Tyranny and bestialization

These are examples of the 'bestialization' of an unacceptable person and how it can be a useful rhetorical device. Bestialization as a psycho-social construct can accompany the perceived change, and ultimate rejection, of a person in society. The idea that someone has just regressed and turned into a wild human or bestial human, offers a convenient ideological justification for social exclusion. Sophocles has laid it out on stage in all its glory.

It clearly is a controversial tactic that brings a degree of dishonour on the speaker who uses it, as it is always attributed to tyrannical, overbearing and unsavoury behaviour and ideas. For instance in Antigone, Creon's utilizes the trope of bestialization to help himself conceptually justify his use of violent punishments reserved for those who do not follow his laws. He worries about a conspiracy that might be held against him somewhere. For Creon, this simply means some men are not properly harnessed to his service.

κρυφ* κάρα σείοντες, ο δ' ᾽ 4πο[ ζυγ;

λόφον δικαίως ε χον= , ς1 στέργειν μέ# .¹⁹⁴

Shaking their head in secret, their necks were not held under my yoke and honouring me in the just way.

In reality there was no conspiracy, but merely Antigone attempting to bury Polyneices. But at this moment, Creon is not yet sure of how it happened, and believes unknown conspirators are to blame. His intuition that there are an unknown number of conspirators who secretly oppose his rule, taken together with the

194 Soph.Ant.291-2 (Lloyd-Jones 1990: 195).

imagery of yoking and thus domineering, is an indication of Creon's psychological worry that somewhere, outside of his vision field, there are such men. Creon then paints his relationship with his subjects in rather undemocratic colours: animal metaphors and horse taming similes are a strong part of his repertoire. When he learns that it was Antigone who did it, and did it all by herself, he once again has recourse to the animal domination imagery. He speaks of bending Antigone's will like of taming of horses:

σμικρ; χαλιν; δ᾽ ο δα= του[ς θυμουμένους ππους

. καταρτυθέντας¹⁹⁵

I've known unwieldy horses being put straight by a small bit

Creon's paranoia, his exaggerated suspicion and anger are of a similar calibre to the anger of Oedipus, which can only be described as a quick temper. But the best comparison is surely Aegisthus, who, like Creon, lives in fear of secret opponents. Like Creon is against a funeral for Polyneices, Aegisthus plans to deck out for Orestes quite the opposite of a good burial. Like Creon, Aegisthus is quite sure that the corpse still is the person, and thus Aegisthus gets ready to punish, hit and mutilate the dead Orestes.

The action is simultaneously to serve as a deterrent to other supposed conspirators in the city.

195 Soph.Ant.477-8 (Lloyd-Jones 1990: 802).

π σιν< Μυκηναίοισιν ργείοις0 θ᾽ ρ ν7 < , 1ς ε& τις α τ ν' / λπίσιν# κενα ς( πάρος

ξ ρετ

# C ᾽ νδρο[ς, το δεῦ , ν νῦ ρ ν7 / νεκρο[ν στόμια δέχηται τ μα[, ¹⁹⁶

for all to see, Mycenians and Argives, how if one of them holds vain hopes

that he could have been saved by that man, now he can see the corpse

getting my bit in his mouth

Aegisthus makes ready to display the corpse of Orestes in a shameful manner for all to see, as a public warning for other prospective usurpers of his power. Like Creon, he employs this same animal taming trope for his purposes.

These examples are just a few small tokens showing the reprehensible, unsavoury side of bestialization as a rhetorical trope. Its use implies that the speaker thinks he is the overlord—

and that is of course never popular. The audience is not expected to align itself with the idea that the tragic protagonist has become bestial, and there is nothing more to do about it. Rather, the audience is invited to inspect the dark side of those in control, who operate such tropes of bestialization and put themselves above a weaker or an injured party. Far from satisfying itself with attributing uncivil and uncivilized behaviour to the protagonist and acquitting everyone else from all blame, the discourse of bestialization is fissured with negative connotations. It is possible to trace instances of rhetorical bestialization in every play, Philoctetes foremost.

196 Soph.El.1459-62 (Lloyd-Jones 1990: 116).

5. Polyphemus

Reflecting this back to Odysseus' bestialization of Philoctetes one last time, comparison springs to mind with how Odysseus overpowers mythical creatures in the Odyssey. Stories of overpowering giants, dragons or horrid hybrid dogs are told in a celebratory tone in the Odyssey, giving Odysseus the appearance of one who can take on opponents greater than himself. When Odysseus lands on Lemnos in Philoctetes, there may be many resemblances that call to mind his homeric landings, yet the Philoctetes they will find on Lemnos is no monster. He is just a sick man. The Lestrygonians, cyclopes, witches, sirens and sea-monsters of which the Odyssey is a catalogue all fall in the conceptual domain of the monstrous and outsized, threatening, cannibalistic, repulsive or destructive menaces to a safe homecoming and even just bare life. The beginning of Philoctetes offers a vista akin to an Odyssean island landing. It even zooms in on dialogue about practical matters and the logistics of Odysseus' arrival.¹⁹⁷ The reminiscence of the Odyssey and its explorations sets up expectations that a similar encounter will take place now on Lemnos, in particular scholars have highlighted the many reminiscences of Odysseus' encounter with—again—Polyphemus.¹⁹⁸

197 Schein (2013), 153: “Philoctetes is deinos ('strange and terrifying') because of his wild and isolated existence and invincible weapon”.

198 “The Cyclops and the Satyr, the gargantuan mouth and the gargantuan phallus, are the two major types of Greek homo ferus” (Greengard 1987, 58); see also Brilliante (2009).

Of course the Odyssey is not all.¹⁹⁹ Euripides’ Philoctetes has been compared with Sophocles’ version (from 409 BCE) since ancient times. It appears that the stage set with the cave was already featured in the earlier, Euripidean Philoctetes (dated at about 431).

It is also known that Euripides’ satyr-play Cyclops shared the identical set design featuring a cave as dramatic location. The Cyclops, as one may expect, dwells on the farcical effects of primitive life in a cave, and beyond the commonalities of set design, Euripides’ Cyclops and Philoctetes were shown to have many internal resemblances.²⁰⁰ The nexus between Philoctetes and Polyphemus, then, is already established in the Euripidean forerunner to Sophocles’ Philoctetes. Between nudging the audience's perception in the direction of expecting a character similar to the dreadful Polyphemus and the references to a very visible disease, Philoctetes’ body begins to look to the others like quite the abomination. His disease is conceptualized not so much as an acute and temporary affliction any more, but turns into his nature, permanently keeping him separate and fundamentally different from the others.

Such a conceptualization has its moral consequences, for example Odysseus' decision on how to treat him. Philoctetes is no ogre or semi-ogre, but just a man, but Odysseus is planning to outwit Philoctetes with similar tactics as he used on Polyphemus in the Odyssey. Conceptually, the reported character of Philoctetes gets pushed in the direction of looking like a bestial wild man.

Philoctetes becomes a wild man, although he was not always one.

This is why, presumably, he and others exert on him the normative

199 Schein (2013), 116, suggests an analogy with Calypso's island for example, based on the adjective perirrutos.

200 Schein (2013) 17; Greengard (1987) 56ff; Segal (1981) 297ff..

gaze of medical treatment, always with one (doubtful) eye to the possibility of his recovery and his becoming once again the man he used to be, and to perform the functions of the heroic warrior, for which he was schooled and prepared his entire life.²⁰¹ Polyphemus and Philoctetes both are presented with an emphasis on how much their existence departs from the norm of civilized humanity. This departure takes on a monstrous dimension in the case of Polyphemus in the Odyssey, and a 'bestialized' one for Philoctetes. Sophocles' characterization of the egregious protagonist does not go as far as painting him as a monster in the style of Odyssean ogres, sirenic hybrids etc. None the less, literary parallels are discreetly superimposed upon the text of Philoctetes to blur together the diseased Philoctetes, and the monstrous Polyphemus.

Recognizing this story line as a fundamental plot structure rather than an isolated one, we can then see how the re-conceptualization of a person hinges on a rhetorical construction of superiority versus inferiority. In the Cyclopeia we can certainly recognize such an assertion of superiority in Odysseus' brandishing of his greater shrewdness and use of elaborate schemes. Levering medicinal and technical knowledge,²⁰² Odysseus overpowers Polyphemus. Marianne Hopman writes,

“Odysseus' intelligence is (...) set into relief by contrast with the Cyclops who is too “stupid” to “understand””.²⁰³ Even though

201 Beye (1970), 67.

202 Giulia Maria Chesi stressed the significance of technical knowledge in addition to the more commonly cited ruse or cunning of Odysseus in this episode, in her talk at the Humboldt University in Berlin in 2015 . 203 Hopman (2012), 37.

Polyphemus is hard done by, the reader is encouraged to rejoice in his injuries. Polyphemus has been sufficiently delineated as a horrible cannibal and an enemy of culture for “us” to do so. Still, Polyphemus is a sentient being, subjected to an unnecessarily sadistic blinding by fire, and is able to attract sympathy. Newton has outlined Odysseus' disregard for the xenia-ritual and his aggressive, arrogant behavior. Odysseus has not even tried to follow the rules. He assumes from the very beginning that any act of civilized humaniy will be wasted on Polyphemus, and for this reason he instructs his men to enter and take what they need. The Cyclops has what seems like a very orderly household inside his cave, with rows of home-made cheeses neatly stored. But none of this, for Odysseus, is a reason to stick to the rules of host and guest. For the audience, it is possible not to be blinded by the description of how monstrous Polyphemus was, and to ponder simply if Odysseus did not make a faux-pas by simply entering the cave and helping himself. With this doubt already on one's mind, one wonders if Odysseus could have done something a little bit less drastic and less sadistic than to blind Polyphemus with burning wood. There is a savage side in Odysseus and his ruses, that comes out through actions such as these.²⁰⁴ As Newton wrote, our admiration of Odysseus' ruses, courage and how effective they are, comes tainted with “reservations about the folly of (...) his actions”.²⁰⁵

In Philoctetes even though Philoctetes is no beast or ogre, his human form is tentatively painted as brutish and horrific.

Odysseus' plans to outwit Philoctetes on Lemnos without consideration to his wishes betoken the same conceptualization of

204 Newton (1983), 137-142, 139.

205 Newton (1983), ibid., 138.

the man Philoctetes as a wild beast devoid of fine reasoning faculties. In this reckoning, Philoctetes’ possession by a paroxysm, Ajax's possession by insanity, and so on, are gateways to becoming reduced to one’s own animality. This in turn leads to a moral evaluation and demotion to a lower status.

The shared story line between Ajax and Philoctetes does not contain an animal transformation myth. Instead, it portrays the subject's invisible transformation in the eyes of all, followed by loss of social appreciation, as if a metamorphosis into a beast had actually happened. The audience is to understand that the bestial characteristics are unacceptable; but of course animal characteristics do inhabit every human, every person. The exploration of bestiality in the human person, and attempts to define the boundary between animal and human, is certainly a theme that we can ascertain here in the case of Ajax and Philoctetes. Of course, this motif exists not only in the work of Sophocles, but ancient literature and mythography much more widely.²⁰⁶ The explicit, and so to speak “naive” representation of an animal metamorphosis is a frequent motif in Greek literary texts. To stay with Sophocles, in Tereus or Inachus, a we find examples of such an animal metamorphosis (Tereus, Procne and Philomela are transformed into birds. Io is transformed into a cow). Explorations of bestiality in the human, or explorations of the boundaries between human and animal like we can see them in Ajax and Philoctetes might be considered one step behind the description of a real and manifest metamorphosis into an animal.

They can, in any case, be considered part of the same complex of fictional explorations that inspect the boundaries betweeen human and animal, human and monstrous even. In the examples of Ajax

206 Aston (2014), 371.

and Philoctetes, the aspect of not just bestiality but also monstrosity certainly comes into play through association with the literary Polyphemus.

Transformation of a human into an animal has for consequence their absolute exclusion from all human dealings, and with this, they are cut off from the enjoyment of civil liberties, civil treatment, the respect of social norm and form by one's fellow citizens. As animals, they become vulnerable to a variety of ill treatments such as captivity, hunting, exploitation, and so on. “Bestialization”, i.e. the characterization of a human as an animal with the intent to deprecate their worth, sends more than one Sophoclean protagonist on a journey from social acceptance to social exclusion. Philoctetes once was well integrated into society, "a prince within the community, a noble and honored warrior", as Badger writes.²⁰⁷ But things have changed, for him. This point we may well also extend to Ajax, Polyneices, Orestes, Oedipus, to the women Electra, Antigone, and Deianeira (as we will do in the ensuing section and sub-sections).

As a result of the transformation, an insurmountable social unacceptability seems to have arisen. The former glorious identity is gone, the new one causes nothing but trouble : Philoctetes is morbidly ill and impossible to manage, Ajax becomes a madman, Heracles is sick with an impure sex drive, and so on. They begin to look like monsters.

We can now recognize exclusion as a process of transformation rather than a permanent state; and as a fundamental plot structure that appears and re-appears in Sophocles.

207 Badger (2013), 35.