BMCR 2008.10.22, Jacques Jouanna, Sophocle

Jacques Jouanna, Sophocle.  Paris:  Librairie Arthe\me Fayard, 2007.
Pp. 906.  ISBN 978-2-213-60384-1.  EUR 30.00 (pb).

Reviewed by Brigitte Le Guen, Universite/ de Paris 8
([email protected])
Word count:  2333 words
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At the end of 2007, specialists of the Greek theatre and, more broadly,
all readers interested in the great Athenian playwrights of the fifth
century BC had the good fortune to see the publication by Fayard of
Sophocle by Jacques Jouanna. The book is the result of some fifteen
years of work.

Let me say it straightway: we are dealing with a survey for which no
equivalent in any language whatsoever exists. The author is the
long-time holder of the position of Professor of Greek Literature and
Civilisation at the Universite/ de Paris IV-Sorbonne. He has devoted at
least half his teaching and research career to Greek tragedy; the other
half has focussed on ancient medicine which, in several respects, is
linked to it. Here J. Jouanna (= J.J.) has achieved the tour de force
of presenting Sophocles, in one and the same work, as both the renowned
politician and remarkable dramatist he was. In contrast to the standard
critical tradition (V. Ehrenberg, Sophocles and Pericles, Oxford 1954),
he tries to show that, while Sophocles won the dramatic contest on 24
occasions (and his main rivals, Aeschylus and Euripides, triumphed only
13 and 4 times respectively), he was also fully engaged in current
debates as a result of which the city of Athens entrusted him with
several duties, which were by no means purely honorific.

This explains the arrangement of the work into two main, albeit
unequal, parts judging purely by the number of pages. The first,
"Sophocles the Athenian", deals with the public figure (pp.11-125); the
second, "Sophocles the Tragedian", deals with the career of the poet,
the features of his dramatic composition and the imaginary which
informs all of his work (pp.129-536). For the first time Sophocles'
theatre is considered as a whole, and in a truly magisterial manner,
with analysis of the tragedies that have come down to us in extenso (7
out of a total of 130; see Annexe I, pp.537-608) followed by the
scrupulous and detailed examination of 115 works that survive in
fragments only (Annexe II, pp.609-676). The separation between man and
work -- which the structure of the presentation make inescapable -- is,
however, never total, so that there is a constant back and forth
between the two. Sophocles lived in the specific socio-political
context of fifth century Athens. He carried this, as and when
appropriate, into his tragedies, while observing the conventions of the
genre. Two examples may serve to illustrate this: J.J. indicates that
the oppressive presence of the plague motif at the beginning of Oedipus
the King almost certainly derived from the "widespread plague which
afflicted Athens for several years at the start of the Peloponnesian
War" (p.42); and when he refers to Sophocles' membership of the Colonus
deme Hippios, he cannot help but cite (p.15) the vibrant eulogy sung by
the chorus of old men in Oedipus at Colonus (v. 668-693).

This book of 906 pages opens with what the author calls a 'snapshot of
Sophocles'.[[1]] J.J. uses the phrase, obviously one pleasing to him,
repeatedly and with slight variations right down to the last page. The
image is one of the poet in action, at a banquet, pictured by Ion of
Chios, a man of letters, playwright and one of his contemporaries.[[2]]
It is preserved for us by a character in Athenaeus of Naucratis'
Deipnosophistai (13, 603f-604d), who cites it six centuries later. From
this we obtain the image of Sophocles J.J. wants to impress on his
readers: a cultivated man, aged around forty, bubbling with
intelligence, as skilled a strategist on the battlefield as at the
banqueting table.

The five following chapters (pp.23-125) allow us to follow the artist
from his youth until his death, including his two careers -- political
and theatrical. And J.J. is sure that, along with his marked
religiosity, Sophocles was able to maintain a true balance between the
two.

Six further chapters (pp.131-517), preceded by a new preface
(pp.129-130), remind us of the loss of a substantial number of Greek
plays of the classical and later periods. These illuminate the poet's
world and the distinctive elements of his dramatic technique. J.J.
examines, one by one, the way Sophocles utilised the myths transmitted
by the Homeric poems and other epic cycles to create the basic
ingredients for his tragedies (pp.131-203); he shows how the artist
made light of constraints imposed by space and time (pp.205-333),
composed and presented his characters (pp.335-416), as well as the
manner in which he portrayed relations between men and gods
(pp.417-462) and handled the power of tragic irony (pp.463-517).

His return to the poet's reputation during his life-time and the
success of the plays over the centuries serve as a conclusion and
fulfil J.J.'s deepest aim in writing his magnum opus (pp.519-536): to
locate the man and his work in his time, using just the single
methodological principle of a "new and critical re-examination" (p.520)
of the available documentary corpus.

Five annexes complete the whole. The first two, devoted to a
presentation of Sophocles' tragedies preserved complete or as fragments
(see above), are followed by one relating to Sophocles the
hellenotamias in 443/2 (Annexe III, pp.677-680) and two more provide
the non-Hellenist with translations of texts important for studying the
writer and his theatre: Discourse 52 of Dion of Prusa, A Comparison
between the Philoctetes of Aeschylus, Euripides and Sophocles (Annexe
IV, pp.681-684); the Life of Sophocles by an anonymous author,
seemingly of the first century BC; and the notice about Sophocles in
the Byzantine manuscript of the Souda (Annexe V, pp.685-688).

Another 52 pages of 'bibliographical orientation' follow, beginning
with the main general works and studies of each individual play.
Subsequent titles are arranged in rubrics corresponding to the various
chapters. The book ends with 136 pages of notes, 24 pages of lexica and
indices (concepts, proper names, passages cited) and 6 pages of
contents.

It cannot be stressed enough that this is a remarkable work, which
demands admiration, and to which it is impossible to do justice in
detail in a few pages. With respect to the life of Sophocles, i.e. his
background and social milieu, his role in introducing the cult of
Asclepius to Athens and the cultic honours he enjoyed after his death
in recognition of his signal piety - virtually all are the subject of
debate, even controversy, and each of J.J.'s assertions deserves
discussion. This is not the place to do so. I should just like to make
one methodological observation: the reliability of an article in a
Byzantine dictionary dating from the eleventh century AD (Etymologicum
genuinum), which is the sole evidence for the heroisation of Sophocles
with the name Dexion, is not confirmed by the archaeological or
epigraphic material. In fact, they only attest the existence in the
fourth century (the date when the recovered stelae were engraved) of a
small shrine built on the western slope of the Acropolis for a private
cult performed by a priestly association jointly to Amynos, a healer
hero, Asclepius and a god or hero called Dexion. The Byzantine note and
the inscription only illuminate each other if one accepts the
identifcation of Sophocles with Dexion. However, nothing makes this a
necessary assumption: the Greek fondness for word-play and explanations
based on apparent etymological similarities are well known. The use of
the adjective dexios to characterise Sophocles in earlier literature
and allusions to his heroisation, combined with the existence of a cult
(or its memory) of Dexion on a spur of the Acropolis, may well have led
the dictionary's author to identify Sophocles with Dexion. In the same
way, knowledge of Sophocles' reception of Asclepius in his house (via
Plutarch and Philostratus the Younger) could have led him to add to the
poet's piety by crediting him with the construction of an altar to the
healer god. These are not established facts and expressing scepticism
about them is not misplaced hypercriticism (on p.80, J.J. refers to
"certain critical scholars [who] might be tempted to doubt" the sources
he adduces).

In the section devoted to Sophocles the tragedian, J.J. discusses the
staging and dramatic practices of the fifth century by considering the
layout of the theatre of Dionysus Eleuthereus, the festivals celebrated
in honour of the god of drama, the composition of the audience, and the
parts played, respectively, by the providers of the chorus, authors,
actors and property men. This story, largely dependant on the work of
Sir Arthur W. Pickard-Cambridge, for long the reference work par
excellence,[[3]] needs now to substantially rewritten based on a new
examination of the documentary corpus. This means going back to the
first major dates of theatrical history (linked to the Great Dionysia
and the introduction of the tragic competition in Athens in 534; 486 as
the probable year of the introduction of comic competitions also needs
to be included) and more broadly the entire context of production
(pp.221 ff.). This, again, is not the appropriate place to do this. So,
rather than discussing in detail the author's statements on these
various points, I shall limit myself to emphasising what is, in my
view, the most important contribution of this work.

First and foremost, gratitude is due to J.J. for his translation and
commentary of the main testimonia relating to the playwright. This
makes a documentation previously restricted to specialists accessible
to a wider public (cf. S. Radt, Tragicorum Gaecorum Fragmenta, vol. IV,
Sophocles, Goettingen, 1977; 2nd ed. 1999). He also deserves praise for
his consistent effort to return to the sources, be they literary,
archaeological or epigraphic, even though their treatment may not
always command agreement. Let me pick just one example: a historian
faced with the problem of how to utilise the fragments accessible
through Athenaeus[[4]] would certainly not accept without reservation
that the Ion of Chios passage, which opens the book, is a piece of
'reportage' on Sophocles, nor yet 'a picture drawn from life'. It is,
of course, a highly elaborated image (J.J. himself describes it as a
"delicious scene from comedy", p.12). It fits the conventions of the
literary banquet, where the quality and quantity of the delicacies
consumed vie with the profusion and aptness of the citations exchanged
among the guests. Moreover, we only have this story because Athenaeaus
of Naucratis used it. And he recontextualises (perhaps deforms) it to
serve his personal artistic project, which is, of course, the setting
of a banquet of food and words. But the crucial point is that fragment
104 (ap. Jacoby) of Ion of Chios' Epidemies is now accessible to all,
specialist and non-specialist alike (pp.11-12).

Another fundamental merit of the book is to bring to life before our
eyes both the wealth and the complexity as well as the pliability of
the myths which made up the cultural horizon of Sophocles and (part at
least) of his audience in the fifth century BC. In the chapter dealing
with the poet's imaginary, as well as in Annexe (II), where the pieces
preserved only in fragmentary form are examined, J.J. rescues numerous
tragedies with whole sections of their history from oblivion. The
result is to diminish the great gaps in the literary tradition. He
considers, scrupulously and with unparalleled erudition, the legendary
tales that inspired Sophocles before he reworked them. For example, he
recalls the madness of Athamas who, while out hunting, killed the son
of his second marriage in the belief that it was a stag. A little
further on, he reminds us of Eumelos, son of Admetus and Alcestis, who
commanded a Thessalian contingent and took part in the chariot race
included in the funeral games held in honour of Patrocles, and then the
Lycian king Iobates whose daughter, wife of the king of Tiryns, fell in
love with Bellerophon. J.J. thus allows the reader to see for
him/herself the rich mythological tradition on which poets planning to
write a tragedy could draw. At the same time, while each playwright was
free to produce as many variants of a particular mythical sequence as
he wanted -- this explains the fact that Euripides wrote two Phrixos
plays, Sophocles two Lemnians, two versions of Tyro, two of Phineas and
three of Thyestes -- the various poets competed against each other,
while picking over and over the same heroes and the same episodes. This
explains the innumerable and subtle games played among poets working
within one, as well as different, genres. Thanks are due to J.J. for
emphasising their importance.

This enthralling survey, impeccably presented, is marred by very few
typographical errors: p.744, n.12, should read "concours"; p.758, n.51,
should be "Ertyhre/es"; p.764, n.44, "Didascalies"; p.766, n.64, the
parenthesis after 440 should be deleted. The translation of the
inscription honouring Kalliades and Lysimachides (p.80) should correct
"it was decided" to "it pleased" (the Greek is not edoxe, but
dedochthai), "seeing that" into "given that" or "in the expectation of"
(this being the usual way of rendering the conjunction epeide in
decrees), "award eulogies" into "award a public eulogy" (this being the
technical meaning of the verb epainesai), and "inscribe" to
"transcribe" (the verb anagraphein being similarly a technical term).
On p.27, too, the total of the sum levied by the Hellenotamiai on the
tribute paid by the cities of the Delian League was not one-sixth, but
one-sixtieth; and on p.26, it needs to be made clear that the lists
found next to the Propylaea during the excavations of the Acropolis
from 1834 on, do not note the phoros payable by the Athenian allies but
the aparchai due to the goddess. On p.92, the translation of rubric (A
56) of the Parian Marble needs to be modified, as it does not at all
reflect the way in which the whole of the chronicle is laid out.

Obviously, these are mere details that do not undermine the book's
value. J.J.'s work is impressive. I would conclude by adapting the
beginning of a verse of Phrynichus' Muses: "Oh happy Sophocles, to have
found in J.J. an unconditional admirer and the most talented
biographer!"


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Notes:


1.   Maria Luisa Gambato in Ateneo, I Deipnosofisti, Salerno Editrice
2001, mentions pp. 1554-1555, n. 2-6, "un rarissimo caso di
testimonianza quasi in presa diretta".

2.   L. Leurini, "Ione di Chio 1960-2005", Lustrum 48 (2006), 7-44.

3.   The Dramatic Festivals of Athens, 2nd ed., Oxford 1988. See also
B. Le Guen, "Re/flexions sur l'activite/ the/a^trale dans le monde
helle/nique : a\ propos de trois synthe\ses re/centes", Topoi 8/1
(1998), 53-94.

4.   E.g. D. Lenfant (ed.), Athe/ne/e et les fragments d'historiens, De
Boccard 2007 (with previous bibliography).