The Phoenician Women, Euripides’ peculiar retelling and refashioning of the Theban myth, offers a portrait of Antigone before she becomes the actor we mostly know today from Sophocles’ play. In this under-studied Greek tragedy, Euripides portrays the political and epistemological dissolution that allows for Antigone’s appearance in public. Whereas Sophocles’ Antigone appears on stage ready to confront Creon with her appeal to the universal unwritten laws of the gods and later dissolves into the female lamenting a lost womanhood, Euripides’ Antigone (...) experiences the opposite journey, thereby offering insights into the conditions that allow for her exposure in the political arena. A speech by Eteocles at the center of the play questions the existence of absolutes, calls injustice beautiful, and opens the door for Antigone’s entrance into the public sphere. With this speech Eteocles challenges us to consider the conditions of political openness in the modern age. (shrink)

Greek literature prior to Plato featured two conceptions of education. Learning takes place when people encounter “teacher-guides”—educators, mentors, and advisors. But education also occurs outside of a pedagogical relationship between learner and teacher-guide: people learn through painful experience. In composing his dramatic dialogues, Plato appropriated these two conceptions of education, refashioning and fusing them to present a new philosophical conception of learning: Plato’s Socrates is a teacher-guide who causes his interlocutors to learn through suffering. Socrates, however, is not presented straightforwardly (...) as a pedagogical success story. Socrates’ failures are, paradoxically, part of what makes him an ideal literary model for a philosophical teacher-guide. Plato requires his readers to question why Socrates’ interlocutors are not converted to philosophers. (shrink)

Nuestro objetivo es exponer un esquema compositivo de Suplicantes que logre aprehender su particular técnica estructural, frente a la pauta fija aristotélica. El enfoque pondera el trabajo de Taplin sobre la puesta en escena trágica esquilea, que revolucionó los estudios performativos al demostrar el uso dramático de los movimientos de entrada y salida de los personajes. Dada la singularidad de Suplicantes en cuanto al protagonismo coral y el predominio lírico, sostenemos que el análisis de su estructura impone reformular la propuesta (...) de Taplin y considerar las odas corales como parte sustancial de los actos. (shrink)

Los versos 990-1008 de Suplicantes de Eurípides constituyen un verdadero locus desperatus: allí Evadne se presenta sobre la escena y expresa en versos líricos los sentimientos previos a su suicidio final. Ni la métrica sin responsio del pasaje, ni el texto evidentemente corrupto, ni la gramática inadecuada ayudan a comprender el sentido del pasaje. Tan así es que la mayoría de los editores ha renunciado a tratar de comprender el sentido de sus palabras. Sin embargo, creemos que la adecuada interpretación (...) de la metáfora utilizada por la esposa de Capaneo ayudará a la comprensión del pasaje: se trata de un priamel que se constituye en patético recordatorio del día de la boda por parte de una mujer que está a punto de suicidarse sobre la tumba de su esposo ya muerto. El fuego del rayo que mató a Capaneo, así como el fuego de la pira en donde arde ahora su cadáver (y en la que ella misma se arrojará muy pronto), le suscitan una serie de recuerdos de días mejores, vinculados todos ellos con el fuego y con la luz. La mención del carro del sol y de la luna, que constituye una metáfora casi cristalizada en la literatura griega, permite desarrollar de manera novedosa otra metáfora: las muchachas que, también ellas, cabalgan sobre la oscuridad portando sus antorchas. Evadne destaca la alegría que reinó el día de su boda, para que sea más agudo el contraste con el momento presente. The verses 990-1008 of Euripides’ Suppliants are a locus desperatus: Evadne there appears on the scene and expresses feelings in lyrical verse before his final suicide. Neither the passage’s metric without Responsio, or text clearly corrupt or improper grammar help make sense of the passage. So much so that most publishers have given up trying to understand the meaning of his words. However, we believe that the proper interpretation of the metaphor used by the wife of Capaneus help the understanding of the passage: it is one that constitutes priamel poignant reminder of the wedding day by a woman who is about to suicide on the grave of her husband already dead. The fire of lightning that killed Capaneus and fire burning pyre where his body is now (and which will throw herself very soon), will raise a number of memories of better days, all linked with the fire and light. The mention of the chariot of the sun and moon, which is a metaphor almost crystallized in Greek literature, enables a new way to develop another metaphor: the girls that they too ride on the dark carrying torches. Evadne highlights the joy that reigned on the day of her wedding, to be sharper contrast with the present moment. (shrink)

Parrhesia is the rhetorical figure of dissent par excellence. The essay argues that parrhesia is understood as risky argumentation within the rhetorical tradition. The relation of frank speech and flattery has been a core discussion about the predicaments of advocacy since Greece and Rome. Whereas Foucault models the term primarily from the aesthetic enactments of Euripides, the essay studies parrhesia as a mutually implicating struggle articulated in Sophoclean drama. Dilemmas of wartime dissent found in United States Congressional debate over Iraq (...) are presented as a contemporary case study. (shrink)

Commentators of Plato’s Symposium rarely recognize the importance of traditional Greek conceptions of Eros, paideia and arête in understanding Plato’s critique of the various educational models presented in the dialogue. I will show how Plato contests these models by proposing that education should consist of philosophy. On this interpretation, ancient Greek pedagogy culminates in a philosophical education. For this new form of education, the dialogical model supplants the traditional practices of kléos and poetic mimēsis, inextricably bound to archaia paideia and (...) traditional forms of education. Plato’s Socrates is searching for knowledge and immortality through an application of the philosophical method, one that relies on a conception of Eros and propagation. For Plato’s Socrates, it is through Eros that ancient Greek paideia educates in matters of arête, but eros is not a passion for kléos or for a beautiful young man. Rather, eros is the passion for Beauty itself, a passion that is pursued through philosophical conversation with another, a life of arête. Thus, our investigation serves to define and criticize the various educational models and defend the claim that philosophy is best suited for educating the citizens of Athens. (shrink)