"Eunaia" [Greek] at Euripides' "Hippolytus" 160 Jordan, Borimir Greek, Roman and Byzantine Studies; Jan 1, 1978; 19, 1; ProQuest pg. 75 Euvaia at Euripides' Hippo!ytus 160 Borimir Jordan I N HIS FINE COMMENTARY on Hippolytus Barrett says of the parodos (lines 121-69): "these topics are spun out over five stanzas ... with great elegance and much felicity of phrase, but no more-high poetry there is none."! Not all will agree, and many will applaud whenever Barrett rises to the defense of the ode's poetical qualities. Barrett does so on p.192, where he makes a considerable effort on behalf of lines 159-60: \ , "',. \ () , I\V7Ta£ 0 V7TEp 7Ta EWV • , '" '''' .1.' EVV(Ua OEOETa£ 'f'VXa; These lines have always been taken to mean that Phaedra is represented by the chorus as lying in bed, ill over the troubles that have befallen her. I cite several explications from the pens of the more important commentators on the play: "atque aegritudo hac orta caussa cubili illam secreto clausam tenet?" (Rataller); "aufs Bett" (Hartung); "but, confined to her bed, has she her mind engrossed with grief for her sufferings?" (Mahaffy-Bury); "she is confined to her bed" (Hadley); "dass sie also im kammerlein leidend liegt und kum­ mervoll" (Wilamowitz); "Evvala fur EV Evvfi" (Wecklein); "une douleur qui la retient au lit" (Weil).2 Barrett discusses much more fully than any of his predecessors the problems of text, grammatical construction and interpretation that this passage presents. Like all scholars before him except Beck, to whom I shall presently return, Barrett interprets Euripides as saying that "the spirit (of Phaedra) is bound fast abed." From the possible variant readings of the manuscripts Evvala. Evvala£. ~vxa. ~vxav. Barrett selects Evvala ~vxa and, construing the words with OEOETa£, 1 W. S. Barrett, ed. Euripides, Hippolytos (Oxford 1964) 192. 2 Apud L. C. Valckenaer, ed. EUripidis Tragoedia, Hippolytus (Leiden 1768) 25; J. A. Hartung, ed. Euripides' Werke III, Hippolytos (Leipzig 1848) 17; J. P. Mahaffy and J. B. Bury, edd. The Hippolytos of Euripides (London 1881) 62; W. S. Hadley, ed. The Hippolytos of Euripides (Cambridge 1889) 61; U. v. Wilamowitz-Moellendorff, ed. Euripides Hippolytos (Berlin 1891) trans!' of lines 159-60; N. Wecklein, ed. Ausgewiihlte Tragodien des Euripides (Leipzig! Berlin 1908) 36; H. Well, ed. Euripides, Hippolyte, rev. G. Dalmeyda (Paris 1914) 22. 75 76 EYNAIA AT EURIPIDES' HIPPOLYTUS 160 argues that line 160 has unity only if dvata is taken as predicative of 8l8ETaL In this he is likely to be right; but the standard interpretation of the line which he follows does not tell the whole story. Barrett is aware that this interpretation may be wide of the mark, for he takes considerable trouble to justify it and his choice of the nominative Evvata: '''is bound fast so as to be kept abed'; she is so paralysed mentally that she can do nothing but lie there in a torpor. An effec­ tive phrase, and to object that a ~vx& cannot be in bed would be petti­ fogging; ~vx& becomes almost synonymous with Ph(aedra) herself ... The Evvata of the MSS. might equally be intended as the dar. Evvata£ ••• But Evvata£ goes ill with AV1Ta£ both in word order and in sense: her being in bed belongs not with the suggested cause (Av1Ta) but with the known consequences (8l8ETa£)... her being in bed is no longer explicitly a consequence of her grief." The choice between nominative and dative presents no difficulty. As Barrett says, palaeographically either is possible, since the MSS. often represent the dative without iota-adscript or subscript; either reading can also be construed. The real problem of the line is the nature of the expression-is it literal or metaphorical? If a metaphor is intended, what is it? Now it is certainly true that earlier in the ode the chorus had mentioned a report that Phaedra remains within the palace because of an illness which keeps her in bed (lines 130-32). But may it not be the case that the phrase Evvata 8l8ETa£ ~vx& refers both to Phaedra's person lying abed and to the paralysis of her spirit that has over­ powered her upon the arrival of bad news from Crete? Paley had already noted in his remark on line 160: "the malady was rather mental than bodily,"3 and there is an interesting parallel in Plato's Phaedo (83D): OVKOVV ~v TOVTCP Tep 1T&8E£ !-'&A£cTa KaTa8EtTa£ ~vrl lJ1TO , T7 A ~'''O r' r ~ \ \ \' ., ~\ " cw!-'aTOC; .I..lWC 0"1; 7"£ EKaCTTJ TJoovTJ Ka£ I\V1TTJ WC1TEp ,/I\OV EXovca 1TpOCTJAot aVT~v 1TpOC TO cw!-'a ••. "And in this affliction, is not the soul completely tied down by the body? How so? Because each pleasure or pain nails it, so to speak, with a nail to the body ... " I intend to argue that Evvata in line 160 has the additional connota­ tion 'anchored' and that it represents a nautical metaphor which Euripides may have used deliberately to create a conscious ambiguity. The evidence for this interpretation is as follows. • F. A. Paley, ed. Euripides I (London 1872) 178. BORIMIR JORDAN 77 In both the Iliad and the Odyssey Homer uses EVV7} (-al) in the sense of 'anchor', or more precisely, 'anchor stones', with which ships anchored on open beaches and in harbors.4 An example of this procedure is the Homeric verse (e.g. II. 1.436=Od. 15.498): , N , \ liD \ \ ,,\ I , "" EK D Evvac EpaIl.OV. Ka-ra DE 7TpV/LV7JCL ED7Jcav. Here is how J. S. Morrison explains the technique that Homer describes: "the ship is moving towards the beach stern first. Out of the bows perforated stones are dropped with cables attached, known suitably as 'sleepers', and referred to elsewhere as 'holdfasts of swift ships'. Lines are then run out astern and made fast on the beach." In a note Morrison quotes from Knight's Modern Seamanship, where "a method of mooring a ship using shore lines to secure the stern and two anchors to hold the bow in position is called the 'Mediterranean Moor'."5 Although Homer's and Euripides' words are related, we cannot of course assume that they mean the same thing. However, Evvala too means anchor. It is the word for 'anchor' in the Argonautica of Apollo­ nius Rhodius, who uses it twice (1.955, 1.1277); and it also appears, in the plural, in a fragment probably belonging to the oeuvre of Callim­ achus (fr.727 Pfeiffer), where it certainly means 'anchor'. This meaning finally is guaranteed by the ancient lexica. In a gloss of the Etymologicum Magnum (s.v. €vvac) which defines €Vv~ (-al) as 'anchor', €vvala is said to have the same meaning, while Hesychius in his Lexicon (s.v. €VVaLaL) has the entry ai aYKvpaL. &7T0 'TOU €uvcf'€c8aL. Evvala, furthermore, was a good tragic word for 'anchor'. There is explicit and incontrovertible evidence for this usage. First, €vvala forms the single word of an unattributed tragic fragment (fr.adesp. 587 Nauck, quoted by Eustathius). Eustathius' gloss leaves no doubt at all as to the meaning; he says that it was a tragic word for 'anchor': E"iJVT] E"iJVala 'TpayLKwc ~ ayKvpa. As a noun €vvala occurs only here in all of extant tragedy. This fact raises the possibility-admittedly remote, but nonetheless real-that Eustathius or his source may have had precisely the present passage of Hippolytus before him when he wrote the gloss. I would also point out that as perceptive and erudite a scholar as Pfeiffer could flatly assert (in his comments on the Callim­ achean passage referred to supra) that Callimachus took the word 4 Hom. II. 1.436=Od. 15.498; II. 14.77; Od. 9.136-37. 5 J. S. Morrison and R. T. Williams, Greek Oared Ships 900-322 B.C. (Cambridge 1968) 56. 78 EYNAIA AT EURIPIDES' HIPPOLYTUS 160 from tragedy, precisely because the form Evvala, unlike the synony­ mous Evval, was not epic. For such doublets compare J48~v7J (epic) and J487Jvala (tragedy); 8vp7J (epic, common Greek) and 8vpala (Menander and in Attic inscriptions; see LS] s.v. 8vpa'ioc m). Homer himself has bh " d' , ot avaYK7J an avaYKat7J. Secondly, Euripides uses the adjective Evvaioc once again with a nautical meaning in Iphigenia in Tauris (line 432). The passage is not entirely free of difficulty,6 but the meaning of the word here is clear. The chorus speaks of rudders hissing as the ship moves through the water. The rudders (7T7J8aAta) are said to be Evvala. That is to say, the rudders are 'well-bedded', 'firmly anchored' in their grooves or row­ locks and thus keep the ship on a steady course as it sails before the wind. Keeping the meaning' anchor' in mind we may construe the passage in several ways. Reading the dative Evvalq. we can translate "because of her grief over her troubles, Phaedra's soul is bound to an anchor stone." So taken, the metaphor makes satisfactory sense: the poet is saying that Phaedra's soul is so weighed down with grief that she is paralyzed mentally and incapable of activity. We may, however, also treat Evvata as an adjective and translate "because of her grief, as it was anchoring [as it came to anchor], Phaedra's soul is bound fast," or "her soul is bound fast to her anchored grief." The poet means to say that Phaedra's soul became paralyzed with grief the moment when the ship from Crete, having reached port, dropped its anchor and the bad news was announced. Evvalq. with a nautical sense can be an adjective, as we noted above. But it really makes little difference whether we regard Evvatq. as noun or adjective, although the latter makes for a smoother construction. The dative forms of both noun and adjective were homophone so that the audience themselves could not have decided which it was when they heard the word spoken. The simplest way, perhaps, of construing the passage is Barrett's. As he points out, the word order Evvata 8E8E'Tat ifJvxa suggests that Evvala is predicate adjective with ifJvxa. The metrical cola too suggest much the same thing. Strictly speaking, Evva'ioc is neither active nor passive; the voice, as often, has to be inferred from context. Here it IOn the problems ofthis line and proposed emendations see N. Wecklein, ed. Euripidis Iphigenia Taurica (Leipzig 1848) 70, App.; I. Flagg, ed. Euripides, Iphigenia among the Taurians (New York 1889) 90; M. Platnauer, ed. Iphigenia in Tauris (Oxford 1938) 97; Morrison and Williams, op.cit. (supra n.5) 199. BORIMIR JORDAN 79 may go either with AJ7T7], 'anchoring grief', or with ,pVX~' 'anchored soul'. But in any case there is a strict cause-and-effect relationship: Phaedra has troubles because a ship has brought them, and these troubles are the reason for the paralysis of her soul. There remains to stress what is in any case obvious: Evvata with this nautical rn.eaning is particularly apt in the account of the rn.essenger's sea voyage which the chorus begin to recite at line 155. In such a context it is only natural to interpret the word as 'anchored', and in fact the eighteenth-century commentator Christian Beck recognized that this is the fundamental meaning of the word in our passage. This meaning was so self-evident to Beck that, hardly bothering to support it, he simply noted "anima illigata est ancorae moeroris ob casus adversos qui illi contigere."7 It is important for the understanding of the image to keep in mind that Evvat and eVvata are not synonymous with ayKvpa, a word which has acquired a traditional and different set of metaphorical connota­ tions. The two former words refer specifically to stones, heavy weights. Apollonius of Rhodes is explicit: Evvat7]C A{Ooc (1.955). Oppian (Hal. 3.373) has EvvacT-ryp A{(Joe. See LS] S.v. {3apJvw for the connotations of being 'weighed down' metaphorically in Greek. It is perhaps per­ tinent to call to mind the comparable 'mill stone' of the New Testa- " ~, " ~ \' ,,~ ~ 1 ~ , , ment: oc 0 av CKaVOal\tcTJ Eva TWV f'tKpwV TOVTWV TWV 7TtCTEVOVTWV EtC " .J.. 1 ,~ .. 0 ~ 1\ " " '\ ,~ Ef'E, CVf''f'EpEt aVTCfJ wa KpEf'ac TJ f'VI\OC OVLKOC 7TEpt TOV TpaX7JI\OV aVTOV Kat KaTa7TOVTLCOfj EV T0 7TEAayEt OaAacc7Jc (Matt. 18.6; cf Marc. 9.42). It should be noted too that the stone anchors designated by the terms Evvat, Evva{a were actually in common use, especially during the Bronze Age (the setting of the present passage). Numerous speci­ mens have now been recovered from the sea bottom by marine archaeologists. Some of these weigh as much as 700 kilograms; moreover, they do not at all resemble the shape of traditional anchors but are simply large stones, exactly as the image of Euripides' passage suggests.s 7 Christianus Daniel Beckius, Euripidis Tragoediae Fragmenta Epistolae ex Editione Iosuae Barnesii nunc recusa Tomus III continens Samueli Musgravii notas integras in EUripidem (Leipzig 1788) 257. Beck's interpretation is cited with approval in Euripidis Opera Omnia, ed. j. M. Duncan, III (Glasgow/London 1821) p.65 ad loco B See Honor Frost, "Anchors, the Potsherds of Marine Archaeology," in Marine Archaeol­ ogy, ed. D. J. Blackman (Colston Papers 23, Hamden [Conn.] 1973) 397-406. The connection between 'bed' and 'anchor, anchorage' is present in Latin as well. At Plaut. Cas. 557 Alee­ simus refers to his wife as a 'battleship' (navis) and says: ibo intro, ut subducam navim rusum 80 EYNAIA AT EURIPIDES' HIPPOLYTUS 160 Although one fundamental meaning of our word and the metaphor which it carries are nautical, there is no denying that themes of illness and of the sickbed are also present in the ode9-a fact which very likely (and naturally enough) led the commentators to take the adjective in its literal sense. It is quite possible, therefore, that Euripides intends a conscious ambiguity here. He has contrived to use a word which would suggest both 'bed' and 'anchor-stone', since both, after all, are appropriate and fit his purpose. Such deliberate ambiguities are not unknown elsewhere in tragedy and in Greek poetry in general; the present instance therefore would hardly be unique or even extraordinary.10 If the interpretation here offered is right, it affords a glimpse into the marvellous dramatic skill of Euripides. The speculations of the chorus in these few short lines about what ails Phaedra's soul form a miniature play within the play. In the imaginary account of the chorus Euripides has painted a vivid tableau packed with compressed and intense action. On the island of Crete an emissary of King Minos, Phaedra's father, goes aboard a ship (vavfJaTac ;7TAEVCEV). The ship straightway weighs anchor (;~OPJLoC)l1 and sets course for the harbor of Athens which "receives all seafarers gladly" (AtJLEva Ev~Etv(haTOV vaVTatc). But, unlike the ordinary sailor putting into port, the Cretan is the bearer of an ominous report (cfnlJLav 7TEJL7TWV).12 The ship drops its in pulvinaria. At Livy 21.62 pulvinarium means 'seat, couch'; if. also pulvinar 'couch, sofa, marriage bed'. In the present line from Casina, pulvinaria must refer to the berthing, securing or anchoring of the metaphorical warship. Cf also Eng!. 'berth'. used both of ships and of beds. , Line 131 vonp/# Kol'T~ (coupled with 8ll'ac. not ,pv](TJ'); line 154 Kol'Ta ~EXlwv. 10 For deliberate ambiguities in tragedy see E. R. Dodds, ed. Bacellael (Oxford 1974) ad 367; E. Fraenkel, ed. Agamemnon (Oxford 1950) ad 22, 300. 471; also ibid. III p.514 n.2 (ad Bum. 460); III p.671 n.1. See also Aesch. fr.700 (Mette); R. F. Renehan. "Conscious Ambi­ guities in Pindar and Bacchylides," GRBS 10 (1969) 218; Aesch. Agam. 438-44 with H. W. Smyth's comments in his Loeb ed. (1926). For ambiguities in comedy see the scholiast on Ar. Nub. 225 and on Ar. Vesp. 1465; M. Platnauer, Aristopllanes, Peace (Oxford 1970) ad 124-26. A nautical metaphor containing an ambiguity may possibly be present in Eur. Hee. 939-41, ef Paley's note ad loc.; and also in Soph. Phil. 271-73, ef the scholium and the comments of Webster, and Campbell and Abbott ad loco For conscious ambiguities in choral poetry see Renehan, op.cit. 11 There is no good reason for asserting, as Barrett does (op.cit. [supra n.1] 191), that in an account of a sea voyage such as this EfoPfLOC must be from 'fopl'iiv 'set forth', not from Jpl'OC 'anchorage, haven'. Besides, 'foPl'iiv too is used of ships: Thuc. 7.14.1. 11 For 4>TJI'TJ as a significant saying connected with omens. dreams and portents see LS] 1.(1) S.V. Cf R. Renehan, Greek Lexicographical Notes (Gottingen 1975) S.V. BORIMIR JORDAN 81 anchor in Mounychia-and now the poet transforms the straight­ forward, factual account of the messenger's sea voyage into an elaborate nautical image illustrating the sudden, ineluctable and grievous change which the news from Crete has brought into Phaedra's life: even as the anchor-stones are cast off binding the ship to its lllooring, Phaedra's soul too becollles bound fast and oppressed by grief. She takes to her bed, incapable of action. With one word Euripides unites two different themes running through the ode in the last line of the parodos. I may add too that €vvata corresponds to E1T).€VC€V and ;goP/LOC in lines 155-56: the departure of the ship from Crete and its arrival in Mounychia serve as boundaries for this section of the anti strophe and give it formal unity.I3 UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA, SANTA BARBARA January, 1978 18 Barrett, op.cit. (supra n.1) 191, explains why the ship first came to Mounychia. I wish to thank my colleague R. Renehan for reading a draft of this paper and offering suggestions and criticism.