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This essay compares Aeschylus’ use of the myth of the House of Atreus in the Oresteia with Sartre’s use of it in The Flies . Aeschylus chose and changed details from among extant versions to make a drama which glorified Athenian achievements in its new democratic organization and its jury system. Sartre used Orestes’ murder of Clytemnestra as the defining act of the existentialist hero that made him a free man. Implicit in his version was a call for the French people to resist their Nazi occupiers. In post-war Germany, the play was performed with new interpretations by the Western and Soviet occupiers.

A body of theory has developed about the role and function of memory in creating and maintaining cultural identity. Yet there has been no consideration of the rich Mediterranean and Near Eastern traditions of laments for fallen cities in commemorating or resolving communal trauma. This volume offers new insights into the trope of the fallen city in folk-song and a variety of literary genres. These commemorations reveal memories modified by diverse agendas, and contains narrative structures and motifs that show the meaning of memory-making about fallen cities. Opening a new avenue of research into the Mediterranean genre of city lament, this book examines references to, or re-workings of, otherwise lost texts or ways of commemorating fallen cities in the extant texts, and with greater emphasis than usual on the point of view of the victors.

Cet article etudie l’hypothese selon laquelle l’Hymne homerique a Demeter aurait ete compose par une femme comme un divertissement presente au cours des Thesmophories d’Eleusis. L’argumen­tation repose sur le theme fondamentalement feminin de l’Hymne, de meme que sur les positions en presence, sur la question de l’audience adequate et du contexte de la recitation pour de tels soucis feminins. Ces preoccupations s’averent identiques a celles des poetesses lyriques comme Sappho, Corinne, Nossis et Erinna. La composition par une femme pour un auditoire feminin explique le traitement humiliant inflige a Zeus dans l’Hymne. D’autres particularites y trouvent aussi leur explication : par exemple, les traits inhabituels de la diction de l’Hymne, ou la question de savoir pourquoi il n’existe aucune reference a cette version du mythe avant la periode post-classique. En depit de leur caractere hypothetique, ces arguments devraient nous permettre d’abandonner la pretendue evidence de l’auteur masculin d’une composition aussi feminine.

This article summarizes the findings of an unpublished PhD dissertation, "The Form of Lament in Greek Tragedy" by E. Wright, which provide for the first time objective criteria for identification of lamentation in tragedy. It applies these criteria to the Trojan Women, and argues, on the basis of metrical and stylistic devices, that virtually every scene in the Trojan Women shows the characteristics of lament. The play is, from both the minute technical, and the overall structural, point of view, a lament. This provides explanations for some of the long-standing critical issues of the play, e.g., no unity, no plot, an ill-conceived prologue. The article then considers also how the Trojan Women fits into current discussions of lament as a gendered genre. It replies especially to work on the development of 5th-century Athenian attitudes towards female lament, in which a pattern of increased criticism and restriction, it is argued, is reflected in the changing treatment of lament in Athenian tragedy. The treatment of lament in the Trojan Women does not conform to this perceived development. This suggests that there were still a variety of attitudes current and influential in late 5th-century Athens towards female lamentation.

Offering a new understanding of the "Hymn to Demeter, " Ann Suter provides an analysis of methodological approaches, reconciling the seemingly disparate pieces of the complex narrative of the hymn. Examining evidence from other versions of the hymn's myths, as well as from Greek religion, linguistics, and archaeology, she lends a new understanding to the relationships among the hymn's personages--Persephone, Demeter, Hades, and Zeus--as they developed and crystallized, providing a new chronology for the cults of Demeter and Persephone at Eleusis.The author analyzes the traditional language of the hymn and Persephone's retelling of her story to Demeter, arguing that the hymn involves an earlier tale of Demeter and Persephone that predates the seventh century. Suter uses anthropological applications to illustrate that the story of Persephone's abduction does not reflect a female initiation rite into adulthood, as has been argued, but rather an "hieros gamos." These methodologies point to the conclusion that Persephone was once a powerful goddess in her own right, independent of Hades and of Demeter as well. To test the accuracy of these possibilities, the book next examines evidence from outside the hymn. Other versions of the two myths in the hymn support the idea that these myths--Persephone's abduction and Demeter's nursing of Demophoon--were once separate and were late combined to create a new story. Evidence from the chief archaeological sites, from vase painting and other artistic forms is provided to enhance the argument. Thus the evidence from outside the hymn supports the conclusions of the textual analyses, giving surprising substantiation that the hymn itself commemorates the early days of the worship of the goddesses as a mother/daughter pair.This book will be of particular interest to scholars of religious history, art history, archaeology, and literature. It is also accessible to the general reader interested in Greek literature, myths, and religion.Ann Suter is Associate Professor of Classical Studies, University of Rhode Island."