Against a background of anxious evocation of Dionysiac rites, Euripides' Heracles stages the extreme degradation of the tragic hero who, as a consequence of the hatred of a divinity, loses his heroic traits and above all his human ones in the exercise of brutal violence. By comparing Heracles in the grip of madnessFootnote 1 to a furious bull assailing its prey, the tragedian clearly shows the inexorability of the divine will and its arbitrariness,Footnote 2 and emphasizes madness itself through images traditionally associated with the bull. However, the reference to monstrosity and animals does not only involve Heracles, but also concerns the representation of Lyssa, the demon of madness sent by Hera to induce Heracles to slaughter his own family.Footnote 3 This representation of Lyssa includes the monstrous and disturbing Gorgon and the dog, set alongside the metaphor of hunting, which in turn highlight the link between the demon and the Erinyes, those other bringers of madness.
The reference to bestiality thus seems to provide the tragedian with a context in which violence proves to be ‘culturally comprehensible’ to the spectators through a series of associations also alluding to the experience of religion and its rites. This context further includes the musical dimension, which highlights the subversion of the human order and a shift towards animal ferocity: in this connection, in Euripides' Heracles the dimension of wild and unbridled animality is introduced in an extremely disquieting way through the aulos, a fundamental instrument of many festive moments for the community and an inducer of Dionysiac enthousiasmos.
Hence the object of our reflection on Heracles will be the representation of violence, particularly connected with the ‘bestialization’ of Lyssa as a ‘dog’ and with the loss of ‘human’ traits in Heracles, who becomes a ‘bull’.Footnote 4 In this sense, madnessFootnote 5 – represented as harmful subversion of Dionysiac enthousiasmos by LyssaFootnote 6 – seems to constitute the discriminating element between the exercise of ‘just’ violence, functional at all events in re-establishing order in things, and ‘unjust’ violence, in which the prevalence of the strongest is translated into the predominance of subversive bestiality in the human order.
THE BENEFACTOR HERO AND HERA'S REVENGE. UPHEAVAL OF REALITY AND AMOUSIA
The μετάβασιςFootnote 7 starts for Heracles when he performs the last of the laboursFootnote 8 imposed on him by Eurystheus:Footnote 9 going down to Hades and capturing the dog Cerberus. Meanwhile, his old father Amphitryon and his wife Megara with their three young children await him in Thebes where, in his absence, violence has been done to them by the cruel tyrant Lycus, who has killed Creon, Megara's father, and now also intends to kill Heracles' family to get power over the city once and for all.Footnote 10 The hero's return is awaited by Amphitryon and Megara as a liberation from their sufferings and a promise of prosperity and serenity, but Heracles' exceptional exploits, and the joyful exultation of the chorus proclaiming the benefits of his double paternity on the death of Lycus (798–806), are destined to turn against Amphitryon himself, and above all against the hero.Footnote 11
Since his early childhood, Heracles has indeed been an object of hatred for the divine spouseFootnote 12 and now will have to suffer her extreme revenge. The victorious outcomes of the tests imposed on him are not enough to make him safe, and not even being Zeus's son serves to protect him from the goddess's wrath.Footnote 13 Therefore, Euripides' Heracles is particularly freighted with bitter and disenchanted observations not just on humans, who show no gratitude to Heracles for the many dangers he has freed them from, but also on the gods' indifference to human concerns and on their wickedness in influencing events on earth.Footnote 14 Hera's revenge appears all the crueller and all the more senseless in that Heracles is made to emerge as a hero bringing benefits for humanity,Footnote 15 the exterminator of terrible and threatening monstersFootnote 16 and a person respectful of the honours due to the gods:Footnote 17 it is not by chance that exterminating fury pervades him precisely as he is about to perform a sacrifice.Footnote 18 Thus the goddess uses against Heracles the very means on which his condition as a hero was founded, thus causing violence itself – βίαFootnote 19 – to destroy that heroic dimension that it previously createdFootnote 20 and turning Heracles into a bloodthirsty monster unwittingly raging against the children that he should have protected.
The events themselves therefore seem to illustrate, as the chorus affirms, that the gods have not set any clear distinction between the good and the wicked (νῦν δ' οὐδεὶς ὅρος ἐκ θεῶν | χρηστοῖς οὐδὲ κακοῖς σαϕής, 669–70). This seems to be confirmed, before Heracles' return, by Amphitryon's words to Lycus, according to which βία turns against anyone who exercises it, once the favour of the gods changes (βίᾳ δὲ δράσῃς μηδὲν ἢ πείσῃ βίαν | ὅταν θεοῦ σοι πνεῦμα μεταβαλὸν τύχῃ, 215–16). In this way, indeed, the old man seems unconsciously to anticipate his son's destiny, while the contrast between the hopes of the woman and the children and the slaughter that awaits them is tragically amplified on Heracles' arrival for, in the words of Megara, in the eyes of his children the hero is worth ‘no less than Zeus Soter’ (Διὸς | σωτῆρος ὑμῖν οὐδέν ἐσθ' ὅδ' ὕστερος, 521–2). Heracles himself, once he has been informed of Lycus' intentions, asks his wife if they were about to be victims of his βία (καὶ πρὸς βίαν ἐθνῄσκετ'; ὦ τλήμων ἐγώ, 550), unaware that that same violence will be perpetrated by him. In the ‘domestic’ dimension of Heracles, the hero and the father are integrated: if, on the one hand, love for one's children is a deeply human characteristic common to everyone (πᾶν δὲ ϕιλότεκνον γένος, 636), on the other hand the same ponoi are worth nothing for Heracles faced with the undertaking necessary to protect his family from any threat. He himself will not be able to say he is ‘victorious’ (καλλίνικος) if he does not ward off death from his own children (578–82).
These elements thus render even more terrible his transformation into a ‘bacchant of Hades’ (Ἅιδου βάκχος, 1119),Footnote 21 an exterminator of his own stock prey to a deadly and impious mania represented in terms of a real degeneration of Dionysiac enthousiasmos. This transformation comes after the killing of Lycus, and hence after the apparent liberation of Heracles' family from the imminent threat of extermination,Footnote 22 and is set in motion at the behest of Hera by Lyssa, a personification of madness. The goddess's revenge also uses deception, a consequence of madness: Heracles slaughters his own relatives in the belief that he is in Mycenae and is killing the children of Eurystheus, and therefore that after his labours he is carrying out rightful revenge against the person who subdued him. The κέντρον that previously prompted him to free the earth from the terror of dangers – at Hera's behest but also through his destiny (ἐξημερῶσαι γαῖαν, εἴθ' Ἥρας ὕπο | κέντροις δαμασθεὶς εἴτε τοῦ χρεὼν μέτα, 20–1) – thus seems to evolve into an οἴστρος (1144),Footnote 23 which causes him to lose himself in bloody feral exaltation.
These changes in fate are effectively reflected in the musical sphere,Footnote 24 which plays a major role in the representation of Heracles' madness. In the parodos, the chorus expresses its own grief at the threats that weigh on Heracles' household, presenting itself as the ‘singer of gloomy laments, like a hoary bird’Footnote 25 (ἰηλέμων γόων ἀοι-/δὸςFootnote 26 ὥστε πολιὸς ὄρνις, 110–11),Footnote 27 and the metaphor of the swan is taken up again at 691–4 (παιᾶνας δ' ἐπὶ σοῖς μελάθροις | κύκνος ὣς γέρων ἀοιδὸς | πολιᾶν ἐκ γενύων | κελαδήσω, ‘inside your palace I will intone paeans from my hoary throat, an old singer similar to a swan’). In this context, the reference to the paean of the Deliades in honour of Apollo,Footnote 28 their dance and the very song of the old poet in honour of the victorious Heracles is contrasted, as an emblem of harmony and ‘good’, with the music and the ill-omened and diabolic dance of Lyssa, the bringer of ruin for Heracles' household. The singer as a swan also seems to evoke an image of defenceless but serene old age that still has the gift of song. Later on in the play, once Heracles has carried out the slaughter, this image seems to be connected to that of Amphitryon, the hero's old father, ‘who like a bird weeps over the brood of the little unfledged ones’ and painfully advances with a slow step (ὁ δ' ὥς τις ὄρνις ἄπτερον καταστένων | ὠδῖνα τέκνων πρέσβυς ὑστέρῳ ποδὶ | πικρὰν διώκων ἤλυσιν πάρεσθ' ὅδε, 1039–41). The simile of the bird complaining about the loss of its little ones, a symbol of poignant and desolate grief, rests in turn on the various previous references to Heracles' children as little birds (νεοσσοί). Megara protects her children under her wings as a bird does with its little ones that seek shelter (οἵ θ' Ἡράκλειοι παῖδες, οὓς ὑπὸ πτεροῖς | σῴζω νεοσσοὺς ὄρνις ὣς ὑϕειμένους, 71–2), and Amphitryon himself, who complains about the ingratitude of Hellas to Heracles (222–6), calls the little boys νεοσσοί. During the massacre, moreover, one of Heracles' children seeks shelter under the altar like a bird, frightened (ἄλλος δὲ βωμὸν ὄρνις ὣς ἔπτηξ' ὕπο, 974),Footnote 29 and Heracles himself, after killing the first child, exults, believing him to be a νεοσσός of Eurystheus (982–3). Hence the reference to birds seems to connote on one side song as lament – significant in this connection is the later reference to Procne (1021–2) – while in the case of Heracles' children it increases the pathos by stressing their innocence and physical weakness in opposition to Heracles, represented as a bull ready to attack.
At all events, the chorus is always aware of sudden changes in fate: it seems to look forward to mournful events and also to allude to the final ruin, in other circumstances too. In the first stasimon, honouring Heracles – believed to be dead – and declaiming his labours in a hymn,Footnote 30 the chorus begins by evoking the joyful song of Apollo with the sweet-sounding κιθάρα, followed by the cry αἴλινος (αἴλινον μὲν ἐπ' εὐτυχεῖ | μολπᾷ Φοῖβος ἰαχεῖ | τὰν καλλίϕθογγον κιθάραν | ἐλαύνων πλήκτρῳ χρυσέῳ, 348–51), the refrain of the λίνος.Footnote 31 This reference, as GostoliFootnote 32 has recently pointed out following on from Hesiod, fr. 305 M–W, appears consistent with the epic-threnodic evocation of Heracles' deeds, but might also allude to a Theban tradition according to which the eponymous character in this song, Linus,Footnote 33 Apollo's son (Ἰσμηνίου), was killed by Heracles, whose music teacher he was (Ἡρακλῆς ἔτι παῖς ὢν ἀποκτείνειεν αὐτὸν διδάσκαλον μουσικῆς ὄντα).Footnote 34 Hence the reference to the song for Linus could be a prelude to Heracles' final ‘deed’, the slaughter of his familyFootnote 35, which frustrates the expectations consequent on all the others.
The evocation of Heracles' glory also seems to take on an apotropaic aspect, which continues in the second stasimon,Footnote 36 through the exaltation of the equilibrium conferred by the gifts of the Muses. According to the perspective of the chorus, the greatest evils can be included in the condition of ἀμουσία (‘living without the Muses’), and so the chorus wishes that this may never happen (μὴ ζῴην μετ' ἀμουσίας, 676), and hope, indeed, never to stop uniting the Charites with the Muses, ‘a very sweet conjunction’ (οὐ παύσομαι τὰς Χάριτας | ταῖς Μούσαισιν συγκαταμει- | γνύς, ἡδίσταν συζυγίαν, 673–5).Footnote 37 These lines represent a very strong call to the kosmos and its values: living in ἀμουσία involves subversion of the rules, annihilation of the harmonic dimension of the community after which reality can no longer be thought of and expressed in musical forms, that is to say in the very forms of the kosmos.Footnote 38
This condition is effectively represented in Heracles through the ‘blasphemous’ paradox of a distorted Dionysianism, deprived of the musical instruments proper to it – and therefore musically distorted – which will be the cause of a ‘ruin that arouses weeping’ (στενακτὰν ἄταν, 917). In this connection, three elements evoked by the chorus in the second stasimon – Dionysus, the aulos and dance – later return as key elements in the description of Lyssa taking possession of Heracles. Indeed, the song of triumph that the chorus wants to intone for Heracles contemplates the presence of Bromius, the dispenser of wine (παρά τε Βρόμιον οἰνοδόταν, 682) and the accompaniment of the seven-stringed lyre and the Libyan aulos (παρά τε χέλυος ἑπτατόνου | μολπὰν καὶ Λίβυν αὐλόν, 683–4). The singer also confirms that he never wants to end his bond with the Muses, who have initiated him to the dances (οὔπω καταπαύσομεν | Μούσας αἵ μ' ἐχόρευσαν, 685–6), and the dance image continues with the Deliades, who intone the paean for Apollo whirling in their harmonious dance (Δηλιάδες … εἱλίσσουσαι καλλίχοροι, 687–90).Footnote 39 Later, in the exultation over the killing of Lycus (755–814), the chorus exhorts people to dance (πρὸς χοροὺς τραπώμεθα, 761),Footnote 40 and invites the natural elements themselves – the river Ismene, the Dirce spring, the nymphs that are daughters of the river Asopus, the rocks of Delphi and of Mount Helicon, the abode of the Muses – to join in the song of joy (781–93). The merry music with which the latter two places are invited to honour the city of Thebes (αὔξετ' εὐγαθεῖ κελάδῳ | ἐμὰν πόλιν, ἐμὰ τείχη, 792–3) will change very soon into the disquieting music of Lyssa, whose sinister appearance upsets the chorus at the end of the song, inspiring the apotropaic invocation to Apollo Paean to drive away misfortunes (ὦναξ Παιάν, | ἀπότροπος γένοιό μοι πημάτων, 820–1).Footnote 41
The reference to ἀμουσία in this part of the play seems also to highlight another important condition, ἀμαθία (‘ignorance’), which is complementary to it. The chorus refers to ἀμαθία in the statement that the gods have not set any clear boundary between the good and the wicked, and time will extol only wealth (669–672), but this condition emerges also in many other lines, and lies behind the slaughter of Heracles' sons, for the hero believes he is killing Eurystheus' sons. Ἀμαθία and ἀμουσία then pervade the tragedy of Heracles, evoking the annihilation of the kosmos in the impious slaughter of innocent and defenceless human beings.
HERACLES' MADNESS
The second part of the play,Footnote 42 in which madness dominates, begins with some lines spoken by Iris, the messenger of the gods, which seem to constitute a further prologue.Footnote 43 From her words we learn that Hera wants Heracles to be contaminated with the blood of his own family by killing his children (Ἥρα προσάψαι κοινὸν αἷμ' αὐτῷ θέλει | παῖδας κατακτείναντι, συνθέλω δ' ἐγώ, 831–2). In order to make it happen, Iris exhorts Lyssa, the demon of madness present together with her on the roof of Heracles' house,Footnote 44 to unleash madness in the hero so that he will be induced to perpetrate the slaughter (μανίας τ' ἐπ' ἀνδρὶ τῷδε καὶ παιδοκτόνους | ϕρενῶν ταραγμοὺς καὶ ποδῶν σκιρτήματα | ἔλαυνε κίνει, ϕόνιον ἐξίει κάλων, ‘awaken madness in this man and upheavals in the mind that induce him to kill his children, and jumping of the feet, agitate him, loosen the rope of murder’, 835–7). Lyssa at first opposes this command, remembering the benefits that Heracles has brought men, and his pietas (ἄβατον δὲ χώραν καὶ θάλασσαν ἀγρίαν | ἐξημερώσας θεῶν ἀνέστησεν μόνος | τιμὰς πιτνούσας ἀνοσίων ἀνδρῶν ὕπο, ‘after having reclaimed inaccessible regions and appeased the wild sea, alone he restored to the gods the worship due to them, which was in a state of decline through the work of cruel men’, 851–3), but in the end she surrenders to Hera's will, although against her own wish (Ἥλιον μαρτυρόμεσθα δρῶσ' ἃ δρᾶν οὐ βούλομαι, 858). So she is to demolish Heracles' house, wiping out his line of descent by killing his children (καὶ καταρρήξω μέλαθρα καὶ δόμους ἐπεμβαλῶ, | τέκν' ἀποκτείνασα πρῶτον, 864–5),Footnote 45 and Heracles himself is not to realize what he has done until she has left him, that is to say until his delirium has passed (ὁ δὲ κανὼν οὐκ εἴσεται | παῖδας οὓς ἔτικτεν ἐναρών, πρὶν ἂν ἐμὰς λύσσας ἀϕῇ, 865–6).
The demon shows her action by indicating to the spectators (ἢν ἰδού, 867) the signs of the possession of Heracles, who ‘shakes his headFootnote 46 at the start of his race, rolls fiercely from side to side without a word his Gorgon pupils,Footnote 47 does not control his breath,Footnote 48 as a charging bull bellows terribly calling on the Keres of nether hellFootnote 49 (καὶ δὴ τινάσσει κρᾶτα βαλβίδων ἄπο | καὶ διαστρόϕους ἑλίσσει σῖγα γοργωποὺς κόρας, | ἀμπνοὰς δ' οὐ σωϕρονίζει, ταῦρος ὣς ἐς ἐμβολήν, | δεινὰ μυκᾶται δέ Κῆρας ἀνακαλῶνFootnote 50 τὰς Ταρτάρου, 867–70), in a progressive annihilation of the human dimension that degenerates into the expression of the uncontrolled violence of beasts. Lyssa's evil possession will seep into HeraclesFootnote 51 through auloi of terror, which will induce him to perform a dance with devastating effects (τάχα σ' ἐγὼ μᾶλλον χορεύσω καὶ καταυλήσω ϕόβῳ, 871).Footnote 52
The chorus's subsequent words take up this image of evil possession – Hellas will lose its benefactor in the deadly dance induced by Lyssa's auletic mania (τὸν εὐεργέταν | ἀποβαλεῖς ὀλεῖς μανιάσιν λύσσαιςFootnote 53 | χορευθέντ' ἐναύλοις, 877–9) – strengthening it with a shrill paradox that highlights the blasphemous distortion of the Dionysiac ritual enacted by Lyssa. Heracles' dances are not accompanied by resounding tympana,Footnote 54 nor are they cheered by the thyrsus of Dionysus (κατάρχεται χορεύματ' ἄτερ τυπάνων | οὐ Βρομίου κεχαρισμένα θύρσῳ, 889–90), and what will be poured out is not the Dionysiac libation, wine produced from clusters of grapes, but blood (πρὸς αἵματ', οὐχὶ τᾶς Διονυσιάδος | βοτρύων ἐπὶ χεύμασι λοιβᾶς, 892–3).Footnote 55 The melody intoned by Lyssa with the aulos is ruinous: Heracles pursues his children (κυναγετεῖ τέκνων διωγμόν, 896),Footnote 56 and the Dionysiac fury that the demon is to bring into his household will be a herald of downfall (οὔποτ' ἄκραντα δόμοισι | Λύσσα βακχεύσει, ‘not in vain Lyssa will revel in Bacchic frenzy through the house’, 896–7).Footnote 57
Hence in the words of Lyssa and in those of the chorus we find the same elements as are evoked in the second stasimon – dance, Dionysus and the aulos – but here they reflect the dehumanization of Heracles. The pretty whirling of the dance of the Deliades (687–90) becomes the insane dance which Lyssa induces Heracles to perform, previously announced in Iris' speech by the ποδῶν σκιρτήματα,Footnote 58 and also the wild whirling of Heracles' eyes (868) seems to be sinisterly contrasted with the whirling of the Deliades. Lyssa's possession of Heracles is further expressed in the forms of a distorted Dionysianism, devoid of the traditional ritual instruments, in which the aulos – it previously accompanied the hymeneals in the celebration of Heracles' marriage to Megara (10–11),Footnote 59 and accompanies also the festive song of the chorus in the celebration of the hero's victories (684) – for Lyssa becomes the privileged instrument with which to infuse in Heracles the phobos that will make him prey to homicidal mania.Footnote 60
The description of Heracles' madness is subsequently taken up again in the speech of the messenger, who reports that while about to make the sacrifice after the killing of Lycus, Heracles stopped,Footnote 61 remaining silent and suddenly appearing ‘to be no longer himself’, his eyes upset and his pupils full of blood,Footnote 62 foaming at the mouthFootnote 63 and exploding in mad laughterFootnote 64 (ἔστη σιωπῇ … | ὁ δ' οὐκέθ' αὑτὸς ἦν, | ἀλλ' ἐν στροϕαῖσιν ὀμμάτων ἐϕθαρμένος | ῥίζας τ' ἐν ὄσσοις αἱματῶπας ἐκβαλὼν | ἀϕρὸν κατέσταζ' εὔτριχος γενειάδος | ἔλεξε δ' ἅμα γέλωτι παραπεπληγμένῳ, 930–5).
This description of Heracles' possession is all the more disquieting because it appears so distant from the joy and the ‘ritual’ exaltation of the cult of Dionysus, splendidly represented in the parodos of Bacchae. In it, the chorus proclaims that it always wants to sing for Dionysus the ‘ritually appropriate’ hymns (τὰ νομισθέντα, Bacch. 72) – no δαίον μέλος (HF 894–5)Footnote 65 – and therefore proclaims that anyone is blessed who is seized by Dionysiac enthousiasmos on the mountains in sacred rites of catharsis (ἐν ὄρεσσι βακχεύων | ὁσίοις καθαρμοῖσιν, Bacch. 76–7).Footnote 66 On the contrary, the cathartic rite that Heracles is about to perform after killing Lycus gives way to slaughter,Footnote 67 characterized by the protagonist himself as a cruel contamination (ἀνόσιον μίασμ(α), 1233),Footnote 68 from which Theseus will free him in Athens (ἐκεῖ χέρας σὰς ἁγνίσας μιάσματος, 1324).Footnote 69
The parodos in Bacchae recalls also the presence of the thyrsus (80, 113–14, 146–7) and of tympana (120–4, 155–6) – absent instead in the rite that Lyssa performs in order to possess Heracles (HF 889) – and defines Dionysus as a god with bull's horns (ταυρόκερων θεόν, 100), while in Heracles it is the protagonist himself that takes on the appearance of a bull, hypostatizing its inhuman violence. Moreover, in Bacchae the aulos plays festively together with the deep-sounding tympana in honour of Dionysus, accompanying the Bacchants that direct him towards Mount Cithaeron (μέλπετε τὸν Διόνυσον | βαρυβρόμων ὑπὸ τυμπάνων, 155–6; λωτὸς ὅταν εὐκέλαδος | ἱερὸς ἱερὰ παίγματα βρέμῃ σύνοχα | ϕοιτάσιν εἰς ὄρος εἰς ὄρος, 160–3), unlike the aulos that induces madness and destruction in Heracles. Finally, the dance that is propagated among the Maenads at the behest of Dionysus is alluring (αὐτίκα γᾶ πᾶσα χορεύσει, 114), and whoever leads the thiasos personifies Dionysus (Βρόμιος εὖτ' ἂν ἄγῃ θιάσους, 115),Footnote 70 while Heracles' dance appears like the most evident and nefarious element of the amousia brought by Lyssa, summing up the subsequent enactment of the slaughter: Heracles' unmusical movements seem indeed to prelude the cruel gestures he is about to perform in the killing of his children.Footnote 71
Dionysiac cult is joyous and exalted, but Euripides seems to suggest that madness is also inherent in it and that it can all too easily move from one to the other, that is from exaltation to horror: Bacchae itself of course exemplifies this ambiguity. The subversion of Dionysiac exaltationFootnote 72 then induces deadly ‘Bacchic behaviour’ in Heracles,Footnote 73 so that, alone in his madness, he dances to the appalling accompaniment of Lyssa's aulos, and ends up identifying more and more with the malevolent demon.Footnote 74
BESTIALITY IN LYSSA AND HERACLES
The sharing of characteristic traits by ‘persecutor’ and ‘persecuted’, originating from the fact that Lyssa acts through Heracles, seems to be expressed on the one hand by the maenadic representation common to both,Footnote 75 which is a characteristic trait of madness, and on the other by reference to the sphere of monstrosity and bestiality,Footnote 76 which seems to take shape in the Gorgon image and in the hunting metaphor, to which the image of the dog is linked.
The former evokes monstrosity that bewilders and causes death: the demon of madness is characterized by the chorus as ‘Gorgon daughter of Night, with a hundred hissing snakes’ heads,Footnote 77 Lyssa with a petrifying gaze' (Νυκτὸς Γοργὼν ἑκατογκεϕάλοις | ὄϕεων ἰαχήμασι Λύσσα μαρμαρωπός, 882–3),Footnote 78 and seems to reflect her image in Heracles himself in his madness, who ‘rolls fiercely from side to side without a word his Gorgon pupils’ (διαστρόϕους ἑλίσσει σῖγα γοργωποὺς κόρας, 868) and has a ‘fierce Gorgon look’ (ἀγριωπὸν ὄμμα Γοργόνος, 990)Footnote 79 when about to kill the second of his children. The Gorgon is also evoked before the madness, in connection with Heracles' children, whose eyes, like those of their father, send out a Gorgon gaze (ἴδετε πατέρος ὡς γορ- | γῶπες αἵδε προσϕερεῖς | ὀμμάτων αὐγαί, 131–3): their destiny thus seems to be heralded by this detail, which brings out the uncontrolled and monstrous madness of which they will be the victims. The link between Gorgon and madness is also found in other tragedies: in Sophocles' Ajax the protagonist is struck with the fury of madness (λυσσώδη νόσον, 452)Footnote 80 by Athena, ‘the indomitable goddess with a Gorgon look’ (ἡ Διὸς γοργῶπις ἀδάματος θεά, 450), and on different occasions the image of the Gorgon is superimposed on that of the Erinyes.Footnote 81
Hence the Gorgon gaze is closely connected to the manifestation of madness, and it seems to be communicated from the agent of the madness itself to the victim. The attribution of this characteristic to both Lyssa and the Erinyes highlights the major similarity between these beings, often translated into real identification: the fact is that their origin is common, since they were born from the blood of Uranus and from Night (Νύξ);Footnote 82 in both cases, moreover, their belonging to a monstrous dimension is translated into virginity.Footnote 83 Further, in persecuting Heracles, Lyssa plays a role similar to that of the Erinyes in relation to Orestes,Footnote 84 as is evident in Heracles when the Erinyes – referred to as Ποιναί,Footnote 85 demons of revenge – are called λυσσάδες (887). This term, giving prominence to the anger connected with the madness that they induce, amplifies with a stronger connotation of violence the wildness suggested by the noun μαινάδες, ‘maenads’, which instead represents their fury in the second stasimon of Eumenides (500).Footnote 86
Another element that connotes both the Erinyes and Lyssa is the image of the dog,Footnote 87 which fits in well with the recurrent metaphor of hunting. The Erinyes are the ‘irate dogs of the mother’ (μητρὸς ἐγκότους κύνας) that persecute Orestes (Cho. 1054)Footnote 88 and have bitches' looks (κυνώπιδες) in Euripides, Electra 1252 and Orestes 260–1. Canine connotations are also appropriate to the unpleasant sounds that they emit,Footnote 89 emphasizing even more their outsider status.Footnote 90 The most effective image in this connection is however that of ‘dogs of Lyssa’,Footnote 91 exhorted to instigate the maenads against Pentheus – who already looks at them angrily (λυσσώδης) – in Euripides' Bacchae (ἴτε θοαὶ Λύσσας κύνες, ἴτ' εἰς ὄρος, | θίασον ἔνθ' ἔχουσι Κάδμου κόραι· | ἀνοιστρήσατέ νιν | ἐπὶ τὸν ἐν γυναικομίμῳ στολᾷ | λυσσώδη κατάσκοπον μαινάδων, 977–81).Footnote 92
The association between Lyssa, dogs and hunting also appears in a line of uncertain location (τάχος ἐπιρροίβδην ὁμαρτεῖν θ' ὡς κυνηγέτῃ κύνας, 860) in which Lyssa seems to declare herself ready to perform Hera's and Iris' commands and to accompany them ‘quickly, with loud barking, as a pack of dogs does the hunter’. On the basis of the position proposed for this line in Diggle's edition (accepting a conjecture by Jackson) after 870,Footnote 93 in his delirious excitement Heracles would invoke the Keres of Tartarus to accompany him like dogs in the hunt that he is about to undertake. Although this location for the line allows a connection with the other hunting metaphors regarding Heracles' slaughter,Footnote 94 nevertheless it seems to me that its position in the manuscript tradition – on the basis of which Lyssa resolves ‘to accompany’ Hera and Iris as dogs accompany the hunter, obeying their will – can be maintained. The future δραμοῦμαι in line 863 appears in fact to be connected to ὁμαρτεῖν, whose consequence it would represent on the plane of the action against Heracles. Thus Lyssa would obey Hera's will, rushing to Heracles' breast and possessing him with her fury. Further, the link between Lyssa and the dog is no less strong than the representation of Heracles in this tragedy both as a mad dog, foaming at the mouth (934), and as a ‘hunter’ in pursuit of his children (896–8), so much so that this characteristic is transfused into Heracles together with the others by Lyssa herself – a deadly huntress in Bacchae Footnote 95 – that makes him more and more similar to herself.Footnote 96 Heracles and Lyssa then appear as dogs and hunters at the same time.Footnote 97
This interpretation also seems to be corroborated by the representation of Lyssa as a huntress and with a canine head on her own head in a bell crater from Vico Equense, attributed to the Lycaon Painter and dated to about 440 b.c.,Footnote 98 in which Actaeon is depicted in a struggle with his own dogs, which are going to tear him to pieces.Footnote 99 In this scene Lyssa appears as a huntress and a dog at the same time: she commands the dogs, infusing in them the anger that she embodies, but at the same time the painter, showing her in an unstable balance between human and animal, seems to want to emphasize the fury represented by the demon by identifying it with the wild and uncontrolled violence perpetrated by an ‘angry’ animal. The animal dimension thus gets the upper hand over the human one in the exercise of uncontrolled violence, as happens to the maddened Heracles, effectively represented in Euripides' tragedy through the image of the bull,Footnote 100 which appears at the same time a consequence of madness and its figurative representation. This image evokes irrational violence, but is also deeply connected with Dionysus, and also makes it possible to identify some fundamental points of contact between Heracles' madness and that of other characters – for instance, Io – who have in common Hera's anger towards them and the reference to the bovine world.
HERACLES THE ‘BULL’
After highlighting the ‘Dionysiac’ characteristics of the upheaval manifested in Heracles (867–9), Lyssa adds that he ‘roars terribly, like a bull ready to charge’ (ταῦρος ὣς ἐς ἐμβολήν, | δεινὰ μυκᾶται, 869–70). Thus before the slaughter, Heracles loses his human characteristics and appears like a bull that sends out monstrous sounds, ready to perform violence that is as blind as it is natural to his status. The hero that exercised ‘just’ violence against monsters that threatened humanity is now, at the behest of the divinity, to turn this violence against the world of ‘civilization’, causing his own downfall through the killing of his children, who should have represented his continuation. Moreover, the passage from the violence of the hero protecting the community against the threats of ‘another’ world made up of monsters to the violence of the murderer raging against unarmed human beings, who are also very close relatives, is thus effectively suggested by the image of the beast devoid of logos whose essence consists precisely in the exercise of brutal violence, threatening all constituted order.Footnote 101
The similarity between Heracles and the bull constitutes an essential element of the Dionysiac context in which Heracles' madness takes shape, in that, at a ritual level, it is Dionysus himself that is assimilated to a bull. This happens, for instance, in a song of worship of the women of Elis, who invoke the god to rage with his ‘bull's foot’ (τῷ βοέῳ ποδὶ θύων).Footnote 102 In a fragment by Sophocles (959.2 Radt = Strabo 15.1.7, 687c), the epithet βούκερως (‘with bovine horns’) refers to the god, while in a fragment by Ion of Chios (86 Leurini = 5 (744) PMG, in Ath. 35e) Dionysus is an ‘indomitable little boy with a bull's look’ (ἄδαμνον παῖδα ταυρωπόν). Athenaeus himself (38e) reports that ‘Dionysus is compared to a bull or a leopard because of behaviour consequent on drunkenness, because drunken people turn to violence’ (ἀπὸ τοῦ κατὰ μέθην δὲ καταστήματος καὶ ταύρῳ παρεικάζουσι τὸν Διόνυσον καὶ παρδάλει διὰ τὸ πρὸς βίαν τρέπεσθαι τοὺς ἐξοινωθέντας), and after quoting some verses by Alcaeus (fr. 369 PLF) he adds that some, prey to drunkenness, ‘become as furious as a bull is’ (εἰσὶ δ' οἳ καὶ θυμικοὶ γίνονται· τοιοῦτος δ' ὁ ταῦρος), adding as confirmation a line from Euripides' Bacchae (ταῦροι δ' ὑβρισταὶ κἀς κέρας θυμούμενοι, ‘violent bulls, whose fury is concentrated in the horns’, 743). Within the sphere of the symposium (τοὺς πρώτους λέγεται τοῖς κέρασι τῶν βοῶν πίνειν, ‘it is said that the first men drank from oxen's horns’) Athenaeus subsequently (476a) makes a connection between the representation of Dionysus with horns and the denomination ‘bull’ found in many poets, confirmed by the cult statue of the god at Cyzicus, which represented him in taurine forms (ἀϕ' οὗ τὸν Διόνυσον κερατοϕυῆ πλάττεσθαι ἔτι τε ταῦρον καλεῖσθαι ὑπὸ πολλῶν ποιητῶν. ἐν δὲ Κυζίκῳ καὶ ταυρόμορϕος ἵδρυται). Moreover, Plutarch (De Is. et Os. 364E) attests that in Greece there were frequent images of Dionysus tauromorphos and imagery of the god with taurine horns can be found in some Roman sculptures that were copies of fifth-century Greek originals.Footnote 103
However, the most incisive testimonies to Dionysus as a bull are found in Euripides' Bacchae, which provides the most immediate term of comparison for the Dionysiac aspects of Heracles' madness: in the parodos (100–4), Semele gives birth to a ‘god with bull's horns’ (ταυρόκερων θεόν)Footnote 104 and crowns him with garlands of snakes, whence derives the Maenads' custom of weaving snakes in their hair.Footnote 105 Subsequently, Pentheus finds a bull in the stables in which he thinks he has shut away Dionysus (πρὸς ϕάτναις δὲ ταῦρον εὑρών, οὗ καθεῖρξ' ἡμᾶς ἄγων, 618), so that the animal itself becomes a hypostasis of the god, as is confirmed in 920–2, where the young man, invited by Dionysus to leave the palace disguised as a woman to spy on the Bacchants, says he sees the god in the guise of a bull, with taurine horns on his head, and indeed asserts that he really has become a bullFootnote 106 (καὶ ταῦρος ἡμῖν πρόσθεν ἡγεῖσθαι δοκεῖς | καὶ σῷ κέρατα κρατὶ προσπεϕυκέναι. | ἀλλ' ἦ ποτ' ἦσθα θήρ; τεταύρωσαι γὰρ οὖν). Further, the chorus invokes Dionysus to appear as a bull or a many-headed snake or as a lion breathing out fire (ϕάνηθι ταῦρος ἢ πολύκρανος ἰδεῖν | δράκων ἢ πυριϕλέγων | ὁρᾶσθαι λέων, 1017–19) and throw his deadly net around Pentheus (1020–23), and effectively sums up the downfall of Pentheus because of the offence to Dionysus, affirming that he ‘has a bull as his guide on the road of misfortune’ (ταῦρον προηγητῆρα συμϕορᾶς ἔχων, 1159). The animal is also evoked in Bacchae in connection with the characteristic ômophagia Footnote 107 of the followers of the god (Bacch. 743–6), which links up with Dionysus being called ταυροϕάγος, to be found in a fragment of the lost Tyro by Sophocles (668 Radt, Διονύσου τοῦ ταυροϕάγου).
When his madness manifests itself, Heracles is also specifically characterized as a bull by reference to sound, as appears from the verb μυκάομαι (μυκᾶται, 870),Footnote 108 already connected to this animal in the Iliad (μεμυκὼς ἠΰτε ταῦρος, referring to the din of the river Scamander, which throws back on the shore the dead bodies of those slaughtered by Achilles, Il. 21.237). This verb is later connected with the bull in a fragment of Edonoe by Aeschylus (57 Radt) in which it is precisely sound that evokes the mysterious and disturbing atmosphere of the rite.Footnote 109 In the representation of mystery rites, μανία is aroused by the low sounds of the bombykes (βόμβυκας, 3),Footnote 110 while the bronze-covered cymbals produce a din (ὁ δὲ χαλκοδέτοις κοτύλαις ὀτοβεῖ, 6). There also rises up a vibrating cry (ψαλμὸς δ' ἀλαλάζει, 7), and ‘from some invisible place there resound frightful voices imitating a bull, and from the tympanon there spreads a deep and terrible sound, as if it were an image of underground thunder’ (ταυρόϕθογγοι δ' ὑπομυκῶνταί | ποθεν ἐξ ἀϕανοῦς ϕοβεροὶ μῖμοι, | τυπάνου δ' εἰκών, ὥσθ' ὑπογαίου | βροντῆς, ϕέρεται βαρυταρβής, 8–11).
Sounds and voices thus seem to define an atmosphere pregnant with phobos, in which the terrible voices that resound like a bull's bellowing culminate in the low-pitched and strong sound of the tympanon, similar to thunder shaking the earth deep down. Further, the verb μυκάομαι is made to refer to the boom of thunder in Prometheus Bound (βρυχία δ' ἠχὼ παραμυκᾶται | βροντῆς, ‘an abysmal echo of thunder lows’, 1082–3),Footnote 111 where the sonorous taurine imagery appears to be the object of a double allusion: in addition to the verb παραμυκᾶται, the adjective βρύχιος (‘deep’, ‘abysmal’) can also be connected with the bull, as seems evident from two other tragic passages. In a line in Sophocles' Ajax the verb βρυχάομαι connotes the moans of the protagonist, which resound darkly though without piercing cries making him ‘similar to a lowing bull’ (ἀλλ' ἀψόϕητος ὀξέων κωκυμάτων | ὑπεστέναζε, ταῦρος ὣς βρυχώμενος, 321–2), while in Euripides' Helen (1557) the verb form ἐξεβρυχᾶτ(ο) is used for the bellowing of the bull, which obstinately resists getting on the ship on which Helen and Menelaus are to set sail. The image of Heracles' terrible (δεινά) bellowing also seems to allude to the apparition of the bull in Euripides' Hippolytus: emerging from the sea, with its din it fills all the earth, which in turn resounds horribly (κῦμ' ἐξέθηκε ταῦρον, ἄγριον τέρας· | οὗ πᾶσα μὲν χθὼν ϕθέγματος πληρουμένη | ϕρικῶδες ἀντεϕθέγγετ(ο), 1214–16), and drives mad with fear the horses drawing Hippolytus' chariot (ταῦρος, ϕόβῳ τέτρωρον ἐκμαίνων ὄχον, 1229).Footnote 112 Thus the comparison between Heracles and the bull could prefigure the fierce slaughter that is about to take place, just as in Hippolytus it is the apparition of the bull that arouses homicidal madness in the protagonist's horses.
The lines from Ajax and Helen just quoted at any rate prove interesting also with regard to the ‘physical’ aspects of the comparison between Heracles and the bull. Ajax's taurine moans show that Heracles is not the only tragic hero to be compared to this animal, as we also see in Euripides' Medea, in which the nurse sees a bull's look in the protagonist (ἤδη γὰρ εἶδον ὄμμα νιν ταυρουμένην, 92) making her predict that the anger will end only after Medea has attacked someone (οὐδὲ παύσεται | χόλου, σάϕ' οἶδα, πρὶν κατασκῆψαί τινι, 93–4).Footnote 113 On the other hand, the representation of Heracles fiercely rolling the ‘Gorgon pupils’ of his eyes (καὶ διαστρόϕους ἑλίσσει σῖγα γοργωποὺς κόρας, 868) seems to be mirrored not only, as we have seen, in Agave in Bacchae, prey to Dionysiac fury, but also – considering the subsequent animal comparison – in the bull in Helen that ‘whirls its eyes around’ (ὄμμ' ἀναστρέϕων κύκλῳ, 1557), and above all in the hero's mythical progenitrix Io,Footnote 114 the maiden horned like a cow (βούκερως παρθένος) in Aeschylus' Prometheus (588). Distorted in body and mind (μορϕὴ καὶ ϕρένες διάστροϕοι, 673) because of divine hatred, Io indeed has the same whirling eyes (τροχοδινεῖται δ' ὄμμαθ' ἑλίγδην, 882) as Heracles.
HERA AND THE BESTIAL REPRESENTATION OF HERACLES AND IO
Although Io's permanent transformation into a heifer sets up a fundamental difference between her and Heracles, who is ‘like a bull’ only while he is prey to madness, the two characters essentially appear to be linked by the hatred of Hera, whose strenuous persecution is effectively represented through the metaphor of the οἶστρος, the ‘gadfly’,Footnote 115 a key element in the tragic representation of IoFootnote 116 that also returns in Heracles' case.
When the young girl/heifer appears in Prometheus, the οἶστρος appears both as a metaphor of her persecution by the ghost of Argos – the cowherd with a hundred eyes who guarded her and whom Hermes kills after having hypnotized him with the sound of the syrinx (here metonymically δόναξ, 574) – and as the nagging thought of the fear that torments her (οἰστρηλάτῳ … δείματι, 580), making her desire total annihilation so as to put an end to her continual wandering (πολύπλανοι πλάναι, 585). In Prometheus' subsequent words, Io is by antonomasia the girl moved by οἶστρος (οἰστροδινήτου κόρης, 589)Footnote 117 in a wandering that appears as an endless and cruelly inane race in which the adversary is Hera, the goddess who feels violent hatred for her (καὶ νῦν τοὺς ὑπερμήκεις δρόμους | Ἥρᾳ στυγητὸς πρὸς βίαν γυμνάζεται; 591–2). Οἶστρος also returns in the lines in which Io recounts her varied fortunes to the chorus of Oceanides and to Prometheus (669–82), in which the young girl says she is οἰστροπλήξ … μάστιγι θείᾳ, ‘pursued by the harassing divine whip’ (681–2). When Io is offstage, it is its red-hot tip that is evoked as a cause of painful torment (οἴστρου δ' ἄρδις χρίει ζάπυρος,Footnote 118 880), together with the mad panting of the λύσσαFootnote 119 that drives Io in her wandering (ἔξω δὲ δρόμου ϕέρομαι λύσσης πνεύματι μάργῳ, 884).Footnote 120
In Heracles, οἶστρος – in the words of Lyssa – is the discharge of lightning that infuses the torment of fear (κεραυνοῦ τ' οἶστρος ὠδῖνας πνέων, 862), while once he has returned to normal Heracles uses precisely the same term οἶστρος to designate the mad upheaval of which he has been the victim (ποῦ δ' οἶστρος ἡμᾶς ἔλαβε; ποῦ διώλεσεν; 1144).Footnote 121 Moreover, Heracles' reference to οἶστρος appears wholly consistent with the Dionysiac context from which his mania derives: the Bacchae, in which οἶστρος appears several times as a metaphor of Dionysiac possession, once again affords interesting allusions,Footnote 122 but it is above all the invocation by the chorus to the ‘fast dogs of Lyssa’ (θοαὶ Λύσσας κύνες, 977) to instigate οἶστρος against Pentheus (ἀνοιστρήσατέ νιν, 979) – who madly (λυσσώδη, 981) spies on the Maenads – that alludes to the persecution by Lyssa that drives Heracles mad. This is echoed in turn by Apollonius Rhodius in the simile of the bull pursued by οἶστρος which he uses for Heracles, mad with grief at the loss of Hylas (Argon. 1.1265–72).Footnote 123
A further element common to the representations of Heracles and Io is the metaphorical use of σκίρτημα, a noun usually associated with the disorderly leaps of animals like cattle and horses.Footnote 124 The ποδῶν σκιρτήματα that Iris asks Lyssa to induce in Heracles together with the homicidal madness against his children (HF 836), and that appear as a physical manifestation of the mental upheaval that has taken hold of him (ϕρενῶν ταραγμοί, 835–6) in fact remind one of Io's disorderly and painful leaps after she has been turned into a heifer and is pursued by the οἶστρος (PV 883–4).
However, the element that most clearly links Heracles to Io and contains the ‘bovine’ animal metaphor is the hatred of Hera pursuing both, in the light of which the comparison between Heracles and the bull takes on a particular religious meaning and seems to be connected to the cult of Argive Hera.Footnote 125
According to the myth,Footnote 126 Io, a priestess of Hera at Argos, is seduced by Zeus and turned by the same god into a heifer to hide his infidelity from Hera. However, Zeus ends up surrendering her to the goddess, who takes her revenge for the infidelity by submitting Io the heifer to the rigid custody of Argos, a many-eyed monster.Footnote 127 After the latter is killed by Hermes by order of Zeus,Footnote 128 Io is forced by Hera to wander pursued by the gadfly (oistros).Footnote 129 Argos, who previously killed the bull of the city of Argos and put on its skin,Footnote 130 taking on its identity, thus becomes, at Hermes' hands, the first sacrificial victim.Footnote 131 This version of the myth seems however to represent the ‘pan-Hellenic’ elaboration, connected to Zeus, of an older version centring on Hera and on the ‘bovine’ element,Footnote 132 which is already attested in Mycenaean ArgolisFootnote 133 and is connected, in the Archaic Age, with the local feast of the Hekatombaia (or Heraia),Footnote 134 the most important feast in the Argolid. To this feast there is linked both the image of the shield, which recalls the actual physical features of the territory of Argos,Footnote 135 and the cattle,Footnote 136 not only because of the sacrificial practices but also on account of the goddess's epithet, βοῶπις,Footnote 137 and her cult, with its allusions to nature and indomitable strength.
As we learn from Mycenaean archaeological evidence – particularly seals – the cult of Argive Hera contemplated ribbons and garlands being tied around a column or tree which represented the goddess herself in an aniconic form, presided over by priestesses called κλειδοῦχοι,Footnote 138 a term believed to correspond to the klâwiphoroi (ka-ra-wi-po-ro) found in some tablets in Linear B.Footnote 139 Moreover, Argos, even before being the inflexible and monstrous custodian of Io in the ‘pan-Hellenic’ myth, is the mythical liberator of the Argolid from the bull that plagues it: after killing the bull, Argos puts on its skinFootnote 140 and calls the city that he has conquered by his own name, giving rise to the dynasty to which Io, the priestess-heifer, will belong.Footnote 141 Then Argos, on Hera's behalf, ties Io to the olive tree in the sacred wood of the Mycenaeans:Footnote 142 she will be ‘freed’ by Hermes – an emissary of Zeus, the new divinity who takes control – killing the ‘bull’ Argos, that is to say with a bouphonia.
Given that Hera exercises her revenge against Zeus by submitting the priestess-heifer to the rigid custody of the bull-Argos, it does not seem too strange that the same goddess, in Euripides' Heracles, uses a man-bull, Heracles, to take revenge once more on Zeus, but this time in a more deceitful and radical way, causing Heracles himself to destroy his own stock, that new stock that was generated through an adulterous union by Zeus.
The image of Heracles as a bull also alludes more immediately to sacrificial practice,Footnote 143 which assigned to Hera, the βοῶπις goddess, not only cows – as at Olympia in the feast of the women of ElisFootnote 144 – but also oxen and bulls, as in the case of the Argive cult;Footnote 145 on the other hand, the bull, a symbol of strength, is the animal usually sacrificed to Zeus,Footnote 146 who himself turns into a bull in the myth of Europa. Heracles as a bull, in Euripides' Heracles, therefore appears to be a sort of sacrificial victim that Hera prepares for herself, ‘stealing’ the animal that most often was offered to Zeus, or, more exactly, as an avenger who, in the guise of an unwitting executioner, performs for the goddess the ‘sacrifice’ by means of which she takes revenge on Zeus. The image of Heracles as a bull therefore seems to represent a sort of masculine variation on the myths of cow women connected with Hera, in which the common feature is madness, while in the economy of the tragedy it appears as the climax of the escalation of Hera's hatred and of the degradation to which the hero is submitted.
In this context, Dionysus appears as Hera's ally, once more confirming what they share. Although Dionysus is frowned on by the goddess as the fruit of Zeus's infidelity with Semele, at the same time he indeed appears connected to her by what Burkert calls a ‘curious intimacy’:Footnote 147 in this connection, Hera perfidiously attracts Semele towards her death and causes the madness of Ino, Dionysus' nurse, and of Dionysus himself.Footnote 148 Hera and Dionysus thus seem to provide the fundamental elements for the interpretation of the image of Heracles as a bull: the hero disapproved of by Hera is the victim of her extreme revenge through Lyssa's ‘Dionysiac’ intervention, so that for her revenge the goddess seems to use a ‘hated’ divinity, with whom nevertheless she is often associated.Footnote 149
CONCLUSIONS
As has been seen, in Euripides' Heracles madness and bestialization constitute effective mechanisms for the representation and description of violence. Through a dense network of mythical and symbolic references, such as the allusion to the monstrosity of the Gorgon, but above all, with regard to Lyssa, the image of the dog and hunting and that of taurine bellowing in the representation of mad Heracles, Euripides succeeds in communicating to his audience the inhumanity of Heracles' violence, which – in his final awareness of the disastrous consequences – is on the point of overwhelming the hero himself. On the other hand, the poet shows the inflexibility of the divine will, concretized in Lyssa's action and in the image of the bull, to which there are connected sacrifice and the religious tradition regarding Hera, the goddess to whom Heracles' ruin is attributed.Footnote 150
In this panorama, the end of the tragedy, with the intervention by Theseus, appears wholly consistent, from the mythical point of view, with the ‘bestial’ representation of Heracles as a bull, while according to the perspective of êthos it seems fully to restore the human dimension to the hero, who has recovered his reason. Indeed, Theseus is the ‘victor’ of the bull, as emerges from the myths of the MinotaurFootnote 151 and of the bull of Marathon.Footnote 152 On the other hand, the final resolution – in which Theseus offers Heracles hospitality in Athens,Footnote 153 and with it a perennial existence in ritualFootnote 154 thanks to the heroic honours that will be rendered to him after his death (θανόντα δ', εὖτ' ἂν εἰς Ἅιδου μόλῃς | θυσίαισι λαΐνοισί τ' ἐξογκώμασιν | τίμιον ἀνάξει πᾶσ' Ἀθηναίων πόλις, 1331–3) – seems to constitute a sort of foil to the disenchanted awareness of the absence of the gods from the vicissitudes of humans,Footnote 155 and particularly that of Zeus, the hero's true father.Footnote 156 It also seems to provide the correct ‘therapy’Footnote 157 for Heracles' madness, that is to say it seems to give a meaning to what he has done by emphasizing the difference between men and gods, redeeming madness itself, after the achievement of awareness by Heracles, in the light of human wisdom, which recognizes the unpredictability and inexorability of the divine will. Indeed, in relation to this situation, the friendship of Theseus, who shows solidarity and gratitude to Heracles for the benefits he has received from him at other times,Footnote 158 is not limited to bringing him consolation: he also offers Heracles, who intends to commit suicide, heroic immortality through the ritual from which Athens itself, which entertains him, will derive glory and benefits. During the play, Heracles is thus transformed from an indomitable and solitary hero into a monstrous and murderous beast, and finally to the fully human condition of one who accepts the solidarity and friendship of another as a way to regain his former greatness by renouncing suicide.
Only with the annihilation of his status as a solitary hero outside the life of the community can Heracles find the strength to accept the values of the community and those of mutual control expressed in the friendship of another man, who seems to afford the only possible mechanism for restoring him to his heroic status after the explosion of madness and the annihilation of the oikos.Footnote 159 The hero who has become a ‘beast’ that has slaughtered human beings thus becomes a ‘man’ through the friendship and hospitality given to him by Theseus. The king then brings him face to face with the need to accept his fateFootnote 160 and offers him the protection of Athens, that is to say a refuge in those ‘human’ institutions that can allow him to go on living over and above the evil done at the behest of the gods.Footnote 161
