Actor's Interpolations in Greek Tragedy, Studied with Special Reference to Euripides "Iphigeneia in Aulis"

238 Pages·1934·9.97 MB·English

by  Denys Lionel Page

ACTORS’
INTERPOLATIONS
IN
GREEK TRAGEDY
STUDIED
WITH SPECIAL REFERENCE TO
EURIPIDES’
IPHIGENEIA IN AULIS
DENYS L. PAGE, M.A.
Student and Tutor of Christ Church
Oxford
OXFORD
AT THE CLARENDON PRESS
1934
OXFORD
UNIVERSITY PRESS
AMEN HOUSE, E.C. 4
London Edinburgh Glasgow
New York Toronto Melbourne
Capetown Bombay Calcutta
Madras Shanghai
HUMPHREY MILFORD
PUBLISHER TO THE
UNIVERSITY
PRINTED IN GREAT BRITAIN AT THE UNIVERSITY PRESS, OXFORD
BY JOHN JOHNSON, PRINTER TO THE UNIVERSITY
PREFACE
This work was begun with the approval and assistance of
the Committee which awarded me the Derby Scholarship
in 1930. I am deeply grateful to Professor Gilbert Murray
and Mr. J. D. Denniston for constant advice and criticism ;
to Professor J. D. Beazley and Mr. E. Harrison for informa­
tion on special points ; to Mr. R. H. Dundas for reading
the proofs ; and to my Reader at the Clarendon Press, by
whose vigilance and acumen I have profited more, perhaps,
than I can prudently confess.
Of the imperfections which I have permitted to remain,
I am only too conscious. But I have little more to say on
this theme, and 1 What is writ, is writ ; would it were
worthier ’—both of its subject and of all whose assistance
has been at my disposal. D. L. P.
Christ Church,
October, 1934.

CONTENTS
THE SCOPE OF THE INQUIRY......................................................«
PartI, INTRODUCTION
Chapter I. THE HISTORY OF THE TEXT · x
Chapter II. SOME HISTRIONIC INTERPOLATIONS . 15
I. Prolegomena . , . . >5
II. Examples:
A. Four Plays :
Phoinissai, Seven against Thebes, Berakleidai, Orestes 20
B. Euripides . , . . . . ■ SS
c. Aeschylus . . . . , . .8 0
D. Sophokles . , , . . . 85
E. Some other instances . , . . . 91
Excursus on the Prompter . , , .9 8
F. Accidental Interpolations . . . . . 100
Chapter III. SOLUTIONS FOR SEVERAL PROBLEMS . 106
Excursus on the Progress of a Text from Poet to Publisher . 112
Chapter IV. SOME CHARACTERISTICS OF HISTRIONIC
INTERPOLATION . . . . . . 116
PartII. INTERPOLATIONS IN
I PH IGEN El A IN AULIS
Chapter I. A. THE EVIDENCE OF REPETITIONS . . 122
B. TABLE OF QUOTATIONS . . .128
Chapter II. THE T E X T ...............................................................130
Excursus I and II . . . . . . 204
Chapter III. EPILOGUE...............................................................207
ADDENDA......................................................................................217
INDEXES :
(1) Actors’ Interpolations . . . . . 221
(2) Greek Words and Phrases . . . . . 225
(3) Names and Subjects . , . . . 226
ABBREVIATIONS
A “ Aeschylus
AP = Aeschylus’ Persai, APV or PV- Prometheus ;
so AHik, AScT or ScT, AAg, ACho, AEum
S = Sophokles
SAi - Sophokles’ Aias, so SEI, SAnt, S.OT, STr,
SPhil, S.OK
E - Euripides
EE1 or El =■ Euripides’ Elektra. H = Herakles, Plkld =
Herakleidai, B ■= Bacchai, Ph = Phoinissai, Hik —
Hiketides, Piek - Hekabe, Kukl - Kuklops, so Aik,
Med, Hipp, Andr, Ion, Tro, IT, Hel, Or, IA,
Rhes
Hdt = Herodotos
PO = Pindar’s Olympian Odes, so PP, PN, PI
ArByz = Aristophanes of Byzantium
WM= U. von Wilamowitz-Moellendorjff
Engl » E. B. England
Σ — Scholiast
DS = Diodorus Siculus
TGF = Tragicorum Graecorum Fragmenta, ed. 2
Nauck.
LP-Agreement of MSS. Laurentianus xxxii. 2 and
Palatinus 287.
THE SCOPE OF THE INQUIRY
Since the middle of the eighteenth century most scholars
have agreed that Iphigeneia in Aults is much interpolated.
And it has always been the fashion to adduce reasons for
calling some verses genuine and others spurious, and to
build a text on this distinction. When the editors have
determined, each for himself, which verses were written by
Euripides, they set brackets about the rest, content, as if
their task were done. They touch lightly on the purpose of
the interpolator, the date of his activity, and similar in­
quiries. A brief and indifferent judgement suffices : ‘ The
spurious verses were admitted because Euripides did not
complete his work ; ’ could they have been admitted if he
had completed it ? ‘ They are intended to divert a later
audience ; ’ what audience, and what suggests that it would
probably be diverted ? The sharpest and most frequent
tool for editorial excision is the phrase ‘ an actor’s inter­
polation ’ ; but even this is conceived to be a term which
either needs or allows no deeper analysis.
And a worse fault follows ; for the editors have nearly
always judged this play by the ordinary standards of textual
criticism. If a great abruptness can be changed by a trans­
position of verses, they transpose ; if faults in the language
can be corrected by emendation, they emend ; and if other
resources fail, and they are driven to despair or to deletion,
they obelize or delete. And yet it is possible that the writer,
whoever he was, created abruptness intentionally ; and if
his diction transgresses the laws of the fifth century, perhaps
it does so because he wrote in the fourth century ; and if
there be no other remedy except either to delete the verses
or to leave them standing ‘ in the blossoms of their sin
it may still be more reasonable to publish what is sinful
but complete than what is faultless but fragmentary.
THE SCOPE OF THE INQUIRY
X
Now since the purpose of the investigation was to deter­
mine which verses Euripides wrote and which he did not
write, there was great room for difference of opinion about
the number and position of interpolations, and this rapidly
became an infinite chaos of more and less widely divergent
estimates. At last the problem was abandoned, not because
it was solved, but because it seemed insoluble.
And insoluble indeed it is, if its only end is unanimous
consent about the number and position of interpolations.
There will be general agreement that this or that passage
is largely spurious ; but whether these are wholly spurious,
and whether other passages and lines are at all spurious,
are questions which will never be answered unanimously.
There has been a curious reluctance to admit this—to dis­
tinguish between parts certainly interpolated and parts
probably or possibly interpolated—and to acquiesce in the
result : and a still more singular tendency to believe that
study must end with the detection of interpolations ; where­
with it ought surely to begin again. We see before us a
tragedy written at the end of the fifth century b.c., much
interpolated and frequently departing from the tragic norm.
It is our duty to examine this tragedy in its traditional
state, a phenomenon to be explained as a whole, not to be
divided into smaller diverse phenomena, idling unlabelled
between obeli. He who lays down his pen when the inter­
polations have been observed may neglect an uncommon
opportunity: for it is probable that those interpolations
will teach him something of the history of such old tragedies
as were popular in the fourth century and later, and. dis­
sipate at least a part of the darkness which encompasses
all tragic texts for nearly two hundred years.
This essay is divided into two parts. The relation
between them is briefly this : the Introduction attempts
to determine certain characteristics of histrionic interpo­
lation ; the Commentary studies the interpolations of
THE SCOPE OF THE INQUIRY XI
Iphigeneia in Aults in the light of these. The Introduction
examines the history of the text of Iphigeneia in Aults,
in case that inquiry should assist us to fix date-limits for
histrionic interpolation ; then it examines histrionic inter­
polations in other plays, and attempts to classify these and
the motives for their insertion. The Commentary seeks
to establish, first, what parts of Iphigeneia in Aults are
interpolations ; second, what account of these interpolations
can be given in view of the general observations made in
the Introduction.
Histrionic interpolations alone are discussed ; inter­
polations of other kinds are barely considered. By a
histrionic interpolation I understand an alteration made
by or for actors in the text of a play or affecting the text
of a play. Whether any given alteration was made by
producer, actor, or diaskeuastes, we shall not discover ; and
it matters little. The alterations are of various kinds—of
words and verses, of punctuation and distribution of lines,
of stage-management, the removal and insertion of verses,
and so forth. It should not seem too great a liberty of
language to include, e.g., cuts, changes of single words,
and redistribution of verses among speakers, in the defini­
tion of interpolation.