essentially feminine duty, burial would have been performed by male relatives – or not at all, in the case of traitors to the state.
405
Soph. Ant. 61-68, 484-85, 578-79, 677-80; Chrysothemis presents similar sentiments of yielding to those in power as Ismene at El. 333-40, 396, and Clytemnestra criticises her appearance outside the house at 516-18. Electra herself states: manqa/nw d' o(qou/neka / e)/cwra pra/ssw kou)k e)moi\ proseiko/ta (618-19). See
also 997-98.
406
Soph. El. 673, see Sorum (1982) 207, Foley (2001) 153 „her [Electra‟s] status too, depends on a dead father
and brother‟. 407
Trachiniae includes not one, but two improperly performed marriages. The first is Heracles‟ with Deianeira: though she is not explicitly anumenaios, she exists in a state of liminality that recalls the use of the term in Antigone and Electra. The second is Heracles‟ with Iole, which
ensures that Deianeira will never be „fulfilled‟. On the surface, Deianeira‟s union with Heracles is the archetypal „hero rescues maiden from monster‟ story. Her prologue describes
her fear of marriage with Achelous, beyond that of the average Geek bride:
h(/tij patro\j me\n e)n do/moisin Oi)ne/wj nai/ous' e)/t' e)n Pleurw=ni numfei/wn o)/tlon a)/lgiston e)/sxon, ei)/ tij Ai)twli\j gunh/.408
She is a passive object in this transaction, with the river as mnhsth\r (9), and can merely hope for death before consummation:
toio/nd' e)gw\ mnhsth=ra prosdedegme/nh du/sthnoj a)ei\ katqanei=n e)phuxo/mhn, pri\n th=sde koi/thj e)mpelasqh=nai pote.409
This wish for death, we have seen, is common to „epithalamial‟ songs, if not to epithalamia themselves.410 It betrays bridal reluctance that must be overcome by the encouragement to
408 Soph. Trach. 6-8. 409 Soph. Trach. 15-17. 410
transition to a new life. In Deianeira‟s case, she is saved from both virgin death and hated
marriage by the arrival of Heracles (18-21).
Unusually among tragic brides, Deianeira leaves her father‟s house under her own
preferred circumstances (a)sme/n$ de/ moi, 18). Once the transfer to Heracles‟ oikos gets
underway, however, things start to go wrong. Ormand notes how, following a „courtship‟ that is in reality little more than an agôn between two hypermasculine figures with herself as the
prize, Deianeira complains about the perversion of the traditional send off from her father‟s
house and subsequent attempted rape by the centaur Nessus:411
o(\j to\n baqu/rroun potamo\n Eu)/hnon brotou\j misqou= 'po/reue xersi/n, ou)/te pompi/moij kw/paij e)re/sswn ou)/te lai/fesin new/j. o(\j ka)me/, to\n patr%=on h(ni/ka sto/lon
cun (Hraklei= to\ prw=ton eu)=nij e(spo/mhn... 412
He states that:
Deianeira‟s choice of words, particularly the adjective “processional” (pompimos) is
significant. She uses the word because she is complaining about the lack of traditional pomp (procession) after her wedding.413
411
Ormand (1999) 41, cf. Armstrong (1986) 101-2. Armstrong further links this passage with Deianeira‟s erêmia by noting that eunis can mean both „bride‟ and „deserted‟ („lacking‟ her patros, understood with eunis from patrôion).
412
Soph. Trach. 559-63.
413
We have seen how marriage is a process of transition for the bride, from enguê to childbirth, which is part of a wider initiation into adulthood. The wedding procession functions as a ritual compression of this process, inscribed in its songs which may represent a transition from wildness and reluctance to domestication and acceptance.414 Electra and Antigone demonstrated the consequences if that process was withheld or perverted; Trachiniae presents a different consequence of its being improperly performed. Instead of processional oars or a ship with sails and a hymeneal stolon to effect her transition into the civilised and civilising institution of marriage,415 Deianeira is carried over the river, a symbol of her liminal state, by a centaur, a hypersexual beast representative of the very margins of civilisation – who then attempts, in a perversion of the cheir’ epi karpôi gesture with which a bridegroom would lead a bride to her new home, to appropriate her sexuality for himself, outside the context of the oikos.
That oikos is unstable – Heracles‟ actions mean that the family are forced into continual transition and separation from each other. He and Deianeira never complete the marriage process through sunoikêsis, living together as man and wife (though by the time of the dramatic action, their son, Hyllus, is himself old enough to marry – an extraordinary deferral of reintegration):
e)c ou(= gar\ e)/kta kei=noj 'Ifi/tou bi/an, h(mei=j me\n e)n Traxi=ni t$=d' a)na/statoi ce/n% par' a)ndri\ nai/omen, kei=noj d' o(/pou be/bhken ou)dei\j oi)=de.416
414
Cf. Ch.1, pp.72-73.
415
Compare Sappho fr. 44.5-8 V: 'Ektwr kai\ sune/tair?[o]i a)/gois' e)likw/pida / Qh/baj e)c i)e/raj Plaki/aj t' a)p? [a)i+]n<n>a/w / a)/bran 'Anrdoma/xan e)ni\ nau=sin e)p' a)/lmuron / po/nton.
416
On Van Gennep‟s model of rites of passage, here the rites of limen, the dangerous transitional
phase between separation and reintegration, are corrupted and the transition permanently arrested. The essential fact of reintegration – cohabitation – is missing from their relationship.417 Deianeira‟s visualisation of her wedding procession as unsanctioned abduction and rape (and one that consequently overshadows the whole of her married life), followed by abandonment, suggests that its proper performance was regarded as essential for the successful transition and transfer of the woman between oikoi. To effect its telos ensures a kind of successful fulfilment in marriage, a reintegration which Deianeira never experiences. She is described during her wedding contest as a calf wandered from its mother, an image which may derive from the wedding song:
ka)po\ matro\j a)/far be/bax', w(/ste po/rtij e)rh/ma.418
Both Deianeira and the Chorus look back to the images of partheneia even after Deianeira is married. This imagery can be used to indicate bridal anxiety or reluctance, which in the
course of the Greek wedding would ideally be overcome, „perhaps by persuasion or perhaps by rites of incorporation‟.419 Deianeira‟s marriage, however, was characterised by violence
and due to her arrested transition it is unlikely that her reintegration could ever have been accomplished. She expresses post-transitional lamentation, identifying with the „sheltered
garden‟ image (to\ ga\r nea/zon e)n toioi=sde bo/sketai / xw/roisin au)tou=, 144-45) at the same time as the „fertile field‟:
417Cf. Wohl (1998) 33, also on Iole‟s failure to make the transition from parthenos to gunê. 418
Soph. Trach. 529-30; cf. Sappho fr. 104(a) V, Seaford (1986) 52.
419
ka)fu/samen dh\ pai=daj, ou(\j kei=no/j pote, gv/thj o(/pwj a)/rouran e)/ktopon labw/n, spei/rwn mo/non prosei=de ka)camw=n a(/pac.420
As a result, she remains liminal. Unlike the Greek bride, this calf is never truly domesticated, always erêma, and never truly a part of a new household. Despite her status as mh=ter (64)
and da/marta/...(Hrakle/ouj (406), Deianeira has never undergone the process of
acculturation expressed in the wedding songs that would make her teleia: she, like her house, is eternally mello/numfoj.
The news of Heracles‟ return leads to a choral ode anticipating a marriage, prompted
by Deianeira herself:421
a)nololuca/tw do/moj e)festi/oij a)lalagai=j o( me/llo/numfoj!422
Her joy seems to suggest that the wedding to be celebrated is the long-awaited reunion of herself and Heracles. His labours are complete; now they may both be reintegrated. This song follows many epithalamial patterns: as in Sappho fr. 44.33-34 V, the chorus of women call upon the men to raise a song to Apollo (a)rse/nwn / i)/tw klagga\ to\n eu)fare/tran /
420
Soph. Trach. 31-33; see Introduction, pp.15-22.
421
Soph. Trach. 202-4.
422
'Apo/llw prosta/tan, 207-9). Here maidens also join in: paia=na paia=n' a)na/get', w)= parqe/noi (210-11). The overall image is one of communal celebration – until Artemis is invoked, both in her „wild‟ aspect (e)lafabo/lon, 214) and as torch-bearer (a)mfi/puron).
The virginal is again juxtaposed with the nuptial. This could refer to the anticipated transition of marriage, but is slightly jarring in view of Deianeira‟s earlier vacillation.
Marriage is an institution which reproduces and strengthens social relations and reaffirms gender roles. The introduction of Dionysiac imagery to this song suggests the rupture or dissolution of those boundaries. The aulos (217) is appropriate to the wedding song,423 but not the function of the god as tu/ranne ta=j e)ma=j freno/j (218), suggesting madness and frenzy which have no place in the epithalamium. It is the result of madness – that of uncontrolled passion – which Deianeira is called to look upon when the Chorus say:
ta/d' a)nti/pr%ra dh/ soi / ble/pein pa/rest' e)nargh= (223-24).424
The next thing Deianeira sees will be the sto/lon (227, cf. 562) by which Iole, Heracles‟ captive-bride, is
brought into the house.
Mello/numfoj could therefore also refer to the second improperly performed marriage. Indeed, the Messenger‟s words cast this union in the context of transgressive
marriage from the beginning. Heracles destroyed a city to obtain Iole (e(/loi / th/n
u(yi/pugron Oi)xali/an, 353-54); as in Antigone, the destructive power of love is blamed
for this rupture:
)/Erwj de/ nin
423
Hom. Il. 18.495, [Hes.] Scut. 281, Sappho fr. 44.24 V.
424
mo/noj qew=n qe/lceien ai)xma/sai ta/de.425
The hero wished to have Iole as his kru/fion le/xoj (360), creating ambiguity as to her role in the house. Lechos can be used of a wife or a concubine, and Deianeira refers to herself with the same term at v.27. The captive is not to be a sex-slave: ou)k a)fronti/stwj...ou)d'
w(/ste dou/lhn (366-67). Lichas swore that he was bringing her (a)/gein) as the da/mart'... (Hraklei= (428), the very term by which he addresses Deianeira in v.406. Deianeira draws
the obvious conclusion that the two of them are to occupy the same position:
e)gw\ de\ qumou=sqai me\n ou)k e)pi/stamai nosou=nti kei/n% polla\ t$=de t$= no/s%, to\ d' au)= cunoikei=n th=d' o(mou= ti/j a)\n gunh\ du/naito, koinwnou=sa tw=n au)tw=n ga/mwn; o(rw= ga\r h(/bhn th\n me\n e(/rpousan pro/sw, th\n de\ fqi/nousan! w(=n <d'> a)farpa/zein filei= o)fqalmo\j a)/nqoj, tw=nd' u(pektre/pei po/da. tau=t' ou)=n fobou=mai mh\ po/sij me\n (Hraklh=j e)mo\j kalh=tai, th=j newte/raj d' a)nh/r.426
Though both are presented as wives, it is desire for Iole that rules the husband. He will be
Deianeira‟s posis in name only. Though she is to all intents and purposes married, to her
425
Soph. Trach. 354-55.
426
mind, she will never have completed the transition of gunê to an anêr. This takes further the
theme of „artificial containment‟ in the previous two plays. Here the ritual and telos of
marriage is insufficient to enclose Deianeira‟s sexuality – though married and a mother, she remains, in a sense, anumenaios, and therefore threatening. When she attempts to reclaim her marital relationship, she inadvertently kills her husband. In the end, it is only her robe which will sunoikein with Heracles.427
Again we are given a sense of the perceived importance of the marriage relationship to women: not only the social construction of posis/damar, but also the personal relationship of anêr/gunê. Deianeira is married and has borne children but is separated from Heracles and privileges the marital relationship in her suicide. Perhaps post-transitional bridal lamentation should be seen in this context: the socio-ritual transition has been accomplished, but the bride has yet to establish a relationship with her husband and stresses her ongoing separation. Rituals may be inadequate to overcome this: the bride still feels herself to be liminal. In Deianeira we see an extreme example of this phenomenon. Her pre-marital anxiety and liminality becomes the central fact of the text, and this unfulfilled potentiality eventually proves the death of her husband – and herself.
I agree with Ormand‟s hypothesis: arguing for the lack of fulfilment of tragic women in marriage and tragedy‟s inability to express this comprehensibly, he notes that Trachiniae presents Deianeira‟s transformation from parthenos (the wandering calf) to gunê as
incomplete, and as such, her integration into her new oikos is interrupted.428 She is suspended in a liminal phase and arrested in her bridal identity until the moment of her death – a death figured as a sexual penetration in which she makes up the bed (920), bares her breasts (925-
427
Soph. Trach. 1055, see Ormand (1993) 224-26.
428
26), and stabs herself with a sword in the liver (930-31).429 Only through one telos can she express her achievement of another.
An inappropriately performed procession, as in Trachiniae, or anumenaios wedding, as in Antigone, disrupts the telos of the ritual – or is used to indicate its disruption and the consequences to follow. The Sophoclean plays give the impression that women are owed these rituals – not merely because they are integral to the survival of the household and the community of which it is a part, but also on a personal level. Epithalamia, with their progression towards civilising imagery and their encouragement of acceptance, are part of a wider, communal ritual whose aim is to effect the transition of the bride from parthenos to gunê, thereby guaranteeing the fertility of the oikos and by extension, the continuity of the polis.430 By implication, their improper performance will result in a corruption of interpersonal relations within the household, sterility, and social stasis. At the same time, the rituals of marriage by themselves are not sufficient to effect this telos. Correct behaviour between husband and wife contributes to the establishment of a relationship that extends
beyond the epithalamium and which is presented as the cornerstone of feminine „fulfilment‟.
Sophocles seems at first glance to use the hymenaios in a similar way to Aeschylus‟ manipulation of the genre in PV or in Agamemnon, in which the term contrasts the expectations of joy which would accompany marriage in reality with the tragic situation, and thus emphasises the current misery of the protagonists (such as Antigone, Electra, and to an extent Oedipus);431 or, more ironically, looks forward to it. There are further similarities with the Aeschylean hymenaios: namely, that the motif can be used to underscore a recognition (or lack of recognition) of illicit or cursed sexuality, and that those who fail to recognise it as such are often classed as tyrants432 – whose downfall is thus imminent. In a similar way to 429 Cf. Foley (2001) 97. 430 See Introduction, pp.34-35. 431 Cf. Ch.2, pp.97-99, 103. 432
Supplices, the Choruses of Antigone and Trachiniae use songs that are like (and yet unlike) wedding songs in order to foreshadow or comment upon the corruption of the hymeneal telos.433
In the suggestion of arrested transition, however, Sophocles differs from Aeschylus. While the Danaids resist marriage and attempt to avoid their own transitions by flight to Argos and obedience to their father, Antigone‟s and Electra‟s devotion to their patrilines causes them to remark on the meaning of their loss of marriage. They are at once defiant over
these actions, and at the same time pitiful and „lost‟, denied a „share‟ in marriage and
children. Deianeira, while she attains this lot on a social level, fails to make the transition to gunê in her own self-identity, and can only assert her status as wife/mother in death. The association of the term anumenaios with death, moreover, suggests both a pitiable sterility and the potential destructiveness of such a state. Its implications of silence, liminality and unfulfilled erêmia intersect with the political sphere in which it can be applied – forcibly – to the female in order to reflect on the Athenian ideals of women‟s silence, obedience, and invisibility – ideals more prevalent under the Periclean regime, but not necessarily the result of it.
When applied to a maiden, anumenaios can suggest the unleashing of a destructive potentiality as a result of her denial of traditional fulfilment in the role of wife, a denial often resulting from her fulfilment of her role as daughter. This denial is due both to her tragic excess and the fear of her reproductive capacity by the authorities, and is bound up in
Athenian anxieties about women‟s role in society. The lack of fulfilment in marriage can also
be applied to the tragic wife, who occasionally experiences a lack of integration into the marital household as a result of the lack of appropriate ritual behaviour (as in Trachiniae). The tragic hymenaios emphasises the dangers of the liminal position of the parthenos, and to
433
an extent of women as a whole in Athenian society,434 and of the period of transition between oikoi. It emphasises the importance for personal fulfilment of female rites of passage – and the importance of their correct performance if society is to continue.
The hymenaios in Sophocles is therefore a more complex topos than in Aeschylus.
Sophocles uses „epithalamial‟ odes, but these suggest a lack of appropriate ritual and an
inversion of the anticipated telos. He also highlights women‟s valuation of marriage through their status as anumenaios. This is a positive valuation of marriage, implying a social and personal fulfilment lacked by Antigone, Electra and Deianeira. Positive representations of marriage in the female voice do exist, but it is rare to find them expressed by the bride in the first person in the wedding song.435 As mentioned in Chapter 1, it is inappropriate for a woman to display eagerness for sexual contact – Sophocles‟ plays suggest, however, that lamentation for the missed opportunity of marriage was acceptable. Similar sentiments are displayed by Greek funerary epigrams on the death of parthenoi:436 to wish for death is an acceptable, ritualised expression of pre-marital anxiety, to achieve death was an occasion for real grief.
434
Anxiety over the transferable position of women and their potential for ill is apparent in the simile of Helen as a lion cub brought into the house in Aesch. Ag, and is expressed by Creon in Soph. Ant. 647-51: mh/ nu/n pot', w)= pai=, ta\j fre/naj g' u(f' h(donh=j / gunaiko\j ou(/nek' e)kba/l$j, ei)dw\j o(/ti / yuxro\n paragka/lisma tou=to gi/gnetai, / gunh\ kakh\ cu/neunoj e)n do/moij.
435
Compare Sappho frr. 30, 44.25-27, 31 V and Theoc. 18 with Eur. Tro 308-41; see Introduction, pp.15-22; Ch.1, pp.47-48.
436
AP 7.182, 486, 487, 488, 489, 490, 491; see p.83, n.271. These, however, are not in the bride‟s own voice,
which further highlights the abnormality of Antigone, Electra and Deianeira‟s self-laments. A similar situation occurs in Cassandra‟s performance of her own wedding song (see Ch. 4, pp.168-69).