Philia in Euripides Alcestis

Seth. L Schein

ΦIΔIA a in Euripides' AlcestisIn: Mètis. Anthropologie des mondes grecs anciens. Volume 3, n°1-2, 1988. pp. 179-206.

RésuméPhilia in Euripides 'Alcestis (pp. 179-206)Euripide dépeint fréquemment des combinaisons de rapports traditionnels et nouveaux, héroïques et quotidiens, institutionnels etsentimentaux, que dénotent les mots φίλος et φιλία. Il met en question les institutions et les valeurs traditionnelles afin d'explorerles relations humaines et d'analyser les fondements moraux des motivations et des actions humaines. Dans Alceste, il met enscène trois sortes de φιλία: le lien traditionnel d'hospitalité, les relations entre parents et enfants, et celles entre mari et femme.En explorant les différents ressorts de ces «amitiés», les obligations réciproques inhérentes à chacune, les formes de solidaritéqu'elles produisent, et leur relation -ou non-relation- avec l'action dramatique et avec le «happy end», Euripide pose le problèmede leur valeur respective.

Citer ce document / Cite this document :

Schein Seth. L. ΦIΔIA a in Euripides' Alcestis. In: Mètis. Anthropologie des mondes grecs anciens. Volume 3, n°1-2, 1988. pp.179-206.

doi : 10.3406/metis.1988.912

http://www.persee.fr/web/revues/home/prescript/article/metis_1105-2201_1988_num_3_1_912

ΦΙΛΙΑ IN EURIPIDES' ALCESTIS

In classical Greek, φιλία signifies a relation or attitude of solidarity or affection between members of the same family, community, social club - even the same business partnership or occupation. Φιλία cuts across our usual distinction between kinship and friendship. It allows, even requires, that one person think of another as someone on whom to rely and who can rely on one in turn, in contrast to those who are «outsiders», αλλότριοι, or «enemies», εχθροί. The word φιλία does not occur in Homer or in extant Greek literature before the third quarter of the fifth century, apart from three instances in the élégies of Theognis1 . Rather, the traditional word for the relationship later expressed by φιλία is φιλότης, and those who par- ticipate in such a relationship are φίλοι. The shift in the fifth century from φιλότης to φιλία as the prévalent word is contemporaneous with the in- creasing disenchantment of Greek, especially Attic, society and culture with traditional institutions and values.

One of the most distinctive features of Attic tragedy is the way the poets invite their audiences and readers to rethink traditional institutions and values by evoking contradictions among (or within) them in light of this disenchantment. In the tragic dramas, language and gesture may lose their old meanings or take on new ones that conflict with the old. Often a par- ticular word becomes, so to speak, both the arena and the object of the struggle for power in the culture between conventional and modem ways of life and thought2. To cite a familiar example, in Sophocles' Antigone,

1. Theognis, vv. 306, 600, 1102. 2. Cf. V.N. Volosinov, Marxism and the Philosophy of Language, tr. L. Matejka and

I.R. Titunik, Cambridge, Mass. and London, 1986, pp. 40-41.

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Creon and Antigone in effect compete to define the scope of the word νόμος («custom» , «law») , and their compétition is one means by which the drama throws the practices and values of the modem polis into conflict with the traditional loy alties of the f amily3 . This conflict is enhanced by the differing uses of φίλος in the mouth of each character: for Antigone, the word refers to her solidarity and loyalty to blood-kin, what Aristotle was to call ή συγγενική φιλία; while Creon speaks of being a φίλος to the state, which is a species of Aristotle's πολιτικαΐ or κοινωνικοί φιλΐαι {Ethica Nicomachea, 1161b 11-16). In a famous passage (III, 82,4) Thucydides de- scribes how, under the pressure of war, words changed their meanings to fit in with changing human values and behavior. In the case of φιλία, this development was not new after 431 B.C.E. ; it only had been catalyzed by the brutal violence of the Peloponnesian War4.

In this essay I first sketch briefly the meaning and use of φιλότης and φιλία from Homer through the fifth century. Then I discuss the transformation, or problematization, of that institution and value, and of the lan- guage in which it is expressed, in Euripides' Alcestis. I am especially con- cerned with how this play dramatizes conflicts among traditional conceptions of φιλία and calls into question ideas and values that had been prévalent in Greek society and literature at least since the time of Homer, but were changing rapidly in the third quarter of the fifth century, especially in Athens. I do not attempt a complète interprétation of the play, but I hope to show how a considération of φιλία can be one path toward such an interprétation. This essay is part of a larger work-in-progress on φιλία in Greek literature, society, and thought of the archaic and classical periods, with particular emphasis on Euripides.

It is noteworthy that Euripides is the first poet to use the word φιλία fre- quently, and that he uses φίλος and related words far more often than do Aeschylus and Sophocles5. Euripides anticipâtes New Comedy in making

3. Cf. J.-P. Vernant, «Tensions et ambiguïtés dans la tragédie grecque», in J.-P. Ver- nant et P. Vidal-Naquet, Mythe et tragédie en Grèce ancienne, Paris, 1972, pp. 34-35 (Eng. tr. , Tragedy and Myth in Ancient Greece, tr. J. Lloyd, Sussex and Atlantic High- lands, 1981, pp. 16-18).

4. U. Schmidt-Berger, PHILIA: Typologie der Freundschaft und Verwandtschaft bei Euripides, Diss. Tubingen, 1973, p. 18, notes the importance of φιλία «bereits in [Euripides'] erster uns erhaltenen Stucken aus der dreissiger Jahren, in der «Alkestis» und der «Medea» ...».

5. For example, to mention only one kind of usage, according to M. Landfester, Das griechische Nomen «phi/os» und seine Ableitungen, Spudasmata, Bd. 11, Hildesheim, 1966, pp. 49, 55, 58, Aeschylus uses φίλος as an attributive adjective 35 times, or once

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φιλία between individuals a significant motif in the action of his plays6. Re- peatedly in his dramas, φίλοι support and assist one another and intervene at their own risk for the sake of friends and family who need their aid; in many plays the idea of «salvation» (σωτηρία) is linked to such «active φιλία»7. Of course, φιλία is by no means all-powerful, nor is the salvation it aims at morally validated in a consistent way from play to play8. Rather, Euripides makes problematic the very institution and value that is central to the action of thèse plays and explores its multiple meanings and moral potential, even as he questions and redefines it. He uses φιλία (and the re- lated notion of χάρις) to explore human relationships and to investigate and evaluate «the moral basis of human action and motives in man's deal- ing with his fellow man»9.

It is by no means suprising that φιλία should be so important in the plays of Euripides or in Attic tragedy generally. In the fourteenth chapter of the Poetics, where he discusses the best kind of tragic action and situation, Aristotle remarks that «when sufferings happen among those in close family relationships, as when a brother kills his brother or a son his father, or a mother her son or a son his mother, or is about to do so, or when some other such thing is about to happen — this [is the kind of action] a poet should look for», that is, the kind that is most conducive to producing in an audience or reader through poetic imitation the proper kind of pleasure re- sulting from pity and fear (όταν δ' εν ταϊς φιλίαις έγγένηται τα πάθη, οίον ή αδελφός άδελφόν ή υιός πατέρα ή μήτηρ υίόν ή υίός μητέρα άποκτεΐνη ή μέλλη ή τι άλλο τοιούτον δρα, ταϋτα ζητητέον, 1453b 19-22). Thus φιλία, as G. Eise has said, is «the gênerai basis of the tragic quality of the pathos»1®. Earlier, in Chapter 11, Aristotle defines άναγνώρισις («récognition»), a crucial means of producing the correct tragic effect, as «a change from ignorance to knowledge, [pointing] either to a state of close, Personal ties [family relationships] or to one of enmity» (άναγνώρισις δε,

every 230 verses; Sophocles 30 times, or once every 330 verses; Euripides 130 times, or once every 190 verses.

6. F. Léo, Plautinische Forschungen zur Kritik und Geschichte2, Berlin, 1912, pp. 126-27.

7. Cf. W. Zurcher, Die Darstellung des Menschen irn Drama des Euripides, Schweizerische Beitràge zur Altertumswissenschaft , 2, Basel, 1947, pp. 154-56; A. Gar- zya, Pensiero e tecnica drammatica in Euripide, Naples, 1962, pp. 30, 33, 80, 111-13, 171; Garzya coins the phrase «amicizia attiva».

8. A. Garzya (n. 7), p. 183. 9. S. F. Scully, Φιλία and Χάρις in Euripidean Tragedy, Diss., Toronto, 1973, p. 44. 10. G. Else, Aristotle' s Poetics: The Argument , Cambridge, Mass., 1957, p. 414.

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... έξ άγνοιας εις γνώσιν μεταβολή, ή εις φιλίαν ή εις εχθραν ..., 1452a 30)11. Thèse two passages should be taken together with the comment in Chapter 13, which is borne out by our surviving plays, that «the finest tragédies hâve been composed around a few families» (... περί ολίγας οικίας αί κάλλισται τραγωδΐαι συντίθενται, 1453a 19), and that Euripides, because of the way he arranges the actions and sufferings of thèse families to end in a change to misfortune, appears [to audiences] «the most tragic of poets» (τραγικώτατός γε των ποιητών, 1453a 29-30) , the best at producing the tragic émotions and the proper pleasure resulting from them. The change referred to in Chapter 1 1 , the change in a character «from ignorance to knowledge, [pointing] . . . to a state of close, personal ties», is itself often a large part of what makes a tragedy end in misfortune. It is no accident that a révélation of a situation of enmity or unrelatedness rarely oc- curs in the extant dramas, or that, when such a révélation does occur, the enmity is between those who naturally should be φίλοι; on the other hand, a change to knowledge of a relationship of φιλία is common, and such a révélation in effect produces the tragedy.

In Homer, those bound by «a part concluded in the name oiphilotes» are conceived of as «committed to a reciprocity of services which constitute 'hospitality'»12. Such a pact is not only a contract based on an exchange of goods and servises; it is also «conceived as an act committing the good faith (πΐστις) of the contracting parties»13, and normally it is accompanied by the ritual gesture of one party taking with his right hand the right hand of the other, and often by both parties solemnly taking an oath over a sacrifi- cial victim to abide by the terms of the pact14. In numerous texts from

11. Hère and elsewhere I adapt G. Else's translations. 12. E. Benveniste, Le vocabulaire des institutions indo-européennes, I, Paris, 1969,

p. 341 {Indo-European Language and Society, tr. E. Palmer, Miami Linguistics Séries, 12, Coral Gables, 1973, p. 278).

13. J. Taillardat, «ΦΙΛΟΤΗΣ, ΠΙΣΤΙΣ et FOEDUS», Revue des études grecques, 95, 1982, p. 4.

14. J. Taillardat (n. 13), pp. 2-5. This ritual was maintained throughout the classical period; J. Taillardat (p. 2) refers, for example, to Aischines, Against Ktesiphon, 224: τήν δεξιαν ένέβαλες άνδρα φΐλον και ξένον ποιούμενος («You gave your right hand, making the man a philos and a guest-friend»). On the ritual and language of friendship, see now G. Herman, Ritualised Friendship and the Greek City, Cambridge, 1987, pp. 44-72, esp. 44-54.

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Homer through the classical period, the language of φιλότης and φιλία is closely associated with the language of «trust» and «good faith» (πΐστις, πεποιθέναι). In fact, the syntagmatic and contextual association of thèse groups of words is so common that J. Taillardat proposed an etymological connection between them15. This may or may not be correct; the etymol- ogy of φίλος has been much debated16. But Taillardat is certainly right to emphasize the close connection between the language of friendship and that of faith, and, as he says, one can easily understand how in Homer φιλότης is used of ail kinds of pacts -military, social, and sexual- not only for those of hospitality and friendship17.

It is noteworthy, too, that in the archaic and classical periods, φιλότης / φιλία and πΐστις also tend to be associated contextually with other words denoting reciprocal relationships, such as χάρις, meaning both a «favor» done by one person for another and the feeling of «gratitude» which in- spired that favor or was inspired by it, and αιδώς, usually translated as «shame» or «respect», «an émotion provoked by one's perception of one's place in the social structure and of the obligations which accompany that place»18. Αιδώς is a psychological phenomenon, a state of awareness or consciousness, while φιλότης / φιλία refers to an exterior fact, a social

15. J. Taillardat (n. 13), pp. 4-9. 16. On proposed etymologies of φίλος, see M. Landfester (n. 5), pp. 34-41; E. Ben-

veniste (n. 12). pp. 338-40 (Eng. tr., pp. 275-77); J. Taillardat (n. 13), pp. 9-13; E.P. ïîarnp. «ΦΙΛΟΣ», Bulletin de la société de linguistique de Paris, 77, 1982, pp. 251-62; J. Hooker, «Homeric φίλος», Glotta, 65, 1987, pp. 44-65, esp. 45-47.

17. J. Taillardat (n. 13), pp. 11-12. Recently J. Hooker (n. 16) has criticized the «in- stitutional» emphasis of E. Benveniste (and J. Taillardat) as grounded in «excessive re- liance on theory and insufficient attention to context» (p. 51). J. Hooker argues that «the primary meaning of φίλος» is «that of denoting affection between two individuals ...». The «institutional» use of the word, he asserts, «emerged from the primary meaning in order to express certain concepts important in Homeric society» (p. 63). Not ail of J. Hooker's criticism of E. Benveniste is well-founded, but his emphasis on φίλος having undergone «a change of meaning during the course of the epic tradition» (p. 64) is salu- tary in its understanding of the poets' rôle in transforming diction and formulas in accor- dance with the distinctive thèmes and values of their poems.

18. J.M. Redfield, Nature and Culture in the Iliad: The Tragedy ο f Hector, Chicago and London, 1975, p. 118. On contextual and formulaic associations of φιλότης, φίλος, φιλεΐν and αιδώς, αιδοΐος, αιδεΐσθαι in Homer, see S.L. Schein, «H φιλία στην Ιλιάδα και στην Οδύσσεια,» in Ιλιάδα και Οδύσσεια: Μύθος και Ιστορία. Από τα Πρακτικά του Δ 'Συνεδρίου για την Οδύσσεια (9-1 5 Σεπτεμβρίου 1984), Ιθάκη, 1986, pp. 131-32, draw- ing on G. Glotz, La solidarité de la famille dans le droit criminel en Grèce, Paris, 1904 (repr. New York, 1973), pp. 138-39.

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condition19. But both words are used of the same persons in référence to the same type of relationship. «Ail those who are united by reciprocal duties of αιδώς are called φίλοι», and both αιδώς and φιλότης / φιλία involve actions and sentiments proper to members of a limited group such as a family or community20.

In Greek popular thought of the archaic and classical periods, the most highly valued of such actions and sentiments is «to help friends and harm enemies». Doubts, uncertainties, criticism, and re-evaluation of this ethic appear in fifth-century and fourth-century texts and are implicit already in the Iliad's critical attitude toward traditional heroic values21. But the standard sensé of φιλία is still reflected, for example, in Xenophon's account of Socrates' discussion of the topic in Memorabilia, II, 4-10 and Isokrates' Ad Demonicum, 24-2622. This traditional value implies a fundamentally instrumental notion of φιλία: a φίλος was someone who could and did help you to gain some advantage, profit, or power, as well as one to whom you could and did give similar assistance. Such an instrumental notion is explicit or implicit in numerous passages of the orators and comic poets, who reflect popular morality and repeatedly suggest that the main motives

19. G. Glotz (n. 18), pp. 138-39· 20. G. Glotz (n. 18), p. 138; Benveniste (n. 12), p. 341 (Eng. tr., p. 278). It isstrange

that hère and elsewere in his chapter on φίλος, Benveniste does not refer to Glotz's book, which he clearly uses and sometimes even takes over Verbatim.

21. See, e.g., L. Pearson, Popular Ethics in Ancient Greeœ, Stanford, 1962; M.W. Blundell, Sophocles: An Ethical Approach. A StudyofElectra, Philoctetes and Oedipus at Colonus, Diss., University of California, Berkeley (Berkeley 1984), pp. 27-46. A.W.H. Adkins, in Merit and ResponsibiJity, Oxford, 1960, «'Friendship' and 'Self-Suf- ficiency' in Homer and Aristotle», Classical Quarterly, N.S. 13, 1963, pp. 30-45, and «Basic Greek Values in Euripides' Hecuba and Hercules Furens», Classical Quarterly, N.S. 16, 1966, pp. 193-219, insists on the continuityof this Homeric value and other values related to φιλία, and dénies that there is any significant criticism or re-evaluation of them in the classical period. But Adkins' literal-minded overreliance on the interprétation of individual words, considered in isolation from their dramatic contexts, vitiates his discussions of literaty texts. See the sound methodological criticism by S. F. Scully (n. 9), pp. 143-55.

22. See, e.g., Xenophon, Memorabilia, II, 6, 35, where Socrates tells Kritoboulos: ...εγνωκας ανδρός αρετή ν είναι νικαν τους μέν φίλους εϋ ποιοϋντα, τους δ' εχθρούς κακώς ... («You hâve realized that a man's virtue is to conquer his friends in kindness and his enemies in harm ...»); Isokrates, Ad Demonicum, 26: ομοίως αίσχρόν είναι νόμιζε των έχθρων νικασθαι ταΐς κακοποιΐαις, καί των φίλων ήττασθαι ταΐς εύεργεσίαις («Consider that it is equally shameful to be conquered by your enemies in doing harm and to be worsted by your friends in kindnesses»).

ΦΙΛΙΑ IN EURIPIDES' ALCESTIS 185

of φιλία are coopération in gaining économie and social advantages, assistance in taking vengeance on personal enemies, and protection in case of économie, légal, or other trouble23.

The word φιλία, which is so much rarer through the third quarter of the fifth century than φιλότης, seems to hâve been used especially of instrumental «friendship» or alliance in a specifically political contact. This is true of its earliest occurrences (as Ionic φιλίη) in the poetry of Theognis, who uses the traditional word φιλότης to dénote a more personal «friendship» or «affection». At vv. 600 and 1102, Theognis has ημέτερη ν φιλίην as the object, respectively, of κλέπτω and προλεΐπω, in accusations that his addressee has betrayed what originally was a reciprocal, clearly political «friendship». The first of thèse passages is particularly forceful24: Theognis refers to the addressee as an «enemy» (εχθρέ), «faithless to human beings» (άνθρώποισιν άπιστε), «you who had a cold, spotted snake in your bosom» (ψυχρόν ος έν κόλπω ποικίλον είχες όφιν, νν. 601- 602). "Απιστος, «faithless», asTaillardathasshown, is virtually a technical term for one who is not engaged in a relationship of φιλία, and εχθρέ, «enemy», is the proper antonym to φίλος and a vox propria for one who has deceived or «stolen» (κλεπτών) «our friendship». The word ποικίλον, used traditionalîy of a snake25, often suggests sornething which is superfi- cially attractive but fundamentally false or misleading26; hère it is felt as applying to the addressee, whose betrayal is snake-like in its quality of coming from ambush, as a surprise (cf. Iliad, III, 33-35).

In another passage, at vv. 305-308, Theognis speaks of «bad men», that is, his political opponents, as «not entirely bad from [the time they came out of] the [mother's] belly, / but with bad men putting together a friendship-alliance / they learned cowardly deeds and abusive words and wanton violence, / expecting that ail those men say is true» (οί κακοί ού πάντως κακοί έκ γαστρός γεγάασιν, / άλλ' άνδρεσσι κακοΐς συνθεμένοι φιλίην / έργα τε δείλ' εμαθον και επη δύσφημα καί ΰβριν, / έλπόμενοι κείνους πάντα λέγειν ετυμα). At ν. 824 Theognis again uses συνθεμένος of

23. See K.J. Dover, Greek Popular Morality in the Age of Plato and Artistotle , Oxford, 1974, pp. 180-84, 276-78, 304-306.

24. See B.A. van Groningen, Theognis. Le premier livre, Amsterdam, 1966, p. 239 on 600.

25. E.g. Hesiod, Theogony, 300 (where the manuscripts' ποικίλον is usually emended to αϊολον, after Scheer); Pindar, Pythian, VIII, 46.

26. B.A. van Groningen (n. 24), p. 239; cf. F. Frontisi-Ducroux, Dédale: Mythologie de Γ artisan en Grèce ancienne, Paris, 1975, pp. 69-71.

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«agreeing to an oath [in the name] of the gods», and undoubtedly implies the same sort of sworn loyalty that constitutes a political friendship27. His language is paralleled by that of the fifth-century historians and in sixth - and fifth- century treaties between city-states. For example, like Theognis at vv. 305 and 824, Herodotos uses συντΐθημι in the middle voice of states agreeing to a millitary alliance (as at II, 181, VIII, 140), and this earliest of prose authors to use the word φιλία (φιλΐη) does so only in the sensé of a «national friendship» or in international, explicitly military or political contexts of alliance28. Similarly, a treaty of 422 between the Athenians and the Bottiaians includes a sentence stating that «the names of those Bot- tiaian cities which put together the friendship and the alliance» (τα όν[ό]ματα τον πόλεον τον Βοττιαίον τον χσυντιθεμένον τέν φιλΐα[ν και τέν χσυμμαχΐαν]) are to be inscribed on a stèle29.

The words φιλότης and φιλία, with or without συμμαχία, are used in normal diplomatie language from the mid-sixth century on. Thus, in a treaty between Sybaris and the Serdaioi, dating from c. 550-525, «The Sybarites and their allies and the Serdaioi made an agreement for friendship faithful and without guile forever» (άρμόχθεν οι Συβαρΐ- / ται κ' οι σύν- μαχοι κ' οι / Σερδαιοι επί φιλότατ- / 1 πιστάι κ' άδολοι άε / ίδιον)30. A treaty of c. 550 speaks of a «friendship for fifty years» (φιλΐαν πεντήκοντα Ρετέα) between the Anaitoi and the Metapoi (whoever they may hâve been)31. The beginning of a treaty between Athens and Egesta, perhaps from 458-57, may speak of the «friendship and alliance of the Athenians, and the Egestaians» ([φιλία και χσυνμαχΐα Άθεναΐον και] Έγεσταΐ[ον]), though the restoration is uncertain32, and a treaty between Athens and Carthage from 406 also may hâve contained the phrase φιλΐαν και χσυμμαχΐαν, «friendship and alliance»33. A treaty of 393 berween Amyntas III

27. B.A. van Groningen (n. 24), p. 315 on vv. 823-24. 28. See J.E. Powell, A Lexicon toHerodotus, Cambridge, 1938, p. 373, s.vv. φιλΐη

and φίλιος. Cf. F. Dirlmeier, ΦΙΛΟΣ und ΦΙΛΙΑ im vorhellenistischen Griechentum , Diss. Munich, 1931, p. 34.

29. H. Bengtson, Die Staatsvertrâge des Altertums, Bd. II, Munich, 1962, p. 114, unes 24-25.

30. R. Meiggs and D. Lewis, A Sélection ofGreek Historical Inscriptions to the End of the Fifth Century B.C. , Oxford, 1969, pp. 18-19, n° 10. For έπί with the dative, J. Tail- lardat (n. 13), p. 5 n. 18, refers to the Homeric Hymn to Hermès, 524.

31. H. Bengtson (n. 29), p. 10, n° 111, lines 2-3. 32. R. Meiggs and D. Lewis (n. 30), pp. 80-82, n°37, line 1; H. Bengtson (n. 29), pp.

41-42, n° 139, linel. 33. R. Meiggs and D. Lewis (n. 30), pp. 280-81, n° 92. Merritt's restoration in line 11

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and the Chalkidians says, «... [neither] Amyntas nor the Chalkidians shall make friendship apart from each other with the Amphipolitai, the Bot- tiaioi, the Akanthioi, [or] the Mendaioi» (προς Άμφιπολΐτας, Βοτ- τιαίους, Άκανθίους, Μενδαΐους μη π[οιεΐ] / [σθ]αι φιλΐαν Άμύνταμ μηδέ Χαλκιδ[έας] / [χωρί]ς έκατέρους)34. Finally, a treaty between Athens and Chios from 384 speaks of «the peace and the friendship / and the oaths and the présent compacts» (την ε[ιρή νην και την φι]λΐαν / και τός όρκος και [τας όσας συνθήκα]ς, 9-10; cf. τήν έρήνην κα[ι τό]ς όρκος και τας σ[υνθ]ή[κ]ας [τ]ας νϋ[ν] ό[σας], 18-19; this treaty begins with the word [Σ]υ[μ]μαχ[ί]α)35.

In addition to this epigrarhical évidence, Thucydides regularly speaks of «friendship and alliance», φιλία και ξυμμαχία, when he reports alliances between city-states (for example, VII, 33, 4), though he sometimes varies the formula by using φιλία alone (for example, VI, 75, 3) or ξυμμαχία alone (III, 86, 3) , or by specifying a truce (αί σπονδαί) and oaths (οί όρκοι) (for example, V, 47, 11, VIII, 37)36. The same formulas are used by later historians including Polybios, Plutarch, and Diodorus Siculus.

It is difficult to be sure precisely what φιλία means in thèse treaties of truce or alliance. Sometimes it is specified that the two parties to the compact are to hâve the same friends and enemies and to help one another with troops or money. But on other occasions, the obligations of φιλία, espe- cially when used alone, without συμμαχία, are not specified, and «friendship» may mean no more than it does when used nowadays, in a vague sensé, of alliances between states which stay out of one another 's way and do not interfère with each other's policies. In any event, on the basis of the epigraphical évidence and Thucydidean usage, F. Dirlmeier concluded that φιλία was the preferred word in Attic prose for «political

is judged «not unattractive» by Meiggs and Lewis, p. 281, and «weithin hypothetisch» by Bengtson, p. 151.

34. H. Bengtson (n. 29), p. 179, n°231, Unes 18-21. 35. H. Bengtson (n. 29), p. 196, n° 248. 36. W.M. Calder III, The Inscription from Temple G at Selinus, Greek, Roman and

Byzantine Monographs, 4, Duke University, 1963, pp. 35-36, notes that 11 of Thucydides' 26 uses of the word φιλία refer to «amicable relations between states»: six in narrative passages (II, 2, 4; II, 92; V, 5, 1; VI, 75, 3; VI, 88, 6; VIII, 7, 1) and five in speeches (III, 12 [twice], IV, 19, 1; IV, 20, 2; VI, 34, 1; VI, 78, 1). Andocides, III, 28-29 (written c. 391) reports a treaty between Athens and the Persian King Dareios II, speak- ing of the two parties as «having made a truce and put together friendship for ail time» (σπονδας ποιησάμενον και συνθεμένοι φιλίαν εις τον άπαντα χρόνον).

188 SETH SCHEIN

friendship / alliance» (and that it was taken over by Herodotos along with other Atticisms in his style and diction)37.

Φιλία between states probably originated as guest-friendship (ξενία) and developed prior to the rise of the polis «in a religious context which was that of themis [and] in a social context which was that of the family or oikos»3g. Just as ξενία «could only be concluded between persons of an équivalent condition», because it involved reciprocal obligations, so, in principle, an agreement of φιλία between city-states assumed an equality of power and status between the sovereign communities which it joined (though often, in reality, this assumption was a fiction)39. Like traditional friendships between individuals, alliances between states were commit- ments of good faith, often accompanied by oaths. In perhaps the earliest extant treaty, that between the Sybarites and the Serdaioi which I hâve mentioned, Zeus, Apollo, and the other gods, and the city-state Poseidonia, are involved as «guarantors» (πρόξενοι)40, and in many other treaties, such as those between Athens and Colophon (447-46?), Athens and Chalkis (446-45), Athens and Samos (439-38), Athens and Leontini (433-32), and Athens and the Bottiaians, oaths are expressly mentioned41. In addition, the fréquent spécification that the contracting parties will be «faithful» (πιστοί) and «without treachery» (άδολοι) is a sign that friendship-alliances between city-states were modelled on, or at least parallel to, those between individuals42.

The political significance of φιλία in relations between city-states is paralleled by the importance of φιλία within communities. W.R. Connor

37. F. Dirlmeier (n. 28), p. 34. 38. P. Gauthier, Symbola: Les étrangers et la justice dans les cités grecques, Annales

de Γ Est, Mémoire n° 42, Nancy, 1972, p. 23. 39. P. Gauthier (n. 38), p. 22. 40. See R. Meiggs and D. Lewis (n. 30), p. 19, on the meaning of πρόξενοι. 41. Cf. H. Bengtson (n. 29), pp. 113-15, n° 187. 42. Cf. Herodotos, I, 69, 1-3, on a treaty between Kroisos and the Spartans: Kroisos'

messenger speaks of the King as «wanting to become a friend and ally, and without treachery and deceit» (φίλος τε θέλων γενέσθαι και σύμμαχος άνευ τε δόλου και απάτης), while the Spartans «rejoiced at the arrivai of the Lydians and made oaths con- cerning guest-friendship and alliance» (Λακεδαιμόνιοι... ήσΟησάν τε τη απίξι των Λυδών και έποιήσαντο όρκια ξεινίης πέρι και συμμαχίης). G. Herman (n. 14), passim, illustrâtes parallels between individual friendships and alliances between communities from the time of Homer through the Hellenistic period. He shows how the rituals of friendship used by Homeric heroes remained the same after the rise of the polis, but its substance changed with the changed fabric of social and économie relations (p. 72).

ΦΙΛΙΑ IN EURIPIDES1 ALCESTIS 189

has demonstrated that until t)ie final third of the fifth century, politics in Athens had been «built on an elaborate complex of friendship ties» among leading citizens and groups with which they were connected43. Member- ship in the social and political clubs known as έταιρεΐαι, descent from prominent or wealthy families, and marriage connections between thèse families were particularly important in this System of political friendship. Connor has shown that gradually, «in the lifetime of Cleon» (roughly the third quarter of the fifth century), the old form of politics broke down and a «new pattern emerge[d] which emphasized mass alliances and direct ap- peals [by leading politicians] to [the] many citizens who formerly had little say in the affairs of the city». As a resuit of this «new politics», there ap- pears to hâve been a tendency among the traditional political élite, who called themselves οί χρηστοί, «to withdraw from politics into private cir- cles of like-minded friends». Although, as Connor notes, this was an es- sentially apolitical reaction, one paradoxical resuit was a «recrudescence of philia» in the political sensé of the term; for the clubs to which the χρηστοί withdrew in some cases became the συνωμοσίαι which overthrew the democracy in the coup d'État of 41 1 and were themselves overthrown a year later. In other cases, it appears that the χρηστοί, «repelled, annoyed, disaffected», remained apart from politics and cultivated private, substi- tute gratifications, including apolitical friendships. Plato and his folio wers are often thought to hâve acted similarly in analogous circumstances a décade or two later44.

43. W.R. Connor, The New Politicians of Fifth Century Athens, Princeton, 1971, p. 194. In this paragraph I follow closely and quote from pp. 194-98 of Connor's illuminat- ing book.

44. Cf. W. Jaeger, «Aristotle's Verses in Praise of Plato», Classical Quarterly, 21, 1927, p. 14: Plato's school was based on the loftiest friendship between master and pupils, who were affectionately termed φίλοι». The famous fragment of an elegy by Aristotle, n° 673 in M.L. West, Iambi et Elegi Graeci an te Alexandrum Cantati, II, Oxford, 1972, pp. 44-45, speaks of someone who, «having corne to the glorious ground of Kekropia / piously founded an altar of revered friendship / of a man [se. Plato] whom it is lawful for bad men not even to praise, / who was the first or only man of mortals to show clearly / both by his own, private life and by the system of his writings / how a man be- comes at the same time both happy and good ...» (έλθών δ' ές κλεινόν Κεκροπίης δάπε- δον / εύσεβέως σεμνής φιλίης ίδρύσατο βωμόν / ανδρός ον ούδ' αινεΐν τοΐσι κακοΐσι θέμις, / ος μόνος ή πρώτος θνητών κατέδειξεν έναργώς / οΐκείψ τε βίω και μεθόδοισι λόγων / ώς αγαθός τε και ευδαίμων άμα γίνεται άνήρ- ...). A.J. Festugière, La révélation d'Hermès Trismégiste , II2, Paris, 1949, p. 220, remarks that this might mean «an altar of the Φιλίη of which Plato, at the Academy, had been the living example», or «an altar of the Φιλίη which united his disciples». On the identity of the man who, «having corne to

190 SETH SCHEIN

As distinctions became increasingly clear-cut between family and community, private and public identity, φιλία became more and more a matter of inner feelings and dispositions and a focus of conflicts between indi- vidual, family, and community loyalties. This shift in the meaning of φιλία is perhaps one example of the way in which, according to Thucydides (III, 82, 4), the meanings of words were changing to fit in with changing judg- ments of what was socially and morally right or acceptable. The educa- tional reforms and social attitudes associated with the Sophists and the violent pressures of the Peloponnesian War intensified thèse conflicts and clarified the contradictions between such traditional institutions and values as aristocratie, political φιλία and changing, modem realities45. Such conflicts and contradictions were, of course, one of the central problems addressed by fifth-century Attic tragedy, especially the dramas of Euripides, who, as I hâve said, is the first poet to use the word φιλία fre- quently and to make the topic a central thème in his plays46.

In Alcestis, Euripides depicts a mixture of traditional and new, heroic and everyday, institutional and sentimental relationships denoted by the words φίλος and φιλία. He brings out contradictions among thèse relationships, thus making them and their ethical value problematic. He challenges his audiences of 438 (and readers of ail eras) to retain or to achieve a clear moral vision in the midst of conflicting manifestations of φιλία in the world of the play47. Thèse manifestations are of three major

the glorious ground of Kekropia, piously founded [the] altar of revered friendship», see I. Diiring, Aristotlein the Ancient Biographical Tradition, Gôteborg, 1957, p. 317, who thinks of Aristotle himself as the founder, contra Jaeger, p. 14, who thinks of an un- known disciple of Plato. Diiring is followed by A.E. Riginos, Platonica: The Anecdotes Concerning the Life and Writings of Plato, Leiden, 1976, p. 310. For other views, see A.J. Festugière, pp. 219-20.

45. Cf.E. Schwartz, Ethik der Gnechen, hrsg. von W. Richter, Stuttgart, 1951, p. 190: «Es ist bezeichnend, dass ein gleichen Grad, in dem wàhrend des Peloponnesischen Krieges die Kraft der staatlichen Ordnung abnimmt, die φιλία mehr und mehr an ihre Stelle tritt».

46. D. Konstan, «Philia in Euripides' EJectra»,Phi/oIogus, 129, 1985, pp. 176-85, esp. pp. 182-83, perceptively studies Euripides' problematic combination of the personal and political sensés of φιλία in the context of the «highly factionalized social world» of late fifth-century Athens.

47. Cf. R. Scodel, «'Αδμήτου λόγος and the Alcestis,» Harvard St. Class. Philol. , 83,

ΦΙΛΙΑ IN EURIPIDES' ALCESTIS 191.

kinds: traditional, heroic guest-friendship; the relationship between parents and children; that between husband and wife. By exploring différent motives for thèse «friendships», the reciprocal obligations présent in each of them, and the types of affection they produce, Euripides raises the problem of their respective worth48.

Near the beginning of the Prologue, Apollo refers to Admetos as his «guest-friend» (ξένος, ν. 8) since the time when he served him as a shepherd, and goes on to say that because he found Admetos to be όσιος («pious»), he has continued to «save» his house to the présent day (vv. 8- 11). Apollo's words imply the quid pro quo involved in guest-friendship: because Admetos, with no prior obligation, treated him well as a «stranger» in his land, the king's house became «most dear» (φιλτάτην, ν. 23) to him49, and an obligation was created for Apollo to reciprocate, which he did by intervening with the Fates to save Admetos' life. Toward the end of the Prologue, Apollo prophesies to Death the advent of Herakles, «who having been treated as a guest-friend in this house of Admetos will take away this woman [se. Alcestis] from you by force» (ος δη ξενωθείς τοΐσδ' εν 'Αδμήτου δόμοις / βία γυναίκα τήνδε σ' έξαιρή σεται, νν. 68-69). Thus, framing the opening scène of the play is the clear assertion that for Admetos guest-friendship has led and will lead to salvation.

Sentiment, as well as practical recompense, is part of guest-friendship: after Death has accused him of «unjustly» (έκδΐκως, ν. 41) assisting the house of Admetos, Apollo replies (v. 42): «I am weighed down by the mis- fortunes of a man who is my friend» (φίλου γαρ ανδρός συμφοραΐς βαρύνομαι). Nevertheiess, iater in the play, when the Chorus sing of the relationship between Admetos and Apollo (vv. 569-96), they emphasize the increase in Admetos' prosperity and power on account of (τοιγάρ, ν.

1979, pp. 52-62, esp. p. 54: «From one aspect, the play's action is a study in φιλία, be- nef action and response, and the conventional norms are critical to its understanding pre- cisely because their application is unsure. The drama deals with characters and situations which strain , test , and surpass the norms , norms without which moral meaning and depth are lost».

48. Thèse three kinds of φιλία explored in Alcestis correspond to the φιλίαι called «strongest» (βεβαιόταται) by Hieron at Xenophon, Hiero, III, 7: those between parents and children, those between wives and husbands, and those between εταίροι. U. Schmidt-Berger (n. 4),passim, argues that Euripides typically contrasts the questionable and unreliable friendship of blood-relations to the true friendship, reliable and moral, of guest-friends. She discusses Alcestis at pp. 18-23, 86-91.

49. It is relatively unusual for Euripides to use the superlative φίλτατος, -η, -ον of someone who is not a blood relation. See M. Landfester (n. 5), p. 83.

192 SETH SCHEIN

588) Apollo's influence. And Admetos himself stresses the pragmatic, instrumental uses of his hospitality to ξένοι50: when he insists on entertaining Herakles, a long-established guest-friend (whose first word to the Chorus, ξένοι [ν. 476], sounds the thème of ξενία), Admetos says that his own mis- fortunes would not be lessened were he to turn him away, but that he himself would be «more without a guest-friend» (άξενώτερος, ν. 556); that it would be adding evil to evil, for his house would «hâve a bad réputation for being hostile to guest-friend» (δόμους καλεΐσθαι τους έμούς έχθροξένους, ν. 558); moreover, and climactically, that «I myself encounter this man as the best guest-friend, whenever I corne to the thirsty land of Argos» (αυτός δ' άριστου τοΰδε τυγχάνω ξένου, / όταν ποτ' "Αργούς διψίαν έλθω χθόνα, νν. 559-60).

Guest-friendship is, of course, a traditional institution and value: in the Homeric poems society is held together largely by the personal loyalties and reciprocal obligations of royal heads of households and leaders of communities -loyalties and obligations which are cemented by cérémonies of guest-friendship and gift-exchange, including marriage51. In the Odys- sey, being a guest or host in the correct way is an important virtue which defines one's social and moral status and, on the level of the plot, leads to salvation or destruction. Thus, by his capacity for and insistence on guest- friendship, Admetos is charaQterized as a particular kind of admirable, traditional figure. Whatever the strain and inappropriateness of entertaining Herakles while in mourning for Alcestis, there is something heroic in his grand statement that «my house does not know how to reject or to dis- honor guest-friends» (τάμα δ' ουκ έπΐσταται / μέλαθρ' άπωθεΐν ούδ' ατιμάζει ν ξένους, νν. 566-67).

Herakles, when he first learns the truth, can barely comprehend it (v. 822); then he praises Admetos for «being generous and noble, having re- spected me» (ων γενναίος, αιδεσθεις έμέ, ν. 857). Γενναίος, translated as «generous and noble», and αιδέομαι, «to respect or feel shame toward another [or: toward one's sensé of oneself in relation to others]», dénote traditional heroic values in Greek society as old as the value of guest-

50. J.-C. Fraisse, Philia: La notion d' amitié dans la philosophie antique, Paris, 1973 (repr. 1984), pp. 79-80, emphasizes the conception between the pragmatic, utilitarian conception of φιλία in Euripides and other fifth-century authors and the ideas of the Sophists. Cf. Dirlmeier (n. 28), pp. 40-49; W.K.C. Guthrie, A History of Greek Philosophy, III, Cambridge, 1969, pp. 43, 48, 127-29, 228-30, 232-33.

51. Cf. M.I. Finley, The World of Odysseus2 , New York, 1977, pp. 64-66, 88-90, 95- 103, 120-26.

ΦΙΛΙΑ IN EURIPIDES' ALCESTIS 193

friendship. Αίδέομαι, in particular, registers an internai, emotional impulse toward correct behavior in conformity with what is expected of one by others52. Αιδεσθεΐς in v. 857 signifies a fundamental social excellence in Admetos that is recognized even by the servant (ήδεΐτο, ν. 823) who disap- proves of his actions.

Near the end of the play, Herakles urges Admetos, «...being just in the future . . . keep on acting reverently concerning guest-friends» (δίκαιος ών / το λοιπόν, "Αδμητ', εύσέβει περί ξένους, νν. 1147-48). Hère he joins a phrase for appropriate behavior toward humans, («being just», δίκαιος ών) with a word normally used of correct conduct toward a god («keep on acting reverently», εύσέβει). By using εύσέβει of Admetos' behavior and attitude toward human ξένοι, Herakles magnifies and validâtes such guest-friendship, according it a virtually divine status and sanction53. Simi- larly, when the Chorus, in terms like Admetos' own, address the «having- many-guest-friends and always libéral house of a hero» (ώ πολύξεινος και ελεύθερος ανδρός αεί ποτ' οίκος, νν. 568-69), they conclude their account of the prosperity it previously enjoyed because of Admetos' ξενία by hop- ing that through his astonishing décision to «open his home to a guest- friend . . . while mourning the corpse of his dear wife who just died in the house . . . , the god-revering m an will do well» (και νϋν δόμον άμπετάσας / δέξατο ξεΐνον ... / τας φΐλας κλαίων άλόχου νέκυν εν / δώμασιν άρτιθανή· ... / ... θεοσεβή φώτακεδναπράξειν, νν. 597-605). In their eyes, asinthose of Herakles, Admetos' practice of guest-friendship toward mortals is the same sort of service to the divine as his previous réception of Apollo, and should gain him profit· in the same way. Thus, there is in Admetos' (and ail) guest-friendship a combination of selflessness and selfishness, of service to another and service to oneself , which makes it an effective instrument of both individual advantage and social solidarity. It would be ana- chronistic simply to dismiss Admetos' guest-friendship as merely egoistic or as trivial in comparison with Alcestis' death54. If his relationship with

52. Cf. J.M. Redfield (n. 18), p. 118, quoted above, p. 183. 53. Cf. Admetos' comment to Alcestis at v. 279, «We révère your friendship-tie» (σήν

γαρ φνλίαν σεβόμεσθα), which similarly uses a verb appropriate to one's attitude toward divinity to describe Admetos' «regard» for his connection to his wife. See, however, A. M. Dale, Euripides, Alcestis, Oxford, 1954, pp. 73-74, who suggests that for «σεβόμεσθα ... to convey an act of worship implying supplication ... is a lot to ask of the word», and adds, «When applied to purely human relations, σέβομαι, σέβω, or σεβίζω means not 'worship', but something more like 'regard', 'be true to' ...».

54. This is, in essence, the argument of K. von Fritz in his influential essay, «Alkestis und ihre Nachahmer und Kritiker», Antike & Abendland, 5, 1956, pp. 27-69, repr. in

SETH SCHEIN

Apollo is, in a sensé, the cause of his death, it is also the cause of his house's prosperity and a mark of his own heroism; his friendship with Herakles, which seems excessive in the context of Alcestis' death, is the very factor which leads Herakles to rescue her and forces Admetos against his will to accept her back into his house before he knows her true iden- tity55.

Φιλία between parent and child in the Alcestis is shown quite simply in the relationship between Alcestis and her children, then problematized at greater length in the conflict between Admetos and his father, Pheres. It seems clear that Alcestis agrées to die in place of Admetos as much for the sake of the children as for his benefit or on account of her sensé of a wife's duty to her husband56. As has often observed, throughout her long, final speech to Admetos (vv. 280-325), she nowhere speaks of any affection she may feel toward him, but rather expresses her concern for their children. Reminding Admetos that «you are in a relationship with thèse children no less than I, if you are sensible» (τούσδε γαρ φιλεΐς / ούχ ήσσον ή 'γώ παϊδας, εϊπερ εϋ φρονείς, 302-303), she demands and receives from him a pledge not to remarry , so that the children will become the «masters of my house» (δέσποτας έμών δόμων, ν. 304) and will not hâve to suffer the en- mity of a step-mother (vv. 309-310). She is concerned that he see them well-married when they grow up, and that they themselves realize that

Antike und modem Tragôdie: Neun Abhandlungen, Berlin, 1962, pp. 256-321 (ail citations refer to this reprinting). Cf. W.E. Smith, «The Ironie Structure of Alcestis», Phoenix, 14, 1960, pp. 127-45, repr. in J.R. Wilson (éd.), Twentieth Century Interprétations of Euripides' Alcestis, Englewood Cliffs, 1968, pp. 37-56 (ail citations refer to this reprinting); and, from the viewpoint of Euripides' ironie treatment of the traditional myth, W. Kullmann, «Zum Sinngehalt der euripideischen Alkestis», Antike & Abend- land, 13, 1967, pp. 127-49.

55. The most notable scholarly exponent in récent years of Admetos' positive, heroic qualities has been A. P. Burnett, «The Virtues of Admetos», Classical Philology, 60, 1965, pp. 240-55, and Catastrophe Survived: Euripides' Plays of Mixed Reversai , Oxford, 1971 , pp. 22-46. See too A. Rivier, «En marge d' Alceste et de quelques interprétations récentes», Muséum Helveticum, 29, 1972, pp. 124-40, and 30, 1973, pp. 130-43, repr. in A. Rivier, Études de littérature grecque, Genève, 1975, pp. 101-138 (ail citations refer to this reprinting). Cf. Δ. Ιακώβ, «Η Αλκηστη του Ευριπίδη: Ερμηνευτική δοκιμή», Ελληνικά, 36, 1985, pp. 221-67, esp. pp. 245-58. (Ι owe my acquaintance with this article to the kindness of Professor P.E. Easterling).

56. But one must take care in speaking of Alcestis' motivation. M. Lloyd, «Euripides' Alcestis», Greece & Rome ,32, 1985, pp. 119-31, esp. p. 120, rightly emphasizes that her offer of her life and Admetos' acceptance of it are understood to hâve occurred prior to the beginning of the play and do not form part of its dramatic action.

ΦΙΛΙΑ IN EURIPIDES' ALCESTIS 195

their mother was «the best» (v. 325, where αρίστης in agreement with μητρός is to be «supplied out of άρίστην» in v. 324)57. When Admetos agrées to her request (v. 374), she says, «On thèse terms, receive the children from my hand» (επί τοισδε παΐδας χειρός έξ έμής δέχου), and he in turn replies, «I receive them, a dear gift from a dear hand» (δέχομαι, φΐλον γε δώρον εκ φίλης χερός, νν. 375-76). Φΐλον hère seems to préserve some- thing of its root meaning of having made oneself a party to a compact: Admetos and Alcestis in effect join their (right) hands and agrée that the recompense for her dying in his place will be his not remarrying and the even- tual inheritance by their children. Like φιλεϊς in v. 302, φίλον and φίλης in v. 376 indicate not so much that Alcestis' «gift» and «hand» are loved by Admetos as that the transaction is one of mutual and reciprocal advantage, in which each side gets what it desires.

Alcestis' willingness to die at a relatively young âge for the sake of her children throws the refusai to do so in old âge by Admetos' father and mother into striking relief. With the same sensé of reciprocal instrumental- ity that characterizes his relations of guest-friendship, Admetos im- mediately agrées to Alcestis' request to préserve the family unit in return for her self-sacrifice (vv. 328-35), and describes in extravagant terms his own future sacrifices and faithfulness to her (vv. 340-68). On the other hand, when his father cornes to mourn Alcestis and praises her nobility in saving Admetos from death and himself from a childless old âge (vv. 619- 24), Admetos immediately informs him, «I do not count your présence as that of a friend» (ουτ' εν φΐλοισιν σήν παρουσΐαν λέγω, ν. 630), and at- tacks him and his own mother, with no less rhetorical extravagance, for their cowardice in letting a «foreign woman» (γυναΐκ' όθνεΐαν, ν. 646) die for him. Earlier he had assured Alcestis that he would mourn for her not only for a year but as long as he lives, «hating her who bore me and being

57. Cf. A. M. Dale (n. 53), p. 78 on vv. 324-25. Professor K. Bassi, in an unpublished essay entitled «The Actor as Actress in Euripides' Alcestis», calls attention to the excep- tional frequency of αρίστη as a termofpraise for Alcestis: vv. 83, 151, 152,235,241,324, 442, 742, 899; cf. the heroic εύκλεής at vv. 150, 938 (cf. vv. 292, 623) and έσθλή at vv. 200, 418, 615, 1083. Such language is not generally used by Euripides of women; it implies that Alcestis' character and behavior are of a kind and quality to which thèse tradi- tional, heroic terms are appropriate. It is noteworthy that, apart from Alcestis, the Homeric Pénélope is the only woman in archaic and classical Greek literature tradition- ally held up as a model of good female behavior. Pénélope , too , as the ψυχή of Agamem- non tells that of Achilles at Odyssey, XXIV, 196-97, will hâve κλέος that will never die as a reward for her αρετή. It is no accident, of course, that each character is described in heroic terms for her loyal préservation of her husband's life and οίκος.

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an enemy to my father; for they were friends in word, not in deed» (στυγών μεν ή μ' ετικτεν, έχθαΐρων δ' έμόν / πατέρα· λόγω γαρ ήσαν ούκ έργω φίλοι, νν. 338-39); at vv. 662-65 he tells his father that he should beget other children to care for him in his old âge and to bury him, «for I am dead as far as you're concerned» (τέθνηκα γαρ δη τούπί σε, ν. 666). This is a radical rejection of what Greek convention and Attic law held that a son owes to his parents, a total rupture of the bond of family φιλία58.

In the ensuing reply of Pheres to his son and the exchange between them at vv. 708-740, each correctly accuses the other of hypocrisy, selfishness, and cowardice. Yet, as often in Euripides, each, while telling the truth, lacks any real moral authority in the eyes either of his antagonist or of the audience or reader. For both characters, φιλία turns out to be no more than love of one's own life, a love v/hich, in Pheres' view, is common to ail people (vv. 703-704). This view, of course, is refuted by the earlier words and deeds of Alcestis. Her nobility and heroism clarify by contrast the baseness of the two men. Since Admetos is the central figure of the drama and Pheres only a minor character, the main effect of their quarrel is to de- monstrate that, in the realm of family-friendship as in that of guest- friendship, Admetos is instrumental and self-serving. But there is nothing either grand or heroic in his relation to his parents or his children, nothing like his hospitality to Apollo and Herakles, to redeem his morally trivial selfishness59.

Admetos' relationship of φιλία with Alcestis is more complex, and de- veloped at greater dramatic length, than either his guest-friendships or his relationship to his father. The contrast between her and Admetos' other φίλοι is first made at vv. 15-18, where Apollo says that Admetos went through ail his friends and put them to the test, including his mother and father, but found no one except his wife willing to die for him60. Later the

58. Cf. the law quoted and discussed in [Demosthenes] 43, 57-59, where oi προσήκοντες are bound to bury a dead relative. Undoubtedly, most members of Euripides' audience would hâve been familiar with the same or a similar law. (I owe this référence to Prof essor S.C. Humphreys). Cf. Aeschylus, Choephori, 700-706 on the im- piety of not fulfilling obligations to φίλοι.

59. Cf. S. F. Scully (n. 9), p. 73: «... for Admetus φιλία involves little more than a catalogue of articles which define the obligations and demands imposed by human re- lationships. His language and terms of référence are clearly not those of affection and respect; they are legalistic and coldly pragmatic».

60. In his récent Oxford Classical Text édition oî Alcestis, in Euripidis Fabulae , I, Oxford, 1984, J. Diggle, following Dindorf, deletes Une 16, which mentions Admetos' father and mother. This seems to me unlikely; see A. M. Dale (n. 53), pp. 52-53 on w. 16-17.

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nurse reports that Admetos «is weeping, holding his beloved wife in his arms» (κλαίει γ' ακοιτιν έν χεροΐν φίλη ν έχων, ν. 201), and the Chorus sing that Admetos «will see dead on this day the wife who is not loved but most loved» (την γαρ ού φίλαν άλλα φιλτάταν / γυναίκα κατθανοϋσαν έν άματι τωδ' έποψη, νν. 231-32)61. Admetos himself, who calls the «road» on which Alcestis is setting forth «most sorrowful to your dear ones, and of thèse especially to me and the children» (οίκτραν φίλοισιν, έκ δέ των μάλιστ' έμοί / και παισΐν, 264-65), tells his dying wife: «In you we are bound up to live or not to live: for y ours is the friendship-tie we révère» (έν σοι δ' έσμέν και ζην και μή· / σήν γαρ φιλίαν σεβόμεσθα, ν. 278-79). As Ι hâve noted (n. 53), σεβόμεσθα, like Herakles' εύσέβει (ν. 1148), suggests a kind of respect or regard for a human being like that which one offers to di- vinities. But it is not clear precisely what Admetos is saying: as Dale points out, φιλίαν in v. 279 might mean «your love for us» or it might mean «the tie between us»62. In either case, the association with Admetos' own living or dying suggests that his révérence is grounded in what Alcestis has done for him, that he conceives of his relation of φιλία with her, like his other relations of φιλία, as an instrumental arrangement which gains him some ad- vantage. Even when he imagines missing her, he thinks not of her but of himself: how in bed he will call by her name the statue he will hâve made in her likeness, «seeming to hold my dear wife in my arms, though not holding her» (. . . τήν φίλη ν έν άγκάλαις / δόξω γυναίκα καίπερ ουκ έχων εχειν, νν. 351-52); how «coming in my dreams you may give me pleasure, for it is sweet to see friends even in the night ...» (έν δ' όνείρασι / φοιτώσα μ' εύ- φραίνοις αν ηδύ γαρ φΐλοις / κάν νυκτί λεύσσειν ..., w. 354-56)63. The same self-centeredness appears also in Admetos' repeated pleas to Alcestis not to «abandon» him (vv. 202, 250, 275), where the verb προδΐδωμι implies that, in his view, Alcestis is failing or betraying him, even though she has said explicitly (vv. 180-81) that she «shrinks from abandoning [him]» (προδοΰναι γαρ σ' όκνοϋσα)64. Admetos' implication is patently untrue,

61 . Perhaps one should translate ού φίλαν άλλα φιλτάταν as «not loving but most lov- ing», since it is Alcestis who, by dying, is doing a service of φιλία for Admetos. But R. Kannicht, Euripides, Helena, II, Heidelberg, 1969, p. 238 on vv. 898-99, comments that the adjective φίλος, though sometimes used in an active sensé by Homer, Pindar, and Plato, seems nowhere to be employed in this way by the tragic poets.

62. A. M. Dale (n. 53), p. 74. 63. Reading φίλους with V et gE, asdoes J. Diggle. On ευφραίνω as a «euphemism...

for sexual fulfillment», cf. J. Henderson, Aristophanes' Lysistrata , Oxford, 1987, p. 146 on vv. 591-3; cf. Lysistrata, 165.

64. The significance of προδίδωμι in thèse passages and elsewhere in the play (vv.

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and it seems particularly thoughtless of him to tell her, «Bring me with you» (αγου με σύν σοί, ν. 382) and «Ι am destroyed if you will leave me, wife» (άπωλόμην âp', ει με δη λείψεις, γύναι, ν. 386), when she is dying so that he may live65.

Although Alcestis has married into the house of Admetos and thereby formed a relation of φιλία with her husband and his family, it is revealing that when he is trying to persuade Herakles to accept his hospitality, Admetos refers to her, in response to Herakles' question about the identity of the dead woman, as όθνεΐος, a «foreigner», not συγγενής, a «blood-rela- tion» (vv. 532-33; Admetos uses the same word of Alcestis at v. 646, when speaking to Pheres). Of course, it is literally true that Alcestis is not a blood-relation; nevertheless, she has saved Admetos' life and sustained

1059, 1096) has been much debated in récent scholarly discussions. A. Rivier, «Sur un motif de Γ Alceste d' Euripide», Actas de/ III Congreso espafiol de estudios clâsicos, Madrid, 28 de marzo-1 abril de 1966, II., Madrid, 1968, pp. 286-95, repr. m Études de littérature grecque (n. 55), pp. 93-100, argues against E.R. Schwinge, Die Stellung der Trachinierinnen im Werke des Sophokles, Hypomnemata, I, Gôttingen, 1962, pp. 48- 49, that προδίδωμι in tragedy can mean either prodere or deserere, and that its occurrences in Alcestis (like that in Hippolytos, 1456) are entirely free of the former meaning. Cf. A. Rivier, Études, pp. 114, 119. Among others, Smith (n. 54), pp. 40-41, and B. Seidensticker, Palintonos Harmonia. Studien zu komischen Elementen in der griechis- chen Tragôdie, Hypomnemata, 72, Gôttingen, 1982, p. 142, argue that Admetos is characterized as selfishly egoistic by the use of προδίδωμι, which clearly means «betray», while A. Lesky, Die tragische Dichtung der Hellenen3 ', Gôttingen, 1972, pp. 293, 297 n. 10; L. Bergson, «Randbemerkungen zur Alkestis des Euripides», Eranos, 83, 1985, pp. 7-22, esp. p. 19; and Δ. Ιακώβ (n. 55), p. 249, disagree. See Ιακώβ, ρ. 249 nn. 91, 93, for further références.

65. B. Knox, Word and Action: Essays on the Ancient Theater, Baltimore and Lon- don, 1979, p. 334, remarks that the audience must «sensé the jarring incongruity of Ad- metus' appeals to his wife not to die ... the one person who cannot possibly beg Alcestis not to leave him and beg to buried with her is her husband Admetus». This «jarring incongruity» and Admetos' thoughtlessness are symptoms of «the lack of true communication between [him and Alcestis]», as exhibited, in the scène of her dying, structurally by the contrast between his iambic trimeters and Alcestis' lyrics (vv. 244-72) and dramati- cally by his «inability to comprehend what is actually happening». Hère I quote D. Mas- tronarde, Contact and Discontinuity: Some Conventions of Speech and Action on the Greek Tragic Stage, UCPCS, 21, Berkeley, 1979, p. 75; cf. S. F. Scully, «Some Issues in the Second Episode of Euripides' Alcestis», in M. Cropp, E. Fantham, and S. F. Scully (edd.), Greek Tragedy and its Legacy: Essays Presented to D.J. Conacher, Calgary, 1986, p. 140. The failure of communication between the two characters, the way they talk across one another, is reminiscent of dialogue in the plays of Beckett and Pinter and has a similar effect.

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his family, and ail the household servants treat her as a beloved mistress and «mother» (vv. 769-79), so it seems rather literal-minded and harsh to call her όθνεϊος. Actualfy, Admetos says «A foreigner, but in another sensé she was closely connected to the house» (όθνεΐος, άλλως δ' ήν αναγκαία δόμοις, ν. 533). Hère his language is so equivocal that, in and of itself, it réfutes the claim that Alcestis is more an outsider than family member in relation to him. In the first place, «closely connected», αναγκαία, is often used of persons or things indispensable or necessary to someone or some- thing - in this case, to the house. In particular, the word dénotes persons «connected by necessary or natural ties, i.e. related by blood»66, so its use hère undercuts Admetos' distinction. Secondly, «in another sensé», άλλως, frequently means «in vain»67, and this common meaning serves as an under-sense hère, suggesting that Alcestis was «an indispensable, close connection to the house / family / household in vain». Later, when Herakles, believing what Admetos had told him, asks the servant if he himself ought not to hâve been well treated because of a foreign corpse (ού χρήν μ' όθνείου γ' οϋνεκ' εύ πάσχειν νεκρού, ν. 810), the servant replies, «She certainly was too much an outsider» (ή κάρτα μέντοι και λίαν θυραΐος ήν, ν. 81 1)68. For the servant, who resents that he was unable to reach out his hand in ritual farewell to Alcestis (v. 768) as did the other servants (vv. 193-95), Admetos' behavior merits the ironie condemnation this comment implies.

Admetos cornes to understand, or at least to feel, what he has really lost by the death of Alcestis, as his remarks in the kommos (vv. 861-934) and in the trimeters of vv. 935-61 show. He realizes that he has no joy of life with- out her and really would be better off dead. At vv. 895-96 he exclaims, «Oh, the great pains and sorrows for loved ones below the earth!» (ώ μακρά πένθη λϋπαί τε φίλων / των ύπό γαΐαν), speaking for the first time of Alcestis as φίλη when there is no question of gaining anything from her. Even hère, of course, Admetos immediately thinks of himself: «Why did

66. Liddell-Scott-Jones, Greek-English Lexicon, s.v. αναγκαίος II. 5. Cf. G. Paduano, La formazione del mondo ideologico e poetico di Euripide: Alcesti-Medea, Pisa, 1968, p. 105.

67. See Liddell-Scott-Jones, op. cit., s.v. άλλως II. e. 68. Reading θυραΐος with BO, not οικείος with VLP and the scholia. See A. M. Dale

(n. 53), pp. 110-11 adloc, who remarks (p. 111) «that one might hâve expected όθνεΐος in v. 811, picking up the same word from v. 810», though, as she notes, «θυραΐος 814 might pick up θυραΐος hère». In his Oxford Classical Text, J. Diggle (n. 60) actually ac- cepts A. M. Dale's όθνεΐος into his text instead of either θυραΐος or οικείος.

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you prevent me from throwing myself into the hollow grave of the tomb and lying dead with her who is much the best woman?» (τι μ' έκώλυσας ρΐψαι τύμβου / τάφρον ές κοΐλην και μετ' εκείνης / της μέγ' αρίστης κείσθαι φθΐμενον, νν. 897-899). But he goes on to say, «[Then] Hades could hâve held the two most faithful lives together instead of a single one, when the two of us had gone through the marsh beneath the earth together» (δύο δ' αντί μιας "Αιδης ψυχας / τάς πιστοτάτας σύν αν εσχεν, όμοϋ / χθονΐαν λίμνη ν διαβάντε, νν. 900-902), where σύν, όμου, and the dual διαβάντε express the mutuality , not only the reciprocality , of the two lives he describes as «most faithful», πιστότατας — a word suggesting Ad- metos' sensé of the pact of φιλία which he and Alcestis committed them- selves when they married.

Admetos recalls this marriage , when «... with torches of Pelian pine and with wedding-songs I entered the house, holding the hand of my beloved wife...» (... πεύκαις σύν Πηλιάσιν / σύν θ' ύμεναΐοις εστειχον εσω, / φιλίης άλόχου χέρα βαστάζων..., νν. 915-917). The Chorus try to console him by reminding him that «death takes from the side of many men their spouses», just as Alcestis i by dying, has «left behind the tie of affection [with Admetos]» (εθανε δάμαρ, ελιπε φιλίαν... πολλοίς / ήδη παρέλυσεν / θάνατος δάμαρτος, νν. 930-932), but Admetos is inconsolable. Prompted, perhaps, by their mention of φιλίαν (ν. 930), he begins and ends a long speech by invoking them as φίλοι (νν. 935, 960). It is easy to see that Admetos, with his new-found sensé of what the death of Alcestis really means for him, badly needs φίλοι who can provide some of the solidarity he has lost. Admetos is not entirely changed: he is still concerned with what people will think and say about him (vv. 954-961), and he undoubtedly hopes to receive from the Chorus esteem and reassurance as well as pity, for thèse are included in the «friendship» he invokes by addressing them as φίλοι. Nevertheless, within the limits of his ήθος and given the harsh real- ity of Alcestis' death (and perhaps of his quarrel with his father), Admetos is no longer merely the complacently selfish and self-absorbed figure he was earlier in the play.

Toward the end of his long speech, Admetos remarks, «Both the mar- riages of the Thessalians and their gatherings filled with women will drive me indoors, for I shall not endure looking at women of the same âge as my wife» (έξωθεν δε με / γάμοι τ' έλώσι Θεσσαλών και ξύλλογοι / γυναικο- πληθεΐς· ου γαρ έξανέξομαι / λεύσσων δάμαρτος της έμής όμήλικας (νν. 950-953). This comment leads nicely to the «happy ending» of the play, in which Herakles forces Admetos to look at and accept into his house an exact όμήλικα of Alcestis. The final scène reflects the conflict of loyalties

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in Admetos between his former and his new attitudes to the demands of φίλοι. Herakles enters with the statement, «One should speak freely to a man who is his friend» (φΐλον προς άνδρα χρή λέγειν ελευθέρως, ν. 1008). He reproves Admetos for concealing the truth about Alcestis' death and entertaining his as a ξένος (vv. 1009-1013), and asks him, as a point of guest-friendship, to keep in his home a woman he has won with great effort, supposedly in an athletic compétition, until he himself returns with the horses of Diomedes (vv. 1012-1035). In a complète reversai of his ear- lier manner, Admetos tells Herakles not to make him keep the woman for him and begs him, «If it is somehow possible, I beg of you, lord, bid some other of the Thessalians who has not suffered as I hâve to keep the woman safe; for you hâve many friends among the Pheraians. Don't remind me of my evils» (γυναίκα δ', ει πως εστίν, αιτούμαι' σ', άναξ, / άλλον τιν' όστις μή πέπονθεν οΓ εγώ / σωζειν άνωχθι Θεσσαλών πολλοί δέ σοι / ξένοι Φεραίων μή μ' ανάμνησης κακών, νν. 1042-1045). The contrast to his ear- lier, self-interested insistence on entertaining Herakles at ail costs and not sending him on to another Thessalian (vv. 539, 545) is clear, but this clarity is then undermined by Admetos' surrender to Herakles' importunity, by his décision, after ail, to do what his friend asks. Herakles himself, though he considers Admetos' détermination never again to sleep with a woman or to remarry as foolish (vv. 1089-1094), approves of him «because you are a friend faithful to your wife» (έπήνεσ' άλόχω πιστός οϋνεκ' εί φίλος, ν. 1095)69, and this approval makes Admetos' subséquent giving way seem objectionable or, at the least, morally problematic. Herakles' insistence on entrusting the woman only to the right hand of Admetos to be led into thehouse (vv. 1110-1117) evokes the basic image ofjoining right hands in a compact of φιλία and mimics the original marriage of Admetos and Alcestis, while forcing the king once again to subordinate his friendship-tie with his wife to his guest-friendship-tie with Herakles70. When Admetos

69. Some editors hâve found «the séquence of thought and grammar» in vv. 1093-95 to be «defective» (A. M. Dale [n. 53], p. 127); J. Diggle (n. 60) follows U. von Wilamowitz in deleting vv. 1094-95. I do not find this compelling. Granted that it is awkward to take μήποτε ... καλών as agreeing with αίνεΐ, understood out of αινώ despite the intervening μωρίαν δ' όφλισκάνεις. Nevertheless, ν. 1095 is thematically and dramatically convinc- ing, and it seems spécial pleading to consider, as Dale does, that v. 1094 is an interpolation inspired by v. 331, with v. 1095 added for the sake of the stichomythia.

70. H. P. Foley, Ritual Irony: Poetry and Sacrifice in Euripides , Ithaca and London, 1985, pp. 87-88, comments: «In consenting to [her] self-sacrifice Alcestis ... gains a second marriage ...», as is indicated by her being «delivered veiled and silent into her hus- band's hands by Héraclès with the traditional marriage gesture of cheir epi karpoi (hand

202 SETH SCHEIN

realizes whose hand he is holding and asks Herakles if it is truly his wife whom he sees before him, Herakles assures him, «This is no conductor of soûls of the dead whom you've made a guest-friend» (ού ψυχαγωγόν τόνδ' έποιήσω ξένον, ν. 1128) , reminding Admetos (and the audience) yet again how, for the sake of his heroically conceived guest-friendship and his own advantage, he has weakly betrayed the woman to whom he owes his life. Of course, the betrayal turns out to be for Alcestis' advantage, too71 . Yet, when Admetos addresses her at vv. 1133-1134, «O face and form of the woman who is most dear, I hâve you unexpectedly, though believing I would never see you» (ώ φιλτάτης γυναικός όμμα και δέμας, / εχω σ' άέλπτως, οΰποτ' όψεσθαι δοκών), his way of speaking in terms of external, physical features seems to enhance the sensé that once again he views her as an object separate from himself, whose «dearness» to him is a matter of his own pleasure and advantage, rather than as a sharer with him in a re- lationship of mutual and reciprocal solidarity.

At vv. 1 147-48, in lines to which I already hâve referred, Herakles says, «Bring this woman into the house; and being just in the future, Admetos, keep on acting reverently concerning guest-friends» (αλλ' εϊσαγ' εϊσω τήνδε· και δίκαιος ών / το λοιπόν, "Αδμητ', εύσέβει περί ξένους). As Ι hâve argued, thèse lines join a phrase which commends virtuous behavior toward humans (δίκαιος ών) with a word normally used of a correct attitude and conduct toward a god (εύσέβει). They enhance the value of guest-friendship by giving it divine sanction, just as in Homer and the Greek poetic tradition generally, Ζευς ξεΐνιος encourages and validâtes such behavior. Herakles' words call to mind Apollo's praise of Admetos' guest-friendship at the beginning of the play, and thus set the purely human action and debate of the work in a divine frame that seems to reduce the significance of the marriage-tie between Admetos and Alcestis in contrast to that of his guest-friendships with Apollo and Herakles. Be-

on the wrist, 916-17, 1115-19 ...)». Cf. R. Buxton, «Euripides' Alcestis: five aspects of an interprétation», in L. Rodley (éd.), Papers Given at a Colloquium on Greek Drama in HonourofR.P. Winnington-Ingram, The Society for the Promotion of Hellenic Studies, Supplementary Paper No. 15, London, 1987, pp. 19, 21.

71. Any interprétation of the final scène , especially of Alcestis' silence , which stresses the future emptiness, absurdity, or awkwardness for Admetos and Alcestis of their re- newed marriage, seems to me to stray unconvincingly εξω τοϋ δράματος, if it suggests that Alcestis herself shares such a view or that she would be better off dead. Contrast the views of K. von Fritz (n. 54), pp. 312-16, to the more cautious reading of W. Kullmann (n. 54),p. 146.

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cause thèse ξενίαι save the day, they seem more powerful, as well as more valuable, than mère φιλία with Alcestis. Admetos becomes conscious of the nature and value of a sentiment that does not exist explicitly for his own material advantage only when his fortunes and those of his house are at their nadir, when he most needs the pity and consolation of the Chorus and can himself express only self-pity72.

Throughout the play there is a notable contrast between the sympathy the Chorus offer Admetos and the more material aid he receives from Apollo and Herakles - a contrast between that which a human being can receive from fellow human beings and that which can corne from a god. For Herakles, though clearly a mortal in Alcestis, is nevertheless function- ally more a god than a human. Admetos welcomes him as «son of Zeus and from the blood of Perseus» (Διός παΐ Περσέως τ' άφ' αίματος, ν. 509), put- ting his divine parentage first; and while to Apollo Herakles is a «man» (άνήρ, ν. 65), Herakles not only uses more than human strength in over- coming Death but speaks with more than human knowledge about the divine reason for Alcestis' silence when she has been restored to Admetos (vv. 1144-46). In his speech to the servant (vv. 773-802), Herakles seems quintessentially human in his burdensome labors and drunkenly expressed ethic of enjoying oneself fully in the présent, since we ail must die and suf- fer the unknown chances of fortune. Nevertheless, Herakles clearly trans- cends humanity by his ability to force Death to release his victim and by his stated intention to go to the realm of the dead, if necessary, to recover Alcestis from Persephone and Hades (vv. 843-54). Herakles' history of his victorious combats with the sons of Ares (vv. 500-504) and his self-con- sciousness of his descent from Zeus (vv. 839-40) contribute to this sensé of his more-than-human status.

Insofar as Alcestis too saves Admetos from death by dying in his place in

72. G. A. Seeck, Unaristotelische Untersuchungen zu Euripides: Ein mo- tivanalytischer Kommentar zur «Alkestis» , Heidelberg, 1985, pp. 148-49, asserts: «... Euripides die Rettungstat des Herakles nicht aus Motiven herleitet, die der eigentlichen Substanz des Stuckes nàherstehen ... Obwohl die Rettungstat aus dem Motiv der Gastfreundschaft herleitet wird, is doch nicht zu verkennen, dass Euripides sich nicht be- muht hat, dies Motiv inhaltlich besonders sorgfàltig auszugestalten. Es hat eine struk- turelle und keine inhaltliche Funktion». This claim, grounded in Seeck's emphasis on so- called structural motifs of the Alcestis, seems to me essentially unliterary and unfruitful: in effect G. A. Seeck ignores the relevance of guest-friendship to the larger thème of φιλία in the play and radically reduces its interpretive significance. Contrast G. Paduano (n. 66), pp. 147-49, who discusses the «funzione importantissima» of the thème of φιλοξενία and of the relationship between Admetos and Herakles.

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a way which is more-than-human, she also is, in effect, a divinity, and the servants, the Chorus, and Admetos praise her in terms appropriate to hero cuit (vv. 150-51, 453, 938). A. M. Dale notes that the familiar lines (1159- 64) which conclude not only Alcestis but Andromache, Helen, Bacchae, and, with a différent opening verse, Medea, are particularly apt to this play, where divinity appears «in many shapes» and «the gods accomplish many things unexpectedly» and «find a means of providing what was un- looked for»73. What is most surprising is that, while Apollo foresees the outcome, the «many shapes» of divinity include those of Herakles and Alcestis, and the operative «gods» are human. Because gods and humans can never share in true φιλία, which implies an equality such that the relation- ship can be meaningfully reciprocal, it is understandable that the «friendship-ties» that predominate in the play are chiefly instrumental in nature. Only when the apparent death of Alcestis, followed by Admetos'

disowning of Pheres, hâve stripped him of any significant relationship to another human being, except the quasi-divine Herakles, does Admetos even begin to miss such a relationship. For the audience and reader of the play, who expérience the distinctively human sentiments of the servants, the Chorus, and Alcestis herself , Admetos' guest-friendships and sensé of φιλία in terms of personal advantage seem literally and metaphorically in- human.

Hère lies much of the well-known problematic of the Alcestis. Like many Euripidean works, it juxtaposes but does not résolve harmoniously the conflicting values and demands of gods and humans, including their differing capacities for φιλία. But unlike some dramas, such as Hippolytos and Bacchae, which conclude with disillusion and destruction in contrast to which φιλία seems a consolatory or even redemptive human resource74, and others such as Helen and Iphigeneia among the Taurians, which end with miracles somehow merited by the human characters, Alcestis swings up from tragedy into re-illusion and a fairy-tale-like «happy ending» appa- rently for no reason. This ending in no way addresses the human feelings and considérations aroused earlier by the realism and conflicts of the cent-

73. A. M. Dale (n. 53), p. 130. 74. On this aspect of the ending of Hippolytos , see B. Knox (n. 65), pp. 227-29. Con-

cluding scènes in Euripidean drama, in which one or more characters «awaken» to φιλία and a φίλος, were studied twenty years ago by Mr. T. Hagerty in a perceptive, regretta- bly uncompleted Columbia University doctoral dissertation , from which I learned much . Cf. H. P. Stahl, «On 'extra-dramatic' communication of characters in Euripides», Yale Classical Studies, 25, 1975, pp. 159-73, esp. 162-71.

ΦΙΛΙΑ IN EURIPIDES' ALCESTIS 205

rai scènes. As a resuit, not only must responses be wavering and divided and an audience left unsure of its moral bearings (as in ail problem plays)75, but the very relevance of moral bearings, which are, after ail, dis- tinctively and characteristically human, to the divine resolution of the drama is questionable. The guest-friendships of Admetos, which might be thought of as meriting his and his house's salvation, are a kind of relation to divinities who are ipso facto amoral, while the human relationships that appear only in contrast to his guest-friendships, when the latter appear to fail him, are moral but seem irrelevant to the outcome of the play's action.

I would not go as far as some critics who see the play as, in effect, «thea- ter of the absurd», which deconstructs the traditional mythology on which it is based and the heroic values it evokes76. This reading, valid for a later, self-consciously anti-heroic and meta-theatrical drama like Orestes11 , is too extrême for the more mundane and realistic Alcestis. It forces on to the earlier work a degree of pessimism and disillusion that were the pro- duct of thirty more years of creating tragedy out of traditional mythology in a world degenerating both socially and morally under the pressure of the Peloponnesian War78. With hindsight, one can see the germ of Orestes in Alcestis, especially given the programmatic undermining of φιλία in the later play. But Alcestis itself does no more than raise as a problem -a human problem- the nature and moral status of a salvation that has no- thing to do with the main human relationships depicted in the play. It

75. See E. Schanzer, The Problem Plays of Shakespeare, 1963, (repr. New York, 1965), p. 6.

76. Such is the reading of K. von Fritz (n. 54). Cf. the gênerai approach to Euripidean drama of K. Reinhardt, «Die Sinneskrise im Orest», in Tradition und Geist: Gesam- melte Essays zur Dichtung, Gôttingen, 1960, pp. 227-56.

77. See F.I. Zeitlin, «The Closet of Masks: Role-Playing and Myth-Making in the Orestes of Euripides», Ramus, 9, 1980, pp. 62-73.

78. Cf. S.L. Schein, «Mythical Illusion and Historical Reality in Euripides' Orestes», Wiener Studien, N.F. 9, 1975, pp. 49-66. A. Rivier, Études (n. 55), pp. 104-105, warns against applying conceptions based on Orestes to a much earlier work like Alkestis. He argues, not wholly convincingly, that K. von Fritz andW. Kullmann came to the Alcestis with a preconceived sensé of Euripides' ironie, critical treatment of traditional myth, based on their readings of later plays and of the Euripidean oeuvre generally, and that they found what they were looking for. Other studies of Euripidean drama certainly con- found the early and late plays. For example, U. Schmidt-Berger (n. 4), in her typological study of φιλία in Euripides, draws equally on Alcestis, Medea, and Orestes, with no apparent considération of the differing historical contexts or dramatic and thematic emphases of thèse works.

206 SETH SCHEIN

forces viewers and readers to question whether there is any moral sensé or human relevance -the two are inséparable in Greek literature- in a story whose characters are saved by their least human qualities, but it does not force a négative response to this question as nakedly as does the Orestes.

(Queens Collège and the Graduate School, City University of New York) Seth L. SCHEIN.