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Ancient tragedies offer a paradox for modern audiences: the plots

themselves are amongst the most violent one can imagine and yet there is little trace of bloodshed actually in action on the ancient stage. In general, the convention of off-stage violence being reported by a messenger seems to have been followed, although there are a few exceptions which show that this convention (like others in 5th-century tragedy) was not necessarily a hard and fast rule.1 Despite this, it is clear that for the most part, even without resorting to dramatizing acts of bloodshed physically in view of the audience, tragedies were capable of creating an atmosphere of imminent violence and that this was achieved partly through the prominence of swords on stage. This often over-looked visual element in staging has real significance for the way in which we think about the ancient audience’s experience of tragedy.

References to swords in extant tragedy are widespread: A. Agamemnon 1651-3; A. Eumenides 40-5; S. Antigone 1235; S. Philoctetes 1254-6; S. Ajax 95, 658, 815, 828, 834, 899, 907, (1032-4); E. Alcestis 74-6; E. Andromache 547; E. Electra 225; E. Phoenician Women 267, 276, 363, 593-6, 600, 625,1677; E. Iphigenia at Aulis 970; E. Helen 983; E. Ion 1257-8; E. Orestes 1457, 1504-26, 1575, 1608, 1627, 1653; [E.] Rhesus 668-9. These verbal references represent moments in plays when particular dramatic emphasis is being given to this prop. However, that is not to say that swords only appeared in the plays where characters say something about them. It is a fair working assumption

to take it from these references that swords were usually included in the costumes for male characters and were at hand to become the dramatic focus whenever the playwright wished.2 This suggestion is strengthened by the evident inclusion of swords in the costumes for the old men of Argos forming the chorus in the Agamemnon (1651-3). If even these men, who at their first stage entry bemoan that they are too old to go to war (72-82), are equipped with them, then it seems reasonable to assume that male characters of younger ages

usually appeared on stage with swords. The iconographic evidence, such as it is, offers further support to the hypothesis that the use of this prop was widespread on the tragic stage.3 Moreover the sword’s status as a particularly ‘tragic’ prop is attested by the 4th-century ‘Choregoi’ vase: here we see Aegisthus (to the left, in front of the doors) embodying the parody of a tragic character and carrying a sword (the hilt is just visible at his left side) as well as two spears; Fig.1.4 A part of what makes him look ‘tragic’, I would suggest, is his sword.

Rethinking Violence in Greek Tragedyby Rosie Wyles

Fig. 1 ‘Choregoi’ vase

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While this vase is dated to the 4th century BC, we know from the evidence of comedy that already in the 5th century the sword held a ‘paratragic’ status on stage; the mere mention of it providing a means of imposing (or attempting to impose) a tragic frame on comic action.5 This is neatly exemplified in Aristophanes Wasps (422 BC) where the tragic hero Philocleon calls for a sword and claims he will fall on it if he loses the debate (lines 522-3). Suicide is, of course, the domain of tragedy and this reference to falling on a sword could evoke images of the on-stage violence which the audience may have already witnessed in the performance of Sophocles Ajax.6 The humour is created in the juxtaposition of the ‘reality’ of the comic playworld in which Philocleon’s claims will never take place and the apparent sincerity with which he aspires nevertheless to re-frame the action as tragic (and the debate as a matter of life and death!).

If the sword offered a semiotic shorthand for the tragic playworld, then what exactly did it represent about the tragic experience? By looking at the way in which swords were used in extant tragedy we can come closer to understanding what they meant to the audience. The example of Ajax, just mentioned, is actually exceptional in its use of a sword to inflict a wound (in this case fatal) on stage.7 Generally while the sword is not used for actual bloodshed on stage, it can nevertheless create tension at the threat of violence (even if the audience knows that any physical conflict with the sword is likely to take place off stage). This tension and fearful anticipation is central to the tragic experience.

In the Agamemnon, this sense of fear is evoked from the very opening in the watchman’s description of a world in which humming becomes a dirge and oppression prevents freedom of speech. Throughout the play, the words of the characters and chorus invite the audience to share this sense of foreboding. Even after the deaths of Agamemnon and Cassandra, a further fear emerges with the appearance of Aegisthus and the threat of violence between him and the chorus at lines 1651-3 (when

both threaten to draw their swords). At this point in the play, violence has been unleashed and is now represented visually on stage in the very immediate threat of swords. Just as Clytemnestra has dropped her guise, now speaking openly and shamelessly (1372f), so too all the hinted references to violence have become unmasked and are now embodied in the explicit danger of naked swords. In this case Clytemnestra will intervene to draw a close to violence (at least for the time being) by dissipating the tension caused by the reference to the swords. Arguably the tension caused by this moment is in any case mediated to some extent by the main violence of the play having taken place already (that is, the murders of Agamemnon and Cassandra). Nevertheless the threat of further violence at this point in the play has important thematic significance for the trilogy as a whole: Aeschylus uses it to foreshadow the cycle of violence which will be the driving force of action through the next two plays.

In other plays, the threat of violence from swords takes place before the main violence of the tragedy has occurred and therefore creates greater tension, as the audience is left wondering whether the threat will culminate in significant action (even if off stage). One of the most striking examples of tension being deliberately built up in this way throughout a tragedy is offered by Euripides Phoenician Women. The play is set in Thebes and dramatizes the struggle between Oedipus’ sons, Eteocles and Polynices, for control of the city. In this version of the myth, Jocasta is still alive and tries to act as mediator between her sons, inviting the aggressor Polynices into the city for a meeting with his brother. Much of the dramatic effect in the first part of the play is created through references to Polynices’ drawn sword which comes to represent his sense of danger as he goes through the city (that is, across the stage); Euripides Phoenician Women 261-77:

The gatekeepers’ bolts have allowed me to pass easily inside the walls. And so I am afraid that having taken me within their net they will not let me go again without a wound. For this reason I must turn my eyes this way and that for fear of trickery. With this sword in my hands

I shall give myself the confidence to venture on. Ah, who is that? Or am I starting at a mere noise? Everything seems frightful to bold men when their feet tread on their enemy territory. Still, I trust my mother – and at the same time mistrust her. She persuaded me to come here under a truce. But help is at hand (for an altar stands nearby) and the house is not without inhabitants: come, let me put up my sword into the dark of its encasement and ask these women standing near the house who they are.8

The passage offers a nice example of an embedded stage direction from which it is clear that the actor should turn his head this way and that (a movement that would have been even more pronounced with the mask) as he crosses the stage with his sword held out in front of him. Through Polynices’ words and body language, a sense of danger and tense anticipation is created. The effect is analogous to the type scene in a modern police drama or thriller where the hero approaches a building (which is presumed to hold danger) looking around him and holding up his gun. The combination of camera work, the actor’s body language, and the gun (as symbol of imminent violence) creates tension for the viewer. In the case of Polynices, Euripides exploits the dramatic effect of this staging to the maximum by evoking it retrospectively – Polynices himself late reports to his mother Jocasta (361-4):

But I’m terribly afraid that my brother will kill me by some trick, and so I have come through the city sword in hand and constantly looking around me.

The re-iteration of his fear and the mention of the previous stage action remind the audience of the danger and keep foreboding anticipation constantly present in the emotional landscape of the play through the visual symbol of the sword. When the brothers finally meet and are able to resolve nothing through an argument delivered in fraught stichomythia, it is no surprise (given the emphasis that Euripides has already given to Polynices’ sword) that the culmination should be the threat of drawing swords (593-7): E: And you take yourself outside the walls – or you’re a dead man

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P: And who’s going to kill me? Who is so invulnerable that he can thrust his murderous sword at me and not receive the death he would inflict? E: He’s standing nearby, not far off. Are you looking at my hands? P: I’m looking. But Mr. Wealth’s a cowardly warrior, afraid to lose his life.

Although the exchange does not end in physical violence on stage, it functions to increase the tension created by the swords since the probable end use of them has been articulated. Polynices’ implied threat, in lines 595-6, that he will use his sword to kill his brother in retaliation in fact prefigures exactly what will happen. It is striking that in the choral ode (1284f) anticipating the death of the brothers, the chorus offers speculative detail about the drawing of blood and conclude by predicting that the sword will decide what will happen. Then in the messenger’s speech itself recounting the off-stage deaths of the brothers careful detail is given about how each killed the other using his sword (1404f). Euripides has prepared the audience carefully for this news, though the added dramatic twist that Jocasta also takes one of these swords and kills herself (as the messenger reports at 1455f) contributes an element of surprise. While Jocasta threatens that she will kill herself if she finds her sons dead (line1282), she gives no hint that she will use one of their swords to do it. So while there is a sense of dramatic closure in the deaths of Polynices and Eteocles, where the swords are used exactly as the audience fear they must be, there is also an element of the unexpected to this additional use of the significant prop.

Polynices’ sword is exploited by Euripides as the equivalent to what modern drama critics refer to as the ‘unexploded gun’ – the potentially fatal danger of the prop creates tension as the play moves with inevitable momentum towards the resolution of this danger (in either a violent incident or its evasion).9 The inevitability of the deaths of the brothers is felt as soon as the dangerously prescient words have been spoken, 593-7, and reinforced by the chorus at 1284f – the words add a meaning to the props which carries the potential to determine a particular end in

the drama.10 There is another important layer to the sense of inevitability, and the tension it causes, in this specific case, since the performance history of this myth had already embedded possible meaning in the swords. In Aeschylus’ Seven Against Thebes, (467 BC), the chorus (785f) recall Oedipus’ curse on his sons in which he predicted that wielding iron they would one day divide his property.11 Euripides develops the dramatic potential of this curse and uses it as a driving force through the action of the drama. From the very opening of Phoenician Women, the audience is reminded of the curse by Jocasta (66-68), who adds the detail that the sons would divide the house with whetted iron (i.e. sharpened swords). This, of course, prepares for the dramatic focus on the swords and allows them to become visual embodiments of the danger posed by the curse. At the same time, the constant reference to the curse by characters and chorus throughout the play reinforces the sense of inevitable momentum towards the fatal use of the swords by the end of the play.12 The careful manipulation of the verbal references to the curse complemented by the tension created through the focus on the dangerous potential of the visually present swords allows Euripides to develop a distinctive dramatic force to his tragedy (cf Aeschylus’ Seven against Thebes).13 The full dramatic impact of his dramatic strategy here can only be fully appreciated by thinking about it in the context of performance where, importantly, the prop as a visual presence keeps the symbolic meaning of the sword constantly before the audience’s gaze.

While swords may have special significance in context of this myth, this treatment of them by Euripides also contributes to the more general association of swords with the tragic experience. The Agamemnon and Phoenician Women offer two representative examples of how swords could be exploited for dramatic effect on the 5th-century stage. Each tragedy in which they become a dramatic focus manipulates them for a slightly different theatrical purpose though broadly speaking they all play on the central effects identified here. Euripides Orestes, performed in 408 BC, offers one of the most extensive, elaborate, and dramatic engagements

with swords and it is perhaps not a surprise that this playful tour de force (a masterful exploitation of the prop’s dramatic potential) should come at the end of a century of theatrical experimentation with it.

It is worth thinking a bit harder about the effect that the sight of this prop might have had on the audience. While spectators did not, in general, witness the moment of the swords inflicting the deadly blows on stage, the prop was still capable of evoking images of extreme violence in the minds of the audience. The pictures painted through the words of messenger speeches have a part to play here, but far more graphic, I would argue, are the remembered images of (potentially gory) on-stage corpses. Bodies, made corpses through swords, were a familiar sight to the audience from the close of tragedies.14 Playwrights could depend on this performance memory to add a further dimension to the verbal references drawing attention to the fatal potential of swords. Another visual association was also possible after 438 BC, when the personification of Death appeared on stage carrying a sword in Euripides Alcestis (74-6). This stage figure (however he was costumed) offered a neat iconographic symbol for the stage association between swords and death by literally embodying it. There is a profundity to this image of the ‘fatal’ association of swords as it connects them not simply to the very human mortal wounds of corpses but to the abstract concept explaining the human experience of death.

Associations from outside of the theatrical world, or performance memory, are also significant. The weapons used on stage could invite connections with the real life of the spectators. In a process of what Sourvinou-Inwood called ‘zooming’, the past setting of the play could dissolve and connect with the audience’s present in different moments of the drama.15 Costume could be an element which invited this kind of zooming - the notion of the mythical world was fluid enough that there was not the problem of anachronism that applies, for example, in our period dramas. There is a striking example of this provided by the muscle cuirass which forms part of the stage costume for Heracles shown on the

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Pronomos vase; Fig. 2.16

The modification of breastplates to include this muscle detail was developed in the 5th century and would have been worn by the wealthier hoplite soldiers.18 There is an example of this kind of breastplate from 4th-century Ruvo (South Italy) in the British museum which shows just how close the stage representation of this armour was to the reality; Fig. 3.19

During the Peloponnesian wars, a significant proportion of the audience would have seen action on the battlefield. The visual echo of this armour not only invited great empathy with the stage

characters wearing it but could bring the action of the mythologically-‘distanced’ drama much closer to home. The shield and sword were also distinctive parts of the hoplite’s kit as this 5th-century red-figure fragment from the Athenian agora shows; Fig.4.21

Just as the parade of war orphans before the tragedies could change the way in which the action was viewed, so too the type of costume armour used in performance could affect the audience’s response.23 In the context of the hoplite experience, the prominence of shields in certain tragedies (for example, Ajax’s shield offered to his son (Sophocles’ Ajax 574f) or the corpse of baby Astyanax brought back on a shield in Trojan Women 1118f) takes on another layer of dramatic significance. Similarly when Polynices has his sword drawn and expresses his trepidation about the potential dangers of the situation, his words and the sight of his sword would resonate with some of the audience member in a profound way, perhaps evoking real-life images of violence rather than simply stage memories of corpses. The visual presence of swords in tragedies could potentially connect to the real life of a society still using these weapons; a dramatic effect lost to us in modern performances of Shakespeare using swords. This potential dimension to ancient performances (and the audience’s experience of them) could have contributed to make the sword particularly powerful as a symbol for the tragic experience.

The significance of male characters carrying swords in tragedy ranges from the scenic to the profound. The recognition that male characters were probably usually carrying swords can have important ramifications for the imagined impact of particular lines or scenes. So, for example, if we imagine that the chorus in the Agamemnon is carrying swords throughout the play, then it gives

a different nuance to their complaints that they are too old to fight (72-82). The presence of the swords as part of their costume demonstrates their state of denial and emphasizes their weakness (the sword which usually demonstrates someone’s power here symbolizes the opposite). At the same time, Clytemnestra’s claim of knowing as much about infidelity as she does about the dipping of metal (the process of sword making, 611-12) in the face of a chorus of old men armed with futile swords resonates rather differently and gains another layer of irony. At the other end of the spectrum, the sword can operate as a symbol for the audience experience of tragedy: it represents the inherent violence and dramatic anticipation essential to the genre. Nor is it just in the 5th century that this applies, but it remained an effective symbolic shorthand for the tragic experience in Seneca’s 1st-century AD tragedies too.24 In fact it is no surprise to find that the enduring tribute to Laurence Olivier’s mastery of the tragic in his performances of Shakespeare should be a statue of him in role as Hamlet with sword in hand, Fig.5.

It seems that 5th-century Greek tragedy and its reception have linked swords so inextricably to the tragic experience that these now antiquated objects can still offer a potent symbol of the tragic even for modern audiences.

ReferencesBond, G. W. (1974). Euripides’ parody of Aeschylus. Hermathena 118, pp. 1-14.

Csapo, E. (2010). Actors and Icons in the Ancient Theater. Chichester: Wiley-Blackwell.

Fig. 2 Heracles on the Pronomos vase17

Fig. 3 Bronze muscle cuirass20

Fig. 4 Hoplite fighter22

Rethinking Violence in Greek Tragedy

Fig. 5 Statue of Olivier outside the National Theatre, London25

Rosie Wyles is Lecturer in Classics at King’s College, London

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Everson, T. (2004). Warfare in Ancient Greece: arms and armour from the heroes of Homer to Alexander the Great. Stroud: The History Press Ltd. Finglass, P.J. (2011). Sophocles Ajax. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Fitch, J. G. (2002). Seneca Hercules, Trojan Women, Phoenician Women, Medea, Phaedra. Cambridge, Massachusetts.

Goldhill, S. (1987). The Great Dionysia and civic ideology. JHS 107, pp. 58-76; reprinted with corrections in J. Winkler & F. Zeitlin (1990) Nothing to do with Dionysus? Princeton: Princeton University Press. Lazenby, J. (1994). The Killing Zone. In V. Hanson, Hoplites: the Classical Greek Battle Experience (pp. 87-109). London: Routledge.

Kovacs, D. (2002) Euripides Helen, Phoenician Women, Orestes. Loeb, Vol. 5. London / Cambridge, Massachusetts.

Lloyd-Jones, H. (1982). Aeschylus Oresteia. London: Duckworth and Co.

Lloyd-Jones, H. (1996). Sophocles Fragments. Loeb. London/Cambridge, Massachusetts.

Mastronarde, D. (1994). Euripides Phoenissae. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

McDermott, E. A. (1991). Double Meaning and Mythic Novelty in Euripides’ Plays. Transactions of the American Philological Association 121, pp. 123 – 132.

Revermann, M. (2006). Comic Business: Theatricality, Dramatic technique, and Performance Contexts of Aristophanic Comedy. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Sofer, A. (1993). The Stage Life of Props. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press.

Sourvinou-Inwood, C. (1989). Assumptions and the Creation of Meaning: Reading Sophocles’ Antigone. JHS 109, pp. 134-48. Taplin, O. (1993). Comic Angels and other approaches to Greek Drama through vase - painting. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Wyles, R. (2011). Costume in Greek Tragedy. London: Bloomsbury.

1 Examples of implied on-stage violence include: the fettering and pinioning of Prometheus in the opening of [Aeschylus] Prometheus Bound; the apparent shooting of arrows at Niobe’s children in Sophocles’ fragmentary tt (fr. 441a Lloyd-Jones) and, of course, Ajax’s suicide in Sophocles’ Ajax (on how this might have been staged see Finglass (2011) n.815-65).

2 It is noteworthy that when characters do refer to their swords, they do not enter into

explanations for why they are carrying them; therefore I take it to be a stage norm.

3 Important evidence here includes: the 5th-century Maenad vase (Stat. Mus. Berlin 3223), the 4th-century ‘Choregoi’ vase (formerly J. Paul Getty Museum 96.AE.29) and Gnathia fragment of a tragic actor (Würzburg H4600); fig. 3, fig. 11 and fig. 13 (respectively) in Wyles (2011). Given the limited numbers of vase paintings relating directly to theatrical performance, it is striking that swords should be present on a significant proportion of this evidence.

4 On this vase see Wyles (2011), pp. 25-7 and Taplin (1993), pp. 55-63.

5 Its ‘paratragic’ status is suggested by Revermann (2006), 40, who offers the example of Philocleon quoted here. Another intriguing example to think about is the 4th-century Apulia bell-krater by the Schiller painter, relating to the parody of Telephus in Thesmophoriazusae (Würzburg, Martin von Wagner Museum H5697, fig. 11.4 in Taplin (1993) and fig. 2.3 in Csapo (2010) with pp. 53-8). The vase demonstrates exactly how heightened tragic moments produced through the involvement of a sword fail to create the same effect when transposed onto the comic stage; the framing (in this case suggested by the costuming and masks of the characters) takes away from the tragic power of the sword. On the comic stage, this most tragic prop is rendered comic. At the same time, parodies like these reinforce the prop’s status as representative of the tragic experience.

6 There is debate over how Ajax’s suicide was staged see Finglass (2011) n. 815-65. The date of Ajax is uncertain; Finglass (2011) dates it to the 440s (therefore before Wasps).

7 Even if the visibility of the suicide to the audience is debated, this is an ‘on-stage’ action in that it is not reported by another character but the action is anticipated in Ajax’s speech then happens directly after this. The effect is not unlike the moment in Euripides Suppliants 1012f when Evadne explains that she will jump to her death before doing so – even if the audience do not see the moment of her death as she falls onto the pyre, they do, in effect, witness an on-stage suicide.

8 All translations of this play taken from Kovacs (2002).

9 On the ‘unexploded gun’ in theatre see Sofer (1993), pp. 167-202.

10 See Wyles (2011), pp. 69-76 on the sense of inevitability that may be created through props.

11 This curse could also have been known to the audience through Stesichorus’ Thebaid; on the curse in different treatments of the myth see Mastronarde (1994), pp. 23-4.

12 It is mentioned at lines: 250-55, 334, 474-5, 623, 764-5, 876-7, 1053-4, 1355, 1425-6, 1555-9, 1611.

13 Euripides engages directly with Aeschylus’ Seven against Thebes (through dramatic criticism of it) at 724f, which implicitly invites the audience to think of the difference in their treatment of the curse and armour in their respective dramatizations of the myth; while Seven against Thebes famously focuses on shields, Euripides shifts the attention to the swords alluded to by the curse. On Euripides’ parody and ‘dramatic criticism’ of Aeschylus see Bond (1974) esp. p. 3, p. 12 and on Euripides’ treatment of this myth (cf Aeschylus), see McDermott (1991), p. 130.

14 We do not have evidence for how far there was attempted realism in the presentation of these corpses, but even on a minimalist interpretation (with no visual representation of wounds and simply dummies brought on covered over) the sight could still have a shocking impact through what the audience’s awareness of what they symbolize (just as body bags can produce a chill in a modern audience).

15 Sourvinou-Inwood (1989).

16 Pronomos vase, Attic red-figure volute krater, c. 400 BC. Naples Museo Archeologico Nazionale 81673, H3240.

17 Permission to publish through Creative Commons licence.

18 On the use of the bronze muscle cuirass see Everson (2004) pp. 140-5.

19 Bronze muscle cuirass, 4th-century BC, found in Ruvo, South Italy. British Museum GR 1856, 1226.614.

20 ©Trustees of the British Museum

21 Fragment of 5th-century Attic red-figure bell-krater found in Athenian Agora LCT-59. The extent to which swords were actually used in hoplite fighting is disputed, see Lazenby (1994), pp. 96-7 and Everson (2004), pp. 163-4.

22 Image ©Craig Mauzy with kind permission of the Trustees of the American School of Classical Studies, Athens.

23 On the parade of war orphans, see Goldhill (1987).

24 For an example of this see Seneca’s Thyestes 144. Even if these plays were not staged, as some maintain, the sword could operate as a verbal symbol without a physical counterpart; for a summary of the Senecan performance debate see Fitch (2002), pp. 19-21.

25 ©Duncan Hull; permission for publication through Creative Commons licence.

Rethinking Violence in Greek Tragedy