Book Review

The Idea of Ancient Literary Criticism Murder among Friends: Violation of "Philia" in Greek Tragedy

In explaining the kinds of situations that are dreadful or pitiable, Aristotle tells us in the Poetics (1453b14-23) that all actions occur between friends (philoi), enemies, or neither: the classification is evidently meant to be exhaustive, and the third term, is added to the usual binary, friend or foe, for the sake of greater precision. Acts between enemies or neutral parties do not arouse pity, apart from the nature of the event itself (pathos). What one wants, then, is situations in which they occur en tais philiais, such as brother killing brother, son father, mother son, son mother, and the like--in other words, to judge from the instances Aristotle offers, when violence takes place within the family. The somewhat odd phrase, "within affective relationships"--embraces familial bonds, whereas en tois philois would, I believe, have suggested rather friends who are unrelated by blood.

Such, at least, is my interpretation of the passage. Elizabeth Belfiore disagrees: in an appendix to the first chapter of her book, in which she discusses my published views on the question, she maintains that here "the noun philos surely has the same range as philia, and both refer primarily, if not exclusively, to relationships among close blood kin" (20). Whatever the sense of philos, however, Aristotle clearly means that tragedy is best at eliciting pity when it deals with tensions within the family, and, as Belfiore notes, such bonds are "central to more than half" the extant tragedies (xv)--and relations by marriage are not included in this figure. Of those fragmentary plays whose plots can be reconstructed with some confidence (Belfiore analyzes 141), 69 involve harm or the threat of harm to blood relatives, according to Belfiore. A dozen more focus on spouses, again classified separately under the heading "reciprocal relationships," which covers also xenia and suppliancy (202-3), although Belfiore (6) notes that Aristotle lists marriage under philia sungenikê (NE 9.4; EE 7.6-7), while guest-friendship belongs rather to koinônikê (supplication is not discussed in NE 8-9). "Reciprocal relationships" is thus a problematic class, since it includes bonds that the Greeks would, I think, have seen as quite distinct. Be that as it may, "Murder among Kin" might have been a more suitable title for this volume, especially [End Page 270] given that violence between friends in the narrow or modern sense is virtually nonexistent in Greek tragedy. It is an unfortunate consequence of broadening the meaning of philos that this circumstance goes unexplained in Belfiore's discussion.

Before examining Belfiore's argument in more detail, let me first give an overview of the structure of the book. It falls into two halves of about equal length. The first part consists of a general overview of philia relations in Greek literature, followed by close readings of five tragedies. These include Euripides' Iphigenia in Tauris, where the danger is fratricide; Aeschylus' Suppliant Women, the theme of which is defined as "the suppliant bride"; Sophocles' Philoctetes, which is treated as a play about xenia; Euripides' Andromache; and Sophocles' Ajax, in which suicide is taken to be a violation of the most intimate kind of philia, that which obtains with oneself (the chapter title is "Killing One's Closest Philos").

The second part consists of three appendices, the first of which summarizes the plots of the surviving tragedies other than the five singled out for treatment in the body of the text. These are arranged by category: blood kinship, subdivided in turn into "parent harms child," "child harms parent," "sibling harms sibling," and "harm to other blood kin" (17 plays in all); reciprocal relationships, covering marriage, xenia, and "suppliancy"; and exceptional plays, including Sophocles' Ajax and Euripides' Andromache. Within each subcategory, plays are treated by author, with individual works arranged in alphabetical order of the English titles. Thus, "parent harms child" begins with Aeschylus' Eumenides, followed by Euripides' Bacchae and five other Euripidean tragedies. Of the Bacchae, we are told: "[T]he central pathos of this play is the killing and tearing apart of son (Pentheus) by mother (Agave) who is maddened and does not know who he is" (126). Other instances of harm to philoi within the plays are also itemized, for example, in the Bacchae, the circumstance that Dionysus is denied by his own aunts, and that Pentheus and Dionysus are cousins. Prometheus Bound gets included on the grounds that "Zeus tortures his uncle Prometheus" (14).

Appendix B treats the fragmentary plays of the three major tragedians, which are organized on a different principle. First come groups of plays based on the same mythological figure: Ajax, Amphiaraus, Antenor, down through Theseus and Tyro, in alphabetical order. The last, for instance, contains two entries, Sophocles' Tyro 1 and Tyro 2; these "were about amphimetric strife between stepmother and stepdaughter and they focused on the killing of a suppliant at the altar" (185). Sandwiched in between "Dionysus Myths" and "Erektheus, House of, Myths" is "Domestic Animal Myths," where "a man was killed by his own animals" (168); the unwary reader may not think to look here for Aeschylus' Glaukos Potnieus and Toxotides, the latter about Actaeon--but does his relationship with his dogs really count as philia? After the groups, come individual plays, organized as in appendix A. The third category contain groups again, but this time those in which violation of philia bonds is "either uncertain or unlikely in more than half of the plays in each group" (162), for example, Odysseus myths, [End Page 271] while the fourth category treats individual plays where such a violation is doubtful. Finally, appendix C covers the same ground in regard to fragments of minor tragedians, organized this time first according to "Titles Suggesting Harm to Philoi," for example, Kyknos (by Achaeus I) and Phoinix (two, perhaps, by Ion, and one by Astydamas II), within the subcategory "parent harms child"; then plays for which there is evidence of harm to philoi beyond the mere title; and third, cases where such injury is unlikely, for example, plays about Antaeus, Bellerophon, and Odysseus, although in the last Belfiore leaves open the possibility that Chaeremon's Odysseus might have been about parricide (214). Of 139 plays considered, 74 are identified as involving harm to blood kin (19 more deal with violations of the marriage bond, classified with xenia and suppliancy).

Belfiore maintains that "The essence of 'the tragic,' for the ancient Greeks, is the representation of acts in which philoi harm or are about to harm philoi" (122), and that this feature distinguishes tragedy from other genres such as epic, which is not based on this pattern (9-13). To what extent, then, is the category of philos central to the analysis of Greek tragedy? I have already indicated that Murder among Friends fails to identify a single instance of such an event--that is, between friends--in tragedy; contrast the positive relationship between Heracles and Theseus in Euripides' Heracles, or that between Orestes and Pylades. Belfiore says that "it is reasonable to exclude from the relevant philia relationships those between philoi who are merely 'friends'" (6), that is, not connected by blood or formal reciprocity. But there is nothing feeble about the bond of friendship in Greek thought (Orestes exclaims in Euripides' Orestes 804-6 that a good hetairos is better than ten thousand kinsmen); if tragedy deals rather with violence among kin or quasi-kin, one ought to explain why violence between friends seems to be taboo in the genre. A further difficulty is Aristotle's claim that tragedy involves "recognizing friendship" (anagnôrisai tên philian, Poet. 1453b31). If family members are by definition philoi, that is, "loved ones" (as in English), then one has to suppose that, as a result of a recognition, "people may 'become philoi' even when they are already philoi in the sense of biological kin" (7).

Of the five plays selected for extended discussion, Belfiore acknowleges that four are "hard cases" for her view (xvii), because they are not directly concerned with injury to kin. These tragedies, then, test the general validity of her hypothesis, and it is incumbent on her to show that they really are predicated on a violation of bonds between philoi, in some sense of that term. Unfortunately, it is just here that I retain some doubts. Belfiore's analysis of Sophocles' Philoctetes, for instance, depends on the premise that Philoctetes and Neoptolemus establish, in the course of the play, a relationship of xenia, "initiated by definite prescribed acts and sanctioned by the gods" (64). The obligatory exchange of gifts (Belfiore follows Gabriel Herman's schema in Ritualised Friendship, a book whose argument I find wholly unpersuasive) is represented by the passing of Philoctetes' bow to Neoptolemus; when Neoptolemus returns it, "he completes the initiation of xenia and thereafter acts as a xenos toward Philoktetes" (65). There is much that is interesting in Belfiore's account of this play, but the basic premise in [End Page 272] regard to philia seems wrong to me. Xenos means "stranger" throughout the play, not "guest-friend." Only after Neoptolemus has restored the bow does Philoctetes address him as philos (1301), as Belfiore herself notes (67).

Again, I find it a distraction from the central themes of Sophocles' Ajax to focus attention on the hero's suicide as an instance of violence against a philos, that is, oneself. Granted, Greek attitudes toward suicide were complex, and Ajax's self-inflicted death might seem an ignoble solution to disgrace (108), although the end of the play suggests rather the reverse, as Belfiore notes (115-16). There are indeed deep issues of loyalty, love, and comradeship raised in this tragedy; I am not persuaded, however, that it clarifies matters to include among them Ajax's relation to himself.

So too, I am unconvinced that Aeschylus' Suppliant Women is best interpreted on the hypothesis that, for the Greeks, "the bride is a suppliant" (41), and hence the play is fundamentally about philia relationships. Belfiore claims that it is wrong "to see a parallel between Zeus in the Io story and the suitors who pursue the Danaïds. Zeus' human analog is instead Pelasgos, who rescues the Danaïds from the Aigyptiads" (48). Conceivably so, but the Danaïds, as suppliants, do not approach Pelasgos as a potential husband. The three passages that Belfiore cites (49-50), two drawn from Iamblichus' Life of Pythagoras (9.48, 18.84) and one from Pseudo-Aristotle Oeconomica (1344a10-12), are not, to my mind, sufficient to prove that marriage was normally associated with imagery of supplication or hikesia; nor am I persuaded that the custom by which the groom takes the bride by the hand evoked the practice of raising a suppliant from the ground (50-53).

In order to read Euripides' Andromache as a play about philia, one must suppose that there is "a parallel between kin murder and incest on the one hand and sleeping with one's enemy on the other, for, according to Greek thought, helping enemies is just as wrong as harming friends" (83). The last assertion is, I think, mistaken, but we may let that pass. Belfiore assumes that Andromache is an enemy to Neoptolemus, whose child she has borne, because he is the son of the man who slew her husband; the act of murder constitutes a person as an authentês, and "the authentês relationship is one between families," not just between individuals. What is more, Andromache is authentês to Neoptolemus: she shares in the murder of Achilles, "since she was the sister-in-law of Paris" (83). Other figures in the play are implicated in this relationship as well, including even Thetis, who married Peleus against her will: Belfiore reviews the negative representation of their marriage over a broad range of Greek literature, and concludes (96) that Euripides was alluding to this tradition in 18 and 1231, which imply that Thetis no longer lives with her mortal husband (although 18 merely hints at the idea with the imperfect xunôikei). The upshot is that all this fraternizing with the enemy plays havoc with the distinction between philoi and ekhthroi: "Treating enemies as philoi, Euripides shows, has consequences as disastrous as those resulting from treating philoi as enemies" (100). Perhaps, but I doubt, for my part, that Andromache has the status of enemy toward Neoptolemus on the [End Page 273] basis of her relationship to Paris, or that this connection is germane to the theme of the play.

These bare summaries do little justice to the details of Belfiore's argument. Her book exhibits the manifold ways in which kinship and other bonds subtend the plots of Greek tragedy, and confirms Aristotle's insight that violence within the family is most suited to eliciting the tragic emotions of pity and fear.

David Konstan
Brown University
e-mail: dkonstan@brown.edu