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Dearest Haimon
Alan H. Sommerstein (Contributor Webpage)
DOI:10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199568314.003.0015
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Dearest Haimon
Malcolm Davies1 has recently restated and amplified the case for accepting the
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Dearest Haimon
Hec. 505) or simply because it brings release from suspense (Eur. Phoin. 1072).
3. It is also possible for a woman to address in this way a man who has been, or
who she hopes will become, her saviour. Thus the chorus of Seven against
Thebes so address Eteokles (677) on whom the city's safety, and therefore their
own, depends. Antigone speaks of Theseus and his (Soph.
OC 1103), who have saved her and Ismene from their Theban kidnappers.
Electra (Soph. El. 1354, 1357) ecstatically greets Orestes' paidagogos, whom she
describes as '
. Andromache, supplicating Peleus to save her and her child from
death, apologizes for being unable to make the full suppliant gesture of touching
his (Eur. Andr. 574). With these we may also class Eur. IT
1065 where Iphigeneia brackets herself with Orestes and Pylades as
: (p.205) their coming has given her the chance to escape from
her hated Taurian exile.14
[74] If our line is spoken by Antigone, it can reasonably be assigned to class (1); to be
sure, Haimon is a prospective rather than an actual husband, and to that extent there is
no exact parallel, but the betrothed maiden is not a very frequent charactertype in
tragedy and the absence of a parallel could not really be regarded as suspicious.
If, however, the speaker is Ismene, things are much more difficult. There can evidently
be no possible justification for the superlative under rubric (2) or (3); we are not
informed at any stage in the play of any action at all by Haimon which affected, or was
likely to affect, Ismene directly for good or ill. And Haimon falls, in relation to Ismene, well
outside the category covered by (1), which excludes not only cousins but even, so far as
the evidence goes, closer relations such as uncles, nephews, and grandsons,15 while
Ismene's connection with him as a prospective sisterinlaw is of so little significance that
classical Attic had no word to describe it.16
17 it would be hard to claim
Dearest Haimon
uncle or her guardian: she thinks of him as the ruler and representative of the state (cf.
44 with 47 , also 60 , 63 '
, 67 ).
Thus Ismene's outburst is not only unique in expression; it is also unprepared for.
Nothing has led us to imagine that she regarded Haimon as at all; yet now she calls
him . If her personality, as revealed up to this point, cannot by itself explain this,
can the immediate context do so?
Ismene, we have seen, is unconditionally loyal to her living immediate kin,20 but all her
interactions in the play are with persons who do not show such loyalty. In the opening
scene, on discovering that she is not prepared to sacrifice her life for the dead, Antigone
calls her an enemy (86, 93) and a contemnor of that which the gods hold in honour (77
' ' ). When they meet again, and Ismene gives the highest
possible proof of her (p.207) devotion to Antigone, Antigone not only rejects her self
sacrifice but does so in as cutting and hostile a manner as she can, and Ismene feels that
she has been treated with contempt unbecoming a sister (544 , , '
). But at least Antigone's attitude, however wrong, is itself based on feelings of
feelings that Ismene can understand because she too [76] shares them, though
not to the same extent.21 In Kreon, on the other hand, she finds herself confronted with
someone who seems, to judge by his words, to have no feeling of for his immediate
22; someone who,
kin; someone who, it might be said,
when it is drawn to his attention that he is injuring his own wholly innocent son, can reply
(569) in terms showing no more consideration for the son's feelings than if Haimon were a
ram or a bull.23 Such an attitude is the very negation of everything we have seen Ismene
say and do; no wonder she is moved to speak of it in the same language that Antigone has
used to her and she to Antigone about behaviour that each saw as contempt for the
claims of immediate kin ' . It may be that she speaks of Haimon as
out of fellowfeeling for a fellowvictim of such unwarranted contempt; it may be
that she is not calling him to herself at all, but reminding Kreon that his son is, or
ought to be, to him; at any rate her extraordinary expression is to be
accounted for by, and serves to draw our attention most arrestingly to, the
extraordinary indifference of Kreon to his son.
It is the climax, and almost the end, of her role in the play. Within four lines she has
recognized that in pleading for Antigone to be spared, even for Haimon's sake, she is
beating her head against a stone wall; within nine she has been taken offstage, not to
appear again; at the end of the following scene her condemnation is casually (p.208)
rescinded (76971), and by 941, when Antigone speaks of herself as the only remaining
member of the royal house, Ismene's very existence has been forgotten. But she has had
her moment, and she has had her function: to represent the principle of being
(99), the principle that both Antigone and Kreon in their different ways refuse to
recognize.24
Notes:
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Dearest Haimon
(1) Davies (1986).
(2) LloydJones and Wilson (1990a); cf. LloydJones and Wilson (1990b: 1278).
(3) Cf. Mastronarde (1979: 956).
(4) See (in particular on = the marriage you speak of) Davies (1986: 212);
LloydJones and Wilson (1990b: 267, 128).
(5) Hence there was a certain logic in the proposal of Dawe (1978 b: 1068) to give 574
(and 576) as well as 572 to Antigone; unfortunately the lines are utterly unsuited to her
(see West (1979 b: 108), LloydJones and Wilson (1990b:128), who concur in giving 574
and 576 to Ismene).
(6) Brown (1987: 169) (not his own view).
(7) G. Mller (1967: 111).
(8) For example Knox (1968: 755), who thinks that the argument of Mller (1967) can be
dismissed in view of the frequent occurrence of this form of as a common
salutation and then cites two examples, both spoken by males to males (one by the
leader of a chorus of satyrs!); Hester (1971: 30 n. 1) (the epithet she [Ismene] applies to
Haemon is in no way remarkable); Paduano (1982: i. 2923 n. 39) ( risibile l'obiezione
secondo la quale la cognata (e perch non anche cugina?) Ismene non pu apostrofare
Emone con ').
(9) This does not include such passages as Aesch. Cho. 1051 where the speaker is calling
the addressee not to herself but to some third person.
(10) Aesch. Cho. 496; Soph. El. 462; Eur. IA 652 (curiously, the father is Agamemnon in all
three cases).
(11) Aesch. Cho. 235; Soph. Ant. 81 (Antigone speaking of the dead Polyneikes; the only
place, except 572, where is used at all in this play), El. 808, 903, 1126, 1158,
1163, 1208, 1224, 1286; Eur. El. 1322, IT 815, 827, Phoin. 166, 1437, 1702, Or. 217,
1045, IA 1452.
(12) Aesch. Cho. 893; Eur. Andr. 222, El. 345, HF 490, 514, 531, Hel. 595, 625, 899, 1299.
We should also include here Aesch. Ag. 1654: it is not clear at what moment (if ever)
Klytaimestra becomes Aigisthos' , but she has already publicly avowed their
relationship (14346) and in a few moments, like a bridegroom of the wrong gender, she
will be leading him into her house.
(13) Aesch. Pers. 851; Eur. Suppl. 793, Tro. 757, Ion 1409, Ba. 1298.
(14) Orestes is of course her brother, but we can hardly suppose she calls Pylades
because he is her cousin (91719) and Electra's husband (91315); she has
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Dearest Haimon
this day met him for the first time, and he was not born when she disappeared at Aulis
(9201).
(15) Note that in Euripides' Orestes, though the cousins Orestes and Pylades can speak
of each other as (733, 1233), Orestes can also use language implying that they
with
are not (8046, contrasting with and
).
(16) Classical Attic uses one term, , reciprocally for all male relations by
marriage; there is no general term for a female relation by marriage, and we know (in
prose) of only one specific term, motherinlaw (Dem. 45.70). See Thompson
(1971). Indeed even the elaborate, IndoEuropeandescended set of affinity terms we
find in Homer does not include, and seems never to have included, any term for wife's
sister or for sister's husband.
(17) Even in comedy, Aristophanes and Menander together can show only one passage
(Ar. Lys. 853) where a respectable wife, maiden, or widow addresses or speaks of a man
not of her immediate family as .
(18) Whitlock Blundell (1989: 108 n. 11).
(19) Cf.ibid. 11115.
(20) The qualification living is crucial: she will defy the state and risk her life for Antigone,
but not for the dead Polyneikes. Antigone's priorities are the reverse: in spirit she herself
has long been dead (55960).
(21) She has begged the pardon of her dead kinsfolk for failing to act on their behalf (65
6), and when she offers to die with Antigone she does so partly in order to do honour to
their dead brother (545).
(22) Men. Asp. 11718 (the prologuegoddess speaking of Smikrines whom she has just
described as surpassing all men in wickedness).
(23) This brutality may be compounded by the impersonalsounding plurals of 571
), especially if the audience knew or suspected, from
(
previous dramatic or poetic versions of the story, that Kreon actually had only one
surviving son.
(24) This chapter was originally published, under the title Soph. Ant. 572 (Dearest
Haimon), in Museum Criticum 258 (19903) 716. I am most grateful to Pacini Editore
for giving permission for this republication.
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Dearest Haimon
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