| Contents > Just What Are Perceptions? by Marian Rhydderch |
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Our second test of the claim that perception is reality takes, us into the literary genre of drama, tragedy to be precise, and our source is Euripides. Euripides, like Herodotos, was born within the first quarter of the fifth century BCE, but unlike Herodotos, Euripides was an Athenian citizen. He wrote perhaps eighty-eight plays, nineteen of which have survived (Lattimore, 1955). The obvious problem for historians when examining evidence from the make-believe world of the theatre is to know what is literary licence, what is just good theatre and what, if anything, is evidence for social reality. I would argue, that where Euripides is the dramatist there is always evidence for social reality. The dilemma over just whose reality, occupied the mind of historian E.R. Dodds (1929, as cited in republished collection, 1973) over seventy years ago. In his essay Euripides the Irrationalist, he had this to say: “Where the speaker’s philosophical opinions are determined in advance by his profession or his previous history (as with the … temple-bred boy Ion) they must of coursebe correspondingly discounted. Where, on the other hand, his opinions are conspicuously inappropriate to his personality or his dramatic situation … there we have especial reason to suspect the intervention of the author.” (Dodds, 1973). In other words, we can only be confident of knowing Euripides’ opinions (trans. 1971) where his characters speak, out of character. There is something unsatisfactory with Dodds’ dichotomy. Can we really afford to discount the opinions of characters so easily? This question will best be answered by considering another question, one asked near the end of the play by the temple-bred boy, Ion.
Euripides set his play, Ion, at Apollo’s oracular sanctuary at Delphi (Euripides, trans. 1971). The young lad had lived there all his life, having been raised from a foundling by Apollo’s priestess. His pleasant, pious existence is about to be shattered, when Creusa, Queen of Athens and her husband Xuthus come to consult the oracle about their childlessness. Ion eventually learns he is the baby Creusa abandoned at birth and that Apollo is his true father. The dramatic date of the play is obviously, ‘the past’. The historic date is more important as it will identify a possible social reality, a particular perception pertinent to that date. Scholars have provided a time frame of 420-410 BCE, determined “on stylistic and metrical grounds” (Willetts, 1958). I would argue this is too broad and should be narrowed to 412-410 BCE. The question that points to this time frame, the question that encourages us to consider a character’s opinion should not be discounted, is the question Ion asks his mother about Apollo – “Is the God true? – or does his oracle lie?” (Euripides, trans.1971). The impact of this question is dynamic although somewhat ameliorated by ‘modern’ scholarship, which disappointingly notes, in one commentary, that such a question “will be satisfactorily answered by the greatest liar.” (Owen, 1939). This is not the place to be drawn on that comment, but rather it is more important to consider the impact of this question on Euripides’ audience. By 412 Athens had well and truly ignored the peace treaty it had signed with Sparta in 421 BCE (Joint Association of Classical Teachers, 1984, p.33). Athens had decimated the Spartan colony of Melos in 416. In 415 it had equipped and sent a mighty armada off to Sicily (Thucydides, trans.1969). In 413 Athens received the most devastating news, from Sicily, that all had been lost (Thucydides, trans. 1969). By 412, Athens had much to question. Core perceptions were shaken. The perception that Apollo at Delphi was there to help mankind, there to speak the truth, was a core perception. I would argue it could only have been so publicly questioned after 413 BCE. Euripides was a master at paralleling the past with the present. It was no wonder he rarely won first prize at the City Dionysia, Athens’ theatrical extravaganza. Ancient perceptions nudged the present and tingled the spine in the process. The perception, the reality, that the gods knew what lay ahead, that Zeus and his son Apollo were willing to share that knowledge, was a perception that surely could only be questioned in the heart of Athens, when times were desperately uncertain. But was it only a perception being questioned by a character, whose opinions should of course be discounted? How easy would it have been for fifth century Athenians to discount Ion and his opinions? Not easy, for was he not the quintessential Athenian? Had he not been one of their early kings? Had his four sons not colonized their world? As we do, Euripides and his audience entertained a tangle of opinions and ideas about the past and if we are to tease out the thinking behind the words Athena utters near the end of the play, that “Apollo has managed all things well”, (trans. 1971) we too need to grasp the effect of that happy ending for all it was worth in that year, in Athens, so long ago (Willetts, 1958).
Had Apollo managed all things well for another Athenian of the fifth century, an Athenian who committed no thoughts, no opinions, to writing? To answer this question, we need to practice some mental gymnastics. We have already explored the probability that a playwright can air his opinions through his characters and his characters can air theirs. We have noted a yardstick for determining whose opinions are whose. But what do we do with a court report, where the author writes as the defendant? Whose opinion is the text setting forth? The defendant was Socrates, the author, his pupil Plato. In order to ascertain whether Apollo had managed all things well for an Athenian other than Ion, the opinions offered in this report will be understood as Socrates’ (Plato, Apology, trans. Fowler, 1917). Three reasons support this understanding. Firstly, ‘Socrates’ comments that Plato was present in the courtroom (Plato, Apology, trans Fowler 1917). Secondly, the report had been written soon after the trial, a trial familiar to many Athenians, and thirdly, Plato’s report is not dissimilar to that of his contemporary, Xenophon.2 The defence speech known to us as the Apology, is categorized as a sub genre of the literary genre, dialogue (Lamberton, 2001) 3 and scholars have long considered it fortunate, notwithstanding his consummate skills at ‘playing Socrates’, that Plato did not share his mentor’s distaste for the written word (Plato, Phaedrus, trans. Fowler, 1917).
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| Contents > Just What Are Perceptions? by Marian Rhydderch |