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Dangerous supplements: Etymology and

Genealogy in Euripides' Heracles

Christina S. Kraus

The Cambridge Classical Journal / Volume 44 / January 1999, pp 137 - 157

DOI: 10.1017/S0068673500002248, Published online: 28 February 2013

Link to this article: http://journals.cambridge.org/abstract_S0068673500002248

How to cite this article:

Christina S. Kraus (1999). Dangerous supplements: Etymology and Genealogy in
Euripides' Heracles. The Cambridge Classical Journal, 44, pp 137-157 doi:10.1017/
S0068673500002248

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 DANGEROUS SUPPLEMENTS: ETYMOLOGY AND GENEALOGY
IN EURIPIDES' HERACLES*

The complex patterns of repetition and reversal in the Heracles have been carefully
and convincingly explored. Whether dividing the play into two, three, or even four
major scenes, scholars have shown that it is not simply imagery or language, but whole
actions or plot-elements which recur from scene to scene, and indeed from generation
to generation.' A consensus has developed that the play's violent disruptions and juxta-
positions of opposites work together with near-obsessive repetitions of language, plot,
and myth to stage Euripides' vision of epic valour savagely mutated into a new, moral
heroism contained by a new, democratic philia.1
It is appropriate that repetition, and repetition-as-reversal, should figure so largely
in this drama, whose action depends on a doubly-fathered hero and whose centrepiece
is the triply repeated description of an action which is itself a play within a play.3 In a
prominent ode the chorus long for a second youth as a sign of goodness (655-72), a
desire apparently realised by Heracles' reappearance from the dead. Nor is he the only
one to be reborn: in the last act, Theseus' appearance, also - ultimately - from Hades
(1170), redoubles Heracles' first entrance: another hero with two fathers, another
monster-killer, another rescuer from the dead.4

* I thank audiences at the APA Annual General Meeting and at the Oxford and Cambridge Philological
Societies for their comments and criticisms of earlier drafts of this paper; I am grateful also to Edith Hall,
Nick Lowe, Tony Woodman, Froma Zeitlin, and the editors and referee of PCPS for their help. Though
there is an extensive bibliography on the Heracles, the range of topics addressed is relatively limited; I
have, therefore, cited earlier studies selectively. Works mentioned only once are cited in full in the note.
' Division into two: M. Schwinge, Die Funktion der zweiteiligen (Composition im 'Herakles' des Euripides
(Diss. Tubingen 1972), G. Arnott, 'Red herrings and other baits', MPhL 3 (1978) 1-24, Baudy; into three:
Hangard, Barlow (1982), K. Hartigan, 'Euripidean madness', G&R 34 (1987) 126-35, D. Porter, Only
connect (1987); into four: Barlow (1996). Most explorations of repetition in the Heracles were interested
primarily in proving the play's essential unity (e.g. Sheppard, Hangard, Barlow [1996]); of particular
interest to me are Higgins on the compulsive repetition of the past from earlier generations, and Ruck on
the doubling of Heracles and Lycus. Heracles himself is aware of mirror scenes (Halleran 86).
2
On the democratic values in the play see Galinsky 58, 64-6; T. A. Tarkow, 'The glorification of Athens
in Euripides' Heracles', Helios 5 (1977) 27-33; Mikalson; and H. Yunis, A new creed: fundamental
religious beliefs in the Athenian polis and Euripidean drama (1988) 139-71. Arguing against the idea of
a new heroism are Foley 203-4 and Dunn 125-6.
3
The repeats in the central panel are Lyssa's predictive description, the chorus' reaction to the unseen events,
and the messenger speech; see Lee 49, Halleran 88-9, Hamilton 22 and n. 10. Anadiplosis, otherwise rare
in this play (Bond ad 1067), clusters around the central scene, as if to mark the unusual repetitions.
4
Theseus' role here will be that of the good king rather than the beast-killer, but his various affinities with
Heracles are what bring him on stage to begin with; see Barlow (1996) 3 and on his differing roles see
Galinsky 40-1 and Walker (esp. 127-35).
138 CHRISTINA S. KRAUS

Repetition has many possible narratological and structural functions.5 It can alter
chronology, forcing a return to an earlier time in the story or the telling of it; it can
delineate sections of a narrative (e.g. via ring-composition); it can suggest relationships
which might otherwise be unapparent; and it can serve as a powerful vehicle for the
expression of nostalgia, melancholy, Utopian visions, and the like. When repetition
features with the frequency that it does in the Heracles, it suggests a fundamental
circularity in the lives and plot being presented, an inability to escape from a cycle that
always wants to repeat itself and yet fails ever perfectly to recapture the past.6 Violent
reversal, as well, is characteristic of this inescapability of the past: just as Oedipus' kin-
murder is the flip side of his over-valuing of his kin, so jrdA.LV in both senses, of
recurrence and of reversal, is a keyword of Euripides' play.
To view these patterns simply as repetitions or as the shocking juxtaposition of
opposites - that is, as sequence - does not, I think, best represent the logic of their
operation or, indeed, the thematics of the drama. That logic can more accurately be
characterised as supplementation. This may take the form of substitution (so e.g.
Amphitryon and Megara wish to fill in for the absent hero, while Heracles the rescuer
replaces Lycus the killer);7 or, in a more complicated scenario, it may take the form of
multiplication (Heracles kills both Lycus and his children as revenge and kin-murder
collapse into each other). What this double process most closely resembles is the
operation of word-play, and particularly of puns.
Puns unsettle. There are many types of pun, ranging from the 'simply funny', in
Empson's words, to the complex, but in any case, every pun is an instance of 'lateral
thinking, exploiting the fact that language has ideas of its own'.8 Puns work simulta-
neously as mechanisms of substitution and of multiplication: so in Falstaff s 'were it
not here apparent that thou art heir apparent', in which Shakespeare plays on both
grammar (the two functions of 'apparent') and morphology (the spelling of the nearly-
homophonous syllable '[h]ere'),9 the two elements sit side by side, in sequence, but the
pun depends on bringing them together, as if with a stereopticon viewer. 'Heir apparent'
replaces 'here apparent', while at the same time being overlaid onto it (and vice versa).
You must have both at once, and neither. This oscillation between 'excess and lack,

5
See particularly S. Rimmon-Kenan, 'The paradoxical status of repetition', Poetics today 1 (1980) 151-8;
Genette 55-6; Miller 7, 144, among many others.
6
Higgins 91-3. That the Heracles is set in Thebes is hardly fortuitous: on Thebes and circularity see F. I.
Zeitlin, 'Staging Dionysus between Thebes and Athens', in Masks of Dionysus, edd. T. H. Carpenter and
C. A. Faraone (1993), esp. 151 n. 10; 'the situation in Euripides' Heracles is demonstrably appropriate to
Thebes in every respect.'
7
On the sacrificial crisis in the play see Foley 147-62. The Heracles has obvious affinities with the Bacchae,
on some of which see below, Section 4.
8
Culler 15. For a start on the large bibliography see W. P. Redfern, Puns (1984) (positivistic), Culler (theo-
retical and semiotic), and S. Attardo, Linguistic theories of humor (1994); important earlier studies are
Stanford and Empson. On the subset of etymological puns see below, nn. 16, 21. On the 'simply funny'
see Empson 108: in his punning description of the drunken Bentley sleeping safe 'in port' Pope merely
'bites the master in the ankles'.
9
H. Kokeritz, Shakespeare's pronunciation (1953) 111, 176,308.
 ETYMOLOGY AND GENEALOGY IN EURIPIDES' HERACLES 139

compensation and corruption' is implicit in famous descriptions of punning both as

theft and as something luxurious, seductive, and expensive. Pope said that 'he that
would pun would pick a pocket', while for Dr Johnson 'a quibble, poor and barren as
it is, gave [Shakespeare] such delight, that he was content to purchase it by the sacrifice
of reason, propriety, and truth. A quibble was to him the fatal Cleopatra for which he
lost the world and was content to lose it.'10
A pun's effectiveness, then, depends simultaneously on the coexistence of the
'original' meaning with the paronomastic, or catachrestic sense and on the replacement
of the one by the other; but its effect is to question, by an exuberant multiplication of
significance, the possibility of an original, proper, or appropriate meaning. This effect
is most strikingly seen in the Derridean supplement. Differance - the gap between
presence and absence, between the signified and the sign, between meaning and deferral
of meaning - is marked, encoded, encapsulated by the supplement, which 'harbors
within itself two significations whose cohabitation is as strange as it is necessary. The
supplement adds itself, it is a surplus, a plenitude enriching another plenitude, the fullest
measure of presence.' But at the same time, 'the supplement supplements. It adds only
to replace. It intervenes or insinuates itself in-the-place-of; if it fills, it is as if one fills
a void. If it represents and makes an image, it is by the anterior default of a presence.
Compensatory and vicarious, the supplement is an adjunct, a subaltern instance which
takes-(the)-place ... The sign is always the supplement of the thing itself.'11 In such a
view of language, any text both means and means differently, functioning 'against its
own explicit... assertions, not just by creating ambiguity, but by inscribing a systematic
"other message" behind or through what is being said.' l2 Like other forms of irony or
ambiguity, such as paronomasia and word-play, puns act as keys, places where a text
breaks open; they 'present us with a model of language as phonemes or letters combining
in various ways to evoke prior meaning and to produce effects of meaning - with a
looseness, unpredictability, excessiveness ... that cannot but disrupt the model of
language as nomenclature.'13 Puns are where differance most clearly manifests itself.
We may seem to have come a long way from Euripides. But, if there is any tragedy
that worries obsessively about issues of presence, origins, and meaning, it is the
Heracles. Its very form, characterised by repetitive, jarring twists and turns of plot,
suggests that its meaning lies rather in the interstices, in the relation between its plot
trajectories, than in any one of them alone.14 Beginning with a detailed linguistic
10
Quoted both by Culler 6-7 and Empson 87, who describes a 'feminine pleasure in yielding to the
mesmerism of language'; for 'excess', etc. see Johnson p. xiii.
11
J. Derrida, Ofgrammatology, trans. G. C. Spivak (1976) 144-5.
12
Johnson p. xiii.
11
Culler 14; for supplementarity and puns see S. Ulmer, 'The Puncept in Grammatology', in Culler. Cf. K.
Ruthven, 'The poet as etymologist', Critical Quarterly 11 (1969) 13-14 on the radical innocence of the
etymon: punning is dangerous.
14
For one, it is neither a rescue drama nor a suppliant drama (for analyses of the two see Burnett 157-82),
but both and neither. So Miller 155: 'A multiplotted novel often presents, more or less openly, alternative
workings out of the same narrative materials. The meaning of such a novel lies not in the predominance of
one story over the others but in the relations of similarity or difference established by their juxtaposition.'
140 CHRISTINA S. KRAUS

analysis of two examples of paronomasia, word-play whose effect resembles that of

modern puns,15 this paper will explore the Heracles' punning supplementarity, and will
consider its implications for understanding the play's myth, structure, and themes.
Finally, I will relate the Dionysiac exuberances and horrors of the central panel to the
radical multiplication and dislocation of meaning that characterises the rest of the play
and - potentially - the tragic form itself.

1. dixaia rovg rexovraq cbcpeAelv rexva

As one would expect of a Euripidean drama, the Heracles abounds with figures of
speech and with paronomasia, ranging from simple repetition and polyptoton to more
complex plays. Among the phonetic figures is the particularly gruesome Klangfigur
XEXVCC (djro)xxei,vetv. In both Greek and Latin such verbal patterns run the gamut from
expressive devices (as in the refrain xr\V£~kka xaAAivixE, e.g. Aristoph. Ach. 1233), to
anagrammatic plays which suggest and/or reinforce meaning. So in XEXVOC XXEIVEIV,
as Pucci remarks apropos of its occurrence in the Medea, 'the word for "children"
sounds like the word for "slaughtering".'16 In one of its infrequent non-Euripidean
occurrences, at what is arguably the ChoephorV s most dramatic moment, the figure
emphasises that in the house of Atreus it is the problematic relationship between parent
and child that produces tragedy: XXEVEIV EOIXOCC;, cb XEXVOV, xf|v [ir|X£Qa (Aesch. Clio.
922).17 So too in the house of Laius: ei ydo XEXVCOOEIC; (c^at) JtaT5\ ajtoxtevEi a' 6
cjj-ug (Eur. Phoen. 18).
TEXva XTEiveiv, by its memorable sounds, supports and emphasises the perversity
of Heracles' acts not only in themselves but also in their resemblance to the murders
that Lycus intended to commit. The phrase first occurs shortly before Heracles'
entrance, as Megara calls to her absent husband: xaxot ydg EIOLV ot XEXVCX XTEIVODOI
ad (496). She stresses both the horror of Lycus' murderous intention and the natural
assumption that Heracles should prevent it: as he himself says shortly thereafter, no
parent refuses to care for his children (632-6). Line 496 assumes and establishes a kind
of norm for XEXVOI XXEIVELV, which describes behaviour that violates human norms.
Every other occurrence of the Klangfigur, however, is referred to Heracles himself,

15
See J. D. Denniston, Greek prose style (1952) 136: 'what, for lack of a better name. I will style "punning"
assonance, where close similarity of sound co-exists with wide difference of meaning. "Punning" is, it is
true, an unfortunate description, because it connotes for us a humorous intention, while by the Greeks it
was frequently regarded as a means of attaining truth, or as aesthetically valuable in itself.'
16
Pucci 111; he connects the similarity of sound to word-magic. For examples of verbal ambiguity in
Euripides see Nussbaumer and Schmid-Stahlin 1.3 803-4, 807-8; more discursive treatments by Gygli-
Wyss and H. van Looy, TIAPETYMOAOrEI O E Y P n n A H S ' , in Zetesis: album amicorum.
Festschr. ... E. de Strycker (1973) 345-66; in general see Stanford, together with his Sound of Greek
(1967)85-6.
17
The overlap between the relationship of mother to child and that of 'child' to 'kill' is signaled by eoixa?:
below, n. 21.
 ETYMOLOGY AND GENEALOGY IN EURIPIDES' HERACLES 141

first by Lyssa (865), then - in a hopeless appeal - again by Megara: cb xexcitv, xi Spate;;
xexva | xxeivetc;? (975-6). l8 Theseus and Heracles deploy the phrase in describing the
latter's deed (1174 xiq xd5' EXXEIVEV xExva; 1237 olxxooc; ydo EL(J.L xayC djraxxeivag
XEXva;), while its last appearance is as a virtual epithet, as Heracles imagines how
people will speak of him: ovx ouxog 6 Aiog, og XEXV' EXXEIVEV JTOXE | Sdjxaoxd x°;
(1289-90). The figure's six repetitions track Heracles' slippage from rescuing hero to
murdering father, while underscoring the horror of his deeds by comparing them to the
tyrant-king's.
xexva xxelveiv has a significant effect beyond this anagrammatic play. It is itself a
pun on the phrase xexva XLXXELV, which, as a verb plus cognate accusative, is among
the commonest types of'figurae etymologicae.19 Euripides liked the expression, whose
appearances in his plays far outnumber those in any other tragedian.20 Like all etymo-
logical figures, this one suggests that the natural relation between the words exists as
well between the things they describe. This is especially clear from its use in the
Eumenides: oi)x eoxi [if|xr|rj f) xexATpEvn XEXVOU | xoxEiig, XQOC|)65 SE xTJjKxxog
veoajiOQoiv | XLXXEL 6' 6 OQUHOXIOV.21
It is in the paronomastic interplay between the phonetic figures that the reversals
and repetitions of the Heracles can be located. The conjunction of xexva xixxeiv and
xexva xxeivetv - like that of 'here apparent' and 'heir apparent' - suggests an inevitable
connection between begetting and killing. x£xva xtxxeiv always lies behind xsxva
22
XTELVEIV, whose form calls it 'naturally' to mind; it is in turn always already shadowed
by its evil twin. The play between the twinned supplements thus reveals simultaneously
that one relationship is being overturned or eliminated - parents are turning into killers
- and that a new etymological relationship is being added - parents by nature both beget
and kill.
The mechanism by which Euripides brings together his hero's twinned aspects is
identical to the paronomastic logic underlying these two phonetic figures: one Heracles
simultaneously replaces and adds to the other. The two meet in the central mad scene,

18
Punctuating the mad scene, her question is marked both by unusual diction (the substantive XEXIOV) and
by the startling word-break in the fifth foot: Bond ad 975 (it is an 'indication of strong emotion'), J. Diggle,
Euripideai 1994) 454.
19
For Euripides see Nussbaumer 89-93 (XEXVCI xixxetv on 91) and the discussion of R. C a m p a g n e r , ' Analisi
strutturale del sintagma accusativo dell'oggetto interno in Euripide', BIFG 3 (1976) 6 3 - 8 3 , with works
cited above, n. 16.
20
Though there are few pre-Euripidean attestations of the phrase in poetry, it is found twice in Homer (//.
6.196, Od. 22.324), thrice in Hesiod (Th. 308, W&D 235, fr. 2 0 4 . 1 2 9 - 3 0 M - W ( x b a e , t . . . XEXVCI at line-
ends)), and twice in the Homeric Hymns (Dem. 136, Ap. 14: material from TLG); on W&D 2i5 see below.
21
Aesch. Bum. 658-60. The lines are flagged as an etymological pun by XBxXr|(,i£vr|; on such markers see
F. Cairns, 'Ancient "etymology" and Tibullus', PCPS 42 (1996) 24-59. Gygli-Wyss (75) notes that some
cases of polyptoton, which images similar etymological/genealogical relationships, are flagged by words
of adding or breeding, including XIXXOJ as at Soph. Aj. 522, El. 235; see also Sulzberger 4 0 5 - 6 and P.
Guiraud, 'Etymologie et etymologic?, Poetique 2 (1972) 405.
22
Cf.Nussbaumer 170n. 1 (online 1289): 'ManerwartetEXEKgv,undnunfolgtmitauffalligem Widerspruch
zwischen dem ahnlichen Klang zu XEXV' und dem entgegengesetzen Sinn zu ETEXEV EKXEIVEV.'
142 CHRISTINA S. KRAUS

but the operation of the supplement begins earlier, with his return from Hades. His
unexpected entrance takes the place of the expected Lycus, drawing our attention to
the dramatic form in an unmistakably Euripidean way.23 As this substitution of stage
action suggests, Heracles is not very different from the tyrant-king. Both occupy the
same generational slot in the line of males in the play; both are characterised by
violence; both imitate their fathers (Lycus rather more successfully: see below);24 and
the 'wolf Lycus may be a reflex not only of Heracles' beast-enemies but also of
Heracles the beast-killer, who in his lion-skin costume is half-animal himself.25 Once
infected with madness, Heracles carries out the executions that Lycus planned. Finally,
the two parts will have been played by the same actor.26 Heracles' entrance at line 523,
then, marks the moment at which the two characters begin to slip into each other's roles,
and can be read as a kind of narratological or plot pun.27 The kinship between hero and
tyrant is foregrounded, moreover, by a series of linguistic puns, sign of the disturbance
of univalent meaning. First, Heracles' entrance in place of Lycus is structurally echoed
and thematically redefined by his resolution to 'work through the death' of his children
(581 8>tjTovr|a(x» Bdvaxov), a declaration which, in its punning oscillation between
positive and negative poles of meaning is, as Bremer argued, 'a borderline case between
homonymy and polysemy,' a verbal trick which 'is part of the overall design of the
play.'28 Second, the definitive change of Heracles from rescuing father to killing father
is brought about by Lyssa, whose name plays on that of Lycus29 and who is herself
galvanised into action by word-play (at 857: see below).
Heracles does not, however, simply replace Lycus. Even in his madness he retains
his heroic and fatherly characteristics. The way in which he murders his sons, for
instance, is entirely appropriate to and uses the same weapons as his earlier beast-
killings - indeed, he thinks of those murders as a last, crowning labour (1280).
Moreover, as scholars also note, the murders echo his former, playful distribution of
his sons' inheritance as Megara described it at 460-75. That dispensation of legacies
is now revealed to have always been a dispensation of death. Once Heracles recovers
his sanity, he consciously undertakes to carry his weapons as reminders simultaneously
of his heroism and of his madness (1377-85).30

23
Halleran 85, McDermott 124-5.
24
For Heracles' and Lycus' reciprocal genealogies see Ruck 58; for violence see e.g. Burnett 170, Higgins
102, Foley 190-2, Barlow (1996) 9 - 1 1 .
25
3 6 1 - 3 ; see Higgins 96, Baudy 169, 173.
26
Ruck 59: this distribution of parts forms 'the armature of the whole drama'. Sophocles exploits similar
stage effects in Trachiniae (Ruck 7 2 - 3 n. 15, with other examples of the technique).
27
Cf. Genette 64 on narrative structure as a kind of grammar.
28
J.M. Bremer, 'Euripides, Heracles 5 8 1 ' , CQ 22 (1972) 240. Both 523 and 581 are seen as puns only in
retrospect: on the time-lines in the play see Higgins (followed by Gibert 255).
29
So e.g. Foley 192 n. 75, comparing Theoc. 4.11.
30
On the combination, or collapse, of Heracles' violence into his heroism see e.g. Ruck 56. Higgins 100-1,
Willink 8 7 - 8 ; on Megara's speech, Michelini 252, Barlow (1996) 146; on the weapons, e.g. Higgins
104-5.
 ETYMOLOGY AND GENEALOGY IN EURIPIDES' HERACLES 143

This double meaning of Heracles' action - and, indeed, of the hero himself - is
further reinforced by a rich set of puns on iiffkoc, and JTOVOC;.31 Heracles is, always
defined by his labours, and never more so than in this play, in which Euripides has
altered the usual chronology in order to place those labours before the murders.32 In
the first stasimon the chorus lavishly celebrate the toils as victories, while the epithet
xa^Aivixoc; recurs throughout the first part of the play.33 As things turn out, however,
both dyiov and uffkoc, are deeply loaded words, full of lateral thinking. After an
imaginary wrestling-bout Heracles pronounces himself xa^Jdvixoc; over no one (961);
that delusional contest foreshadows his murders, the savage dycbv of Hera (1189), a
designation which picks up the choral description of his victory over Lycus as a
xaXAivixoc; dywv (789). All his labours, which he initially sees as lesser than his rescue
of the children, turn out to be instead-and-also violent forerunners to his murder of
those same children. The exangelos clinches this by concluding his account with a pun:
eycb [IEV ovv | oiix oiSa •fh'Trtcov Scrag dO^tcbxefjoc; (1014-15).34 In his madness,
then, Heracles becomes the killer of his children while remaining their father, the most
miserable man while remaining the most 'contested', the performer of glorious dywvec;
and of terrible agonies. The moment at which his identity is fully doubled is marked
by Megara's paronomastic cry (975-6, quoted above). Heracles' metamorphosis both
is and is not a change. Euripides has no choice but to present his two sides sequentially,
but the logic of this murderous paronomasia must be comprehended stereoptically.35
His siting in Thebes is almost inevitable, as that is often presented as the tragic city par
excellence, in which time and identity may be distorted and even lost.36 'Heracles' is
constituted in the gap between his mad and his sane self, as he is between man and god,
feminine and masculine, beast and hero.

" Including line 581. For the puns on Jtovoc; see Willink. (lo^Oo) also elides Megara's labours with
Heracles', e.g. at 22, 281, 1369 (Galinsky 61).
32
Gregory 267-8, Bond pp. xxviii-xxix. The labours therefore have no secure motivation (adding to our
sense that the divine world acts unpredictably and savagely) but are variously ascribed to Hera or TO
X(J£tbv(20-l), Hera (1261-80),TOXTl(1357), and "HQCK; ^uai ... TIIXT]I (1393). Galinsky (58), for one,
reads the changed chronology positively, as productive of the new heroism.
33
E.g. at 49, 180, 582. All three formal stasima are versions of epinician; on them see Foley 176; Bond
146-8, 224-5, 272; Barlow (1996) 1 3 9 ^ 1. The near-total choral silence in the second half of the play is
especially notable given the elaborate odes in the first.
34
Galinsky 62. There are archaic versions of a related pun: cf. Hes. fr. 248 M - W to xexog, r\ jidXa 6r| ae
jTovrKjoxatov xcd apicrtov | Zeiig TEXVUXJE JtaxriQ.
35
This is neither the old idea that Heracles was always mad, nor the more subtle one that his violence is
punished through violence (on both see Burnett 170 n. 20). Cf. Ruck 70: 'The moment of madness super-
imposes defeat upon the hallucination of victory so that the two potentials [i.e. Heracles and Lycus] for
a time are synchronous.'
16
For Thebes see above, n. 6. Heracles was sometimes allegorised as Time: H. von Staden, 'The mind and
skin of Heracles', in Maladie et maladies, ed. D. Gourevitch (1992) 131 n. 3.
144 CHRISTINA S. KRAUS

2. Fathers and sons

If Heracles' position as father and as hero is affected, even determined, by paronomasia,

his position as son is doubly so. While his relationship to his two fathers has been
thoroughly analysed,37 it is perhaps worth looking at the problem from a slightly
different point of view, considering how his relationship not only to Zeus and
Amphitryon but also to Hera and Alcmene further reflects the problematics of the
supplement.
The accusative in xexva xbccav echoes the root of the verb as a faithful copy echoes
the original, establishing the validity of that copy by proving the true, cognate rela-
tionship between the words. The relationship is often thought of as a kind of genealogy,
as in Hesiod's description of the just city, in which children resemble their parents:
xbtxououv Se yvvalxec, eoixoxa xexva yoveCoiv.38 Though such etymological
figures are classed as forms of verbal ambiguity, they are on the whole thought of as
clarifying rather than multiplying or confusing meaning, fixing it through an 'original
naming process' that can also give access to the future (nomen-omen).39 Closely
following what is perhaps the most famous of these name-etymologies, the derivation
of Helen in the Agamemnon (681-98), the chorus implicitly connect true etymology
with the begetting of children who resemble their parents, in the lines on good houses
bearing good children (Aesch. Ag. 750-62) and in the ainos of the lion-cub which
eventually reveals its bloody f]0oc; Jtgog xoxecov (717-36). The begetter begets the
begotten; the mirror image between parent and child - or between sign and signified -
is unbroken and undistorted. The (re)iteration of narrative elements can similarly be
understood as revealing a world fixed by some underlying form or ground. In a world
in which such original, natural meaning is possible, the actions and words of characters
or narrators can be referred back to that origin, and consequently are felt to make sense.
The simplest example is that of a plot with a 'fixed beginning, causal sequence, and
determined end', which 'works powerfully to reinforce belief in some form of meta-
physical ground, some reason or logos, behind the story'.40

37
See Hangard 1 3 0 - 1 , Gregory (with her later discussion in Euripides and the instruction of the Athenians
(1991)), and Mikalson.
38
W&D 235; see Gygli-Wyss 9 2 - 5 5 . T h e play between yvvalxeg and yoveOoiv reinforces the figure;
e o i x o x a is another flag (above, n. 21).
39
Goldhill (1986) 19-20, with Stanford 70 ('Once the hearer has been warned to expect ambiguities |as by
a term such as 6gOoVvu|.iovl they can be as explicit as any monosemantic statement'); cf. also Goldhill
(1991) 2 4 - 3 6 . There are many discussions of these figures, most recently that of O'Hara. On Helen and
the rest of the stasimon see Goldhill (1986) 20, 23; for etymologies in Aeschylus one can start with the
list at Schmid-Stahlin 1.2 2 9 7 - 8 . On the ooOoxrig ovouxraov see T. M. S. Baxter, The Cratylus: Plato's
critique of meaning (1992).
40
Miller 156; cf. also 5 - 6 on a reading of the world that 'asks us to think of difference on the basis of
preestablished similarity or identity', and that consequently thinks of repetition as 'grounded in a solid
archetypal model which is untouched by the effects of repetition ... The validity of the mimetic copy is
established by its truth of correspondence to what it copies.' On etymological genealogy in the construction
of identity see further R. Bloch, Etymologies and genealogies (1983), esp. 62 and 85-6.
 ETYMOLOGY AND GENEALOGY IN EURIPIDES' HERACLES 145

The use of etymology to prove and predict identity is deeply implicated in the very
form of tragic drama, which often turns on recognition of identity through the meaning
of a name. Pentheus, Hippolytus, and especially Oedipus learn the true meanings of
their names as they recognise their fate; less catastrophically, the etymology of Ion's
name triggers and focuses a critical moment in the play;41 and the champions in the
Seven against Thebes live (and die) up to their names and the blazons that image them.42
In the Heracles, however, there is no such recognition, though the hero tries to force
one by his 'violent repudiation of his own legend'43 during his debates with Amphitryon
and Theseus after he awakes from sleep. Instead, the model of true etymology is
relevant to the Heracles as a Utopian vision from which the reality of the play is fatally
distant. We are conscious of that vision from the very beginning, as Amphitryon's
opening rhesis dwells obsessively on genealogy. He wants above all to establish a fixed
beginning (whence does Heracles originate? whence Amphitryon (1-3)? whence
Heracles' wife (7-9)?), a causal sequence (what is the cause of Amphitryon's exile
(16-17)? of Heracles' labours (20-1)? how has the family come to the present crisis
(26-43)?), and he hopes beyond hope for a determined - even happy - end (44-50,
88-106). According to his own story, however, it is rather his enemies who have
relentlessly and successfully pursued a logos with logic: Lycus the son of Lycus the
father repeats his heritage of violence as he moves inexorably toward his goal of
extirpating his enemies' line.44
Heracles' is a different story. In his attempt to fix their genealogy, Amphitryon
appeals to common knowledge: all mankind is to guarantee his status. Who, he asks,
does not know the OVKKEKTQOC, of Zeus, son of Alcaeus son of Perseus, me (tovoe),
the father of Heracles (1-3)? Yet this appeal to universal knowledge, together with the
vision of Heracles the xA.eivoc; (12,1414), the EJtiOT]|iog (68), the eraXerig (290) which
haunts the play, serves ultimately to reinforce not certainty but deep aporia. No one
can say what Heracles really is. The point is brought home by Amphitryon's confident
use of the vivid ovkkwTQOC,. All mortals may know him: but how many know what
the word means? It may imply that Amphitryon and Zeus were in Alcmene's bed at the
same time: it can also mean 'wife', and will do so at line 1268, referring to Zeus' other
oi)XA.exxQog, Hera. Logically, according to the myth, Amphitryon followed Zeus in
Alcmene's bed, and in one version fathered Heracles' twin Iphicles, a scenario clearly

41
The recognition of Ion as Xuthus' 'son', which will in turn cause Creusa to try to kill the boy, thereby
precipitating the near-Oedipal denouement (Eur. Ion 514-675, esp. 661-3).
42
For a discussion see F. I. Zeitlin, Under the sign of the shield (1982). On Euripides' use of irony and
ambiguity as 'the motif of whole scenes, especially in civaYVCOQtotg passages' see Stanford 175.
43
Michelini 274. Heracles' earlier inability to recognise his children (e.g. 975-6, 981-9) is also appropriate
not only to his madness but also to the disorderly conduct that farce, as well as violence, demands: dramatic
recognition is an orderly and ordering, hegemonic gesture that would be entirely out of place in this play.
44
26—43. On the elder Lycus' violence see Bond ad 27, 3 1 , and Baudy 171; that Euripides has obtrusively
invented this younger son-of-his-father is highly illuminating (Bond p. xxviii, McDermott 124-5). On
Amphitryon's 'dream of unbroken generations' see H i g g i n s 9 l , and on the 'rare prominence of males' in
the play see Michelini 248 and n. 14.
146 CHRISTINA S. KRAUS

designed to solve the problem of the superfluous father.45 But Iphicles is not mentioned
in this play. Nor does Amphitryon name Alcmene here - or indeed any woman before
Megara in line nine - in his fantasy of an exclusively masculine heredity. All attention
is focused on Heracles and his father(s). Instead of pinning knowledge down,
Amphitryon's first words open the gap that will become one of the most critical issues
in the play. Does the ambivalent OTJ?IA,£XTQOC; indicate replacement or multiplication?
Heracles' two fathers are, of course, an integral part of his nature, as is the
consequence that he shares in both the human and the divine. In this play, however,
which opens under the sign of the supplement, the expectation is repeatedly raised that
he will at last make known which is his 'real' father, thereby proving his true genealogy.
He can do so only through his actions, which will establish his validity as a copy of his
father; yet in positive and negative ways he resembles both his human and his divine
natures. Amphitryon begins by praising his son's filial loyalties as demonstrated by his
willingness to restore Amphitryon to Argos (17-20, cf. 14 jcalg e^iog), while the chorus
takes his return from Hades to prove him A165 6 jtaig (696). In the famous debate
between Lycus and Amphitryon (140-235), the tyrant tries to demythologise and
deheroise Heracles' strangling of the Nemean lion, using sophistic word-analysis and
contemporary polls values;46 though Amphitryon defends his son, Euripides ultimately
refuses to endorse either Lycus' attack or Amphitryon's vindication. Heracles'
promised incorporation into the Athenian polls suggests that he will thereafter combine
the virtues of the archer and the hoplite, affirming his membership in the human,
political world, but Theseus' promise of cult and the possible hints at his apotheosis
suggest a divine status;47 again, his claim to have mastered the beast with his bare hands
- the act, surely, of a divinely sired hero - is confirmed by the choral celebration of his
labours (348-424) and, implicitly, by Theseus (1169-70, cf. 1386-7), but challenged
by his fear that without his weapons he will be vulnerable (1388). Finally, Heracles'
two murderous actions behind the skene collapse into each other: the intended victim
Lycus disappears into the palace, whose doors later open to display the bodies of other
victims, a shocking substitution that both follows and overturns dramatic convention.48

45
On Iphicles see Ruck 5 4 - 5 ; on ovWemgog and Hera see Ruck 6 2 - 3 and Michelini, who reads
OI3XXEXTOO5 as an 'ambiguous reference that just grazes the edge of the ludicrous, but may pass by safely
in the heavily genealogical context of the speech's opening' (269 - a safety that I do not see).
46
The debate turns partly on a pun (153-4, did he strangle the Nemean lion with his arms, pga/iovec;, or
with nets, fSooxot?) and partly on the literary topos of the bowman, of which Foley 169-75 has illus-
trations; see the extended discussion of Hamilton and most recently F. M. Dunn, in F. M. Dunn, D. P.
Fowler, and D. H. Roberts, edd., Classical closure (1997). Neither here nor in the Bacchae. another play
which revolves partly around puns and name-magic, is the explicit, contemporary etymologising of the
on-stage sophists effective; Euripides seems to be interested in something more fundamental about the
way language works (I owe this observation to Professor Easterling).
47
On fusing hoplite fighting with the bow see e.g. Hamilton 23-4 and Gibert 256 n. 43; on the apotheosis
see R. Meriodor, 'Plot and myth in Euripides' Heracles and Troades', Phoenix 38 (1984) 205-15.
Michelini 255.
48
On the collapse see Higgins 100; on the staging see e.g. Barlow (1996) ad 904-5 and above, n. 23.
 ETYMOLOGY AND GENEALOGY IN EURIPIDES' HERACLES 147

These violent deeds, which Euripides' staging invites us to think of as a single act,
prove him simultaneously the son of a god (as avenger of Lycus' hybris: 696, 801-6)
and of a mortal (as madman and family killer: 1264-549).
As if in illustration of his duality Heracles uses a single exemplum for his own fate
that assimilates him to both fathers: xov aou.axri)\,axov | 'I^ioV EV oea|iolouv
exuAiiriaouai (1297-8).50 The myth is at first sight an odd one to choose, as Ixion was
guilty of murdering not his wife and children but his father-in-law. Amphitryon,
however, is in exile precisely for killing his father-in-law, as he tells us in his prologue
rhesis, even making it part of the new aition for Heracles' labours (16-19).51 Ixion has
still more extended application as an exemplum, for he is famous also for being the first
(attempted) rapist,52 a role that Zeus fulfils to perfection - and one which is particularly
relevant to Heracles' situation, as it is Zeus' rape of Alcmene that has caused Hera's
wrath (e.g. 1308-10). And Heracles may palely imitate even this aspect of Zeus. While
explaining to Amphitryon how he entered Thebes, he says that he entered xoijcjuog
(598).53 The only other occurrence of the adjective is in the same case and metrical
position, when Amphitryon describes how Zeus sneaks into other men's beds: av 5' eg
(xev eiivag XQixfaog f[nlax(a (j,oA.e!v (344). Euripides thus sets up an apparently
unending, paronomastic play between the two meanings of JTCITTIQ 'Hoax^eoug, in
which any single Heraclean act may be interpreted as copying either one father or the
other, but never as deciding the issue once and for all. The effect is strikingly similar
to that of the kind of repetition embodied in xexva xxeiveiv, in which the roots are
close but not quite the same. A relationship not of similarity but of difference is
established: 'each form of repetition calls up the other, by an inevitable compulsion.
The second is not the negation or opposite of the first, but its "counterpart", in a strange
relation whereby the second is the subversive ghost of the first, always already present
within it as a possibility which hollows it out.'54

49
av uevtot ur|o£v d/OeoOfiig, "/EQOV | xaxega yaQ d v t i Zr|voc; f)YOU(.iat a' kyto. In these lines Heracles
seems to misinterpret the lesson of his own life, though he does - temporarily - solve the dilemma of his
paternity through an 'emotional choice': Gregory 274-5. The chorus try to spin the 'whose son?' dilemma
positively in the first stasimon (Miehelini 255, citing Fraenkel for the encomiastic topos).
50
It is a typical 'unconscious' polyvalent exemplum, another text with a mind of its own; on these see Goldhill
(1991) 305-6. The choice verb £jttuu.oi)[iai, 'to imitate exactly', draws attention to the comparison (see
also below, n. 87).
51
Higgins 102; for further similarities see Bond 390 (Ixion's 'punishment is dynamic and continuous, like
that of Heracles'), Hamilton 24 n. 16 (both Ixion and Heracles - in the mad scene - are charioteers),
Miehelini 259 n. 122 (Ixion, like Heracles, was an enemy of Hera).
52
P. Maas, 'De deorum cum feminis mortalibus concubitu', in Kleine Schriften (1973) 66-7 (I owe this
reference to Professor Diggle).
51
- In the midst of a conversation whose 'improbability' and 'lack of connection' have bothered more than
one critic (e.g. Wilamowitz, Bond, both ad loe.). Heracles is in myth a great womaniser, but this echo is
the only hint of it in this play.
54
Miller 9, following Walter Benjamin; cf. 6: the 'lack of ground in some paradigm or archetype means that
there is something ghostly about the effects of this second kind of repetition. It seems that X repeats Y,
but in fact it does not, or at least not in the firmly anchored way of the first sort of repetition.'
148 CHRISTINA S. KRAUS

The impossibility of naming Heracles' father is reflected in the play's 'unnatural'

plot, which parodies and rejects the narrative virtues of fixed beginning and causal
sequence. The play does, of course, begin: but for Amphitryon to start with a
painstaking genealogy, which is immediately challenged by Zeus' presence and is
followed by a radical new chronology and a doubled explanation for his son's labours,
certainly raises the question of at what point we can say 'it starts here'. The unnameable
father is reflected also in the difficulty of finding a resolution: '[s]ince no movement
backward through the woven lines of the text will reach a starting point with explanatory
power to run through the whole chain, it is equally impossible in the other direction
ever to reach a definite explanatory end. Goal vanishes when origin recedes.'55 On the
surface, Theseus' offer of a cult at Athens provides the sort of ritual aetiology with
which Euripides was fond of ending his plays.56 Yet in seeking to establish the (always
deferred) etymological link between xexva and XIXXELV, the Heracles succeeds only in
obscuring that link, and in fact ends with difficulty. One obvious solution, that of
suicide, is refused: Heracles cannot be another Ajax. Nor may he reject his divine
origins: 'miserable tales of poets' these stories may be (1346), but in the play's terms
of reference they are manifestly true.57 Heracles is by his (dual) nature disrupted and
disruptive: 'If ... tragic-suffering man is man's image of his own essential condition,
and if god is his projection of what he would, but dare not, aspire to, and is, instead, a
helpless prey to, then the enactment of tragic-suffering god-man threatens to involve
its audience in an existential inquisition of an uncommonly powerful and painful kind
... when tragedy does, eventually, dare to focus on this anomaly, disturbance is
conspicuous.'58 To reach a resolution the Heracles must step outside itself, in time,
place, and person; it must differ from itself. Theseus may be, potentially, a second
Heracles, but he is here a non-tragic one, whose ascent from Hades reverses Heracles'
own second emergence from hell (cf. 1101-2); and Athens, as often elsewhere, is a
non-tragic environment which will provide a haven. By agreeing to leave Thebes,
Heracles ensures both that he will live and that he will at last enter time and die: despite
the allusions that readers have seen to his apotheosis and marriage to Hebe, what

55
Miller 173; cf. 168 'The lack of paternal origin may mean the impossibility of reaching a satisfactory end'
and 129 'the emergence [in a plot] of an unwilled or undesired pattern raises the question of its source'.
56
On these see J. R. Wilson, 'The etymology in E. Troades 13-14', AJP 89 (1968) 6 6 - 7 1 . Any work of
literature concerned with origins will foreground such 'homoeopathic' verbal play (the term is E. S.
McCartney's, 'Verbal homeopathy and the etymological story", AJP 48 (1927) 326-43); see O'Hara
104-5.
57
Baudy 166 n. 19 has recent bibliography on lines 1341-6, to which add S. Yoshitake, 'Disgrace, grief and
other ills: Herakles' rejection of suicide', JHS 114 (1994) 135-53. See further Michelini 275 on metathe-
atrical elements here, which extend to questioning Euripides' own project (he is, after all. one of the poets
who tell these 6 i ) ( m | v o t Xoyot): 'In the plane of the play's mimesis of reality, what Herakles says is
patently untrue ... But no play, and especially no play of Euripides, exists solely on the plane of its mimetic
"reality". At every point this play ... has raised the question of the trustworthiness of poetic fiction.' See
also Pucci 179, 182 ('the otherness still writes Euripides' discourse, for the matrix of myth is
unavoidable'), 186. O n the link with Ajax see most recently Gibert 255 n. 42.
58
Silk 122.
 ETYMOLOGY AND GENEALOGY IN EURIPIDES' HERACLES 149

Theseus promises him is cult after death.59 This ending, despite its echoes and reversals
of elements in earlier sections of the play, is in a deep sense inorganic to them, and
leaves their chief issues unresolved.60 The 'strange relation' between Heracles' two
fathers remains in force.

3. Momma's baby

It remains possible for Heracles to claim a stable identity through his mother. Hesiod,
for one, identifies the hero as the son of Alcmene, at least partly to distinguish him from
other sons of Zeus: 'Ahx\ir)vr\c, KaXkiotyvQov dA.>u|iog uiog (Th. [526], 950).6I Of all
the female presences in the Heracles, however, which include Megara, Heracles' wife
and would-be imitator (294), Iris, Lyssa, Hera and Athena - each of whom performs
some significant (albeit brief) action - Alcmene is mentioned only casually, and not
before line 712, halfway through the play. She does, however, figure elsewhere in puns
on her son's name (so already in Hesiod). There is d}oa| (anagrammatically) in
Heracles, without whom the characters have no hope: xiv' EAJUS' dXxr|v x' eiooQdxe
\ir\ 6avetv (144, cf. 326). The third stasimon combines the notions of rebirth and
Heracles' dual parentage as the chorus celebrates d.^>tr| at the height of his glory: d>
XEXTQWV bvo avyjEvtlc, | etivai, dvaxoYevoOg xe xai | Aiog, 6g f)M)ev eg euvdv
vi)(iqpag xag rieQor|i6og- cbg | maxov [xoi xo jtaAmov fjSr| Aixog, do Zei3 ... |
\a\inQav 6' eSeti;' 6 XQovog | xdv 'H^axXeog dXxdv (798-806).62 Though shadowy,
Alcmene lurks in the background.
She is also, of course, the reason for Hera's jealousy, and for Heracles' 'punishment'
(840-2, see Bond ad he). When madness strikes, any anchor Heracles might have had
to the world of human mothers and positive female influence vanishes. 806 is d^xfj's
last appearance in the play. What replaces that hint of benign maternal support is a
character who takes over as a kind of mother-from-hell: Hera herself. While Hera
cannot be considered as a mother to Heracles in any real sense, she is the only female
figure in this play who is said to have tended him as a baby, sending snakes to him
when he was ev ydA,axxi (1266-8),63 and it is her influence that has driven him, both
59
1331-3 fiavovta 6 ' . . . xi(.uov d v d ^ e i j i a a " A 0 r r v a k o v noXig.
60
Theseus' appearance, which precipitates the denouement, is far less organic than Heracles' eleventh-hour
return from the dead and his subsequent maddening, as those elements centre around the hero and either
follow from or pervert what we know about him already. Theseus really does come out of the blue, and
has to explain his implausible entrance at some length (1163-77). On the open-endedness of the play see
now Dunn.
61
On the matronymic see M. West, Hesiod Theogony (1966, 1971) 4 3 1 ; on the etymological pun see
Sulzberger 413 and M. A. Joyal, 'Hesiod's Heracles: Theogony 526, 950'. Glotta 69 (1991) 184-6.
62
Cf. Bond on 806. In the Heracles dta<r| occurs at 144, 194, 326,440, 806; only 194 is not connected with
the hero himself. On his relationship with Alcmene see Pucci 219-20 n.47, and for similar puns cf. Eur.
Heracl. 711 (Iolaus to Alcmene: dvbooov yaQ OXKT\) and 761-2 (akxai ^ifjvuv).
w
Line 1268 is the other occurrence in this play of the phrase Atoc; CTUXXEXTQOC; beside line 1, making an
unholy familial trio of Zeus, Hera, and Amphitryon; see above, 145-6.
150 CHRISTINA S. KRAUS

through his labours and through his madness.64 Given the ambiguity-ridden structure
in which Heracles' paternal identity is inscribed, it is noteworthy that his mother, too,
is doubly determined. And in a play so concerned with genealogy and etymology,
alongside the puns on dA,xr| one might expect to find plays on Hera's part in 'Heracles,'
producing twinned supplements analogous to the Amphitryon-Zeus system. Yet, while
Euripides repeatedly puns on the second half of the name,65 he takes no opportunity to
etymologise the first half until close to the end.
Trying to persuade his friend to come to Athens, Theseus says that the hero the world
knows would not give up as Heracles proposes: [0r|.] 6 TtoWid St] xXac, 'Hoccx^fjc;
Xeyei xd5e; [ C HQ] oiixouv xooaOxd y' ' £ v [AEXOOOI no)(0r|X£OV. [@r\.] evEQy£.rr\c,
PQOTOTOI xai jieyag (fjiloc;; (1250-2). Theseus alludes here to three actual or plausible
cult titles, i.e. nokvxXaq, ei)eQyexr|5,and (JHAXXVOQCOTTOC;.66 But Heracles rejects them
all: oi 6' oi)8ev cbcjjeA.o'Oai \i\ aXk' "Hoa xgaxEi (1253). The article ol is generally -
and naturally - taken as referring back to |3QOXOLOI in 1252: ungrateful mortals do not
repay Heracles eveQyETf\c,. Yet there is another possible way to read this line. In 1250
and 1252 Theseus shows Heracles his former and potential self, almost as a costume
that he may wish to don; Heracles refuses that self in three of its manifestations, ol
might, in that case, mean something like 'those "Heracles'".67 Heracles is similarly
self-conscious elsewhere in the play, e.g. 581-2 (OIJX do' cHoaxA,f}c; | 6 xaXXtvixoc;
dt>5 jtagoiOe Xe^ojiai) and 1289-90 (quoted above, Section 1); moreover, much of the
dramatic energy has gone into thinking about ways of understanding Heracles, whether
as an epic or epinician hero, as a father, as a good son, as a threat to the gods, etc.68 If
those aspects of 'Heracles' do not help him, what is left? According to Heracles, "Hoa
xoaxEi. In his despair, Heracles cedes power to Hera by replacing his name with the
similarly sounding phrase 'Hera holds sway'.69 As both father and son he has fallen

64
She does not appear in the play but the frequency of naming, especially in the lris-Lyssa scene, brings
her vividly before us (so Hangard 132-3, Lee 46). There are variants of the myth in which Hera suckles
Heracles (as a grown man): see Michelini 270 n. 175.
65
E.g. at 5 8 1 - 2 (quoted below), 680-1 ( x a U t - ) , 12, 173, 290, 1414 (xtaivog, eiuAerig, xWistv), and cf.
68 (EJttor||xo5). On the derivation of 'Heracles' see W. Potscher, 'Der Name des Heracles', Emerita 39
(1971) 167-73.
66
Bond 3 8 0 - 1 ; Theseus makes a similar appeal at 1414 6 xXetvog cHoaxA.fJ5 o{ix ei voa&v (Wilamowitz,
for not) xetvo? u>v of the paradosis).
67
A referee objects that 'the logic P Q O T O I O I / o i 6' ... / 'EXXdg is much more comprehensible'. I agree in
principle, but Heracles' self-consciousness elsewhere inclines me to see a second sense in these lines; and
I do not agree that Ei>EQyeTr|5 and (jjiAdvOpumog are 'added to the definition' of the singular figure 6 at
1250 (while being themselves near-synonyms, they are enough different in sense from 6 noXka bi] xkac,,
I think, to comprise further, and distinct, faces of Heracles).
68
See e.g. Foley 175-92, and on Heracles' self-consciousness see now Gibert 256. The Heracles, like the
Oedipus, is a meditation on and search for identity (Sheppard 77-8, Michelini 234). One can think of the
frequent switches in the plot as providing new roles for Heracles; see Foley 192 on his domestic side (both
a surprise and contrary to his nature), Silk on the 'tragic' Heracles, and further below.
69
This is the only place in the play where Hera's name precedes a word beginning with xX or XQ; indeed it
is only one of two places where it precedes a word beginning with kappa (the other being 855 " H Q O ;
d
 ETYMOLOGY AND GENEALOGY IN EURIPIDES' HERACLES 151

victim to his own double nature; at the last he tries to erase his own identity, and does
so with an etymological pun.
But the new etymology makes no more sense without the word 'Heracles' than the
phrase xexva xxetveiv has any real force without texva TIXTELV. Heracles is equally
the hero whose defeat brings glory to Hera and the one who rises to glory because of
her. The irony and ambiguity in his name need not be resolved by positing an earlier
stage of the myth in which Hera supported Heracles; instead, the two interpretations
form yet another paronomastic system. His name, under erasure at line 1253, forms
one of the points around which the play, in Michelini's word, 'vibrates': it is one hinge
of the oscillating system within which the hero's identity is constituted.70

4. Heraclean madness, Dionysian poetics

Between lines 728, when Lycus disappears into the palace, and 1039, when Amphitryon
emerges accompanying the bound Heracles and the bodies of his family, Euripides
stages an extraordinary metatheatrical mise en abyme.1] The vertiginous structure draws
attention to itself while the panel's content, especially the messenger speech, is loaded
with self-referential language. At the heart of this play with its doubly-determined hero,
actions multiply, warping into each other with deadly economy, making it impossible
even to determine where the action (which action?) starts and stops.72 Iris' and Lyssa's
appearance on the roof of the skene, exceptionally rare in mid-play, comprises a second
prologue; their dialogue, which recalls the opening of the Prometheus Bound, reinforces
that impression.73 The break in continuity, together with the unexpectedly savage divine
intervention, 'forc[es| upon the audience questions about truth and reality that the
dramatic illusion represses.'74 Yet this interruption, violent though it is, does not
necessarily determine where the central section begins. Lycus' prior exit into the palace
- itself metatheatrically marked by the chorus, whose \iEX<3$o\a xaxtov (735) names
the peripeteia15 - will in retrospect be seen as the stage action which is answered by
Amphitryon's re-emergence with the wrong bodies, and which thus constitutes the
(another?) beginning of this panel. At the other end, Athena's stone-throwing (as

70
Michelini 250. Cf. Miller 127 and Silk 121 (Herakles is 'interstitial' and hence 'dangerous'); on the
'interlocked chain" as a thematic in the play see Ruck 64, Higgins 104-5.
71
Whenever chorus or characters draw attention to stage mechanics and conventions, or use 'technical'
language, metatheatre results; in the Heracles it starts for earnest with the second stasimon. O n choral
self-reflection see Wilamowitz 11.148-50, Henrichs 54-62; on stage conventions see McDermott and
below, 154.
72
'Warping' is Ruck's term; on the collapse of actions see also above, n. 48.
73
For echoes of the PB see Burnett 169, with Foley 192 and Bond ad loc. on the striking archaic metre of
855-74. On other possible instances of mid-play epiphany see Bond 279.
74
Michelini 267. She continues: 'In Herakles, where the gap between myth and reality is central, the
appearance of the deus ex machina is centralized as well.' For a discussion of the scene see Lee.
75
Bierl 143, cf. Segal 257.
152 CHRISTINA S. KRAUS

reported by the exangelos) constitutes a deus ex machina of the stop-action type - but
the scene may be read as extending not only through Amphitryon's emergence and
lament at 1042-88, but right up through Heracles' return to sanity (1089-1162).76 The
difficulties inherent in delineating this section recall those which scholars have had in
identifying the number of parts in the whole play (above, n. 1); they are also analogous
to the problem faced by the characters of where the action begins and how it ends. I will
concentrate here on the inner part of the central scene, following the third stasimon
(734-814) and closed by the short, astrophic lyrics at 1016-38.77
The action moves progressively inward from 815 to 873, where Lyssa descends
behind the skene and madness enters Heracles, and on to 906, the cry to the invisible
Athena: f\ fj- xi ogoag, cb Aiog JTCXT, [AekxBocoi;78 The anguished cry tdgay^a
xaQidgeiov cog kri"Eyx.e'kab(ai JTOTE, TlaXkac,, eg Sououg ntymeic, (908-9, cf. Lyssa
at 873 eg 56|xoug ... SuooLieoG') redefines that house as Hades, the farthest inward
and downward that mortals can go, and a place from which there is normally no return.
But it also serves as a cue for a messenger to emerge to report on the action inside
(action that we have already followed through the lyric dialogue at 875-909: above, n.
3). His rhesis takes us back inside the palace, whose space he now elaborately details
until it collapses under Athena's stone and Heracles' weight.79 This concentration on
internal space is the theatrical equivalent of the psychological realities being enacted:
coming from outside, madness infects the hero within, warping the way he sees and
interprets the world, descending to his vitals. The conversion of the hero in control into
the hero at the mercy of the gods is, like the similar conversion of Pentheus or Oedipus
from dron to paschon, 'a model of sorts for the nature of tragic action'.80 Lyssa turns
inside outside, making Heracles perceive the heart of his domos as a banqueting hall
(955-7), a wrestling-ground (958), Mycenae (963), and the walls of Eurystheus' palace
(998-9). The inner space, like the hero, is reconstituted by madness; for the audience,
who have a dual perspective, it is both inside and outside, both familiar and strange.
This duality begins in the ritual setting of a purificatory sacrifice (922-30), but the
god under whose auspices the action unfolds is Dionysus (890, 897, 1086, 1119).81

76
On the model of Agave's awakening (Bond 341-2). More parts: Heracles resolves on suicide, but is stopped
by the virtual deus ex machina Theseus (Walker 70-1), who is thus both a new beginning (~ Heracles' own
return from Hades) and a replay of Athena, whose action anticipates his (Higgins 103). The sequence
disaster-J<?w.v ex macM/ra—lamentation (906-1088) is hard to parallel except at the end of a play (Foley
192-3), and thus again calls attention to the dramatic form; on final laments see Taplin 170-1, 180.
77
Barlow 1996 adopts clear-cut divisions (and the term 'episode') between parts of the play; Wilamowitz
and Bond are slightly more cautious. The third stasimon properly begins at 763 (so Bond 255, following
Kranz), but as he notes, 734-62 form a barely-detachable 'prelude'. Lycus exits at 728 (Bond ad 726-8).
and no new character enters before the divine pair at 815; their exit at 874 is followed by a short sequence
of lyrics and then by the exangelos (enters at 910, exits at 1015); Amphitryon enters at 1039.
78
On the attribution of 906-9 see Burnett 171 n. 2 1 , Bond 304-5.
79
On this interior space see S. Said, 'L'espace d'Euripide', Dionysio 59 (1989) 123—4.
80
Segal 250; on madness and sight see Padel (1995) 65-96.
81
On the ritual setting see Foley 147-203; on Dionysiac ekstasis in the play see Hangard 133-5 and on the
Bacchic metatheatricality see Bierl 84-7, 140-6.
 ETYMOLOGY AND GENEALOGY IN EURIPIDES' HERA CLES 15 3

Padel has shown that the spatial doubleness of tragedy, the complex of exterior and
interior spaces separated by the skene, reflects and is reflected by the duality of the
mask and of tragic language: 'Expression in space interacts with linguistic expression
... The open mouth or door, through which speech comes, is the only real thing in the
mask. Yet the mouth in a sense is only half-open: the person is half-concealed behind
the words that come out of it. Skene matches mask ... Both speak to the metonymic
quality of speech itself.'82 The gap that Dionysiac poetics opens up between logic and
illogic, between civilised and wild, is conventionally bridged by a messenger speech
whose mimetic description brings the unseen before our eyes.83 But these descriptions
of things behind the skene also 'heighten our sense of the conventional, arbitrary nature
of the space that we actually see before us': 84 the more vivid the description, the more,
paradoxically, we are aware of its artificiality. The messenger rhesis in the Heracles is
one of the most vivid in all Greek drama, comparable perhaps only to the Bacchae
rheseis; it concludes, moreover, with the description of divine intervention and a
scenery collapse (1006-9) which - like the palace miracle in the Bacchae - were almost
certainly not staged. That we must imagine them brings the conventional nature of
theatrical representation inescapably before us.85
The self-referentiality of this messenger speech goes far beyond allusion to the
physical appearance of the staged drama, even beyond reconstitution of the invisible
space as new 'stage' territory. The actions it describes so vividly are themselves
imitations of actions: the speech comprises the description of a play within the play
within the play. That inner, imagined drama has its own actors, starting with Amphitryon,
Megara, and the children who, owing to Heracles' inability to see truly, willy-nilly
assume the roles of Eurystheus' family (are they, then, wearing metaphorical masks?).
There is at least one character who is invisible to everyone but the madman, the opponent
whom he wrestles and defeats (961 onuxog JIQOC, CUJTOIJ xaXA.ivi.xog oti&evoc;);86 finally,
there is Heracles who, in his madness, though being outside/beside himself, actually
plays himself.*1 Many of these characters speak, their words related by the exangelos;
while speech-inside-speech is not rare in Greek drama, that of the Heracles is unusually

82
Padel (1990) 359.
81
Itself conventionally followed by a display, probably on the ekkuklema, literally bringing the inside out:
Padel (1990) 363; on this Messenger's speech see I. J. F. de Jong, Narrative in drama: the art of the
Euripidean messenger-speech (1991) 164-71, and on the ekkuklema in the Heracles see Bond 329-30.
84
Segal 2 4 0 - 1 .
85
Segal 218-32; on the Bacchae scene see also Goldhill (1986) 2 7 6 - 8 3 and on the staging in the Heracles
(arguing that Athena is not visible at 9 0 6 - 9 ) see Bond 3 0 3 - 5 . On the complexity of the Heracles speech
see Kroeker 7 3 - 5 , Barlow (1982) 125 n. 25.
86
Wolff discusses the closely parallel scene in Eur. Iph. in Tauris.
87
Ruck 56, 59; on not seeing straight see Goldhill (1986) 2 7 5 - 6 , Padel (1995) 6 5 - 7 7 . The highly mimetic
nature of Heracles' actions is underscored by the label ui|xn,uxt, also used by Megara to describe her own
attempt to imitate him as beast-killer (992, cf. 294). One can compare Heracles' self-consciousness about
his epithets (above, 150). The complex, Chinese-box effect of role-playing intensifies our sense of broken
dramatic illusion: 'the interplay of different levels of constructed literary reality challenges ... the naive
assumption of a naturalistic mimesis' (Goldhill (1986) 252, on Eur. Electra).
154 CHRISTINA S. KRAUS

frequent, exceptionally naturalistic, and of unparalleled complexity. Such imbedded

speech can simultaneously heighten and reduce the mimetic impact on the audience; it
works, therefore, like the messenger speech itself, both to bring these imagined actions
vividly before our eyes and to remind us that we are watching a play.88
The internal drama, further, has props. Again, some are imaginary, such as the
chariot in which Heracles rides to Mycenae (947-9), while some are all too real, i.e.
the bow and club, weapons which have been so prominently discussed earlier in the
play.89 It even has a chorus: %OQOC, Se xaAAinoQ(t>oc; ... xexvcov (925). While this is
not an uncommon use of xoooc,, in this intensely metatheatrical atmosphere one may
find self-referential resonance here as well.90 This is reinforced in the lead-up to this
scene by the repeated references to the aulos, the flute to which the chorus dance: Lyssa
will 'make Heracles dance-like-a-chorus' and will 'pipe him with fear' (871 toc/a a'
eycb jxa^ov ypQEvaw xai xaxauA,r|aa) cf>6|3<x>0, while the chorus describe Heracles'
actions behind the skene as dancing to flutes (879 ypQZvQ&vx' EVOUXOU;) and as a
'murderous tune played on the aulos' (894-5).91 Such metatheatrical moments can be
focused through costume (i.e. explicit impersonation), as in the Cadmus/Teiresias scene
and the Pentheus robing scene in the Bacchae.92 Something similar happens here, in
the ostentatious play with props; in addition, Heracles himself gives numerous stage
directions, as if telling an audience exactly where he is as the scene 'changes'.93
Most importantly, perhaps, this interior drama has an audience, the palace slaves
who are at first uncertain whether to laugh or cry: Si:rcA,oi3c; 6' OJTOCSOIC; f|v ye^rac, c}>6(3og
8' 6(ioi3, | xai, TIC; TOO' eljiev, aXkoq eig aAAov 5g>axarv | Ilai^ei JiQog f|fiac;
6eojt6xr|g f\ \iaivExai; (950-2). Their confusion is extremely revealing. Heracles might
well appear to be acting comically, galloping a non-existent chariot around the hall and
wrestling with an invisible opponent. That is certainly the spin that Plautus put on this
scene when he borrows it for the 'mad' scene in the Menaechmi.94 Tragedy, especially
88
V. Bers, Speech in speech (1997) 8 0 - 2 , 2 2 5 - 6 .
89
942; see above 142, 146. They are conventional props, like Philoctetes' bow and Ajax' sword, which
similarly become focal objects (Taplin 36; for a general discussion of objects in tragedy see his Greek
tragedy in action (1978) 77-100).
90
So Hamilton 22 and n. 10, Henrichs 62: the chorus of children 'marks the climax of the pattern of perverted
khoreia\
91
See the discussion of Henrichs 54-62; on the dance of madness see Padel (1995) 131-44 and forxooeiko
of setting up a tragic chorus cf. Eur. Ba. 21-2 raxEi ypQuvaac, xai xaxaoif|oa5 i^iac, te^exdq.
92
Both with comic elements (see below); Goldhill (1986) 2 6 2 - 3 compares the transvestite scenes in Old
Comedy. Heracles changes 'costume' to wrestle (he strips: 959).
93
So 9 5 4 - 5 (he says - £((>aaK£ - he is at Nisus' hall), 958 (approaching the vales of the Isthmus; fe'XeyE),
963 (he is in Mycenae xdn Xoyon). One can compare the elaborate announcement of scene change in the
Eumenides, and cf. Bond 3 1 2 a d 9 4 \ - 6 : 'even in a stage performance these cues (his calls for his weapons|
would be adequate; and this is only a narrative.' On stage directions in general see Taplin 28-39.
94
Men. 8 3 1 - 7 1 ; see A. Gratwick, Plautus: Menaechmi (1993) ad lot: for parallels between the plays. On
Heracles' comic actions see Kroeker 70, Baudy 166 (he is 'pantomimisch') with Michelini 253-4 on
earlier 'sentimental' moments (e.g. line 628, a joke for the children). On comic elements in tragedy
generally see Seidensticker; on this moment in particular (judging it a particular kind of tragic incom-
prehension, a laughter that is a 'sign of dislocation') see B. Gredley, 'Comedy and tragedy - inevitable
distinctions: response to Taplin', in M. S. Silk, ed., Tragedy and the tragic (1996) 2 0 7 - 8 .
 ETYMOLOGY AND GENEALOGY IN EURIPIDES' HERACLES 155

Euripidean tragedy, can accommodate comic moments, and indeed one such introduces
the madness, in Iris' final, and effective, rebuke to Lyssa for not playing her role: oii/i
oco(j)Qov£lv Y' ejten,i|)e OEOQO O' f| Aiog Sd[iaQ (857).95 Such moments of generic
transgression stand out as metatheatrical markers, drawing attention to the artificiality
of the stage and to Dionysus' essential ambiguity.96 Heracles may be confusing to this
internal audience particularly because his usual representation on the Attic stage is as
a grotesque or a buffoon: his appearance in tragedy as a tragic figure is unusual,
apparently confined to this play and the Trachiniae.91 The servants are used to Heracles
the (epinician) hero and Heracles the (comic) buffoon; until they are revealed as
savagery, then, his actions inside the palace make sense only on a different stage. Iris'
joke and Heracles' momentary comedy remind us of the volatility of theatrical illusion:
one misstep and you've got a weasel for a windless day, slapstick for murder.98 This
rich concentration of self-referential, metatheatrical play focuses our attention on the
dark centre of the Heracles. If the drama revolves around the question of Heracles'
identity, and ultimately around the truth of the stories that are told about him (TIC, ...
oiix oiSev;), then it is in this scene that the answers are given - and deferred.
Both acting and madness represent a kind of Dionysiac ekstasis, an experience in
which the audience, in its search for truth-in-deception, shares.99 At the core of the
Heracles, behind the doors of the skene, is enacted a scene in which the two states
collapse into each other, as Heracles 6 xexcbv and 6 xxavcbv merge. It is, to return to
the supplement, the hinge of the play, the place where the multiple meanings of
'Heracles' are fully revealed and tragically connected. Acting, perhaps particularly
acting in a mask, comprises a process of supplementation: the actor both is and is not

95
The line highlights etymology yet again (Bond ad loc). Michelini 270 sees Iris'joke as a jab at the whole
play, encouraging the audience to see the inappropriateness of Hera's rage; cf. also Kroeker 60-1 and
now. on metatheatre and the audience in tragedy, see P. E. Easterling, ed., The Cambridge companion to
Greek tragedy (1997) 165-7! (Easterling) and 193-8 (P. Burian).
96
Seidensticker 125, 129; Goldhill (1986) 263-4. See O. Taplin, 'Fifth-century tragedy and comedy', JHS
106(1986) 173 (arguing against tragedy 'undermining its own fictionality'): 'laughter is a great threat to
this kind of concentrated emotional sequence ... The inactivity of the audience is, indeed, a vital
prerequisite of the tragic experience ... The audience of comedy is, on the other hand, allowed, and
encouraged, to express its response by laughter.'
97
As scholars regularly note; this seems to hold for lost plays as well (Silk 118-19). On Heracles' various
roles in this play see above, n. 68.
98
Segal 16, 254-6 on the Bacchae: 'We do not know for certain whether we should laugh or grieve ... [this]
also depicts the ambiguity of illusionistic representation in the theater, the paradox that the same mimetic
act may give us both pleasure and pain'; see also Segal 266-7 on JTodi^etv at Ba. 161 (cf. Her. 952). On
Ycdiiv(') 6Q(B (Eur. Ores. 279) see E. K. Borthwick, 'Seeing weasels', CQ 18 (1968) 2 0 0 - 1 .
99
Segal 224. 227-8; Wolff 333-4, esp. n. 73; B. Simon, Mind and madness in ancient Greece (1978) 92
(apropos of the Heracles): 'madness is theater gone berserk'; cf. also 130-9 and 146 'in the Heracles,
Lyssa and Iris almost literally orchestrate the madness ... The mad scenes [in tragedy! themselves are
works of the imagination, dramas portrayed with only a few props ... The chorus, as audience to these
dramas, experiences the emotions that Aristotle ascribes to the audience in the theater... In sum, the play
within the play is the creation of madness.'
156 CHRISTINA S. KRAUS

his character; the mask both reveals and hides.100 It is possible, I think, to read this
central panel not only as a concatenation of the mythical, linguistic, and narratological
paronomasia that runs through the play, but also as emblematic of the nature of acting
and the theatre itself.101 The disturbing effect of madness resides above all in discon-
tinuity and in the displacement of the familiar: Heracles acting as his old heroic self in
the wrong place; the play itself, taking its cue from its hero, flipping apparently without
motivation from one type of plot to another. So too verbal ambiguity comes from and
produces a kind of linguistic madness: in Empson's words, an 'explosion' in which
meaning is revealed.102 Heracles, whose identity is deeply split, and who plays the role
now of a buffoon, now of a hero, is an ideal figure in whom to explore the issues of
identity raised by the theatre. Like Pentheus and Oedipus, he serves as the focus of an
exploration of the unreality - or the truth - of drama itself.

ORIEL COLLEGE, OXFORD CHRISTINA S. KRAUS

100 p a d e l (1990) 358—9; see also F. Ahl, Metaformations (1985) 17, connecting puns with comic doubles in
plays like Plautus' Amphitryo.
101
Padel (1995) 246: 'madness stages the possibility that out of ec-centric pain, out of taking illusion for
reality, may - for the onlookers - c o m e insight into reality as tragedy presents it'; cf. also Silk 132 on
Lyssa: ' T h e staging makes her external; the words tend to suggest her internality; she is. therefore, both,
even more clearly than other destructive deities of the psyche, like Dionysus in Bacchue.'
102
Empson 150; cf. Michelini 272: 'the puzzle-box structure of the plot is thus replicated in the kaleidoscopic
fragmentation of Herakles' image.'
 ETYMOLOGY AND GENEALOGY IN EURIPIDES' HERACLES 157

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