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The Classical Greece, Democracy,
and Greek Tragedy
Week 13-14
Alice Y. Chang 1
The classical period
Alice Y. Chang 2
The three major Greek tragedians
• Aeschylus— Agamemnon
• Sophocles— Oedipus the King
• Euripides— Medea
AESCHYLUS
524?-456 B.C.
Epitaph of Aeschylus
“This tomb hideth the dust of Aeschylus, an
Athenian, Euphorion’s son, who died in
wheat-bearing Gela; his glorious valour the
precinct of Marathon may proclaim, and the
long-haired Medes, who knew it well.”
• ~Aeschylus, Fragment 272
the creator of tragedy
• The earliest documents in the history of the
Western theater are the seven plays of Aeschylus
that have come down to us through the more than
two thousand years since his death.
490s BCE
• When he produced his first play in the
opening years of the fifth century B.C., the
performance that we know as drama was still
less than half a century old, still open to
innovation—and Aeschylus, in fact, made
such significant contributions to its
development that he has been called “the
creator of tragedy.”
Dionysia Festival
• After the defeat of the Persian invaders (480-479
B.C.), as Athens with its fleets and empire moved
toward supremacy in the Greek world, this spring
festival became a splendid occasion.
• The Dionysia, as it was now called, lasted for four or
five days, during which public business (except in
emergencies) was suspended and prisoners were
released on bail for the duration of the festival.
an open-air theater
• In an open-air
theater that could
seat seventeen
thousand
spectators, tragic
and comic poets
competed for the
prizes offered by
the city.
three tragedies and a satyr play
• Poets in each genre had been selected by the
magistrates for the year.
• On each of three days of the festival, a tragic poet
presented three tragedies and a satyr play (a
burlesque on a mythic theme), and a comic poet
produced one comedy.
trilogy
• The three tragedies could deal
with quite separate stories or, as
in the case of Aeschylus’s
Oresteia, with the successive
stages of one extended action.
• By the time this trilogy was
produced (458 B.C.) the number
of actors had been raised to
three; the spoken part of the
performance became steadily
more important.
an equilibrium (~concerto)
• In the Oresteia an equilibrium between the two
elements of the performance has been established.
• The actors, with their speeches, create the
dramatic situation and its movement, the plot;
• the chorus, while contributing to dramatic
suspense and illusion, ranges free of the immediate
situation in its odes, which extend and amplify the
significance of the action.
justice
• The first play, Agamemnon, was followed at its
performance by two more plays, The Libation
Bearers and The Eumenides, which carried on its
story and theme to a conclusion.
• The theme of the trilogy is justice, and its story, like
that of almost all Greek tragedies, is a legend that
was already well known to the audience that saw
the first performance of the play.
retribution
• This particular legend, the story of the
house of Atreus, is rich in dramatic
potential, for it deals with a series of
retributive murders that stained the
hands of three generations of a royal
family, and it has also a larger
significance, social and historical, of
which Aeschylus took full advantage.
Tribe polis
• The legend preserves the memory of an important
historical process through which the Greeks had
passed: the transition from tribal
institutions of justice to communal
justice, from a tradition that demanded that a
murdered person’s next of kin avenge the death to
a system requiring settlement of the private quarrel
by a court of law (the typical institution of the city-
state, which replaced the primitive tribe).
Avenge
• When Agamemnon returns victorious from Troy, he is
killed by his wife, Clytemnestra, and her lover, Aegisthus,
who is Agamemnon’s cousin.
• Clytemnestra kills her husband to avenge her daughter
Iphigenia, whom Agamemnon sacrificed to the goddess
Artemis when he had to choose between his daughter’s
life and his ambition to conquer Troy.
• Aegisthus avenges the crime of a previous generation,
the hideous murder of his brothers by Agamemnon’s
father, Atreus.
standards of the old system, justice
• The killing of Agamemnon is, by the standards of
the old system, justice; but it is the nature of this
justice that the process can never be arrested, that
one act of violence must give rise to another.
This red-figure crater
• The Libation Bearers presents the revenge
taken on Clytemnestra and Aegisthus by
Orestes, Agamemnon's son.
• This red-figure crater (c470 BCE) shows
Orestes striking down Aegisthus as
Clytemnestra tries to intervene with an axe.
• Electra stands at far right, urging him on.
insoluble dilemma
• Agamemnon’s murder must be avenged too,
as it is in the second play of the trilogy by
Orestes has acted justly according to the code
of tribal society based on blood relationship,
but in doing so he has violated the most
sacred blood relationship of all, the bond
between mother and son.
• The old system of justice has produced an
insoluble dilemma.
The ending of the second play
• At the end of the second play they are only a vision
in Orestes’ mind—“You can’t see them,” he says to
the chorus.
• “I can; they drive me on. I must move on.”
• But in the final play we see them too; they are the
chorus, and they have pursued Orestes to the
great shrine of Apollo at Delphi where he has come
to seek refuge.
The Furies
• At the end of The Libation Bearers , Orestes sees a
vision of the Furies.
• They are serpent-haired female hunters, the
avengers of blood.
• Agamemnon had a son to avenge him, but for
Clytemnestra there was no one to exact payment.
Furies/ Erinyes/ Eumendies
• female, chthonic deities of vengeance or
supernatural personifications of the anger of the
dead.
• They represent regeneration and the potency of
creation, which both consumes and empowers.
• A formulaic oath in the Iliad (iii.278ff; xix.260ff)
invokes them as “those who beneath the earth
punish whosoever has sworn a false oath.”
• Burkert suggests they are "an embodiment of the act
of self-cursing contained in the oath".
The Remorse of Orestes (1862) by William Frederic
Bouguereau (1825–1905)
The task of the Furies
• This task is taken up by the Furies, who are
the guardians of the ancient tribal sanctities;
• they enforce the old dispensation when no
earthly agent is at hand to do so.
• Female themselves, they assert the claim of
the mother against the son who killed her
to avenge his father.
The trial
• The arguments employed in the trial
may not strike us as compelling, and
may appear disappointing as an
answer to the problems of guilt and
justice raised by the trilogy.
The establishment of the court
• According to this argument, the fact of the
court’s establishment is more important than
the particular judgment in Orestes’ case.
• This is the end of an old era and the
beginning of a new.
• The court institutes a system of communal justice,
which punishes impersonally and has at last replaced
the inconclusive anarchy of individual revenge.
Human institutions
• Besides, the trilogy not only is concerned
with the history of human institutions but
also makes a religious statement.
• The sequence of murderous acts and
counter-acts over three generations, leading
to an important advance in human
understanding and civilization, can be seen as
the working out of the will of Zeus.
Athenian democracy
• The ending of the Eumenides, then, when the Furies
call blessings down on Athens, gives a vision of a
city ruled by law and living in harmony with its
land and its gods.
• In this story of progress painfully won,
Aeschylus offers Athenian democracy its charter
myth just as it is entering the era of its greatest
achievements and its greatest risks.
Athena Erichthonius
Athenians
• In myth Athena gave her name to the City
(Athens) after being chosen over Poseidon as
protector of the land.
• She was the surrogate mother of the
autochthonous child, Erichthonius, from whom
the Athenians sprang.
Gaia (the earth) hands her
newborn son Erikhthonios
over to the goddess Athene,
who will foster him as the
founding king of Athens.
Gaia is shown only partially
risen from the earth, being
inseparable from her native
element. Zeus, holding a
lightning bolt, and two
goddesses, possibly Hera (?}
and Nike with a fillet, stand
as witness.
THE CITY-STATES OF GREECE
• The geography of Greece – a land of mountain
barriers and scattered islands – encouraged
this fragmentation.
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The expansion of Greece
750-580 BCE
• Starting with colonies at Ischia and Cumae
around the Bay of Naples in c. 750 BCE, the
Greeks founded cities all around the
Mediterranean, from the south of France to
Naucratis in Egyptian Delta, to solve problems
of over-population at home.
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ATHENS AND SPARTA
• By the beginning of the fifth century B.C. the
two most prominent city-states were Athens
and Sparta.
• These two cities led the combined Greek
resistance to the Persian invasion of Europe in
the years 490 to 479 B.C.
• The defeat of the solid Persian power by the
divided and insignificant Greek cities surprised
the world and inspired in Greece, and
particularly in Athens, a confidence that knew
no bounds.
Alice Y. Chang 40
Athens
• Athens was at this time a democracy, the first
in Western history.
• It was a direct, not a representative,
democracy, for the number of free citizens
was small enough to permit the exercise of
power by a meeting of the citizens as a body in
assembly.
Alice Y. Chang 41
The Athenian Acropolis
Alice Y. Chang 42
Athena
• Athens is the symbol of freedom, art, and
democracy in the conscience of the civilized
world.
• The capital of Greece took its name from the
goddess Athena, the goddess of wisdom and
knowledge.
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Earliest coinage: Electrum
• Electrum is a naturally occurring alloy of gold and
silver, with trace amounts of copper and other metals.
It has also been produced artificially.
• The ancient Greeks called it 'gold' or 'white gold', as
opposed to 'refined gold'. Its color ranges from pale to
bright yellow, depending on the proportions of gold
and silver.
• The gold content of naturally occurring electrum in
modern Western Anatolia ranges from 70% to 90%,
in contrast to the 45–55% of electrum used in ancient
Lydian coinage of the same geographical area.
• This
Oldest Lydian Lion electrum
http://rg.ancients.info/lion/
Sophocles’ Antigone
• “Make your profits, import electrum from
Sardis if you wish, and gold from India” (Anti
1037-1039).
An Athenian Owl
• Silver Tetradrachm, with the Owl standing on
a olive twig, a crescent on the upper left and
"ΑΘΕ" in front and Athena wearing an
ornamented helmet, 454 - 449 BC.
c. 430 BC - 23 X 27 mm diameter, 16.5g
Resorted plan
of the Agora in
400BCE
Alice Y. Chang 50
Sparta
• Sparta, on the other hand, was rigidly
conservative in government and policy.
• Because the individual citizen was reared and
trained by the state for the state’s business, war,
the Spartan land army was superior to any
other in Greece, and the Spartans controlled,
by direct rule or by alliance, a majority of the
city-states of the Peloponnese.
Alice Y. Chang 51
Persian War and Peloponnesian War
• These two cities, allies for the war of liberation
against Persia, became enemies when the external
danger was eliminated.
• The middle years of the fifth century were disturbed
by indecisive hostilities between them and haunted
by the probability of full-scale war to come.
• As the years went by, this war came to be accepted
as “inevitable” by both sides, and in 431 B.C, it
began. It was to end in 404 B.C, with the total
defeat of Athens.
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The Athenian Empire
• Before the beginning of this disastrous war,
known as the Peloponnesian War, Athenian
democracy provided its citizens with a cultural
and political environment that was without
precedent in the ancient world.
• The institutions of Athens encouraged the
maximum development of the individual’s
capacities and at the same time inspired the
maximum devotion to the interests of the
community.
Alice Y. Chang 54
Solon: The Lawmaker of Athens
• an Athenian statesman, lawmaker, and elegiac
poet. He is remembered particularly for his
efforts to legislate against political, economic
and moral decline in archaic Athens. His
reforms failed in the short term yet he is often
credited with having laid the foundations for
Athenian democracy.
Alice Y. Chang 55
Pericles
• There were limits on who could participate in
the democracy.
• The “individual Athenian” of whom Pericles
spoke was the adult male citizen. In his speech,
he mentioned women only once, to tell them
that the way for them to obtain glory was not
to be worse than their nature made them, and
to be least talked of among males for human
progress from savagery to civilization.
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Polis common Hellenic heritage
• The Greek cities never lost sight of their
common Hellenic heritage, but it was not
enough to unite them except in the face of
unmistakable and overwhelming danger, and
even then only partially and for a short time.
• They differed from each other in custom,
political constitution, and even dialect: their
relations with each other were those of rivals
and fierce competitors.
Alice Y. Chang 58
Total Democracy: Athenian
Democracy in action
• The role of the
assembly
• After 500 BCE the
Assembly met at the
Hill of the Pnyx, on
which stood a plinth.
Alice Y. Chang 59
Athena, maiden
goddess of wisdom
and the crafts, was
very aptly the
special deity of
Athens, a city
Aristotle later
called the city hall
of wisdom.
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Greek Tragedy and Sophocles
A brief introduction
• 由演員為觀眾表演故事。說得更簡
單的話：戲劇是由甲扮演乙﹐有丙
觀看。這定義與另一本戲劇史中寫
的一樣：凡能滿足以下條件的就是
劇場(theatre): A represents X
while S looks on.（Fischer-
Lichte 257). 甲（Ａ）是演員﹐乙
（Ｘ）是故事裡的人物﹐丙（Ｓ）
是觀眾。
• 希臘戲劇是這個主流的源頭。希臘的城邦
之一，雅典﹐從西元前534年起就奠立了
悲劇節，綿延長達三個世紀以上，其間傑
作至今仍為人類瑰寶。戲劇也是表演藝術，
希臘劇場的演出形式及安排，為後世樹立
了一個長青的典型。要了解這份寶貴的遺
產，最好從雅典著手，因為它既是希臘戲
劇的搖籃，也是它的中心。
• 就人類戲劇史而言，皮氏最大的貢獻，
是他在西元前534年創立了悲劇競賽。
• 希臘悲劇與宗教儀式有密切的關係。但
是世界大部分的地區都曾有過類似的儀
式，為什麼唯有雅典才能在那麼早就能
把它蛻化成為戲劇?
• 真正起源已經不可考。現在一般認為起源於
酒神
• 在祭祀中，合唱隊(Chorus)會表演歌舞祭祀
酒神戴奧尼索斯(Dionysus)，這種歌舞被稱
為「酒神頌」 。
• 「酒神頌」發展到後來，逐漸擴大到神話和
英雄傳說的範圍——悲劇的形式逐步發展和
完善，成為一種固定的敘事體。
• 他是天神宙斯 (Zeus) 與凡女西蜜莉
(Semele) 生下的兒子，宇斯的妻子希拉
(Hera) 出於嫉妒將他擲入火中，幸被仙女
救出而得重生。
• 戴奧尼索斯的經歷因此象徵著生命循環
（出生、成長、衰敗、死亡、重生）與四
季交迭（春、夏、秋、冬），希臘人祭祀
他祈求香火傳續，四季豐饒，而身為酒神，
他也常讓人聯想到一些不理性的力量。
• 古希臘悲劇的表現主題不在於悲劇性的故事本
身，而是在於表現崇高壯烈(sublime and
magnificent)的英雄主義思想。
• 根據亞裡斯多德Poetics中的定義，古希臘悲劇
「描寫的是嚴肅的事件，是對有一定長度的動
作的摹仿；目的在於引起憐憫和恐懼，並導致
這些情感的淨化；主人公往往出乎意料的遭到
不幸，從而成悲劇，因而悲劇的衝突成了人和
命運的衝突」。
Tragedy= Goat song
The word tragedy literally means
"goat song," probably referring to
the practice of giving a goat as a
sacrifice or a prize at the religious
festivals in honor of the god
Dionysus.
希臘戲劇
• 內容:宗教精神、風俗文化
• 演出場地:天然的露天圓形劇場，圓形
廣場為表演區
希臘戲劇
• 早期:ㄧ個演員一個歌隊
• Aeschylus
兩個演員一個歌隊
• Sophocles
三個演員一個歌隊
日後希臘戲劇維持為三人，ㄧ人分飾多角
Dionysus Festival
• 有幾世紀之久，希臘戲劇只在既四戴歐尼
色斯(Dionysus)的節慶中演出。祭祀他是為
了確保春天的復甦。他代表著是上許多非
理念的力量。
• 在早期的戴歐尼色斯禮拜中，酗酒和縱慾
被視為是宗教衝動的一部分，而加以接受。
• 雖然這種陋習已經逐漸昇華，但是禮拜中
求取的豐腴的基本目的仍然保存未變。
「戴神頌」(dithyramb)
• 戴歐尼色斯的崇拜是在西元前十三世紀左
右，自小亞細亞傳入希臘的。
• 到了西元前第七、第八世紀時，再祭拜他
的節慶中已經有歌隊舞蹈者的競賽了。隨
辦著這些舞蹈的是狂喜的「戴神頌」
(dithyramb)，稱戴歐尼色斯。按照亞里斯多
德的說法，戲劇就是由這些讚美和舞蹈蛻
變而來的。
Thespians
• 希臘戲劇的第一個確切紀錄見之於西元五
三四年，這一年「城市的戴神節」組織改
變，在各項活動中加入了悲劇演出競賽。
• 戲劇在此以前勢必早已存在，否則不會又
有此競賽。這時其中唯一可考的戲劇家就
是賽士比斯(Thespis)，也就是第一次悲劇競
賽的冠軍得主，並且，由於他也是第一個?
是人所知的演員，以後演員們就常被叫做
賽士比斯之徒(Thespians)
和諧: 理性與非理性
• 在宗教的領域中，竟然包括了非理念力量，
這顯示希臘人相信對自然的每一部分都應
適當崇敬，否則災厄就會隨之而產生。
• 希臘人始終努力，要在所有相衝突的力量
之間無論是內心的還是外在的，達成和諧。
The three major Greek tragedians
• Aeschylus
• Sophocles
• Euripides
Aeschylus (悲劇之父)
• 525B.C~456B.C
• 古希臘悲劇早期發展階段的詩人
• 悲劇主要以神話為題材，觸及當時社
會問題
• 悲劇思想深刻，氣勢宏大、人物雄偉、
風格崇高，富有抒情色彩。
• 結構較簡單
Aeschylus (悲劇之父)
• 現僅剩七部作品
• 創新戲劇表演形式，引進第二個演員
• 《阿伽門農》、《奠酒人》、《報仇
神》
~古希臘悲劇中唯一一部完整傳世的三聯
劇
Oresteia Divine and human
Justice
• 要見出愛斯奇勒斯的力量，最號莫過於談他的三部曲，
通常被稱作「奧瑞斯提亞」(Oresteia)的，這是戲劇文
學上偉大的里程碑之一。
• 愛斯奇勒斯無時不關注人與神和宇宙的關係。而「奧
瑞斯提亞」就範示了他的這種關注，因為他在劇中處
理了公理觀念的茁長問題。在前兩個劇本中，劇中人
物把公理與個人的私仇等量齊觀；在最後的劇本中個
人的公理尺度終國家的法制所取代。這種發展的呈現，
完全經由一個有力的故事，其中滿富謀殺、復仇與悔
恨，在人類觀念史中這發展具有革命性的意義。
• http://teacher.yuntech.edu.tw/~wangil/theater/drama/greece.pdf
Sophocles生平
• 496B.C~406B.C
• 生於雅典北邊名叫Colonus的村落
• 受良好教育，擅音樂、體育、舞蹈…
等
• 因為貌美與音樂天賦被推選為慶祝戰
爭勝利祭儀中少年合唱團領導
索福克里斯(Sophocles, 496B.C. -
406B.C.)
• 生於一個富裕家庭，當時正適逢雅典
城邦的黃金時期，雅典人活於滿懷自
信的年代，他們的哲學家相信「人是
衡量一切的標準」。
• 但過分的自信令他們傲慢而又熱忱於
爭名逐利。當時詭辯學應運而生，處
士橫議，傳統的信仰受到挑戰。索福
克里斯對這種風尚深感憂慮，在劇本
中，他反複出了他的勸導與警告。
Sophocles生平
• 曾任以雅典為盟主的「德利亞聯盟」
的財政總管
• 兩度被選為將軍(政府的最高官位)
• 祭師
• 「生前完滿，身後無憾。」
Sophocles創作
• 生涯劇作有110部左右(130、125、123)
• 現存七部戲劇及少數殘本
• ㄧ:阿傑克斯(Ajax c.450B.C)
• 二:安蒂岡尼(Antigone c.442B.C)
• 三:屈欽妮亞(Trachiniae c.413B.C)
• 四:伊底帕斯王(Oedipus Rex c.425B.C)
• 五:伊蕾特拉(Electra c.410B.C)
• 六:菲洛特提斯(Philoctetes c.409B.C)
• 七:伊底帕斯在柯隆納斯(Oedipus at Colonus
c.401B.C)
索福克里斯改進了舞台設計
• 減低了歌隊在戲劇中的重要性，但更重要的是他
首先引進了戲劇中的第三個演員，因而展開了前
所未有的複雜性。
• 在他的戲劇中，最關心的是人際關係的問題，而
非艾思奇利斯的戲劇所關注的人與神關係的問題，
劇中的悲劇英雄大都因自身的性格特點而促使悲
劇的發生，而非像艾思奇利斯的悲劇般常涉及宗
教力量的。
• 他本人曾說過，他筆下的悲劇英雄都是「他們應
當如此」(they ought to be)。
《伊狄帕斯王》
• 而比起艾思奇利斯的劇本，索福克里斯的
作品更注重技巧高潮的建立與片段的完美
發展，其中尤以《伊狄帕斯王》最為出色，
堪稱索福克里斯甚至是悲劇史上的代表作。
Sophocles
•倡民主，反暴政
•歌頌英雄主義
•佈局複雜嚴密、細緻入微
•創作獨立、完整的單部劇本
•將演員增加到三個~合唱團退於次要地
位
~自此戲劇無合唱團參與也可獨立進行
Euripides
• 「舞台上的哲學家」的美稱
• 悲劇內容大多以家庭生活為題材，討論戰
爭、民主、貧富、宗教、婦女地位…等問
題
• 討論雅典奴隸民主制衰弱時期的社會思想
• 寫實
• 現存十八部作品，是傳世作品最多的古希
臘悲劇家
希臘戲劇
• 悲劇
• 喜劇
• 撒特劇(薩提洛斯劇)
阿里斯陶芬尼斯(Aristophanes)與米
南得爾(Menander)。
• 雖然古希臘的戲劇有好幾個世紀的歷史，留存至
今的卻只有五個劇作家的作品愛斯奇勒勒斯
(Aeschyles)，索發克里斯(Sopholes)，優里皮底斯
(Euripides)，阿里斯陶芬尼斯(Aristophanes)與米
南得爾(Menander)。
• 而他們的大量劇作中，僅存的也不過四十五個其
中三十二個悲劇，十二個喜劇，一個撒特劇(satyr
p Lay)，除了其中四個之外，所有的這些劇本都做
於西元前第五世紀。
悲劇
• 角色:多半是身分地位高於一般民眾的
英雄、國王、貴族或神祈
• 劇情:際遇由盛而衰
• 使用語言較高雅
• 蘊含積極意義
• 強烈道德意涵
喜劇
• 角色:多半是地位低於一般大眾的人物
• 劇情:自逆境漸入佳境
• 使用語言多為一般生活用語
• 發展晚於悲劇
撒特劇(薩提洛斯劇)
• 輕鬆詼諧、滑稽戲謔
• 語言粗鄙、動作放縱
• 嘲諷
• 作為嚴肅悲劇演出後的餘興
Recurrent Themes in Tragedy
P.148
Von Reden, Sitta. Exchange in Ancient
Greece. London: Duckworth, 1995.
Alice Y. Chang 105
First
• There is a general reflection upon the
tension between nature and
civilization which thought to be
controlled by marriage, sacrifice, and
agriculture.
Alice Y. Chang 106
Secondly
• There is a vital concern about the
relationship between oikos and polis
and their conflicting claims to the
loyalty (philia) of their members;
Alice Y. Chang 107
Thirdly
• There is an extended debate on the
relationship between Athenian law
and divine nomos;
Alice Y. Chang 108
Fourthly
• Most plays contain a self-reflexive
debate on linguistic exchange, the
power of logoi and their manipulative
force on society and its individual
members;
Alice Y. Chang 109
Finally
• They are framed in a discourse
which uses Homeric imagery and
mythology for the discussion of
contemporary problems.
Alice Y. Chang 110
All these themes are interlocked.
• This not only ties together scenes
which seem at first unconnected, but
also gives a complex meaning to
every individual image.
Alice Y. Chang 111
Alice Y. Chang 112
The Dance of Ares
• The plains of Boeotia, called “the dance of
Ares (Mars)” because many battles were
fought there.
• Alexander, by destroying Thebes in 335 BCE,
shocked Greece into accepting his power.
• The end of classical Greece: 337-322 BCE
Alice Y. Chang 113
Alice Y. Chang 114
Supplementary Materials:
Philoctetes
Themes and discussion
Philoctetes
Alice Y. Chang 116
Philoctetes is leaving the island of
Lemnos
• A cave had been Philoctetes’ home since the
Greeks abandoned him on Lemnos.
• Philoctetes sits clutching his magic bow in his
left hand.
• Above right is Odyssues.
• To the left are Athene and Neoplotemos.
Alice Y. Chang 117
Lemons
• Lemnos or Limnos is an island in the northern
part of the Aegean Sea.
• It is part of the Greek prefecture of Lesbos and
has a considerable area, about 477 km².
A sacred island
• For ancient Greeks, the island was sacred to
Hephaestus, god of metallurgy, who— as he tells
himself in Iliad I.590ff— fell on Lemnos when his
father Zeus hurled him headlong out of Olympus.
• There, he was cared for by the Sinties, according to
Iliad or by Thetis (Apollodorus, Bibliotheke I:3.5),
and there with a Thracian nymph Cabiro (a daughter
of Proteus) he fathered a tribe called the Cabiroides.
• Sacred rites dedicated to them were performed in the
island.
LEMNOS
BY PAUL HETHERINGTON
• The position of Lemnos in the northern
Aegean, where it lies midway between the tip
of the Mount Athos promontory and the coast
of Asia Minor, meant that control over it was
always sought after. Any ships entering or
leaving the Hellespont (the Passage of
Romania, now the Dardanelles) could do so
only with the knowledge (and often the
permission) of the current rulers of Lemnos.
Lesbos
• The frequency with which their identity might
change is a symptom of its strategic
importance to the Hellenic would throughout
its history.
• The island is now administered under the
nomos of Lesbos.
Two sectors
• Lemnos has an area of 476 sq km and, like a
number of the Aegean islands, its shape
indicates its volcanic origins, two bays to north
and south almost dividing the island in two;
– the smaller, eastern, sector was where the capital of
the island in antiquity, Hephaestus, was situated,
– while on the coast of the western sector, larger and
much more mountainous with the highest peak of
Mount Skopia reaching 430 m, the medieval and
modern capital of Myrina is located.
Lemnian earth
• The low-lying and flatter areas of the island
are quite fertile, and produce a variety of crops.
• A tradition, already current in antiquity and
still existing in the 20th century, credited
Lemnian earth, excavated on one day each
year, with the power of healing many kinds of
wounds; it was exported all over the Hellenic
world.
figured both in Homeric legend and
in Hellenic history
• In antiquity Lemnos figured both in Homeric legend and in
Hellenic history.
• Herodotus (4.145) related how the Argonauts, who according
to legend had arrived on the island and left progeny there,
were driven out of Lemnos three generations later by the
Pelasgi.
• Later (5. 26) he described how Lemnos, with Imbros, was
taken from the Pelasgi by Otanes, who had already occupied
Byzantium and Chalcedon.
• The stronghold of Myrina figured early in the history of the
island, as when Miltiades, having called on the Pelasgi to leave
the island—a call which the townspeople of Hephaestus
obeyed—was defied by the inhabitants of Myrina, whom he
besieged (no doubt secure in their rock-perched fortress)
before eventually ejecting them by force.
Philoctetes on the island of
Lemnos. Marble. Victoria
and Albert Museum, London.
ARGONAUTS
• When the ARGONAUTS, in their way to
Colchis, came to Lemnos, they found out that
all males had been murdered.
• For the Lemnian women, having learned that
their husbands had taken Thracian wives,
resolved to kill all men in Lemnos.
Philoctetes and Odysseus
• http://homepage.mac.com/cparada/GML/Philoctetes.h
tml
• Only Philoctetes excelled me with the bow in the land
of the Trojans, when we Achaeans shot." (Odysseus
to the Phaeacians. Homer, Odyssey 8.220).
• "Destruction shall have end when you are dead, the
author of our bane." (Philoctetes to Paris. Quintus
Smyrnaeus, The Fall of Troy 10.229).
