Luigi Battezzato
Progetto Giovani (www.agenzia2000.cnr.it)
The following pages contain a slightly updated version of the research project submitted to the CNR in June 2000 (Consiglio Nazionale delle Ricerche: National Council for Research). The project was financed in July 2001. The research project was prepared according to the rules set by the CNR. It describes possible avenues of research and suggests a way of approaching some of the problems related to the topic chosen. People interested in taking part in the conference are welcome to read the project description, which is posted here to invite scholars to add new fields of work and new approaches to these issues.
1. Organizer
2. Title of the research project
3. National and international context of the research project
4. Goals, programs and methodology
5. Detailed description of the project
a) the tragic genre and its textual and intertextual success
b) the texts of Sophocles and Euripides in the Hellenistic age: actors and philologists
c) Sophocles and Euripides at Rome
6. Description of the results envisaged
1. Organizer: Luigi Battezzato (research fellow at the Scuola Normale Superiore, Pisa in the field of Greek Literature)
2. Title of the research project:
Transmission and reception of the text of Sophocles and Euripides in antiquity: philology and intertextuality
3. National and international context of the research project
INTERTEXTUALITY
Students of classical philology have always been keen to find 'sources' and parallels, but only in recent times they have developed a stronger methodological awareness, distinguishing between linguistic parallels, parallels of poetic/literary langue, allusion/imitation (G. Pasquali, G. B. Conte), 'interdiscoursivity' (C. Segre) and the more generic cases of intertextuality. Among the most recent contributions to this debate see T. C. W. Stinton, The Scope and Limits of Allusion in Greek Tragedy, in Greek Tragedy and its Legacy (Toronto 1986); R. Garner, From Homer to Tragedy: The Art of Allusion in Greek Poetry (London 1990); M. R. Halleran, "MD" 39 (1997) 151-163.
The relationship between Roman plays and Hellenistic stage productions and interpolations of classical tragedy one must still rely on R.A. Brooks, Ennius and Roman Tragedy (New York 1981 [in fact diss. Harvard 1949!]). The recent, excellent paper by L. Holford-Strevens, Sophocles at Rome, in J. Griffin (ed.), Sophocles revisited: Essays presented to Sir Hugh Lloyd-Jones (Oxford 1999) 219-253 devotes only sporadic attention to the textual aspect of the transmission.
TRANSMISSION OF THE TEXT
A trend for suspecting larger and larger sections of the transmitted text of tragedy can be detected in the work of many contemporary scholars working in Britain and America: see the recent editions by Dawe (Sophocles; Lloyd-Jones and Wilson are more conservative in this respect), Diggle and Kovacs (Euripides). This trend follows the lead of Fraenkel ('Zu den Phoenissen des Euripides', SBAW 1963, Heft 1) and his pupils (M. D. Reeve, GRBS 13 (1972) e 14 (1973)). The deletions are only in part based on the data from the Hellenistic manuscript tradition (papyri: see esp. M. Haslam, in Arkturos: Hellenic Studies Presented to B. M. W. Knox (Berlin-New York 1977), 91-100, with references). In Italy a group of scholars liked to the Scuola Normale and the University of Pisa (V. Di Benedetto, F. Ferrari, M. C. Martinelli, M. S. Mirto, E. Medda, L. Battezzato, M. Fassino) has developed a more conservative approach to these problems (see also D. J. Mastronarde's work on Phoenissae) but has also been at the forefront of research, working esp. on metre and papyri.
Some Euripidean and Sophoclean papyri have been recently re-examined or published, and the results of these studies show that there is still much work to be done on these issues: see Barrett's reconstruction of P. Oxy. 2180 and PSI 1192 in Sophoclis Fabulae, recognoverunt Lloyd-Jones/Wilson, Oxonii 1990; M. Fassino, ZPE 127 (1999) 1-46 on P. Strasb. WG 304-7. (Fassino is one of the collaborators of this research project).
Some recently published papyri have given unexpected new readings for Medea (P. Oxy. 4548 and 4549 = P10 and P 11 in Diggle's ed.), Hecuba (P. Oxy. 4557 and 4559 = P7 and P9 in Diggle's ed.; P. Oxy. 4558), and Phoenissae (P.Oxy 3321 and 3322 = P16 andP17 in Diggle's ed.). The new results and methods in these two fields suggest that one should attempt at giving a new reconstruction of the transmission and reception of the text of Sophocles and Euripides in antiquity.
4. Goals, programs and methodology
GOALS
We are aiming at giving an overall picture of the transmission and reception of the text of Sophocles and Euripides in classical antiquity.
We are envisaging producing papers on the ways tragedy uses intertextuality to achieve authority and presence as a genre, on the intertextual relations between different Euripidean and Sophoclean plays, on their intertextual survival in other ancient works of literature (old and new comedy, attic oratory, Roman comedy and tragedy), on the Hellenistic staging, interpolation and adaptation of classical plays, and on the history of the text.
A second, equally important goal, strictly connected to the reconstruction of the text of Sophocles and Euripides, is that of creating an occasion for young scholars of different countries to discuss and confront their approach to these problems. We will organize a meeting inviting young scholars to contribute papers relevant to the topic of the research. The scholars will be within the age-limit set by the CNR for its 'progetto giovani'. This will favour integration between a number of important research centres and further the exchange of ideas and methods.
We are also planning to further the exchange of ideas in our field in Italy through the creation of a database making available on the internet the titles and possibly the texts of Italian Ph.D. theses on Greek theatre and its reception, with special reference to Sophocles and Euripides (see below, description of the results envisaged)
We are planning to organize a conference on the transmission and reception of Sophocles and Euripides, inviting young scholars under 35, from Italy and abroad. This conference will mark the end of a first stage of research, and will be an occasion to control and discuss the work done that far. We are planning to publish the papers on a web site dedicated to the topic; we expect comments and a debate to follow from all the participant in the project, and we hope the results will be such as to permit publication in book form.
In the first phase of the research all the collaborators will work on a specific topic. At the same time, they will issue a 'call for papers', inviting young scholars from Italian and international universities to submit an abstract relevant to the selected research topic. The abstracts will be of 600 words (4000 characters ca.) and will be sent to a coordinator. The more interesting, original and convincingly argued papers will be accepted for oral presentation at a meeting, which is to take place in June 2002.
The results of the research will be discussed at the meeting, and a first version of them will appear on a special web site, which will contain all the information relevant to this research project.
METHODOLOGY
Our research group includes a number of philologists and scholars who are interested in problems of intertextuality and reception, besides the traditional approach to textual criticism (see above, national and international context). The best work done on tragedy in recent years has shown that the technical competence of the traditional philologist must be strengthened by the awareness of the information available from iconographical and archaeological sources. The trained papyrologists present in our research group (Fassino, Prauscello) will inspect the original documents and acquire new data.
5. Detailed description of the project
INTRODUCTION
The project starts from the need to integrate two strands of research which have yielded important results in recent years: on one hand the development of literary theory and interpretations discussing intertextuality; on the other hand the growing debate over and the ever increasing documentation on the textual transmission of Sophocles and Euripides in antiquity; this debate takes account of new documentary evidence (papyri), is advanced by a stronger awareness of and attention to theatrical transmission and staging, and is kindled by discussions on metre and style as a means of detecting interpolations.
a) The tragic genre and its textual and intertextual success
The first section of the research will discuss the strategies through which the tragic genre in general, and Sophoclean and Euripidean texts in particular, achieves authority in and control over the Greek poetic tradition. The tragic genre incorporates genres and languages of the Greek tradition; it manages to assert its presence and authority both on textual and intertextual level: its 'text' is allegedly transmitted through a single authoritative manuscript, and it is intertextually present in subsequent texts and genres (for instance Greek and Latin epic, and, of course, Roman theatre).
The tragic genres achieves its form by the very process of incorporating and restructuring preceding genres (cf. J. Herington, Poetry into Drama, (Berkeley-Los Angeles-London 1985)), for instance canonical forms of Greek lyric poetry (e.g. the Paean: cf. I Rutherford, Arion 3 (1995)). The tragic texts achieves this 'colonising' role also showing on stage or alluding to the texts of poets and musicians that are at the origin of Greek literary tradition: not only Homer, but also e.g. Orpheus. Aeschylus is on record, in the anecdotal tradition, for saying that his plays were 'large cuts taken from Homer's mighty dinners' (Athenaeus VIII, 347 E), but in fact the tragic genre tends to assert itself as authoritative in the Greek literary tradition.
Tragedies are set in the oldest antiquity, and only the oldest poets and musicians can be explicitly mentioned: Orpheus (e. g. Eur. Ba. 561, Cycl. 646, Hyps. fr. i III v. 10 (?), fr. 64 v. 98), Olympos (IA 577), Thamyras (Soph. frr. 237-245, [Eur.] Rhes. 916 s.) and even one of the Muses (Rhesus). The intertextual link to this supposed body of very ancient poetry is used by Attic drama as a means of displaying its own presence as a genre. The chorus of Alcestis (admittedly a prosatyric play, but like a tragedy in almost every respect) sings a hymn to Ananke, a very important key-word of the tragic genre (see the extremely important thematic role played by ananke in e. g. Ag. 218, PV 1052, Eur. Alc. 416, and, later on, Med. 1243, Hec. 1295 (the very end of the play), El. 1301, fr. 299). Against ananke, the key-word of tragedy, no remedy can be found, not even in the poetic oeuvre of Orpheus, for all its magic and religious connotations.
In his Medea, Euripides presents the text and the story narrated in it as potentially able to mark a turning point in the course of poetry through a revolution in gender relationship (415 ff.). (that this has not happened, that this road has not been taken, all this is proved by the very end of the Medea). Euripides also presents the heroine, and with her the story of the Medea as not appropriate for Athens, a city 'where they say that the blond goddess Harmonia once begot the ritually pure nine Pierian Muses' (830-2) [on the syntax of the passage see Euripide, Medea, a cura di V. Di Benedetto e E. Cerbo (Milano 1997), G. W. Most, CPh 94 (1999) 20]. The text of Euripides celebrates Athens as the place of poetry par excellence, and by doing this it alludes to its own existence as a poetical text; yet at the same time, the very same chorus that alludes indirectly to tragic poetry also stigmatizes the story that is shown on stage, and considers the protagonist unfit for and unworthy of Athens. Euripides uses a highly complex and ironical presentation of the story and the metapoetical reflection on it; the reference to the poetic tradition is a strategy used by the tragic text to assert its own authority within that tradition. This way of looking at the relationship between tragedy and the poetical tradition suggests a new perspective for the scene where the Muse appears on the tragic stage: [Eur.] Rhes. 890 ff. This scene can be read as a way for post-classical tragedy to assert its own authority vis-à-vis the pre-eminence of fifth-century tragedy.
The tragic genre is created through this strategy of appropriation of earlier genres and languages. This very strategy of appropriation forges the subsequent history of the genre: tragedy as a genre conquers the whole of Greece, manages to control an international market (cf. O. Taplin, Comic Angels (Oxford 1993)), is crystallized to form a canon (P. Easterling, From Repertoire to Canon in The Cambridge Companion to Greek Tragedy (Cambridge 1997)), and achieves the status of model in public discourse.
The authority of tragedy is strengthened by another factor: its textual transmission is controlled by a centre. The text of Homer was transmitted in a series of 'city' editions. A vulgate text is created by a centralization process, controlled by the authority and the intellectual superiority of extraordinary scholars (Zenodotus, Aristophanes, Aristarchus/Crates: see the conflictual stance of Homeric scholars attested in the scholia). On the other hand, according to the propaganda-like version that we find in Galen, the textual transmission of tragedy is achieved through a prestige-laden material object: Lycurgus put together the tragic texts in an official manuscript (Ps. Plut. Vit. dec. orat. 7, 841) and Galen (in Hipp. epid. III, 607, 6) tells us that this official Athenian manuscript was sent to Alexandria to be copied. The prestige of the 'authentic' object meant that Egyptian ruler preferred to keep it in Alexandria. The Athenians had to make do with a pecuniary compensation and an accurate copy of the original manuscript, albeit one written by human and fallible scribes. That this story is not particularly credible does not make it less significant. The text is appropriated in the form of a particular manuscript; this validates and gives authority to the new owners, and to the text itself: the textual transmission is deemed by some philologists (Erbse) to have preserved the original wording without substantial interferences. (A different perspective on the tragic text is preserved in the Euripides scholia; we find a series of negative comments on the plays that deserve to be analyzed as a testimony to a particular Hellenistic taste: W. Elsperger, Reste und Spuren der antiken Kritik gegen Euripides gesammelt aus den Euripidesscholien, (Philologus Suppl. 11, 1) (Leipzig 1908)
b) The texts of Sophocles and Euripides in the Hellenistic age: actors and philologists
The second part of the research will focus on the history of tragic text in the Hellenstic age. The actors are part of this story; but the actors (in the version usually told) are only a negative element, writers of ill-formed, ungrammatical or inept lines that ancient or modern philologists are able to spot and excise: see e.g. the scholium on Eur. Andr. 7 D. L. Page, Actor's Interpolations in Greek Tragedy (Oxford 1934) (still useful, and needing a more thoughtful revision than Baumert's dissertation ENIOI AQETOUSIN (diss. Tübingen 1968); see also R. Hamilton, 'Objective evidence for actors' interpolations in Greek tragedy', GRBS 15 (1974) 387-402). It is true that we can now often individuate actors' interpolations, thanks to the contribution of papyri, but still a lot remains to be done on the relationship of actors' interventions in tragic texts and Hellenistic taste: we need to discuss the popular taste for shows, not only simply the taste of highly learned Alexandrine audiences, and the relationship of these two different kinds of taste to Roman literature. These problems can be approached starting from the work of E. G. Turner, 'Dramatic Representations in Graeco-Roman Egypt: How Long Do They Continue?' Ant. Class. 32 (1963) 120-128, G. Sifakis, Studies in the History of Hellenistic Drama (London 1967), B. Gentili Lo spettacolo nel mondo antico = Theatrical Performances in the Ancient World: Hellenistic and Early Roman Theatre (London 1979), B. Le Guen, 'Théatre et cités à l'époque hellénistique' REG 108 (1995) 59-90.
By combining the philological study of tragic Textgeschichte and the literary/intertextual approach we are hoping to achieve a comprehensive view of different phenomena. The 'popular' success of some texts has started the process of modification, adaptation and interpolation that lead to the creation of new theatrical forms in the Hellenistic age (bravura pieces for solo actors; the creation of 'actors' books'). This very success caused the survival of so many Euripidean texts in papyri that reproduce scholarly editions, and this allows us to detect textual blemishes and interpolations.
c) Sophocles and Euripides at Rome
The third part of the research will be devoted to the survival of Greek tragedy in Rome. Roman playwrights of the Republican period made use of the same techniques used by the Greeks that wrote interpolations in tragic texts: addition and interpolation. They expand invocations already present in the original (see e.g. Ennius, Medea; Accius, Phoenissae); they insert etymological explanations of Greek names (e.g. Eur. Tro. 12 f. ?, Hel. 9-10, Ennius, sc. 105, 250 Vahlen); they invent names for characters that Greek tragedians left nameless (the same process is found in the scholarly hypotheseis to Greek tragedies). If interpolators and translators made use of the same techniques, this is not simply due to the easily foreseeable tendency towards expansion that is found in both (Leo, Plautinische Forschungen, p. 91): it is also due to similarity of literary taste. Note that some interpolated lines were possibly inserted to shorten the text by cutting (part of) a scene: see most recently H. C. Günther, Exercitationes Sophocleae (Göttingen 1996).
If we approach these problems from both a philological and literary perspective we can better understand how this is part of a common literary taste of the Hellenistic age. This approach allows us to avoid the excesses of scholars who follow the lead of the late works of Fraenekel (Reeve 1971/1972) and those of scholars who are prepared to defend almost every single line attested in our medieval manuscripts (Erbse).
Rome does not only mean a different literary taste from classical Greece, but also a change in the general conditions of production and reception of texts. The tragic genre becomes more and more marginalized, whereas the epic genre takes the centre of the literary stage. This perspective allows us to interpret the process of selection of tragic texts in terms of textual transmission and as a result of 'the battle of literary genres': tragic texts become less important in the school curriculum (they are notable for their absence from Statius, Siluae 5.3--their absence is 'compensated' by the presence of Lycophron), and less prominent as models for imitation. The Aeneid (cf. A. König, Die Aeneis und die griechische Tragödie, Inaugural-Dissertation (Berlin 1970)) and Ovid (cf. e.g. D.H.J. Larmour, Ill. Class. Stud. 15 (1991)) make abundant use of tragic models, but it is the epic genre (esp. the Aeneid) that ousts tragedy from its place of pride, as the really important sublime 'genre'. Tragedy loses ground also because the epic genre appropriates phrases, situations and tones that are peculiar to tragedy: this process famously starts with Apollonius Rhodius. (In this context we are planning to discuss an important allusion to Antigone present in a passage of Ovid's Metamorphoses; the allusion is not noticed by Hollis and Bömer, and they do not judge well the ideology and the style of the passage: Ov. Met. 8, 477 / Soph. Ant. 924).
6. Description of the results envisaged
SCHOLARLY PUBLICATIONS
The papers presented at the conclusive meeting will be published on a web site, in advance of a publication in book form. L. Battezzato will work on Euripidean and Sophoclean intertextuality and on the reception of Euripidean and Sophoclean texts in Roman Republican drama; M. Fassino will work on Hellenistic staging and papyrus transmission; R. Ferri on Roman Imperial drama. The publication on a web site is in accordance with the directions given by CNR, so as to make a good use of the opportunities opened by new media and achieve a quicker response from the scholarly community. The publication on a web site also allows the results of the research to be published by the deadline set by the CNR (1 year).
DATABASES
We are aiming at creating a database collecting Italian Ph. D. theses on Greek theatre and its reception, with special reference to Sophocles and Euripides. There is no easily accessible bibliographic survey of Ph. D. theses at the present. Ph. D. theses are often the starting point for new studies and strands of research. A comprehensive survey of Italian Ph. D. theses would offer Italian and international scholars a useful overview of recent trends of research, would promote the progress and the coordination of research on ancient theatre. We will ask the individual contributors to make available the text of their theses, so as to make them available on line, immediately accessible to scholars. We will also ask them to send a list of their other publications on Greek theatre and its reception.
OTHER
The final meeting of the research group, integrated by the presence of additional papers by Italian and international young scholars (see above, programs), will promote the exchange of ideas and favour the discussion of scholars coming from different methodological traditions. The fact that non-Italian young scholars will take part in the meeting will strengthen the international relevance of the Italian scholarly tradition in classics even for younger scholars. It will also show that the Italian academic community can be at forefront of innovation, taking advantage of the possibilities give by the special funding allotted by the CNR to further the research of younger scholars.