Semantron 2015

the comic dressing-up scene in Bacchae (912ff.), or to the goddess of madness, Lyssa, asking whether it is quite the sensible thing to do to drive a great hero mad in Hercules Furens (857), or to the frequent references to the untidiness of Orestes’ hair in the Euripides’ play of that name ( Orestes 225-6, 387, 483). However, my main example of the inappropriate comes from Alcestis . Admetus admits that the death of his wife has taken all the joy out of his life but he consoles himself in the following way ( Alc. 348-54):

σοφῇ δὲ χειρὶ τεκτόνων δέμας τὸ σὸν εἰκασθὲν ἐν λέκτροισιν ἐκταθήσεται, ᾧ προσπεσοῦμαι καὶ περιπτύσσων χέρας ὄνομα καλῶν σὸν τὴν φίλην ἐν ἀγκάλαις δόξω γυναῖκα καίπερ οὐκ ἔχων ἔχειν. ψυχρὰν μέν, οἶμαι, τέρψιν, ἀλλ᾽ ὅμως βάρος ψυχῆς ἀπαντλοίην ἄν.

An image of you shaped by the hand of skilled craftsmen shall be laid out in my bed. I shall fall into its arms, and as I embrace it and call your name I shall imagine, though I have her not, that I hold my dear wife in my arms, a cold pleasure, to be sure, but thus I shall lighten my soul's heaviness. (Trans. David Kovacs)

Is there something a little queasy about Admetus’ attachment to his ‘cold pleasure’? Is there something ‘ludicrous in the extreme, or even disgusting’ 39 about Admetus’ use of – dare we say? – a sex toy? I think it’s a good example of the inappropriate grotesque, and I wonder whether Euripides has either developed or invented this as a category. 40 I note something similar in a late 80s film called River’s Edge (1986), directed by Tim Hunter, in which Dennis Hopper lives with a sex-doll called Ellie. To close, I wish simply to suggest that another great purveyor of the inappropriate and grotesque is Seneca himself. I give you two small examples.

First, Oedipus blinds himself ( Oedipus 965-9, 978-9):

scrutatur auidus manibus uncis lumina, radice ab ima funditus uulsos simul euoluit orbes; haeret in uacuo manus et fixa penitus unguibus lacerat cauos alte recessus luminum et inanes sinus rigat ora foedus imber et lacerum caput largum reuulsis sanguinem uenis uomit.

Second, Atreus cooks Thyestes’ children, and asks Thyestes whether he recognizes his children ( Thyestes 765-7, 770, 1059-65):

haec ueribus haerent uiscera et lentis data stillant caminis, illa flammatus latex candente aeno iactat.

stridet in ueribus iecur

et artus, corpora exanima amputans, in parua carpsi frusta et haec feruentibus demersi aenis; illa lentis ignibus

39 Beye 1959: 114. See Stieber 2007: 163-4, and 116-45 on agalmata more generally. 40 On Alcestis , see Buxton 2013: 201-18; Gregory 1991: 19-50.

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