Notes
(1) For a survey of modern criticism on Deus ex Machina, see F.M.Dunn, Tragedy's End---Closure and Innovation in Euripidean Drama--- ( Oxford, 1996), 42. Dunn says on Deus ex Machina, “...in the Western tradition, the deus is rarely found...”
(2) Arist. Poet. 1454a39; Pl. Cra. 425d5ff; Cic. Nat.D 53; Hor. Ars P. 191-2.
(3) tragi-comedy: e.g. H.D.F. Kitto, Greek Tragedy :a Literary Study 3 (London, 1961) 311-29. Romantic tragedy: e.g., D.J. Conacher, Euripidean Drama, Myth, Theme, and Structure (Toronto 1967) 265-313.
(4) Aristophanes of Byzantium, Hypothesis to ORESTES. Schol. as 'unworthy of tragedy' and 'comical' on 1512, 1521.
(5) The popularity of IPHIGENIA TAURICA can be assumed from the vase-paintings(fourth century B.C.) with the marks of stage-productions: T.B.L. Webster, Illustrations of Greek Drama (London,1971) 91-4. HELENA obviously was so much enjoyed that Aristophanes copied several lines from it in THESMOPHORIAZUSAE, his burlesque of it the next year. (e.g., HEL.16-7=TH. 860-1, 22=862, 52=864-5.) On Ion's popularity, see below and n.33.Aristophanes of Byzantium says in his Hypothesis that the performance of ORESTES was well-received.
(6) For Euripidean chronology e.g. M. Drury in P. Easterling & B.M.W. Knox (ed.) Cambridge History of Classical Literature I. Greek Literature. (Cambridge,1985) 768-9. For Ion, G.B. Walsh, 'The Rhetoric of Birthright and Race in Euripides' ION', Hermes 106 (1978), 308-9;N.,'Kreusa the Autochthon' in J. Winkler & F. Zeitlin (ed.), Nothing to do with Dionysus? (Princeton, 1990),185.
(7) On her sense of being victimized K. Tange (Girishahigeki- Kenkyujosetsu.(Tokyo,1996), 173 n.27) draws attention to the use of the words peplos (185, 304, 307, 501, 542, 544, 1140, 1206, 1227) and pharos (191, 317) as the symbol of her material plight.
(8) Conacher: 208.
(9) Tange (157ff) notices that in Electra's speech there are only few remarks about father. In Sophocles Electra is so devoted to the idea of mourning for her wronged father(100, 244-50, 341-2, 345-6, 381-2, 395,399, 626-7, Orestes, too, 71-2 ) that she has chosen poverty over easy life (359ff).
(10) In CHOEPHORI Orestes gives a long and powerful speech after the
matricide, stating his cause of justice (972-1006). In Sophocles' ELECTRA the murder as the concluding climax of the play is briefly commented on as something heroic by the Chorus (1508-10) which reflects the feelings of the sister and brother.
(11) Attention is paid to contrived appearance of Deus by G.M.A. Grube, The Drama of Euripides ( New York,1961 ), 75-6.
(12) One successful example among many in the comedies listed below may be found in A MISER. Without the unexpected and delayed appearance of Anserm in Act V scene v, when the angry miser is about to punish
his daughter and her lover, the play would end in disaster.
(13) R. Lattimore Euripides, Iphigenia in Tauris. (Oxford,1974) 3-4, for example, gives thirteen exact parallels between the plays.
(14) On distortion of the 'recognition scene', see A.P. Burnett, Catastrophe Survived---Euripides' Plays of Mixed Reversals-- (Oxford,1971) 84.
(15) Reminds one of similar comic situations, e.g. in Shakespeare's COMEDIE OF ERRORS.
(16) The word tyche is most frequently used in HELENA among the so-called tyche-plays, as shown by J.T. Allen & G. Italie, Concordance to Euripides. (Groningen. 1970).
(17) O. Taplin, 'Comedy and the tragic' in M.S Silk (ed.) Tragedy and the Tragic (Oxford,1996), 196 refers to G.B. Shaw's definition of tragedy as 'heavy drama, in which everyone is killed in the last act' and of comedy as ' light drama in which everyone is married in the last act' and argues that as far as Aristophanic comedy is concerned this definition does not apply. To me Shaw's definition seems to reflect the tradition of Western classical comedy, in which the comedy writers of different ages each contributed to the formation of the idea of what a comedy should be like, by imitating and elaborating what seemed to be the essence of comedy in his model.
(18)( One successful example among many in the comedies listed below may be found in THE TRICK OF SCAPIN, where Scapin swindles money from Arganto and Jeronto in Act III Scenes viii-x.
(19) Dunn (143ff) elaborates the point.
(20) Aristophanes called Euripides' HELENA or its heroine 'new' in his THESMOPHORIAZUSAE (850). Helen in Euripides' tragedies before 412 B.C. had been frequently criticised and blamed as a bad woman who deserted her husband and caused millions of men to die. However in HELENA she first appears in the prologos as an unhappy beauty keeping fidelity to her husband in the loneliness in a foreign land throughout the years of the Trojan war and yearning for reunion. The audience may have been surprised at the'new Helen' as well as the entirely new approach to the legend.
(21) Z. Nakamura, 'Ta apo tes skenes' in his Girishahigeki-Kenkyu (Tokyo, 1987) 53-69.
(22) As indicated by B.W.M. Knox, 'Euripidean Comedy' in The Rarer Action: Essays in Honour of Frances Fergusson ( New Brunswick,1970)
70-74.
(23) A similar and more complicated qui-pro-quo scene may be seen in TWELFTH NIGHT and COMEDIE OF ERRORS, passim.
(24) Pollux, ONOMASTICON 4. 111.
(25) A typical servus dolosus is to be found in Epidicus in Plautus' EPIDICUS.
(26) Plenty of wine and food constitutes one of typical scenes in comedy as Knox (85) remarks, and seen in Plautus' CURCULIO, esp.365-70.
(27) As a comic outsider to be expelled eventually from the restored society of the play, Xuthus' foreignness is stressed (63, 290, 293, 592, 702-3,813-4, 1056, 1297). He does not even understand the mythological origin of the Athenian royal family (542). However, he is characterized as a basically good-natured, pious man, as shown in his own words (401-3) and Creusa's (977). Therefore, the final expulsion of such heterogeneous element from resumed normalcy, which reinforces the successful ending of a comedy by arousing the 'feeling of (the society's) cohesiveness and exclusiveness' shared by the audience (Knox,86), is actualized without leaving a sense of pain or destruction, as Aristotle suggested as the requisite of the fun of comedy (1449a34; cf. Pl. PHLB. 48c6-49c5), in the same manner as with the Taurian King in IPHIGENIA TAURICA and the Egyptian King ( On his character see Dunn ,149) in HELENA as well as with Bacchus in Terentius' MOTHER-IN-LAW (HECYRA).
(28) Reversal of established value is seen typically in Epidicus' last scene.
(29) Disjointed structure is counted as a cause to create comic mood in Tractatus Coisilianus (J.A. Cramer, ed. Anecdota Graecae Codd. Manuscriptis Bibliothecae Regiae Parisiensis vol. (Oxford,1839 repr. Hildesheim,1967) 404-6), if any value is to be claimed by this pamphlet.
(30) (1)10-27, (2)338ff, (3)501-6, (4)881ff, (5)936ff, (6)1479ff.
(31) e.g. W. Schmid, & O. Staehlin, Geschichte der griechischen Literatur I.3. (Muenchen, 1940) 544.
(32) Evidence for date and supposed or attested god for Deus ex Machina: ALOPE, Ar. AVES (414B.C.) 559, Poseidon?; ANTIOPE, schol. Ar RANAE53, Hermes; AUGE, schol. Ar. RANAE 1080, Heracles?; MELANIPPE SOPHE, unknown; MELANIPPE DESMOTIS, Ar.THESM. (411B.C.) 550 and Eupolis, DEMOI (fr.) (412B.C.), Poseidon?; HYPSIPHYLE, schol. Ar. RANAE 53, Dionysus. Sophocles' TYRO(before 414B.C.?, Schol. AVES 275) Date and Reconstruction referred to T.B.L. Webster, The Tragedies of Euripides (London,1967) But see M. Cropp & G. Fick, Resolutions and Chronology in Euripides (London,1985) 74-76.
(33) J.U. Powell, New Chapters in the History of Greek Literature 3rd ser. (1933)104; G. Murray, 'Ritual Elements in the New Comedy' CQ 37(1943) 45-54; G Murray, 'Euripides' Ion and Its Consequences' PCPS 42(1945) 9-12.
(34) In IPHIGENIA TAURICA sister and brother have embarked on the sea made calm by Poseidon and the simpleton King in his infuriation does not seem to alter the outcome. Husband and wife in HELENA are already on their way home and the slow-witted King's threat against his sister does not seem to affect the course of the plot. In ION mother and son basically have nothing to settle between them and the penultimate scene is merely felt to be somewhat wrong that something just to correct it is needed. See Dunn ,160-1.
(35) The Phrygian is comparable to the fool in TWELFTH NIGHT. Aristophanes of Byzantium comments on the characters of ORESTES that they are all worthless except Pylades (Hypothesis). Aristotle also condemns Menelaus as 'bad' (poneria) twice in POET.1454a29,1461b21. Aristotle elsewhere(1449a31) says that the characters of comedy are of a lower type (phauloteros). Orestes and Menelaus in this play must have been found comic.
(36) Orestes' unconditional acceptance of Apollo's command in ORESTES makes a clear contrast to the ending of ELECTRA where Electra asks the Dioscuri (Apollo's deputy) about the justification of a matricide but the question is left unanswered. The contrast may be suggestive of the distinction between tragedy and comedy. While tragedy presents life as something problematical, comedy diverts people's attention away from their problems.
(37) In the ending scene of EPIDICUS, for example, Periphanes is still angry at line 714 when he exits. When he reenters on line 721, he is repentant and forgives Epidicus.
(38) Satyrus, Life of Euripides (S. Hunt, The Oxyrhynchus Papyri (London,1912)149; Philemon fr.130; Quint.10.1.69ff.
(39) Dunn, 42.
(40) On the dramatic effect of a god's figure on tragic vision, see P. Easterling, 'Gods on stage in Greek tragedy' in Grazer Beitraege, Supplement bandV,Zeitschrift fuer die klassische Altertumswissenschaft (Graz 1993/4)77-86.
