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with the practice of Aeschylus in other occurrences of the vocative  In none of the twenty-nine instances (all but five in the Suppliants or Choephori) is there the slightest possibility of ambiguity, except in the two just mentioned. The word is regularly either followed or preceded immediately by the name of the person addressed, unless the vocative refers to the speaker's human father. The only exception (other than Suppliants 811 and 885) is Suppliants 480, but in this case the possibility of ambiguity is removed by the explanatory phrase  Thus we must either assume that  refers in both instances to Zeus (which no editor or translator is willing to do), or we must accept the ambiguity as intentional. |
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Zeus appears in the Suppliants in several modes. His principal dramatic role, as  (1) indicates, is that of protector of the weak suppliant. He is also characterized as savior (26), avenger (645646), and just judge (402406), as "the protector of the weak, the avenger of the wronged, and a towering symbol of the ultimate triumph of justice in the world" (Golden 1962: 101). More important for our purposes are the various formulations, both abstract and concrete, which describe Zeus' higher nature, those characteristics which are not demanded by the predicament of the Danaids in this play as frightened and helpless suppliants. His role is described as one of absolute power and sovereignty; he is 'Lord of lords, most blessed of the blessed, and most efficacious power' (524526), without whom nothing is accomplished for men (823824; cf. Agamemnon 1487). He is omniscient (139) and his thought becomes deed as quickly as that of others becomes speech (598599). Everything is effortless ( , 100); "as he sits, he accomplishes his will in a mysterious way from the holy throne itself" (101103). |
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The effortless omnipotence of Zeus (or of any supreme deity) is, of course, a common phenomenon. From a psychoanalytic point of view it is derived from the universal and inevitable disillusion of the infantile perception of parental power as unlimited. As Freud says: |
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When the growing individual finds that he is destined to remain a child forever, that he can never do without protection against strange superior powers, he lends those powers the features belonging to the figure of his father; he creates for himself the Gods whom he dreads, whom he seeks to propitiate, and whom he nevertheless entrusts with his own protection (1927: 24). |
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In the Suppliants however, the transition from father to god is not a subsequent effect of the oedipus complex, but is rather an effort to maintain the complex while repressing its incestuous aspect; it is a matter not of the religious development of the race, but of the individual's erotic projection. As Dodds notes, in his discussion of the place of Zeus in Greek culture, "It was natural to project on to the heavenly Father those curious mixed feelings about the human one which the child dared not acknowledge even to himself" (1951: 48). |
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