oráculos en traquineas

Department of the Classics, Harvard University

The Oracles of Sophocles' "Trachiniae": Convergence or Confusion?Author(s): Charles SegalSource: Harvard Studies in Classical Philology, Vol. 100 (2000), pp. 151-171Published by: Department of the Classics, Harvard UniversityStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/3185213 .Accessed: 18/05/2014 21:46

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THE ORACLES OF SOPHOCLES' TRACHINIAE: CONVERGENCE OR CONFUSION? *

CHARLES SEGAL

1. THE ORACLES

O VER eighty years ago Tycho von Wilamowitz incisively laid out the problems surrounding the oracles in what is often regarded as Sophocles' most puzzling extant play.' From beginning to end the play is dominated by oracles, but we are never told precisely how they fit together. The problem begins in the prologue. Deianeira is anxious about Heracles's absence for fifteen months, "no small time" (Xp6vo;), and then immediately refers to a tablet in close proximity to some "terrible woe" (43-48):

oaS'bv 5' v io a8i9ai tg t nfii ' FXovt6 vtv Xp6vov y7p oi I30at6v, 1&XX' ijrl eca 7t , va "XxPi )g a,ot; ncv't' ni Kpu:'OS ,tV1t. 45

Ka(ot~tv "t 8Etvo)v cijt'a" "ota'Ut7lV 69tot 8AXov xtn(uv ,o(TtXs" tlv syo Oag t Osoi; &pji(at inrltovfi L aftp Xap v.2

* I have profited from the comments of the Boston University Group in Religion and Mythology, where I presented a version of this paper on Sept. 24, 1999, especially Jeffrey Henderson, Stephen Scully, and Steven Esposito.

1 Tycho von Wilamowitz, Die dramatische Technik des Sophokles, Philologische Untersuchungen 22 (Berlin 1917) 116-133 (henceforth cited as Tycho). For Trach. as "the most puzzling of our seven plays" see F. J. H. Letters, The Life and Work of Sopho- cles (London and New York 1953) 176. For a survey of other views of the play see C. Segal, Sophocles' Tragic World (Cambridge, Mass. 1995) 27 (henceforth cited as Segal, Tragic World). For a careful examination of the supposed discontinuities of the oracles in the course of the action see Albert Machin, Cohdrence et continuitd dans la tragddie de Sophocle (Paris 1980) 151-162.

2 The apparent inconsistency of these lines with the oracles elsewhere (pointed out in detail by Tycho 122-125) has led to attempts at deletion, most recently by M. D. Reeve,


152 Charles Segal

Acting on the Nurse's suggestion, she summons Hyllus, who adds two pieces of information: first, Heracles's enslavement to Omphale for the past year, literally the "past plowing season" (rbv rnapEX06vr' aporov, 69); then, in response to Deianeira's question whether Hera- cles is "alive or dead," the rumor that he has pillaged the "Euboean land, Eurytus' city, or is about to" (74-75). At this point Deianeira makes the first explicit mention of oracles in the play. Picking up Hyl- lus' allusion to Euboea, she recalls the "trustworthy oracles about this place" that Heracles had left her (jtavrta Intat tijocE tif X( 4pa; nept, 77)-an anticipation, in a much less dramatic mood, of Oedipus' recognition of a critical place in OT 726-745. She does not specify the form in which Heracles "left" this oracle (h7ltns, 76), but presumably it was in the form of the tablet of line 47 that he "left" (86kxov Xtnuv).

Line 77 introduces the first serious problem of the oracles. The manuscripts all read Xcdpa;; but editors often print Hense's conjecture, Xpdag; (a favorite word of Sophocles), on the grounds that "we hardly expect mention of the oracle about Euboea."3 But the name of this "place," Euboea (74), soon becomes all too familiar, for it returns at significant moments throughout the play (237, 301, 752, 788). Particu- larly significant are the two messages from Cenaeum announced on the stage, first Lichas' announcement of Heracles' victory-offerings at Cenaeum on the "Euboean shore" and then Hyllus' horrific account of Heracles' sacrifice there later:

ooojio EXrl 9' yicapna Krlvatq At( (237-238)

acurj rt; ag(cpickXXo;o E'AU"o(c apov

Kijvat6v FoTtv, 9Iv0a xnap(co Ati ipoiont;o 6pi5st .. (752-754).

The verbal echoes make clear that all the joy of that first message from

"Some Interpolations in Sophocles," GRBS 11 (1970) 283-286. For a good defense see Malcolm Davies ed., Sophocles, Trachiniae (Oxford 1991) ad loc. I cite the play from the Oxford text of Hugh Lloyd-Jones and Nigel Wilson, Sophocles, Fabulae (Oxford 1990), with a few minor departures.

3 So Hugh Lloyd-Jones and Nigel Wilson, Sophoclea (Oxford 1990) 151; similarly Davies (above, n. 2) ad loc. P. E. Easterling ed., Sophocles, Trachiniae (Cambridge 1982) ad loc. retains the mss. reading, rightly in my opinion.


The Oracles of Sophocles' Trachiniae 153

Cenaeum is now reversed. The use of the demonstrative in 77, furthermore, helps confirm the validity of the manuscript reading, for "trustworthy oracles about this place" in 77 makes perfect sense if it refers back to the "Euboean place" that Hyllus had first mentioned four lines earlier (Ei'poi8a xOpav, 74). The "place" of 77, to be sure, is still obscure at this point; but the unanticipated mention of such a detail in a prophecy, as we shall see, is fully in keeping with Sophocles' dramatic use of oracular information.

Deianeira, in the prologue, goes on to describe this Euboean venture as the critical labor or trial (&OXov) for either "the end of (Heracles') life" or "a happy lifetime" (79-83):

xhEfxliv to?I Pioi giLxEt tEhEv, / x ... toyV Xotn6V ir Piotov E*ioV)' F~Etv. Tycho observed the difficulty of reconciling this oracle with Deianeira's full statement of the oracle from Dodona that she tells to the chorus, soon after the parodos (155-174).4 Here too she mentions a tablet from Heracles ("an old tablet inscribed with signs," naxat&v &8Xrov

'yyeypaIvivrl / Sv-

0ijCaa, 157-158) in which he recorded the prophecy from the talking oak at Dodona (164-168):

... Xp6vov npozdaq, 4; tpinrlvo; ivirxa

Bt pan th&iei t cavtaio to; pte hr, 165 TOT' 1 0avetv Xpe&r7 apE to6e "t xp6v , i toi0' nenK68pat6vxta xoI Xp6vol teXo;

This oracle foretold either his death or a painless life after a period of fifteen months of absence from home but it says nothing about the place.5 Despite Tycho's doubts, the combination of the tablet and the fifteen months links this oracle unmistakably to the prologue (44-47). Between the two allusions to this oracle, however, a dramatic progression has occurred, for the issue of "time," mentioned by Deianeira in 44 ("no small time") has become more critical. Heracles had "appointed the time" (Xp6vov cnpotdga;, 164) of fifteen months for his death or happy life, and "this time" has now arrived (t(6e x( Xp6vM, 166).6

4 Tycho 122. 5 The reference to the place in 165, Xcbpaq &drcll K&dvtwaito; I P qeO, perhaps

estab- lishes a vague link with the "place" that Deianeira mentioned in the prologue (77), but the "place" here is her home in Trachis, not Euboea.

6 Xp6vo; is a recurrent and important theme in the play; the word occurs 18 times: see Segal, Tragic World 30-32.


154 Charles Segal

This oracle, in its two divergent forms, comes from Heracles. From him too will come another, different oracle. Near the end of the play he recalls an "old" oracle from his father Zeus that no living thing could kill him. Now he understands the meaning of this oracle, his death from the dead Centaur, Nessus; and he goes on to combine this prophecy with the "new" oracle that he "wrote down" from the Selloi that stipu- lated "the living and now present time" as the moment of his "release from the toils that had been set upon him" (1164-1171):

(Pavo) 5' y&, 0rorotat ot$lpavovT' 'i'a jiave(ta icatva, Tol t; lXat ovrijyopa, 1165 & t(iv O6p&iv 1aci XaCgat1otT(Ov Sy&) EXXX v 9axovxo; Fv yooS (opaVOtCwlv 7pE; -Onj;

azp(,;

cnai ioXiyXdoaaoT 5pi6;, ii got Xp6vO ro (~ivnt Icai niap6vrt viv cpaoncT ioxOO&w 'r t& o PTAT(orcov goit 1170 Xi(atv t Twoeat ...

In these "new oracles," as in Deianeira's oracle about the fifteen months, time rather than place or agent is the decisive factor. Not only does Heracles here add to the oracular information circulating about his life, but he completes the dramatic progression involved in the "time" of its fulfillment, for he recognizes this moment as "the present and living time" of its realization.7 All previous reports of this oracle have been second-hand. Now for the first time we hear it in the first person, from the mouth of the man who received it and who will suffer what it has foretold.8

7 The combination of "old" and "new" in 1165 also underlines the importance of time; and "old," naikat, cnaxat6g, is another recurrent theme in the play. J. C. Kamerbeek, The Plays of Sophocles, Part 2, The Trachiniae (Leiden 1959) 76 f., also notes the parallels between Hyllus' mentioning the name of the place to Deianeira in the prologue and the name of Nessus to Heracles in the exodos (1141). E.-R. Schwinge, Die Stellung der Trachinierinnen im Werk des Sophokles, Hypomnemata 1 (G6ttingen 1962) 103, on the other hand, finds Heracles' new oracle at the end undramatic and unintegrated with the rest of the play and therefore an indication of early date. Karl Reinhardt, Sophocles3 (1947), trans. H. and D. Harvey (Oxford 1979) 61-62 suggests that this recognition of an oracle is in the vein of story-telling rather than in a fully dramatic mode, citing a parallel with the story of Cambyses in Hdt. 3.64. P. E. Easterling, "The End of the Trachiniae," ICS 6 (1981) 57-58, rightly points out that Heracles' oracle at the end brings completion in what is essentially a play about the nostos of this hero.

8 See Segal, Tragic World 50. Comparable too, though on a different scale and with a



To add to the complications, the play has one other oracle. In the third stasimon, just after Hyllus reports the horrible effects of the poisoned robe at Cenaeum, the chorus refers to an oracle that spoke of the "twelfth plowing season" as the time for Heracles to find relief from his toils, an oracle which they now interpret to mean his death (821-840).

Tycho brought some order into this embarassment of oracular riches by pointing out that Hyllus' two pieces of information in the prologue are chronologically congruent: Heracles' year of service to Omphale plus three months attacking Eurytus' city of Oechalia make up the fifteen months of his ominous absence.9 That figure of a year, however, will recur later in the play, when the chorus, in the second stasimon, joyful at the prospect of Heracles' return, recounts their twelve-month wait for the hero (8oKat8id1crlvov &aggivoimat Xpvov, 647-649), whom they now regard as "released," thanks to Ares, from his "days of toil" (viv 8' "Apri; oiaprl0i 15~o' Yintnc6vo)v FiEp6v, 653-654).10 This hope approximates an interpretation of oracles, particularly in the reference to the twelve months and the "release from toils" (cf. 825, 1170, 1173). But, as we shall see, the third stasimon soon dashes these hopes to the ground.11

Noting the inconsistencies among these oracles, Tycho concluded that Sophocles' principal aim in the prologue is to motivate Deianeira's anxiety and to set up the present mood of crisis. Sophocles, he argues, withholds mention of Dodona in the prologue so that Deianeira can save that crucial part of the oracular material for her dialogue with the chorus in 153-177.12 At that point the oracle enters into the shifting movements between hope and disaster that are characteristic of Sopho- cles' use of oracles in general. Tycho is right as far as he goes, but we need not accept his view that Sophocles is willing to purchase an

different dramatic effect, is the contrast in OT between Jocasta's report of the oracle to Laius (711-712), received at second hand, and Oedipus' first-person account of going to Delphi and receiving his oracle directly from the god (787-793).

9 Tycho 130; see also Walther Kranz, "Aufbau und Gehalt der Trachinierinnen des Sophokles" (1921), in his Studien zur antiken Literatur und ihrem Nachwirken: Kleine Schriften, ed. Ernst Vogt (Heidelberg 1967) 288.

10 On the ironies of the "release" here see Segal, Tragic World 38; also 50-51. 11 The second stasimon exhibits the Sophoclean device of a hopeful interpretation of

events by the chorus just as the disaster is about to break: cf. Ajax 693-718 and OT 1086-1109.

12 Tycho 131-133.


156 Charles Segal

immediate dramatic effect in an individual scene at the price of inconsistencies and contradictions in the details of his plot.

Even within the limits of Tycho's analysis Deianeira's first mention of the oracle reveals its importance for the overall design of the play, for it energizes Hyllus to his role as the bearer of messages and narratives between Deianeira and Heracles (86-91)--a role that defines his tragic situation in the play. In that role he soon joins the chorus in their parallel attempt to soothe Deianeia's fears (88-89; cf. 136-140, 178-179, 723-728). Both his and the chorus' optimism, of course, proves to be misplaced.

Sophocles often introduces new oracles late in a play (as in Ajax 748-761) or allows different versions of oracles to interact until they add up to a coherent whole. But the aim of this device is not, as Tycho thought, to gain the maximum immediate impact from the individual scene, but rather to depict a gradually unfolding meaning and concur- rently to show the mortal characters' dawning recognition of a tragic pattern that is becoming clear in their lives. To this end, as is now widely recognized, Sophocles gradually reveals different aspects of critical oracles or lets them appear in different perspectives.13 In the case of the Ajax, for example, as has often been observed, the report of Calchas' oracle about the fateful single day not only creates dramatic tension but also shows the interconnection between a divinely foreseen outcome and a life pattern that character has stamped with a recurrent mode of behavior (see Ajax 763-780): i~Oo d;&v0pc'no 6ao ov. In other words, the converging oracles reveal the shape that a human life will eventually have and in fact has had all along in the all-seeing vision of the gods. The obverse of this idea appears in Deianeira's opening statement, but from the point of view of the limited vision of mortals (1-3): "There is an ancient saying, revealed among humankind, that you

13 See, e.g., Kranz (above, n. 9) 285-288; Schwinge (above, n. 7) 93-103; Hugh Lloyd-Jones, "Tycho von Wilamowitz-Moellendorff on the Dramatic Technique of Sophocles," CQ 22 (1972) 222; Davies (above, n. 2) ad 43 ff., on Sophocles' "masterly revelation of details as and when appropriate"; and, following Schwinge (above, n. 7) 103-104, he notes the similarity of this "progressive revelation of the truth" to Homer's use of the prophecies around Achilles' death in the Iliad. Schwinge 104, however, also points out the important difference between the relative clarity, objectivity, and directness of the Iliadic prophecies and the relative obscurity and complexity of those in Trach. See also G. M. Kirkwood, A Study of Sophoclean Drama, Cornell Studies in Class. Philol. 21 (Ithaca, N.Y. 1958) 72-82; T. B. L. Webster, An Introduction to Sophocles (Oxford 1936) 21-23; R. B. Rutherford, "Tragic Form and Feeling in the Iliad," JHS 102 (1982) 148.



would not fully understand the quality of life (aithv) of mortals, whether good or bad, until one has met his death."

In Oedipus Tyrannus, Sophocles' most carefully constructed oracular play, the initial oracle that Thebes must "drive out the land's pollu- tion," the oracle to Laius and Jocasta that their child will kill its father, and the oracle given to Oedipus at Delphi, that he will marry his mother and kill his father (in that order), all add up to a coherent pattern that the two main protagonists finally grasp with the horrendous recognition that gives the play its incomparable power. In the Philoctetes, another play of highly controversial oracles, there is an apparent contradiction between whether the prophecy means that the man or the bow, or both, must go to Troy; but as the play goes on we see that the different inter- pretations of the oracle reflect fundamental differences in outlook, particularly between Odysseus and Neoptolemus. In a tense dramatic progression, Neoptolemus' nobler and more generous view is ulti- mately proven correct.

In the Coloneus Oedipus' initial knowledge of an oracle that the Eumenides' grove is to be his ultimate place of rest (46, 84-110) combines with various oracles that his presence, whether he is alive or dead, will be a source of blessings or curses (390-409, 1331-1332). These contrasting oracles then come together at the end when Oedipus curses his sons on the one hand (1370-1396) and instructs Theseus in the future blessings that his tomb will bring to Athens on the other hand (1518-1534; cf. 603-628). At this point Oedipus himself possesses oracular authority, for he speaks like a prophet (sO~tenrovTa, 1516) and is shown in fact to have predicted the numinous signs of the gods' call to him (cf. 94 f. and 1605-1612).

The Trachiniae resembles both the Tyrannus and the Coloneus in the way in which the different oracles converge to reveal the final shape of a mortal life in the divine plan; but Trachiniae is closer to the Philoctetes in that the oracles are unclear and ambiguous and are revealed in their true meaning only at the end.14 The vagueness and obscurity of these different oracles are calculated to set off the effect of

14 On the other hand, as Machin (above, n. 1) 151 points out, the essential unity of the oracles of OT and Phil. contrasts with the ambiguous plurality of the oracles of Trach. On the oracles of Phil. see, for example, C. H. Whitman, Sophocles: A Study of Heroic Humanism (Cambridge, Mass. 1951) 183-185; Kirkwood (above, n. 13) 79-81; D. B. Robinson, "Topics in Sophocles' Philoctetes," CQ 19 (1969) 45-51; further bibliography in Segal, Tragic World 241 n. 22.


158 Charles Segal

an ultimate convergence in Heracles' flash of tragic understanding that brings together the "old" and the "new" prophecies. In order to gain this effect of convergence, Sophocles deliberately blurs the relation among the various oracles.

To sum up thus far, there are five oracular statements in the Trachiniae; and Sophocles leaves it vague exactly how they relate to one another:

1. a prophecy, written on a tablet (47), mentioned by Deianeira in the prologue that involves "some terrible woe" (46) after Hera- cles' absence for fifteen months.

2. An oracle (the same as 1) that specifies the "place" (77), i.e. Euboea, as the critical element in Heracles' future (death or a happy life).

3. Deianeira's full statement, made to the Trachinian Maidens in 154-174, of what seems to be the same prophecy. Here she harks back to the tablet and the "fifteen months" of the prologue (164-165 and 44-45), but adds its provenience from Dodona and specifically mentions "death" (167) and not just the "end of life" (cf. 79-81 and 167-168).

4. The chorus, in the third stasimon, to which we shall presently turn, refers to a similar disjunctive oracle, but places it twelve years in the past.

5. Heracles near the end combines the oracle from Dodona (3) with an "ancient" oracle from Zeus that nothing living can kill him.

Some interpreters have tried to reduce all of these to two. Tycho pro- duced an elaborate argument for identifying the chorus' oracle (4) with the one given to Heracles twelve years ago at Dodona. On leaving Deianeira Heracles merely "subtracted" the fifteen months from the twelve years during which he has, presumably, known this oracle.'5 Jebb, followed by Schwinge, similarly views items 1 through 4 as merely different aspects of the same oracle.16 As we have noted, the

15 Tycho 127-128. 16 R. C. Jebb ed., Sophocles, Part 5, The Trachiniae (Cambridge 1892), Introduction,

xli-xlii; also on 44 f. and 824 f; Schwinge (above, n. 7) 97; H. D. F Kitto, Poiesis, Struc- ture and Thought, Sather Classical Lectures 36 (Berkeley and Los Angeles 1966) 189. Christina S. Kraus, "'Aryo pv

eat' a&pxa'o;': Stories and Story-telling in Sophocles' Trachiniae," TAPA 121 (1991) 96 suggests that the oracle from Zeus is the oldest thing in the play-a point which would perhaps confirm the Zeus-given pattern operating in Hera- cles' life from its beginning. See also Kranz (above, n. 9) 288 and below, n. 28.



play invites us to identify 1 through 3, despite their different emphasis; but the relation of 4 to the other oracles is never clarified. Sophocles has left its exact relation to the other oracles vague, and it is probably wrong to try to reduce this to chronological precision.

To a modem audience, and particularly to a rationalistic critic accus- tomed to scrutinize the details of a written text, these differences may seem confusing. Yet their very vagueness has an important dramatic effect: while not eliminating the agent's choice and responsibility, they show the lives of these characters, and especially Heracles, surrounded by divine forces that are elusive and obscure to mortal understanding.17 The important thing is that the oracles all do come together (auC1- paivovra, 1164) or, in Sophocles' other metaphor, "speak together," 4wuviyopa, 1165) in that terrible clarity of the ending which Ezra Pound tried to express in his famous, "It all coheres."'8

Several features of the dramatic progression in these oracles are significant. Deianeira's fear that the Dodonan oracle may mean Heracles' death (166) is so vivid that she often leaps out of her sleep terrified at the prospect of losing her husband (Kictrin6&v igTh / p63py, c(ptat, rap- poikuav, 175-176). This fear seems to be dispelled by the Messenger's news of Heracles' arrival, as the Messenger eagerly indicates (Inpaoro; a&yyXv

/ 'icvou a Xiaco, 180-181). The Messenger's entrance seems to endorse the hopeful answer to the alternative meanings of the oracle,

much as the Corinthian Messenger's at OT 924 seems to bring a posi- tive answer to Jocasta's anguished prayer. The Oedipus' use of this device is more dramatic, but the effect is analogous. In both cases a messenger's apparent good news proves to be the catalyst of disaster. In

17 For the oracles as the site of the revelation of a divine plan see C. M. Bowra, Sopho- clean Tragedy (Oxford 1944) 148-154; see also Kitto (above, n. 16) 190-191; Machin (above, n. 1) 155-157, who views the oracles in terms of "stages of an evolution that it is possible ... to distinguish in the presentation of the fate of Heracles" (155). On the importance of oracles in the religious thinking of the Greeks in general see A. D. Nock, "Religious Attitudes of the Greeks," in his Essays on Religion in the Ancient World, ed. Zeph Stewart (Cambridge, Mass. 1972) 2.534-542.

18 The end of Ezra Pound's Sophokles, The Women of Trachis (1954); on convergence and coherence in Trach., with good remarks on the oracles, see Adrian Poole, Tragedy: Shakespeare and the Greek Example (Oxford 1987) 54-56, 80-86. Note the repetition of oapavovra

in 1164 ten lines later in 1174, ,aCmp'x

oCtpaip vet. Heracles' 4uvi(yopa in 1165 may also reflect back on the chorus' dismay when Deianeira, by her silence, "agrees with" the accusatory speech of Hyllus, just before her exit (814), 4jlvVlyOpEb; oatyioa o icarloy6po, with the remarkable play here on "speaking with" and "speaking against."


160 Charles Segal

Deianeira's case, his revelation of the truth about Iole not only brings the first of the play's reinterpretations of narratives about the past but also impels Deianeira to the fatal use of Nessus' gift (536-587).

Deianeira's account of her use of that gift in her next speech gives a new significance to the tablets on which Heracles had written down his oracle. The play's first two accounts of the oracle are linked by this motif of the tablet. The writing down of the oracle is in itself a striking detail, particularly given the anachronism of a literate Heracles.19 The importance of writing is in fact emphasized by the contrast between the somewhat mysterious "signs" or "tokens" that Heracles has inscribed on his tablet (157) and the oral instructions that he gave Deianeira about the property (edne igv ... eine 8c, 161-162).20 Heracles also mentions "writing down" his Dodonan oracles at the end (1167). In the middle of the play, however, Deianeira, alarmed by the unguent's effects on her tuft of wool, recalls how how she preserved Nessus' "teaching" as if it were the indelible writing of a bronze tablet (680-683):

~Y~O y&p jOv 6 00ip t1 e Kvtrapo; novov IXrt1p Ov IrClCPa yXq)XLVi)vt tpo1~)6lt&aao napi^:Ca

EYO OeWv o)&v, &XX' 8 aY6mtrlV, aX"cL;i; itc;o &6ovtirtov

ec &X-ro) ypapijv. The play obviously exploits the contrast between the domestic concerns that accompany Deianeira's inscription from Heracles and the lust and murderousness lurking behind the mentally "inscribed" instructions of the Centaur. The one comes from Zeus, the other from a violent beast- man; the one speaks truth; the other is deceptive; the one has to do with safeguarding the household, the other with destroying it.21

19 Sophocles may have in mind something like the aiijgata kueypd scratched on the folded tablets that Proitos gives Bellerophon, II. 6.167-170. 20 On this point see Tycho 126.

21 On the significance of the tablets see Easterling (above, n. 7) 59; C. Segal, Tragedy and Civilization: An Interpretation of Sophocles (Cambridge, Mass., 1981) 93-94 (henceforth cited as Segal, Civilization); most recently Kirk Ormand, Exchange and the Maiden: Marriage in Sophoclean Tragedy (Austin 1999) 50-55, who relies, however, on a dubious connection between the letter delta (to be associated with the female genitalia) and deltos, tablet. A similar connection is attempted by Laurel Bowman, "Prophecy and Authority in the Trachiniai," AJP 120 (1999) 344-346, with n. 14, which appeared after the completion of my essay. She also discusses the writing down of the oracle from Zeus in terms of the authoritative voice behind prophecy (339-340). Nevertheless, the



Both the literal and the metaphorical tablets are parallel to the oracles in producing the sense that we are gradually working our way back to the remoter past in the lives of both of the protagonists. Heracles' tablet takes us back fifteen months. The oracle of the third stasimon takes us back twelve years, presumably to the beginning of Heracles' labors. Deianeira's metaphor of the tablet in 683 takes us back to the beginning of the marriage, perhaps some eighteen to twenty years in the past (given the probable age of Hyllus). Her narrative in the prologue (like the first stasimon) takes us back to the contest between Her- acles and Achelous that immediately precedes the marriage. Thus we follow both of these lives back to their remote past; and, as we do so, we see a pattern emerging on the basis of new information, in part oracular information, that requires us to reevaluate our interpretation of the past-a device characteristic of a play that is so much about narrative and about understanding or misunderstanding narrative.22

Closely related both to this uncovering of stories about the past and to the oracles is the interweaving of ignorance and truth, illusion and reality. From the prologue on, the oracles contribute to the atmosphere of illusion and ignorance in which these lives are embedded. Deianeira initially refers to the tablet and the crucial fifteen months' absence in the context of "not knowing" where Heracles is (ixevog 8' 6nov / t3irl- iKEv OIEi oF6E, 40-41). Hyllus' report of the oracle about Euboea emerges from a dialogue about knowing, "tales," "belief," and "hear- say"; and the repeated indications of uncertainty here hammers in the interlocutors' remoteness from "truth" (67-78):

YA. &X' ot6a, ~v60ot0; y' Ei't Uoreietvy XpE'v. AH. iai tnoi3 c tg vtv, tinCvov, iSplao0at x0ov6;;

YA. vr6r v inapeX06vr' aiporov v CifiEt Xp6vov

metaphorical "writing" of Nessus' instructions, precisely because it is a metaphor, seems to me to belong on a different level from the writing on Zeus' tablets, and the contrasts between the two tablets seem to me more important than the parallelism that Bowman alleges.

22 On this gradual revision of the past narratives see Kraus (above, n. 16) 75-98, pas- sim, especially 96. On the issue of misunderstood narrative see Ursula Parlavantza- Friedrich, Tdiuschungsszenen in den Tragbdien des Sophokles, Untersuchungen zur antiken Literatur und Geschichte 2 (Berlin 1969) 26-29 and (with considerable exaggera- tion) Bruce Heiden, Tragic Rhetoric: An Interpretation of Sophocles' Trachiniae (New York 1989) 44-79, both on Lichas' narrative about the past events at Oechalia.


162 Charles Segal

Av,~6 yVvatc' qeaoi vtv Xdtptv Iovetv. 70 AH. Crt`vov",o' %zrl,

Ea Iqot Tt 9V. YA. hXX' p4 itai'rat oii y', UE

"

799 (9 . AH. itoi3 '8ra v6v &v ii Oav, v dryy( brXat; YA. E439o~ta X pav paciv, Eipurov u nt6tv,

IntoepaTeIetv aI)bv 1i t,h)tV

1tt. 75 AH. &p' otoTa Ifr', T riCVov, )g XEhtn ~ got

gavzta ytora IGio8ErI^J; X( zpa; nt'pt; YA. r icnoia, ptIrEp; brov 6yov yyp &yvow. 78

Deianeira's verb, &yyEDzXrat in 73, followed by Hyllus' "they say" and his uncertainty about whether Heracles has already attacked Oechalia or "is about to" (74-75), adds to the atmosphere of uncertainty and ignorance. Hyllus exits with the promise to "make inquiry about the whole truth" (90-91): v6v 6' ; Svvirltu', ovi6i v XhXi m w rtb Tgil /

tav nto0oIEto t r &v8'

&68,OEtav rnpt. Lichas' lies are only gradu-

ally disentangled (cf. 449-454, 474), and the truth proves disastrous as Deianeira reacts in a way that makes her the victim of the deception of Nessus. Everyone in the play will remain entangled in lies and deceptions, until Heracles' chilling cry brings forth the recognition of "the misfortune in which we stand" (1143-1146).

The oracles early in the play, nevertheless, offer clues to the truth that will recur throughout the play: the definition of a limited period of time (xpdvog, 44, 69) conveyed through the seasonal metaphor of the agricultural year (diporo;, 69), and the disjunctive formula, "alive or dead," "end of life or happiness" (73, 79-81). These terms, along with the numerals twelve and fifteen, recur throughout the play to suggest a coherent pattern underlying all the discrete bits of information. When Deianeira explains the oracle in its full form to the chorus in 154-174, she repeats the disjunctive formula of the prologue, but also anticipates the darker outcome when she reports how Heracles in the past set off on his tasks "as if to accomplish something, but not to die" (&)X' i6

nt 8pdico EtpnE oi'o Oavo6*Evog, 160). That word "die," Oavo'gEvog, harks back to Deianeira's question of 73 (ntob 8fira v6v Uv i Oav&v dyy kXrxat;) and will color the oracle's Oaveiy a few lines later with the hint of the actual outcome (9 Oavetv XPcirl aYpE t&E T X p6ovm, 166).23 There is perhaps a touch of Sophocles' celebrated tragic irony

23 We may wonder whether Sophocles' audience may have heard a more somber and ominous note in 73: not just, "Where then is he announced to be, (whether) living or



in the fact that her simple request for Heracles' whereabouts in 73 anticipates the disjunctive "alive or dead" of the oracle, which does not become explicit until the full statement of the oracle in the next scene (r6r' i~ Oaveiv XpEil ... / i ... o

9 otrtbv ... fiv ..., 165-168). The third stasimon, as we shall see, moves us farther along on the path to

the fatal meaning. When Heracles, finally, describes his oracles near the end, he will confirm the meaning "death" (0avdiv, 1160, 1172). What Tycho saw as Sophocles' opportunistic concern to exploit a local dramatic effect proves in fact to be part of a carefully wrought sequence of individual facts and stories whose progression from incongruity to order is an essential component of the play's design.

2. THE THIRD STASIMON

The most notorious among the problems of the oracles is the period of twelve years mentioned in the third stasimon and nowhere else in the play. Jebb tried to reconcile the twelve years with the other oracles, but even he had to acknowledge an "inconsistency of detail ... overlooked by the poet" (ad 824 f.). For S. M. Adams, this inconsistency was one of the reasons for thinking the play not by Sophocles.24 In this anoma- lous detail, however, apparent incoherence is revealed as part of a larger meaning. Interpreters have not fully perceived the dramatic function of this oracle because they have insufficiently appreciated the little word dcpap, "all of a sudden," "all at once"-one of the play's favorite words-at the ode's opening (821-822):9'18' oov, naai^t8,

rtpo(ylt- ev id(pap / to~9itog 6r OeoIrp6rtov il7V ..., "Behold, girls, how suddenly the oracular word has come to mingle with us." This word of "sudden" arrival has associations with both protago-

nists in their respective forms of tragic suffering, for it harks back to the

dead?" but also, "Where then is he announced as living or dead?", particularly as the verb nyy'*xErat is often used of the report of an oracle: see Gregory Nagy, Pindar's Homer (Baltimore 1990) 168, with n. 95. Furthermore, in the context of "life or death," &dy,lE- rat may also have resonances of the "message" that passes between the world of the living and the dead, as in epinician poetry and elsewhere: e.g., Pi. 01. 8.81-82, 14.21; also Plato, Rep. 10.614d; see in general my "Messages to the Underworld" (1985) in my Aglaia (Baltimore 1998) 133-148; on the Pindaric usage see also D. E. Gerber, "Pindar, Nemean Six: A Commentary," HSCP 99 (1999) 82-83.

24 S. M. Adams, Sophocles the Playwright, Phoenix, Supplement 3 (Toronto 1957) 125-126.


164 Charles Segal

"sudden" disappearance of human happiness in the parodos (134), to Deianeira's fearful isolation when Heracles wins her in marriage (529), and to the chorus' death-wish in their terror at seeing the approach of the stricken Heracles (958).25 The "suddenness" with which the chorus recalls this oracle contributes to the effect of dawning recognition that is a particular feature of this play of "late learning."26 The metaphor of "mingling" here (nIpoo~Lett v, 821) adds an ominous tone to the chorus' statement.27 Coming immediately after Hyllus' account of the poisoned robe at Cenaeum, the chorus' unique oracle indicates their sudden recognition of the meaning of these events, and this prepares for Heracles' flash of recognition at the end. This is the first time that an oracle from the past has been understood for what it is, a prediction of doom rather than a promise of hope. Hitherto the major statements of the oracles, as we have noted, have the disjunctive form, either happiness or death. Now, for the first time, an interpreter resolves the dis- junction into a single meaning: not two alternatives, but only one, death.28

This device of a preliminary recognition of the meaning of a mysterious oracle with multiple versions has a close parallel in the Philoctetes. In a striking epirrhematic dialogue with the chorus in dactylic hexameters-the language of oracles-Neoptolemus realizes that the oracles about Philoctetes mean not just the Greek victory at Troy but the benefit to the exiled sufferer as well (Phil. 839-842).29 That recognition in the Philoctetes also comes at a place in the action comparable to the third stasimon of the Trachiniae (821-830):

25 Davies (above, n. 2) ad 134 ff. notes that q`pap occurs four times in this play and only twice again in the rest of extant tragedy (A. Pers. 469; Eur. IT 1274). On the repeated verb P3iPvice associated with the adverb q`pap in 133-134 and 529 (and cf. 874) see Segal, Tragic World 82.

26 Late learning is central to the play: see Whitman (above, n. 14) 103-121, whose view of this theme remains influential: e.g., H. E Johansen, "Heracles in Sophocles' Tra- chiniae," C&M 37 (1986) 48-49.

27 For the sinister of connotations of "mingling" see 519 and 838; also Poole (above, n. 18) 72.

28 On this point see R. W. B. Burton, The Chorus in Sophocles' Tragedies (Oxford 1980) 66; also D. A. Hester, "'Either ... or' versus 'both ... and': A Dramatic Device in Sophocles," Antichthon 13 (1979) 12-18, especially 13.

29 On this passage see B. M. W. Knox, The Heroic Temper, Sather Classical Lectures 35 (Berkeley and Los Angeles 1964) 131; Segal, Tragic World 106.



XO. i'' otov, & n RaitS, 1poo4lEt4Ev aap ro no; tr Oeonp6nov i tv

&rlE naXatcpdou npovoia;, 0 T' Xaicsv, 6E6tS sE,6,trLvo; EKicqpot 80&Kicaao; poto, avaIoXOCv sXtV n6v(ov 825

o At'; a 9r 6"ratit icKai 6' 6p809 ioCSo 8 Ca icaoupi`&t. co; yap av o Ri 6 Eiaooaov it nor' er' ntinovov

i'xot Oavciv Xhapeiav; 830

Sophocles does not tell us where this oracle comes from, or how the chorus knows it, or what its relation is to the other oracles that we have heard. He is probably drawing on a tradition, preserved in Apollodorus (2.4.12), in which Heracles, at the beginning of his labors, receives from the Pythia an oracle that "he will become immortal" after his twelve years of service to Eurystheus.30 In its concentration on the present crisis the play leaves all this vague; but it does link this oracle to the others by the repetition of the same or similar words in those previous oracles: aiporo; and

rt6vot, the numeral twelve, the word for

months, and a sense of approaching finality implied in both rOXe6wOLvo; and reLiv.31

In several other ways too this ode prepares for the progression toward Heracles' final understanding of the oracles. Like the previous oracles, this one depends on the characteristic oracular ambiguity of "release from toil" in the phrase ava5oXa'v sriv n6voMv, which can mean both "accomplish a relief from toils" and "fulfill the succession of toils" (or "fulfill the continuation of toils"); and in both of these senses the phrase can also imply death.32 In a departure from the under-

30 On this point see Tycho 128. The problem of how the chorus knows this oracle has often puzzled interpreters: e.g. Kirkwood (above, n. 13) 78; Kamerbeek (above, n. 7) ad 824-825; Machin (above, n. 1) 153. Kranz (above, n. 9) 288 mentions speculation about an original model of a "Zeus-oracle" (death from no living being) and an "Apollinian oracle" about the twelve years that points to "death and transfiguration," but acknowledges that any such distinction is arbitrary in this Zeus-dominated play.

31 See, e.g., 79-81, 164 (the compound rpi-trlvo;), 167-168, 824-825, 1170-1171. 32 Davies (above, n. 2) ad 825 notes that this meaning "series," or "succession" (Jebb

[above, n. 16] ad 824 f., followed by LSJ) occurs only here. The scholiast (ad 826) takes the word to mean "rest" or "release," &vxao-tv, avaico)Xaiv, Easterling ad 825 prefers the meaning "undertaking," connecting it closely with relxv, in the sense "carry through to the end." Yet rexiv has a sinister sense throughout the play, associated as it is with the


166 Charles Segal

standing of the earlier oracles, however, the chorus now recognizes the ambiguity and solves the riddle, as it were, of the ambiguous words, as if it were answering a question (828-830): tG0; y &p &v 6 pg~l LEuoowv / ei t rnor' et'

irnrtovov / eXot 0aviv harpeiav; This interpretation is

confirmed by the parallelism between Wt; y&p av 6 gil Eaooaov here

in the strophe (829-830) and 835-837 of the antistrophe: i;j i8' &v xiktov repov

9 tav6v i'ot, / 8etvoradsr ogev i6pa; / rpoore'arido /

oagaxrt. Both passages not only are parallel in their interrogative form but also they repeat the metaphor of sight for life, and its absence for death. This metaphor of "not seeing the light" for Heracles' death (here for the first time in the play) anticipates Heracles' cry at his recognition of his oracles' meaning: "I am destroyed, destroyed; I have the light no longer" (0,oX' ,o,

a, qeyyo; obicet' ,~aot got, 1144). The significance of the third stasimon's oracle emerges retrospec-

tively in yet another way at Heracles' final recognition of the truth. When he adds to the original oracles about the fifteen months the oracle hitherto not mentioned, but revealed to him "long ago" by Zeus, that he could be killed from nothing (or no one) breathing, he sees that this lat- ter oracle meant "the beast Centaur" (6"6' o v 6 Ol'p Kv-racpo;, 1162). The congruence, however, is not just with the first group of oracles mentioned early in the play, but also with the chorus' oracle in the third stasimon, where both the name and the bestiality of the Centaur are prominent. As has often been noted, the "seething spurs," KdEzvpa, that are the metaphorical instrument of his death (840) constitute a figura etymologica for the name of Heracles' killer in Hades, Kivrabu- po; (831-840, especially 835-840):

Ei yidp ape Kevrau~pot povia vep~P& Xpiet oIonootb;O &v6y(cx txpi, tEpooYraiC~Xvro; io0,

Ov 'tKEVo 06varoq, 'rpe(pe 6' ai6,o;

6pd~aov,

dark "fulfillment" of the oracles. Kamerbeek, ad loc. argues for the sense "the toils he had to submit to." Lloyd-Jones, in the Loeb edition, Sophocles 2 (Cambridge, Mass. 1994) translates, "It should bring relief from his labours." Drawing on the scholiast, I would argue that the phrase is deliberately ambiguous, as is appropriate to the oracular discourse of the play. Even Easterling's "carry through to the end the undertaking of toils" and Jebb's "it should end the series of toils" are ambiguous, for both can imply death as well as final achievement.



rco d6' & v d~tov 'repov i' ravuv i'8ot, 835 8&tvotdic ptv Supa;

npooaetaicco; (Pdoaagat, gc~ayYXa`za r' ajtptya vtv aiv rt rn6(0pova 8oX60 u- Oa icevyp' intr~iavra; 840

For if the guile-producing necessity of the Centaur anoints (Hera- cles') ribs with its [and/or his] murderous cloud as the poison melts into him-the poison that death sired and that the shimmering snake nurtured, how would he (Heracles) see the (day of) sunlight other than the present one, melted to the most terrible phantom of the Hydra; and the murderous, guile-speaking spurs of the black- haired one, seething upon him, disfigure him, mingling (with his flesh).33

The first part of this passage (831-838) also foreshadows Heracles' oracle about his doom only from one who is dead, for it strongly emphasizes death: the poison appears metaphorically as the child of Death in those "deadly" Centaur-spurs, and Heracles will die "melted to the most terrible ghost of the Hydra" (Kevtraupo t oviat ve(qpi, ioi / 5v rcicEco 0Ovatog, &8tvo-r&,rp.. q.iaati, n6cpova ... Kicvrpa).

The Centaur is himself the "ghost" or "apparition" of the Hydra (836-837), the form of the Hydra that now lives again in him, thanks to its poison that he has handed on to Deianeira. The Centaur is also the "ghost" of the Hydra in the sense that he is both the victim of the Hydra and also its current incarnation, a kind of alastor who returns, like a ghost, to take revenge from the dead against his killer. Such ideas are deeply rooted in Sophocles, as Winnington-Ingram has pointed out, and are explicit at the end of the Electra (1416-1423; cf. 1495-1500).34

33 On this passage and its significance in the play see Segal, Civilization 87 and Tragic World 33; on the beast-man conflict generally, see Civilization 70-73, 87 ff.; Tragic World 52-54.

34 See R. P. Winnington-Ingram, Sophocles: An Interpretation (Cambridge 1980) 205-216, especially 213-215 on Trach.; also Segal, Tragic World 64. See also Letters (above, n. 1) 78: "The Centaur's cloud is in effect the Centaur's ghost," calling attention too to the myth of the origins of the Centaur from Zeus's deceptive "cloud" (vEqpa) in Pi. Pyth. 2.26-48, on which see also Davies (above, n. 2) ad 838 ff. At Trach. 839 -m6'nova ... .So6uOa

is Hermann's widely accepted emendation of the unmetrical {icno


168 Charles Segal

These associations are also in keeping with this play's use of "primi- tive" themes of magic and incantations.35 In fact, at the end of the play the language of magic and philtres leads directly into Heracles' recognition of the coincidence of the different oracles (1140-1145):

HP. iKai rfg roaooro; qpappjaluei q Tpaxtviov; YA. N"coog na'iat Kevraupo;g eeta vtv

8otoE pirzpto Gv obv C~ivcgat a60Oov. HP. ioi )iot 86orivog, oi'ogjat rdXa;g

X WoX' oXoXa, (kyyO; o t'S9' EoJt got. Oitgot, (PPOVo 6i ;A(Popa; i'v' orasgev.

Hyllus' phrase Niooog i6tXat Kevravpo; here triggers Heracles' sudden cry of the recognition of his doom in 1143: jot iout 84oulnvo;. The coupling of "Centaur" and "inhabitant of Hades" at Heracles' explana- tion a few lines later confirms the certainty of his death (1160-1163):

npbo; vov vEsvrov gtievbo; Oavsiv {Jno, &XX' ortg; "At8oL )peOitgvo; olci-op niRot. 68' o v 6 Oi'p Kvrtavpo;, c0 ti Os8iov jv p7p6(pavTov, oSto rvtd ji' iK'sretvev OavIv.

As we have noted, the associations of Nessus with both death and Hades here also point back to the third stasimon. In that passage, furthermore, the parallelism and progression from the first to the second no); in the questions about death (828 and 835) shift the emphasis from the "dying one" as victim (Heracles), to the death-dealing agent, the Centaur with his "murderous cloud" and "deadly spurs" who is the transmitter of the death-begotten poison of the Hydra and is also a kind of "ghost" ((pdo6La), a dead creature seeking revenge on the living (831-840).

In both its statements of recognizing the oracle's meaning in the third stasimon, the chorus' question, "How could not... ," emphasizes

?poivia ... SottAi6nOa of the mss.: see Lloyd-Jones and Wilson, Sophoclea (above, n. 3)

168. Easterling (above, n. 3) prefers p6vita ... 8oot6'giOa. In any case, some adjective from p6vo; is fairly certain.

35 For this much discussed theme see, e.g., Hugh Parry, Thelxis (Lanham, Md. 1992) 290-294; Christopher A. Faraone, "Deianira's Mistake and the Demise of Heracles: Erotic Magic in Sophocles' Trachiniae," Helios 21 (1994) 115-135.



the intellectual process of solving a problem or riddle. That sense of intellectual discovery, though phrased somewhat differently, also domi- nates Heracles' movement from "seeming" to truth in 1171-1173:

Kc86Kouv 4evpd IEtV KaCxx 6 68' Av Lip' oi~ v i, o v i ilv OavXev jCi roit ydp 0avoiat 6pxOo o0 1)poY~yyvezat. I thought that I would fare well; but this then (6pa) was nothing other than my dying; for no toil comes to those who are dead.

Heracles' repeated ,6xOo; in this passage (1170, 1173) corresponds to the repetition of its synonym in6vo; in 825-830 (nivoov ... ~ninovov), just as the inferential apa with the imperfect of "sudden enlighten- ment" in 1172 corresponds to the rhetorical form of the question, "How could not ... ," in both the strophe and antistrophe of the third stasimon.36 We may note too the alternation of metaphors for death with the literal Oavsev in both passages (not seeing the light of the sun in 830-835, having no toil in 1172-1173).

Like Deianeira and the chorus, Heracles too comes to reevaluate the meaning of past narrative. His correct recognition now of the cause or ai'nov behind his death contrasts markedly with his misrecognition in the murky flames of the sacrifice at Cenaeum (772-785). There, when he "heard" (0; iricovce, 777) the hapless and ignorant Lichas' answer about the gift of the robe (6 &' ou?i~8v ei86;), he hurled him to his death, though Lichas was "in no way guilty of (his) woe" (Aixav, t6v oI?5Cv ai'-nov tou oI icaico~ , 773). Now, at the end, he immediately understands the truth behind Hyllus' report.

Heracles' clinching oracle about doom that can come only from the dead is, as he says, from his "father," Zeus and is "old" (np6qpavtov CK ncap~~g iiat, 1159). In the third stasimon the oracle about his death after twelve years is "spoken of old" (&r i nakat(pa&rov 7povota;, 823) and is directed to "the very son of Zeus" (t(o At'; a6ronat&t, 826). Given the importance both of Zeus and of father-son relations in the play,37 these oracular statements cast an ironic light on Heracles' confi-

36 For the inferential liopa see H. Weir Smyth, Greek Grammar (1920), rev. G. M. Messing (Cambridge, Mass. 1956) pp. 635-636, sections 2790-2791.

37 On father-son relations see 139-140, 1104-1106, 1268-1269; Segal, Tragic World 51; Kitto (above, n. 16) 163-164.


170 Charles Segal

dence in his descent from Zeus (cf. Hyllus' closing speech, 1266-1269 and 1278), for it suggests that the will of Zeus has "long ago" estab- lished a shape for Heracles' life very different from his assumptions about "faring well" (rpaetyv KaX'&;, 1171; cf. 57). In the other direc- tion, still hidden from Heracles and the other mortal characters, is the further extension of Zeus's will beyond the death of Heracles, to his future apotheosis.38

To one interpreter the chorus' interpretation of the oracle in the third stasimon (particularly 828-830) must "ruin Heracles' subsequent realization that the oracle meant his death."39 If so, why does Sophocles thus allow the chorus to anticipate the oracle's final meaning at this rel- atively early point in the play? The answer lies, I think, in the ode's place at the juncture of events and especially at the juncture of accumu- lated information about the past lives of both protagonists. By this point we have heard the three long narratives about this past: Lichas' account of the events at Oechalia, Deianeira's of her encounter with Nessus, and Hyllus' of the horrors of the perverted sacrifice at Cenaeum, where the consequences of both the remoter and recent events converge. This moment is also the juncture between the present agony of Heracles and the imminent suicide of Deianeira (813-820; cf. 720-722). At this point the chorus, like all the other characters, is forced to reinterpret radically the meaning of previous narratives, including oracular narratives. So far, it has maintained an optimistic and hopeful mood as it attempted to reassure Deianeira in her worries (119-120, 205-224, 655-662). It even tried to offer "hope" amid her fears of "terrible deeds" after Deianeira herself has recognized the fearful truth of what she has done (723-730). The chorus now draws the logical conclusion and simultaneously adds its recollection of a twelve-year-old oracle whose import it "suddenly" grasps. Thus another piece of Heracles' past falls into place.

The chorus' mention of this oracle also continues the play's pattern

38 Heracles' apotheosis remains controversial; I continue to believe that it is a relevant part of the action of the play. See Segal, Civilization 99-101 and Tragic World 53-55; with the references there cited; also Easterling (above, n. 3) 9-12, 17-19; Philip Holt, "The End of the Trakhiniai and the Fate of Heracles," JHS 109 (1989) 69-80, especially 78 f.; Winnington-Ingram (above, n. 33) 215 n. 33; Davies (above, n. 2) Introduction, xix-xxii.

39 Adams (above, n. 24) 126, who, I think, exaggerates the problem and misses the fact that foreshadowing, not suspense, is the poet's aim.



of introducing new information about the past along with an interpretation of the past. The pattern is complete with Heracles' account of his oracle from Zeus at 1159-1174, where new information and definitive interpretation again coincide. At that point his reference to a "revelation" stamped by the authority of the gods (b' )r6 Oeiov ~v lnp6opavTov, 1162-1163) harks back explicitly to the chorus' "revelation" of a "vast and treacherous disaster" that is about to "come" as the "portion" or "doom" of the house (849-850): &( ' pXop~ova tgotpa sipopa(vet XOki~v / ical( Xsyakav aa.40 Heracles' reference to to6 Osov in 1162 now marks his privileged, definitive understanding of what the oracles have been telling him for so long.

In all of these cases the oracles reveal the present as dominated destructively by the past. Only at the end does new information refer to the future as Heracles commands the preparation of his pyre and orders the marriage of Hyllus and Iole.

To sum up, through the oracles the mortal protagonists discover the hidden truth of the divine pattern that underlies the struggles and suffer- ings of their lives (nt6vot or g6xOot), both in the present and in the past. The oracles are the medium through which the characters come to see the shape of their lives in the gods' design. Sophoclean tragedy allows that meaning to emerge only gradually from the illusions, errors, and self-deceptions amid which these characters, like all mortals, live. Although Sophocles leaves vague the exact interrelation of the three forms of the prophecy of Heracles' death, the language of the third stasimon is carefully calculated to suggest a gradual progression in the unfolding meaning of the oracles. Specifically, it points ahead to the final recognition of that meaning, which will pass from the chorus to Heracles. For the first and last time that meaning will be enunciated by Heracles himself; and that recognition will be followed by his knowledge of a still more mysterious, undeclared oracle having to do with the pyre and his afterlife. In this case, however, Heracles does not know precisely what that oracle says, and so he meets his end almost as unen- lightened about his afterlife as he was about the death that he is now undergoing.

HARVARD UNIVERSITY 40 The reference is probably to the doom of both Heracles and Deianeira: see Easter-

ling ad loc. On the importance of notions of revealing and the root paxv- in the play see Segal, Tragic World 57-58, with n. 128.


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Issue Table of ContentsHarvard Studies in Classical Philology, Vol. 100 (2000), pp. 1-584Volume Information [pp. 527-584]Front MatterA Distant Anatolian Echo in Pindar: The Origin of the Aegis Again [pp. 1-14]War Games: Odysseus at Troy [pp. 15-23]Aithn, Aithon, and Odysseus [pp. 25-51]Who Is in the "Odyssey"? [pp. 53-65]The "Parthenoi" of Bacchylides 13 [pp. 67-81]The List of the War Dead in Aeschylus' "Persians" [pp. 83-96]"Dream of a Shade": Refractions of Epic Vision in Pindar's "Pythian 8" and Aeschylus' "Seven against Thebes" [pp. 97-118]The Ilioupersis in Athens [pp. 119-150]The Oracles of Sophocles' "Trachiniae": Convergence or Confusion? [pp. 151-171]Drama and Dromena: Bloodshed, Violence, and Sacrificial Metaphor in Euripides [pp. 173-188]Democracy in Syracuse, 466-412 B.C. [pp. 189-205]Epos as Authoritative Speech in Herodotos' "Histories" [pp. 207-225]Author and Audience in Thucydides' "Archaeology". Some Reflections [pp. 227-239]Darius III [pp. 241-267]Musai Hypophetores: Apollonius of Rhodes on Inspiration and Interpretation [pp. 268-292]Plautus' "Amphitruo": Three Problems [pp. 293-299]Politics and Religion in the Bacchanalian Affair of 186 B.C.E. [pp. 301-310]Tragic History and Barbarian Speech in Sallust's "Jugurtha" [pp. 311-325]Silenus and the Imago Vocis in "Eclogue 6" [pp. 327-339]The Poet's Fiction: Virgil's Praise of the Farmer, Philosopher, and Poet at the End of "Georgics 2" [pp. 341-360]Well-Read Heroes Quoting the Aetia in "Aeneid 8" [pp. 361-380]A Trope by Any Other Name: "Polysemy," Ambiguity, and Significatio in Virgil [pp. 381-407]Hylas and Silva: Etymological Wordplay in Propertius 1.20 [pp. 409-421]Propertius 2.32.35-36 [p. 423]The Soldier in the Garden and Other Intruders in Ovid's "Metamorphoses" [pp. 425-438]The Writing in (And of) Ovid's Byblis Episode [pp. 439-451]Nero Speaking [pp. 453-462]On Statius' Thebaid [pp. 463-476]Juvenal, the Niphates, and Trajan's Column ("Satire 6.407-412") [pp. 477-486]Missio at Halicarnassus [pp. 487-500]Observations on a Byzantine Manuscript in Harvard College Library [pp. 501-514]Summaries of Dissertations for the Degree of Ph.D. [pp. 515-526]

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