Euripides’ Heracles in its artistic and cultic environment

Autochthons and newcomers

Abstract

Ποῖ γῆς; Does tragedy evoke specific places and/or buildings, sculptures, murals? If it does, can we pin them down, given the state of the surviving material evidence, the paucity of literary sources and a host of related difficulties? In the cases we can pin them down, does this knowledge contribute to a deeper understanding of a play and how? What if such evocations are unconscious or the similarities are accidental? These are the questions this paper explores taking Euripides’ Heracles as a case-study, a play that draws attention to its dialogue with its artistic and cultic environment and whose points of contact with the metopes of the Hephaesteion have long been identified and well discussed. My reading broadens the frame of the intermedial dialogue by bringing into the picture (a) the entire decorative programme of the temple, which was nearing its completion in the years following the peace of Nicias in 421; (b) the cult of Athena and Hephaestus which received a great boost after the reorganization of the Hephaesteia in 421; and (c) the cult of Heracles in Attica with emphasis on his cult at Melite, one of the most conspicuous sites of his worship in Athens. It argues that through the persona of Theseus, Euripides offsets verbal and visual discourses of autochthony by highlighting the issue of new cults. Some in his audience would still have remembered Hephaestus’ grand entrance to Athens after the annexation of Lemnos; the reminder was equally powerful, regardless of whether Heracles was produced slightly before or slightly after the cult statues of Athena and Hephaestus were installed in the Hephaesteion – the statue complex being the final essential component for completing the temple; seen against this artistic and cultic background, Theseus’ invitation and generous cultic and artistic offers to Heracles, notably Athena’s favourite hero, is an unmistakable gesture away from emphasis on autochthony and towards a return to Panhellenic aspirations and concerns.