persuaded by Odysseus, has decided that Astyanax must be killed too, thrown off the very walls designed to protect him and to define Trojan civilization (713ff.). The scene ends with Astyanax being taken from Andromache and sent away by Talthybius with Greek soldiers. At a performance of the play at a London girls’ school I was able to watch the audience. It was clear that most if not all found the suffering unbearable.
Tony Harrison, poet and verse translator of Greek tragedy, has said: ‘I always talk about the tragic mask in Greece, because the mask has eyes that are always open, which must see everything,
and a mouth that is open, that must respond to everything.’ 30 Classical scholars have said similar things in relation to Troades . One example will suffice: ‘ Trojan Women testifies to the power of logos to help human beings to endure the unendurable.’ 31 My contention, however, is that for about an hour in performance Troades has been building up to the removal of Astyanax for execution – an
unspeakable, impossible-to-look-at and unendurable event. Real horror tends to render people speechless, as this one picture of viewers of the 9/11 disaster makes clear. At the end of the Andromache scene we – the audience – need a break. 32 And this, I believe is the function first of the chorus (759-859) the follows immediately after the abduction of Astyanax and then – in a rather more complicated way – of the agon itself. Gellie says: ‘[The agon ] is a remarkable scene. It is placed in that sickening gap between the removal of Astyanax for killing and the return of his corpse.’ 33 The tone of the agon – so different from the rest of the play – does provide necessary emotional relief; it also allows us to view the funeral of Astyanax with more equanimity than might have been possible without the agon . 34 But it is not only the fact that the agon gives us a holiday from the relentless, oppressive and depressing events elsewhere in the play; it is the manner in which it does so. I have already remarked on the incongruous appearance of Helen. But to understand how radical Euripides is being in the agon , we have to look at the famous joke. At the end of the debate, Menelaus declares that Hecuba has won and that she will take Helen back to Greece for execution. Euripides then gives us the following couplet (1049-50): 35
Ἑκ. μή νυν νεὼς σοὶ ταὐτὸν ἐσβήτω σκάφος. Μεν. τί δ᾽ ἔστι; μεῖζον βρῖθος ἢ πάροιθ᾽ ἔχει;
Hec. Don’t let her get on the same boat as you. Men. What is it? Is she heavier than before?
I am surprised at the number of scholarly attempts to prove that this is not a joke. Gregory argues that Hecuba’s worry is serious given Helen’s notorious effect on men and their eyes (891-3); she also says – extraordinarily – that overloading a ship was a real concern. 36 David Kovacs, while accepting that ‘the Helen scene is the only one that could admit a joke without terrible discomfort’ 37 , argues that classical literature is full of divine and semi-divine beings being too heavy for boats or other vehicles. I wonder why scholars are so keen to stop an audience – or a reader – from finding something funny. Funniness is surely a matter for the audience. That a joke appears in the agon should make us see the function of the scene as described above. But it also points us to a distinctive feature of Euripidean tragedy, namely, its preparedness to include the apparently inappropriate, the grotesque, the bizarre and, yes, the comic. 38 One could refer for instance 30 http://oxfordstudent.com/2013/01/24/expletive-de-leeds-ed-an-interview-with-tony-harrison/ 31 Gregory 1991: 178. 32 Seneca Troades 1110ff. gives a typically graphic account of what happens to Astyanax’s body in the fall from the walls. 33 Gellie 1986); 116. 34 For the funeral of Astyanax, see Dyson and Lee 2000. 35 On comedy and the Trojan War generally, see Wright 2007. 36 Gregory 1999-2000: 68-71. 37 Kovacs 1998: 553 38 On these features of Euripidean tragedy, see Mastronarde 1999-2000; Michelini 1987: 71ff.; Seidensticker 1978; 1982.
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