When studying ancient Greek literature and, in particular, genres that had a performance aspect, one naturally analyses a text, rarely being conscious that discourse does not simply consist of words. In a timely manner and in line with contemporary trends, this volume reconsiders ancient literary narratives by uncovering the role of silence and its importance. Silence can be uttered or ushered (e.g. ‘let us now be silent’); it can also be deliberate and meaningful. It has been too easy to overlook how silence is not necessarily the absence of words, but rather a stance and an essential platform of emotion, a strategy or even a way of navigating certain circumstances. This is a very welcome volume that complements earlier important work by S. Montiglio and looks at silence as a medium of communication in different literary genres with a greater focus on the novel and tragedy. While it emphasises silence as inferred or constructed, it contains many insights on how silence functions in Greek literary culture as a multifaceted device. For anyone who thinks about silence, knowing that a good part of historical lives operated in silence, it is significant to see the snippets of the surviving literary record as something that both preserves and, also, carefully makes space for silence as a critical element of human behaviour.
The first chapter by A. Lardinois considers what renders silence in epic poetry more meaningful. It introduces the aspect of ‘performance of silence’, which is a steering motif for this chapter and also the entire volume. Performers would imitate the characters’ silence, and silence is often marked distinctly. Through a careful consideration of different passages from the Iliad and the Odyssey and also Sappho 31 and then Euripides’ Medea it emerges that what might seem antithetical to poetry, namely silence, has a role to play in both a technical way and in the way metre works, but also as a performance of its own. As Lardinois mentions, Medea's children's silence is not discussed but performed.
A. Tatsi takes a different strand by looking at the productive notion of concealment in Pindar. Intentional silence intersects with complex nuances of temporality and time as an opportunity. It is associated with aidos as an emotion and moral value to avoid excess in praise and envy. This chapter becomes particularly thought-provoking when it considers silence as a way to conceal historical truth (with emphasis on Nemean 9). The earlier notion of performance comes back in this chapter as Pindar uses concealment to avoid discussing Hieron and Sicily, thus enabling the poet to be atemporal and address different audiences.
E. Bowie explores Chariton, Xenophon, Achilles Tatius and Longus and, from a macroscopic level, considers the novelists' act of writing a break into silence and, therefore, an opportunity for authorial revelation. One can take this further and view silence as a generative space. The characters’ choices between speech and silence are seen not as antithetical but as complementary moments. Silence intersects with the expression of fear or eros. The topos of ‘all were silent’ while someone breaks the silence puts more focus on speaking characters. Although the novelists deploy silence differently, it is a strategy to engage readers’ attention in all of them.
Montiglio, who has stirred strong interest in the topic of silence with her 2000 book (Silence in the Land of Logos), returns here to discuss silences in the novels, focusing on the figure of Chariclea in Heliodorus’ Aethiopica. Starting with a frame that sees two opposites in Greek culture, on the one hand the silence that signals modesty and on the other cunning intelligence, Montiglio traces Chariclea's expression, her oscillation from speechlessness to speech, from reticence imposed by a sense of shame to cunning use of lies to protect herself. One of the gems in this essay that should spark more interest is how Heliodorus as an authorial voice takes the heroine's stance at the end of the novel, keeping silent about the erotic content, ‘as Chariclea would have done, in silence’ (p. 83).
D. Lateiner analyses the opacity of silence in Aristophanes’ dramatic characters, treating it as a conspicuous non-verbal behaviour. Those receiving raw power can be reduced and resort to silence. On the other hand, commands for silence, especially as expressed by the notion of euphemia as an antithesis, bring into lines of comedy the echo of ritual effect or political convention. In situations that mirror law-courts silence is also a way to escape self-incrimination. This paper explores a great range of meanings and functions of taciturnity in comedy, as a comic device but also as a platform for intentional isolation. One of the most important points made is that the ‘unspeaking moments’ (p. 110) are ‘extratextual’ (p. 109) and in line with the characters, which affords drama with diverse nuances.
The remaining six chapters all focus on tragedy. D. Rosenbloom explores the ‘unspeakable’ and traces how the three tragic poets use it differently. While Aeschylus’ unspeakable moments have a ritual effect and theatricalise the invisible, for Sophocles and Euripides it becomes a rhetorical way of ‘speaking through silence’ (p. 116). Speakers who proclaim the limits of verbal expression tend to appeal to raw emotion, like Tecmessa in Ajax, and become sympathetic to the audience. The reading of Oedipus at Colonus from the perspective of fourth-century forensic rhetoric and its use of the unspeakable is an important perspective. Similarly, deliberate silence can destabilise an interlocutor, as is the case in the communication between Clytemnestra and Cassandra. The closer look at Clytemnestra and her use of ritual speech with incantatory elements as well as at Cassandra, who is a ritual vessel for Apollo's voice, is particularly insightful, especially on how Clytemnestra appropriates the chorus’ speech becoming like a ‘ventriloquist’ (p. 155) and how Cassandra ultimately prepares the resolution in the trilogy.
J. Gregory comes from the perspective of historical restrictions on speech for different groups. This essay rightly examines the relationship of speech and silence not as two opposites and rather underscores the complexity of this relationship by exploring how Greek literature stages silence as resistance. Beginning with Homer, this chapter brings examples from Aeschylus’ Eumenides, Euripides’ Ion, Orestes, and further considers Sophocles’ Oedipus Tyrannus, Antigone, among other texts, looking at how silence works with gesture, as non-verbal expression. One pattern that is convincingly argued is that characters can be silenced propelled by themselves or compelled by others. When the latter happens, silence becomes resistance.
The chapter by S. Μills returns to Sophocles’ Theban plays and looks at the unspeakability of incestuous relationships. Secrecy and silencing just as in modern incestuous families permeate the three Theban plays, while tyranny and incest become a pair as sick relationships exhibit themselves at the family and state levels. This essay carefully reads the Oedipus Tyrannus and the ambivalence between secrecy and speech for characters and chorus, whereas the Oedipus at Colonus brings the issue of repression and shame. Similarly, in the Antigone, these themes are also present: incest, tyranny and blood relations are re-evaluated, as the two tyrannical figures, Oedipus in the OT and Creon in the Antigone, witness the silent departure of their families and end up in isolation. This is a remarkably perceptive piece that views all three plays from an unusual lens.
Papadodima turns to Sophocles’ Ajax and looks at the many ‘shades’ and ‘degrees’ of silence. This chapter employs a fruitful approach that presents Ajax as a hero evolving from epic into tragedy. While in relation to Achilles in Iliad 9 he is arguably the most appropriate to appeal to Achilles, he himself eventually withdraws like Achilles. The additional perspective from Pindar of Ajax as aglossos (‘lacking speech’) adds a vivid image of Ajax's presence in the Greek literary tradition. The essay further draws attention to reported silences; whereas rumours and reported speech have been an integral part of this tragedy, understanding the reported silences gives more depth to our reading as the hero becomes both volatile and violent. In a sensitive manner this essay draws the different hues of unutterability, silences, silencing, stealth and breaking from silence. It also considers the temporal element and the apt use of real versus imagined silences as the action of the play evolves.
L. McClure brings a new angle that looks at silence as a precursor to song. This essay complements the other essays on Aeschylus and the Agamemnon, by reading Agamemnon together with Euripides’ Ion and focusing on the two figures who have been impacted by Apolline force. Cassandra's presence in the Agamemnon, rightly discussed as the most protracted silence on classical stage, is framed by the Watchman's words that choose to leave certain things unsaid, associating silence with powerlessness. This essay redirects our attention from Cassandra's status (virgin, concubine etc.) and puts forth a new reading focusing on her silences and enigmatic cries. It is the staged silence that makes her later lyric utterance a forceful and disquieting voicing. This dramatic technique also implicates Apollo as the god of prophecy and song. The same connection is convincingly argued for Creusa. Although Creusa, unlike Cassandra, speaks as soon as she enters the stage, her past trauma is disclosed and her silence ruptured in her lyric monody, in a play that constantly uses language of concealment, secrecy and coercion. Creusa swerves into lyric anapaests. This fascinating reading highlights the captive girl and the royal wife as two figures whose lyric utterance both ‘outstrips the comprehension of their male interlocutors’ (p. 237) and points to female trauma, with both figures being Apollo's victims.
K. Synodinou, through the perspective of epic female silences, moves to tragedy and how tragedy moves beyond the assumption of female submissiveness, focusing on Clytemnestra. This essay brings together the Aeschylean Clytemnestra from Agamemnon and the Euripidean one from Iphigenia in Aulis and traces the evolution of a character as she is transformed into a revolutionary figure who defies her husband.
The final essay by R. Seaford revisits the silences of Achilles and Niobe in the Aeschylean lost dramas, returns to Cassandra in Agamemnon and explores how Aeschylus innovated by introducing long silences, something not present in the earlier epic tradition. This essay subtly brings attention to the hymenaeal context by analysing Niobe's ‘veiled silence’ as also Cassandra's bridal silence. This essay aptly points out associations between isolation and silence in tragedy, as the silence of the mourner or the bride, which are evoked further, are ritualised silences, being merged with the silence of isolation.
This is a volume rich in detail, offering nuanced close readings that considerably change earlier views of how silence is present in ancient literature, making a compelling case that silence operates as an important agent in performative texts and beyond.
