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Thus the story goes. It produces
Scant belief in me,
That the gold-faced sun
Changed its warm station
For mortal misfortune
For the sake of human justice.
But fearful myths for humans
Are useful for worship of the gods.
You forgot this when you killed
Your husband, sister of famous brothers. |
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I have discussed elsewhere both the extraordinary rhetoric whereby a chorus offers an exemplary tale only to distance itself from its own story, and the self-reflexive pronouncement of the usefulness of muthoi for religion (as this chorus performs in precisely such a frightening muthos).49 Here, I want to focus first on the difficulty of the chorus' description of the exemplary narrative that they have just offered, and second on the connecting relative  , translated as 'you forgot this', literally 'which things/figures'. To what does it refer? How much of the exemplary narrative and its choral commentary is it to be assumed that Clytemnestra failed to remember?  indeed is notably ambiguous, since it can mean not only 'human justice' in the sense of 'punishment meted out to humans' by the gods, but also 'human vengeance', that is, the punishment Atreus meted out on Thyestes, as well as a more general sense of 'justice' or 'right', that is, 'for the sake of proper order among humans'. Nor is  any easier: 'for a mortal's i.e. Thyestes' misfortune' is how Denniston construes it; Wilamowitz, followed by Stinton, takes it generally 'for mankind's detriment'; Wecklein, differently, construes it as 'because of human blindness'. The narrative which is to be exemplary is glossed by the chorus in a way which leaves it open to plays of interpretation which construct quite different versions of the relations between man, god, transgression and punishment. What, then, of  ? Denniston relates it closely to  : 'you |
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49 Goldhill (1986) 24459. |
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