Medea 2017

Greek Learning Greek
1

I’m going through Medea once with just Perseus and no commentary, per advice in the other thread. And this way I don’t have to await for a book to arrive in the mail.

I’ve jotted down a translation as I go, to hopefully allow you to let me know where I’ve gone wrong. Once I’ve gone through the play, I’ll return to it with a commentary and Loeb translation.

Τροφός

Εἴθ’ ὤφελ’ Ἀργοῦς μὴ διαπτάσθαι σκάφος
Κόλχων ἐς αἶαν κυανέας Συμπληγάδας,
μηδ’ ἐν νάπαισι Πηλίου πεσεῖν ποτε
τμηθεῖσα πεύκη, μηδ’ ἐρετμῶσαι χέρας
ἀνδρῶν ἀριστέων οἳ τὸ πάγχρυσον δέρος
Πελίᾳ μετῆλθον. οὐ γὰρ ἂν δέσποιν’ ἐμὴ
Μήδεια πύργους γῆς ἔπλευσ’ Ἰωλκίας
ἔρωτι θυμὸν ἐκπλαγεῖσ’ Ἰάσονος·
οὐδ’ ἂν κτανεῖν πείσασα Πελιάδας κόρας
πατέρα κατῴκει τήνδε γῆν Κορινθίαν
<φίλων τε τῶν πρὶν ἀμπλακοῦσα καὶ πάτρας.>
<καὶ πρὶν μὲν εἶχε κἀνθάδ’ οὐ μεμπτὸν βίον> [Note]
ξὺν ἀνδρὶ καὶ τέκνοισιν, ἁνδάνουσα μὲν
φυγὰς πολίταις ὧν ἀφίκετο χθόνα
αὐτῷ τε πάντα ξυμφέρουσ’ Ἰάσονι·
ἥπερ μεγίστη γίγνεται σωτηρία,
ὅταν γυνὴ πρὸς ἄνδρα μὴ διχοστατῇ.

Note: Versus composuit Kovacs. [He switched the order of the two lines?]

Nurse

Would that the hull of the Colchian Argo not have flown to the land of the dark Crashing Rocks [not gen.?], nor in Pelion’s groves have ever fallen a cut pine [for the ship] (why nom.?), nor the hands of noble men set to oars, who sought the golden fleece of Pelias (is this dat. towards the fleece or the verb?). For then would not my lady Medea have sailed from the fortified land of Iolcus struck by love in her soul for Jason, nor would she having persuaded him to kill the father to Pelias’ daughters have dwelt in this land of Corinth, before having been bereft of friends and fatherland.

And before she had there a blameless life with man and children, gladly an exile in the cities of his land which she came to, assisting Jason in all things – how great a deliverance whenever a wife is not divorced from her husband!

νῦν δ’ ἐχθρὰ πάντα, καὶ νοσεῖ τὰ φίλτατα.
προδοὺς γὰρ αὑτοῦ τέκνα δεσπότιν τ’ ἐμὴν
γάμοις Ἰάσων βασιλικοῖς εὐνάζεται,
γήμας Κρέοντος παῖδ’, ὃς αἰσυμνᾷ χθονός.
Μήδεια δ’ ἡ δύστηνος ἠτιμασμένη
βοᾷ μὲν ὅρκους, ἀνακαλεῖ δὲ δεξιᾶς
πίστιν μεγίστην, καὶ θεοὺς μαρτύρεται
οἵας ἀμοιβῆς ἐξ Ἰάσονος κυρεῖ.
κεῖται δ’ ἄσιτος, σῶμ’ ὑφεῖσ’ ἀλγηδόσιν,
τὸν πάντα συντήκουσα δακρύοις χρόνον
ἐπεὶ πρὸς ἀνδρὸς ᾔσθετ’ ἠδικημένη,
οὔτ’ ὄμμ’ ἐπαίρουσ’ οὔτ’ ἀπαλλάσσουσα γῆς
πρόσωπον· ὡς δὲ πέτρος ἢ θαλάσσιος
κλύδων ἀκούει νουθετουμένη φίλων,
ἢν μή ποτε στρέψασα πάλλευκον δέρην
αὐτὴ πρὸς αὑτὴν πατέρ’ ἀποιμώξῃ φίλον
καὶ γαῖαν οἴκους θ’, οὓς προδοῦσ’ ἀφίκετο
μετ’ ἀνδρὸς ὅς σφε νῦν ἀτιμάσας ἔχει.
ἔγνωκε δ’ ἡ τάλαινα συμφορᾶς ὕπο
οἷον πατρῴας μὴ ἀπολείπεσθαι χθονός.

But now all are enemies, and the dearest ones sicken. For my lord Jason, abandoning his children, sleeps in the royal marriage bed, having married Creon’s child, who rules the land. And Medea, the wretched dishonored woman, shouts oaths, and recalls the pledge of great faith and calls the gods to witness what result she obtains from Jason. She waits without food, surrendering her body to pains, wasting away from tears the the entire time since she perceived herself wronged by the man, neither raising her eyes, nor removing her face from the land, just as a sea rock [why ἢ?] is rebuked hearing the friendly waves, if [ἢν = ἐάν because of the μὴ, but why is it here?] she should never turn her white neck from bewailing her own beloved father and land and home, which abandoning she went with the men from whom now she has been dishonored. And if the wretched one had known the outcome from doing it, she would never have left her fatherland. [I don’t really get the construction of the entire last part, staring with ἢν.]

2

No no don’t write a translation. Big mistake. You need to learn to read the Greek as Greek and not translate it even in your head. Ruinous.

Your problems will be solved when you go through the play properly with Kovacs and/or Mastronarde, preferably both. Any residual problems you can ask here then. For now just make your way through the play, looking up words as needed if it gets quite unintelligible but not worrying about difficulties. The choruses are very hard, and you may not even follow their gist. That’s ok, just move on. But don’t skip them.

P.S. One or two answers though, to get you off to a decent start. It’s an exceptionally highflown and oblque opening. Most of the iambics are simpler.
to the land of the Colchians
κυαν. συμπλ. object of διαπτ., fly through
πευκη nom. like σκαφος, both subjects of ωφελεν
ερετμωσαι parallel with πεσειν. The felled pine oared their hands i.e. supplied them with oars.
Πελιᾳ for Pelias. He’d sent the Argonauts to fetch it from Colchis.
κτανεῖν πείσασα Πελιάδας κόρας | πατέρα having induced Pelias’ daughters to kill their father. You could look up the myth for the whole backstory.

3

ἄνδρες και γυναῖκες τεξτκιτοί, τὸ ἀμὴν λάβω;

I mean, that’s α τύμπανον I’ve been beating for a long time now, and it’s good to hear it ἐκ τοῦ στόματος ἄλλου.

4

Thanks for the corrections.

I understand what you’re saying, but it’s hard to communicate with other people about difficult Greek on Textkit (or elsewhere) without translating. Translating is bad, but what can we replace it with? Someday I’d like to figure out how to properly do a “Let’s Read” thread. What are the rules we need to make it work?

I’m recording as I go, so that my “Greek as Greek” experience will be listening to the audio version, and of course re-reads.

5

Versus composuit Kovacs. – Kovacs wrote the two lines in the brackets himself to suggest the possible content of what he thinks is a lacuna in the text. The English side of the page gives a cite to his article in Classical Quarterly where he discusses this, which I haven’t read. In other words, he thinks that there is a gap in the transmitted text, and has tried to explain what he thinks the gap might have said, but he’s not asserting that this is exactly what the gap did say or even that it’s necessarily close.

I believe the problem he perceives is that with ἁνδάνουσα μὲν the nurse seems to have slipped from a summary narrative of the lead-up to the current situation cast in the form of contrafactuals (negative wishes beginning with Εἴθ’ ὤφελ’ and then apodoses of the protases implied by the wishes, beginning with οὐ γὰρ ἂν) to a direct statement of the background.

"I wish the Argo had never sailed, etc. If it had not, Medea would not have moved to Corinth, finding favor among the citizens of Corinth . . . " doesn’t seem quite right to Kovacs. “Finding favor” seems more like a direct statement of fact about what actually happened, not part of the sequence of contrafactuals, because it’s a positive development from Medea’s perspective, and thus doesn’t quite seem to fit in the sequence of negative events that go before it. (But it’s something Euripides wants us to know, I think, because it shows that Medea can be likeable. At least, the nurse says so.)

So (I think) Kovacs concludes the preceding sentence, breaking the sequence, and supplies a new main verb εἶχε that doesn’t depend on οὐ γὰρ ἂν. Not everyone would agree that there’s a lacuna here, and I’m not sure I would if I were faced with the task of constructing a reading text of Medea, but I think Kovacs raises a valid question, if I understand what he has done correctly, whether or not he’s right.

I doubt an editor of an OCT or Teubner edition would have gone beyond indicating a suspected lacuna in the text (and perhaps discussing the passage in an article somewhere), without composing two lines to fill the perceived lacuna, but the Loeb edition is designed to provide a readable Greek and English text, and that’s what Kovacs has tried to do.

6

I understand what you’re saying, but it’s hard to communicate with other people about difficult Greek on Textkit (or elsewhere) without translating.

Yes, for that we need to translate, to communicate our understanding of the Greek. But you shdn’t be communicating with others at this point. That comes later. For now you shd just be making your way through the play by yourself and not bothering too much about problems, least of all textual problems. (You can use Kovacs’ text, or Mastronarde’s, or Diggle’s OCT, it makes little difference. You’ll find differences when you come to compare them, but I urge against doing that yet, for fear of not seeing the wood for the trees.)
If you want to skip this rough preliminary read-through of the play, of course you can, but I do think you’ll find it helpful to get a sense both of what tragedy’s like and of what sorts of problem you’re likely to have with it, before hitting the commentary and us. And you want to avoid Paul’s difficulty (and so many others’) with actually getting to the end. We could have hundreds of posts on the prolog alone, or on a single line of it. (Just think of earlier threads which all petered out.) Perhaps I shd have suggested a different play for the purpose, e.g. Alkestis (not a typical tragedy, but it would serve perfectly well).
Translating aims to give the meaning of the Greek but won’t help much with getting an idea of how Greek drama works.
And I don’t mean to diss your audio but I’d beware of listening to yourself. It could so easily lead you astray if you don’t quite get how the text is articulated.

7

I’m now going through Medea with a “fast read” as a first pass. I’m looking up a lot of words compared to what I do for new Plato or Xenophon, but I hope that peters off over time. Hopefully I will be finished before the commentary comes in the mail on Saturday.

8

I stopped looking up words (mostly) at about line 400, and simply read through the rest, aloud. I re-read some sections where I felt that I had missed something, and any line where I screwed up the meter (in the non-lyric sections, that is). Like with Shakespeare or Milton, the meter really takes hold and provides a feeling of velocity to everything.

I believe that I caught the gist of things mostly. I found the play to be absolutely harrowing. Medea struck me as very similar to Lady Macbeth (but with far more cause), especially in her monologue just after negotiating with Creon to be allowed to prepare a single day before her exile begins [or something like that]. She says something like “I’ve only got one day to murder the three people I need to murder” .

Once everything became inevitable and the messengers began arriving on stage, some elements became actively painful to read.

οἴμοι, τί δράσω; ποῖ φύγω μητρὸς χέρας;
οὐκ οἶδ’, ἀδελφὲ φίλτατ’· ὀλλύμεσθα γάρ.

While I caught the main element of most of the speeches, I missed much more than I understood. The chorus sections were mostly a blur. The most important element of the plot that I missed, I think, was Jason’s initial conversation with Medea. While I understood some parts, I feel like I missed some important part of Jason’s explanation of his actions. I seem to have only caught his complaints about her present conduct. There was clearly hubris to his speech that I was supposed to catch, but didn’t fully.

EDIT:

Mastronarde has arrived today. What particular essays from the introduction should I read, or all, or none, and how should I approach my next read-through of the play?

9

I’ve been going through the Mastronarde commentary line by line and am at the first choral section. (131-213)

There is very detailed information about each line and section, but I think I that I’d appreciate an overview of what’s going on here in general terms.

In what ways does will this choral interlude look like the others, and in what ways not?

10

In what ways does will this choral interlude look like the others, and in what ways not?

I’m not sure I see the point of this question. It’s not an interlude–it’s an integral part of the play. It develops the situation described in the prologue, at the same time raising the emotional temperature through more elevated, more intense and poetic, lyric language, as opposed to iambic dialogue. Bringing in Medea’s offstage voice in counterpoint to the characters and chorus on stage is probably not an unparalleled effect, but here it’s wielded in a striking and brilliant way.

But each choral passage should be appreciated on its own terms, and compare and contrast really isn’t a meaningful exercise.

11

From the introduction I’d recommend reading the sections on production and on the Medea myth before going further with the text. These are things you won’t learn from the text itself. I’d leave “The Play: structure, themes, and problems” until after you’ve been properly through the play. And either now or later you’ll benefit from reading the section on structural elements and on language and style. You can use the commentary to correct and refine your first impressions of the play, and of course to improve your Greek in general and tragic and Euripidean Greek in particular. Don’t go too fast.

131-213. It’s normal for the chorus’ entry to be in anapests (but anapests can be used in other parts too), but for the first anapests to be heard from a character “inside” is startling. Note distinction between sung anapests (“doric” alpha a tell-tale marker), and “recited” ones. Medea sings, as does the chorus, the nurse recites. More usually the chorus’ entry is in recited anapests as they take one of the two side entrances (the parodoi, παρ-ὁδοι) into the dancing area. Sung anapests are more emotionally intense and agitated, recited ones (probably chanted) closer in register to spoken iambics.

Strophe (148-59) and antistrophe (173-183), metrically corresponding, is a common structure in lyric. This pair starts out anapestic, like what precedes, before passing into closely related “aeolic” meters. Many choral odes in Greek drama are in aeolic meters, and all tragic lyrics are in a watered-down form of “doric” derived from the likes of Pindar (as is the strophe/antistrophe responsion). It’s not uncommon in tragedy to have strophe and antistrophe separated, as here.

You might compare and contrast Soph.Ajax 134-262, which you have read if I remember. Hylander’s quite right to say this part of the play (like all the others) should be appreciated on its own terms, but there are norms and conventions, which you’ll get more familiar with as you read more plays.

Some of Medea’s prayers here turn out not to be fulfilled, others are. The play opens up various possible developments and outcomes at the outset, while withholding others. It’s one of Euripides’ most suspenseful plays.

12

πῶς ἂν ἐς ὄψιν τὰν ἁμετέραν
ἔλθοι μύθων τ’ αὐδαθέντων
δέξαιτ’ ὀμφάν,

The chorus is the Corinthian women. It seems that they using ὀμφάν to refer to their own voice here, but is some divine counsel implied?

13

Outside Homer, in PIndar and Aeschylus, the word ομφη is generally used to mean just a “voice.” It’s obviously a word in an elevated, poetic register, characteristic of choral lyric and tragedy. If there were some implication of divine utterance, it would surely be made more explicit.

http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text?doc=Perseus%3Atext%3A1999.04.0057%3Aentry%3Do)mfh%2F

But I see that Hesychius mentions that in Laconian, ὀμφά meant “ὀσμή”. And the line from Medea is in a “Doric” passage. Putting two and two together, could it be that the chorus is despairing that Medea can’t smell them? μύθων τ’ αὐδαθέντων suggests otherwise, but actually, Euripides undoubtedly wrote αμων τ᾽ου νιφθεισᾶν / δέξαιτ’ ὀμφάν. From a paleographical point of view, it’s easy to see how the corruption found its way into the text.

14

As Hylander indicates, the word has extended its range by this time (or simply in lyric), but it does give a portentous impression, as does the phrase as a whole (μυθων αυδαθεντων ομφαν).

His textual emendation is I believe new, but is entirely convincing. It’s confirmed by its tastelessness, so characteristic of Euripides, and also by the fact that it’s clearly meant as a patriotic insult against Corinth, not on the best of terms with Athens at this point in time. Could it have been the match that ignited the Peloponnesian War?

15

While both Hylander and mwh know much better than me, as always, I would suggest:

πῶς ἂν ἐς ὀσμὰν τὰν ἁμετέραν
καὶ περδομένων τ’ αὐδαθέντων
δέξαιτ’ ὀμφάν;

I think this is well motivated here in the choral part, because if you’ll accept a Christian source:

nonnulli ab imo sine pudore ullo ita numerosos pro arbitrio sonitus edunt, ut ex illa etiam parte cantare videantur.

16

Doesn’t scan. You need a line of eight heavy/long syllables to respond with the strophe – and then another line of heavies follows. The portentousness of the solemn and poetic words αὐδαθέντων and ὀμφάν is heightened by the meter.

You also need a motion verb to govern ἐς ὀσμὰν τὰν ἁμετέραν and to be connected with δέξαιτ’ by καὶ.

For your Christian source, let me guess: Luther?

17

I had prepared this if anyone raised first objection: “maybe Euripides found the strophe too hard to follow here and went back to anapests, which explains the later corruption.”

For the second, I was thinking of ἐπ’ instead of ἐς to hopefully be read as connected to δέξαιτ’ – but I didn’t think that actually made sense, and I hoped that you’d just read it as a pregnant construction.

The quote is from St. Augustine’s City of God, but here is Luther on the theme:

Quam bene conveniunt tibi res et carmina, Lemchen!
Merda tibi res est, carmina merda tibi.
Dignus erat Lemchen merdosus carmine merdae,
Nam vatem merdae nil nisi merda decet.
Infelix princeps, quem laudas carmine merdae!
Merdosum merda quem facis ipse tua.
Ventre urges merdam vellesque cacare libenter
Ingentem, facis at, merdipoeta, nihil.
At meritis si digna tuis te poena sequatur,
Tu miserum corvis merda cadaver eris.