antigone's vision, but also by maintaining the purely female 
presence that characterises the opening of the play: Jocasta gives way 
to Antigone, who gives way to the Chorus, while even the Pedagogue 
is concerned with possible female censure (196-20 I). The single nar­
rative of Jocasta's prologue is followed by a dialogue between An­
tigone and the Pedagogue that incidentally builds up, by referring to 
features of the Theban plain, a history alternative to that which Jo­
casta delivered and one moreover in which two very different broth­
ers, Amphion and Zethus, collaborate in founding a city rather than 
in destroying it. IS 

But as its name implies, the scene is primarily concerned with sight 
and the gaze, from the possible censorious gaze of the citizens on An­
tigone (93-95) to Capaneus' threatening gaze upon the walls of 
Thebes as he measures them for scaling (180f). The Pedagogue's 
previous sighting of the attackers (96) makes possible Antigone's 
present gaze; her vision will take on greater significance when she 
must become the eyes for Oedipus. 

18 See M. B. Arthur, "The Curse of Civilization: the Choral Odes of the Phoenis­
sae," HSCP 81 (1977) 170, on the prehistory of Thebes and the hopeful contrast it 
offers to the present. 



GOFF, BARBARA E., The Shields of "Phoenissae" , Greek, Roman and Byzantine Studies, 29:2 
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BARBARA E. GOFF 145 

Critics have argued that in this scene Antigone's understanding of 
the world is shown to be derived from contemporary (i.e., fifth-cen­
tury) painting,19 and that the dialogue points up her tendency both to 
glamorise and to domesticate the scene of battle.20 But while the 
contrast between the view of war offered here and that which develops 
in the course of the play is significant, it is important to note also the 
difficulty of seeing the attackers at all. Hippomedon is said to look like 
a giant EV ypacpaLCTtV; this suggests that what is 'real' (an attacker) to 
the characters within the drama can only be comprehended by refer­
ence to what is 'fiction' (a picture) to them. Similarly this scene can 
only be approached by way of the prior fictions that are the Aes­
chylean and Homeric texts. Antigone's words express a constant 
grasping for comprehension. Hippomedon can be captured only by a 
proliferation of naming (127ff, yavpos, cpo{3£pos, YLyaVTt ... 7TPOUOP.O&-

, '" I '" • I I ) h fi h os, auupW7TOS, OVX& 7TPOU'f'0POS ap.£pL~ Y£VVQ, t at con uses as muc as 
it clarifies. The scene then plays with other possibilities of clarity or 
confusion. Tydeus is a>...>...os (three times, at 132 and 138) and P.£L~O{36.p­
{3apos, and his outlandishness vies in Antigone's eyes with his possible 
familiarity as her brother's brother-in-law. At this point (if we accept 
the lines) the explicitly Aeschylean note of the shields is introduced 
(142); then yopyos is borrowed from the description of Parthenopeus, 
and uvv OlK'!1 from the shield of Polyneices, in the Seven. After this 
literary play Polyneices appears, or rather fails to: Antigone can make 
out his shape but cannot see him uacpws (161 f). Polyneices remains 
indistinct and elusive, even though he is about to appear on stage 
before us. 

After Polyneices' failure to materialise, the last two attackers ap­
pear in more mundane guise: Amphiaraus is distinguished by his 
white chariot and his uwcppwv prowess, while Capaneus' exercise of a 
more aggressive intelligence and control brings down on his head the 
liveliest imprecations of the scene. 

This scene and the shield scene seem to me to advertise in different 
ways the difficulty of producing a set of warriors as compelling as their 
Aeschylean counterparts. This difficulty can be attributed to several 
causes. In the case of the teichoskopia, we have to take into account 
the effect of Antigone's partial (in both senses) gaze; but the analysis 
should not stop there, for turning the play over to the interventions of 
women and the young can be seen as part of a larger project of testing 
and rejecting the various available literary models. The difficulty in 

19 S. Barlow, The Imagery of Euripides (London 1971) 57-60. 
20 Foley 118. 



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146 THE SHIELDS OF PHOENISSAE 

giving an adequate account of the attackers appears to be related to 
the presence of these models, which in the conditions of late fifth­
century Athens embarrass both by their abiding authority and by their 
diminished utility. The blank shield of Amphiaraus may be seen to 
indicate this misfit between the literary models that the play draws on 
and the contemporary pressures under which it was produced, in that 
this shield most clearly evokes-and most resolutely refuses to be­
its Aeschylean predecessor. 

In contrast to the blank shield, that of Hippomedon is full of eyes, 
for it represents the monster Argus. The distribution of Argus' ubiqui­
tous sight is complex; it appears that some eyes open with the stars' 
rising and others close with their setting.21 Despite the difficulty of 
envisaging the creature, it is clear that Argus is altogether less of a 
threat than the Typhon which Hippomedon displayed in the Seven. 
Moreover, instead of a Zeus on the Theban side to confront the 
Typhon, there is another gaze to meet that of Argus: the gaze of the 
Messenger, who is able to look on the shield after its bearer is dead 
(1118). This is the only example of the containment of a shield-image 
by the kind of destructive irony that Eteocles continually displays in 
the Seven. 

As well as being locked into the predominantly Theban discourse of 
sight and blindness, light and dark,22 the shield is intimately con­
nected with Theban prehistory, in that Argus was the sometime 
guardian oflo. 10 is invoked in the early choral odes as founder of the 
connection between the Chorus and Thebes (248) and again as the 
Thebans' 7TpOJJ.~T'1/P (676, 828); at 679 her son Epaphus is called upon 
as one in a line of deities who are favourably disposed towards 
Thebes, and at 828f the birth of Epaphus and further royal descen­
dants (KaaJJ.Elwv /3a<TLAfjas) is contrasted with other Theban births 
such as that of Oedipus, the Sphinx, the Sown Men, and the city 
herself as she arose to the music of Amphion's lyre. The figure of 10 
participates in that positive evaluation of Theban prehistory which 
provides a hope for as well as a contrast to the sordid present. 23 As the 
creature of Argive Hera, Argus has a natural hostility towards the 
Theban side, but his image can be seen to set up resonances in Thebes 
that the bearer of the shield would presumably not desire. 

The shield of Tydeus displays a similar 'ignorance' of its potential 
significance. The textual difficulty here is such that it is doubtful 

21 See Mastronarde (supra n.2) 118-21. 
22 See Podlecki (supra n.9) 357-62 on the prominence of this theme. 
23 See supra n.1 7. 



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BARBARA E. GOFF 147 

whether either the lionskin or the Titan Prometheus refers to images 
on a shield, or whether one is a real skin and the other a metaphor for 
Tydeus; but since it seems unlikely that we have here another blank 
shield whose blankness nonetheless goes unremarked, I will assume 
an unproblematic association of skin and Titan with the shield.24 The 
lionskin, like the dead boar of Parthenopeus, produces inauspicious 
resonances with Adrastus' beast-oracle.2s The Prometheus is a more 
complex case. The appellation'Titan'perhaps renders him monstrous 
enough to be a suitable shield-icon for the Argive side, but a Prome­
theus-particularly a Prometheus 7Tvpf/Jopos-is first and foremost a 
culture-hero,26 and it seems unlikely that the Argives can succeed in 
so simply appropriating the figure to an entirely destructive purpose. 
This shield bears a quotation from an Aeschylean shield, but it is from 
Capaneus', not Tydeus', and it is furthermore a misquotation. Capa­
neus in the Seven displays a YVJJ-vov livopa 7TVpf/JOpov (432) rather than 
an inappropriate Prometheus, and his warrior proclaims in golden 
letters TIP~lTw 7TOALV (434), whereas the Prometheus here is described 
7TP~ITWV 7TOALV (1122). The shields of Phoenissae, in contrast to those of 
the Seven, display a marked rejection of language, either spoken or 
written; it is perhaps significant that this denial is most clearly 
enacted on a Promethean shield, since Prometheus was known as the 
inventor not only of writing but of other signifying practices such as 
divination. 27 The misuse of the image of Prometheus has repercus­
sions for the Argives later when the Thebans are enabled to win the 
battle by their 7Tp0/J-7J8la (1466), although as Foley points out, the 
Thebans' foresight brings them discredit with their victory. 

We may connect the appearance of Prometheus with the play's em­
phasis on human intelligence, an emphasis that is almost unavoidable 
in a drama that features Oedipus.28 Terms for learning, sense, and 
folly abound. Jocasta's prologue is marked by a concern with Oedi­
pus' knowledge and understanding or lack of it (33, 36, 50, 53, 59), 
and ends with an appeal to the very different wisdom of Zeus (86). 
Her interrogation of Polyneices includes remarks on the foolishness 
of those leaders under whom Polyneices had to live (393f) and on the 
wisdom of the god (414). The &.yOlV is full of claims and counter-

24 See Mastronarde (supra n.2) 122-24 on Tydeus' shield. 
25 Note that Eteocles and Polyneices are called boars and lions at 1380 and 1573; 

c1 OLOVILOL e~pn at 1296. See also Podlecki (supra n.9) 362-67. 
26 The fragments of Aeschylus' satyr-drama Prometheus Pyrkaeus indicate such a 

role for Prometheus even in this context, where he is .p(PfU/3LOS and U7rWctIOWPOS (10). 
27 For writing and divining see PV 454-58, 460f, 488-99. 
28 D. J. Conacher, "Themes in the Exodus of Euripides' Phoenissae," Phoenix 21 

(1967) 93, notes that intelligence is a theme here but does not pursue it. 



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148 THE SHIELDS OF PHOENISSAE 

claims about wisdom and intelligibility (453, 460, 495, 498f, 530, 
569, 570, 584), of which Jocasta's are the more disinterested. The 
scene between Creon and Eteocles is concerned with strategic intelli­
gence (735£), whereas that between Creon and Teiresias sets up a 
brutal economy of knowledge between the prophet, Creon, his son, 
and the city (839, 863, 866, 970). The /LOVO/LaXLa turns first on Eteo­
cles' CTt5f/lLCT/La (1408) and then on his failure of concentration (1418). 
References to Oedipus' intelligence and to the Sphinx return at the 
close of the play (1506,1612,1688,1731), while Antigone and Creon 
quarrel over the intelligence of his proclamation and her determina­
tion to follow her father (1647, 1680). The overall tone of this em­
phasis is pessimistic, in keeping with the play's reliance on ritual rath­
er than political solutions and on women and children rather than 
adult males; as she prepares to leave, Antigone laments (1 726£): 

, r,.. A I , 
OVX OPC!- ~LI(a KaKOV~, 

'~"'{3 {3 ~, I OVu a/Lu ETaL POTWV aCTVVECTLa~. 

Polyneices appears next, described as "leading in Ares" (1124)-a 
double dismantling of his claims in the Seven to be led by ~LK7J. 
Instead of ~LK7J, he displays Potnian horses that are fixed onto his 
shield and move by means of pivots from the inside (1125-27). His 
device responds to the Sphinx of Parthenopeus in Aeschylus,29 and 
each of these articulated shields might be considered as evoking the 
shield of Achilles in Iliad 18, where the field, although made of gold, 
grows black behind the moving ploughmen (548£): 

• ~\ .. I ,,, ()' I ~" 1J oE /L£AaLVET 07rLCT (V, ap7Jpo/L(V'(J o( (CPK(L 
, ,~ \~\ \Ll~ I 

XpVCTU7J 7r(P (OVCTa· TO u7J 7r(PL uav/La T(TVKTO. 

We can think of the shields with their mechanical devices as mea­
suring and displaying their distance from the divinely effortless shield 
of the 'original' epic hero. The shields of Phoenissae suggest neither 
the construction of a cosmology as in Homer30 nor the workings of a 
curse as in Aeschylus. 31 Their signification turns instead on them­
selves. The Potnian horses are an apt symbol for this inward turning, 
for their evil master Glaucus, who kept them on a diet of raw human 
flesh, was himself eventually devoured by them. 32 They suggest not 

29 But see Mastronarde (supra n.2) 124 for an argument against the articulation of 
the Aeschylean shield. 

30 As suggested by O. Taplin, "The Shield of Achilles Within the Iliad," G&R 27 
(1980) 1-21. 

31 Suggested by Zeitlin (supra n.6) and Vidal-Naquet (supra n.7). 
32 Other versions of the death of Glaucus are known, but all involve the Potnian 



GOFF, BARBARA E., The Shields of "Phoenissae" , Greek, Roman and Byzantine Studies, 29:2 
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BARBARA E. GOFF 149 

only the internecine nature of civil war but also the ultimately self­
destructive quality of the Argive enterprise. 

The similarity with the motif of the Aeschylean Parthenopeus is 
reinforced by the fact that the horses are, like the Sphinx, eaters of 
raw flesh (iVJJ.0ULTOLS, 1025). In the Seven, Parthenopeus occupied fifth 
place in the series, which is taken by Polyneices here. The remaining 
elements of the Aeschylean Sphinx motif will be displayed by Adras­
tus in seventh place, the position reserved for the Aeschylean Poly­
neices, where his entrance into the play was a matter of awe and hor­
ror. In Phoenissae we are well aware from the outset of the brothers' 
fratricidal intention, and emphasis must fall on individual effects 
other than overall tension and suspense. 

Only the last two shields figure the city itself in their imaged threat 
to it. Capaneus, a giant in the Seven (424), bears a giant on his shield, 
who instead of merely measuring the walls for scaling, as in the 
teichoskopia (181 f), has uprooted the entire city and bears it on his 
shoulders. At 1133 the Messenger adds a comment to the effect that 
the device is a suggestion of what the city will suffer. This is the first 
time that he has remarked on the shields' signifying capacities, and it 
might be thought that the shield is self-evident and the comment re­
dundant. The threat, however, can be seen to be insecure at one point, 
for the giant is described as earthborn, Y1JY£v~s (1131). Autochthony 
is a potentially double sign at Thebes as at Athens;33 the Sown Men 
can provide either a paradigm for the fratricidal zeal of Eteocles and 
Polyneices, or a model of nobility and purity that will be mobilised in 
the person of Menoeceus for the salvation of the city. 

Adrastus is left until last as the figure who advised and assisted the 
attack-foolishly, as Jocasta has said (569). The inclusion of Adrastus 
marks a return to the scheme of the Thebaid rather than to that of 
Aeschylus, who introduced Eteoclus. 34 If the function of Eteoclus is, 
as Zeitlin has suggested, to mirror and undermine the name and 
position of Eteocles,35 the absence of Eteocles necessarily entails that 
of his near-double. The shield of Adrastus is as unsuccessful as his 
advice, although it draws on both the Sphinx-motif of Parthenopeus' 

horses. See l: ad Eur. Or. 318, Servius and Probus on Verg. G. 3.267, and Paus. 
6.20.19. 

33 See N. Loraux, Les enJants d'Athena (Paris 1981) 239. 
34 See Foley 127 on Euripides' shift and the consequent disappearance of Eteoclus. 
3S Of these figures Zeitlin (supra n.6: 77) writes: "But the name of the attacker, 

Eteoklos, as a quasi-homophone of Eteocles' own name, strikes both at the security of 
Eteocles' opposite position and at the identity of his singular name." 



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150 THE SHIELDS OF PHOENISSAE 

shield in the Seven and on the snake-motifs associated with the 
Aeschylean Tydeus and Hippomedon (381, 495). Its threat is mini­
mised by the Messenger's words at 1135 and 1137; ),pacpfi here, far 
from confirming a frightening status as it does for Antigone in the 
teichoskopia (129), rather undermines it, while ' Ap),EI.OV aVX1Jp.a per­
haps suggests that the shield is only a boast, without substance. 

But the crucial point about Adrastus' shield-image is that it shows 
apaKovTES carrying from the walls children of the Cadmeans (113 7f). 
This image both recalls and replaces the Aeschylean Sphinx who 
carried but one adult Cadmean. The overt hostility of the surface 
meaning is quite obvious and needs no further comment, but the 
differences are signal, and bring the Euripidean image firmly into line 
with the specific concerns of the play. Foley (127) objects that "the 
Hydra ... has no special meaning in the Theban context," but 
apaKovTES have a significant place in the history of Thebes and in the 
scheme of Phoenissae. The Chorus recall the defeat of the apaKwv at 
Delphi, the city which is their destination and where they are due to 
become in truth a xopos, to sing and dance (232-38). Cadmus kills the 
apaKwv of Ares in order to found Thebes (657-63, cf 820)-an act 
calling for the sacrifice of Menoeceus that will save his city (931-35). 
As well as apaKovTEs, children proliferate in the play; they are perhaps 
more significant than the adult Cadmean carried by the Aeschylean 
Sphinx, since the play's only selfless actions are performed by the 
young: by Antigone and Menoeceus. Furthermore, birth, relation­
ships between the generations, parental love of children, and repay­
ment by children of parental care are all prominent issues in the play. 

The alterations to the Aeschylean image can thus be seen to estab­
lish particular resonances with the themes of the play. The affinities 
between the apaKwv and the Sphinx it replaces can be read not only on 
the shield but also throughout the play; the two are frequently linked 
by the figure of Ares. The apaKwv belongs to Ares, and the Sphinx 
shares with Ares the unmusical music emphasised by the Chorus (791, 
807). Both apaKwv and Sphinx carry off young men, and this is also an 
obvious predicate of war, Ares, itself. We might think of the Sphinx, 
the apaKwv, and the war as different manifestations of a force that 
periodically preys on Thebes; this force would undoubtedly be con­
nected to what has been called the "curse of civilization"36-the 
necessity of repeated reparation for a founding act of violence. 

The last Argive shield, then, can be seen to display a synchronic 
view of the history of Thebes, in which the single attack by the apa-

36 Arthur (supra n.lS). 



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BARBARA E. GOFF 151 

KOVT£S stands for the repeated sufferings of the Thebans at the hands of 
the original opaKwv, Sphinx, and Ares. Such a history is an obvious 
choice for representation on an enemy shield. But the changes to the 
Aeschylean image also have another tendency: they are most signifi­
cant for the bearing they have on the sacrifice of Menoeceus, the brief 
report of whose death introduces the Messenger-speech. As we have 
pointed out, the Sphinx in the Seven carried off a Cadmean, and in 
this play she is described as carrying off the children of Thebes to the 
accompanying lament of mothers and virgins (1 033f, 1042).37 The 
choral ode in which this reference is made comes directly after 
Menoeceus announces his determination to die, and it celebrates him 
as the city's second saviour, drawing a parallel between his sacrifice to 
the opaKwv and Oedipus' victorious intervention against the Sphinx. 
The Chorus also pray to have children like Menoeceus (l060f), thus 
reminding us of his youth. Hence when we hear of opaKovT£s carrying 
off children, it is hard to resist the connection with Menoeceus' 
sacrifice to the opaKwv of Ares, who has claimed his victim as the 
Sphinx claimed hers. 

If we consider the shield of Adrastus in this light, as an oblique 
representation of the sacrifice of Menoeceus, we see that the attacker 
unwittingly brings an image not of the destruction of Thebes but of its 
salvation. Critics have considered that the success of Menoeceus' 
sacrificial gesture is presented as ambiguous at best, since no claim is 
made for it after the event, and the event itself is given such brief 
notice. 38 That this salvation-if such it is-can be enacted on an 
enemy shield alerts us forcefully to the horror ofthe means whereby it 
is achieved, means such as an enemy would rejoice in. 

The shield scene ends on an intriguing note. The descriptions of the 
warriors, both here and in the teichoskopia, are supported by 'realis­
tic' accounts of how the speakers come by their knowledge; the Mes­
senger says that he sawall the shields (described precisely as objects of 
sight, Of.aJJ-ara, 1140) when he was taking a password (,vv07JJJ-a, 1140)39 
to the captains of the troops. The password is one paradigm of 
signification insofar as it consists of an arbitrary word or group of 
words that bears meaning as a result of agreement among sets of 

37 The absence here of wives is consistent with the status in the play of marriage: 
Jocasta's is grotesque, Antigone refuses hers, and even the anonymous wife of 
Polyneices is problematic (338-43). 

38 See Foley l06f on this ambiguity and the variety of critical opinion on Menoe­
ceus' success. She argues (128) that the success of his sacrifice is indicated clearly by 
the divine thunderbolt that intervenes in the battle. 

39,vv8TI/J.a signifies 'word' itself at certain points in Plato (era. 433E, Grg. 492c) 
and at Soph. Tr. 158. 



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152 THE SHIELDS OF PHOENISSAE 

people, between whom it establishes a circuit of communication. In 
contrast, the shields seem fragmented, random, motiveless signifiers, 
their meaning either impenetrable or self-defeating. The text of these 
recalcitrant, unreadable shields thus ends with an ironic flourish, as 
the Messenger in vokes the successful code that the shields fail, so 
spectacularly, to be.40 

KING'S COLLEGE, CAMBRIDGE 

May, 1988 

40 I should like to thank those who have read and commented on this paper: Pat 
Easterling, Michael Simpson, and the readers for GRBS.