An Apulian red-figure bell-krater (No. 7) with a simple two-figured scene is the best candidate for a pictorial scene dependent on a play (plate 7.4). Both figures wear grotesque masks with open mouths and are dressed like women in long garments, although the figure on the right has short hair like a man. That figure kneels on an altar, whose sides are splattered with blood. He holds a sword upright in his right hand and a rather odd object, which wears two shoes, in his left. A slightly hunched-over woman, carrying a large skyphos or krater with both hands, approaches him from the left. Between them a mirror, seen in profile, hangs on the wall. The clue to the meaning of the scene rests on the right figure and the object he holds. Taking refuge at an altar occurs in several stories, but only one tale focuses on someone simultaneously taking a hostage - Telephus threatening Orestes.
In one of the encounters before the Greeks reach Troy, Telephus, the leader of the Mysians, manages to best the attacking Greeks, but is himself wounded in the thigh by Achilles. Telephus learns from an oracle that only the one who wounded him can cure him. Since the Greeks are unlikely to help Telephus voluntarily, he enters Argos
Plate 7.4 ‘‘Telephus’’ threatening ‘‘Orestes.’’ Apulian bell-krater by the Schiller Painter. ca. 370 BCE. Wurzburg, Martin von Wagner Museum H 5697. Photograph © Martin von Wagner Museum, Universitat Wiirzburg. Photographer: K. Oehrlein.
Dressed as a beggar, hoping to trick them into healing him. When his disguise is penetrated, he flees for sanctuary to an altar with the baby Orestes, whom he threatens to kill if Agamemnon, the father, does not help him. We know of at least seven Attic tragedies and five parodies involving Telephus. From summaries and fragments it is believed that Euripides introduced the motif of Telephus as a beggar sneaking into Argos for his play Telephus, performed in 438 bce.
Now our plot thickens. Aristophanes in 411 bce parodied the scene of Telephus threatening Orestes in his Women at the Thesmophoria (704-56). We know it must be a parody of Euripides and not Aeschylus or Sophocles, who also wrote plays about Telephus, because Euripides is one of the characters in the play. Aristophanes gives Euripides an elderly relative, Mnesilochus, who disguises himself as a woman in order to penetrate the exclusively female festival of the Thesmophoria. The women are plotting against Euripides because of Euripides’ nasty characterizations of them in his tragedies, and Mnesilochus’ task is to find out what they are up to. He succeeds quite admirably until he makes the mistake of defending Euripides, at which point the women become suspicious. Mnesilochus flees to the altar, stopping only to grab one of the women’s children as a hostage. Mnesilochus threatens to kill the
Child, but, as he unwraps it from its swaddling, it slowly dawns on him that he is holding not a baby, but a wineskin wearing Persian booties - in short, the scene on the Apulian vase.
The play explains other details of the vase. The woman, who rushes forward with a bowl to catch the ‘‘blood’’ (actually wine) from the sacrifice about to be performed, must be the mother of the ‘‘child’’ (Women at the Thesmophoria 752-56). She is meant to be an ‘‘equivalent’’ of Clytemnestra, the mother of Orestes, who also is supposed to have appeared in Euripides’ play and certainly is present in some pictorial representations of the story. As Taplin (1993, 38) rightly points out, the scene is not intelligible without knowledge of the play. Up to this point there is universal agreement about the vase and its source. Whether the vase belongs to the category of phlyax scenes or directly illustrates Attic comedy does not matter for this discussion. What does is whether the vase depends on a text, an actual performance of the play, visual prototypes, or a combination thereof.
In support of the independence of the visual scene are the vases with straightforward scenes of Telephus threatening Orestes. The earliest example occurs on an Attic red-figure pelike (No. 8) where Agamemnon approaches Telephus, who is seated on an altar holding a diminutive Orestes hostage. Because of its date of around 450 bce, the absence of Clytemnestra, and the fact that Telephus is holding a spear upright in a non-threatening manner, this version has been associated with Aeschylus’ lost play. The type with Clytemnestra, combined with Telephus threatening Orestes with a sword, does not appear until around 400 bce on a red-figure calyx-krater (No. 9). The subject also appears on the other side of the Cleveland calyx-krater with Medea, which dates to the same period (No. 10; plate 7.5). It is this version that the Wurzburg vase spoofs. It is immaterial for the interpretation of the Wtirzburg vase whether this visual type depends on Euripides’ play of approximately forty years earlier, because the Wurzburg vase need depend only on Aristophanes and other visual prototypes, even though Aristophanes must depend on Euripides. In other words, there are two traditions, the visual and the literary. It is also disputed whether Euripides staged the scene of Telephus threatening Orestes or had his threats reported in a messenger’s speech. (Gould 1973, 101-3, argues for the messenger speech; Heath 1989, 275-76, argues against it.) In the latter case, the visual tradition cannot depend on what went on during a performance, but must rely on the artists’ imaginations to create the visual scene, even if the story itself was created by Euripides.
In conclusion, I think that the Wurzburg vase is one of the rare examples of a scene that may truly illustrate a text, or if not a text directly, then a performance of a text. The wineskin with booties, along with the action and the details, makes the meaning clear, especially since this salient detail appears uniquely in this story. Although I accept a direct connection to Aristophanes, nonetheless, it is not possible to ascertain from the extant evidence whether the artist saw the play performed on stage, read the text, or knew only the story and the visual tradition associated with Telephus taking Orestes hostage, or, indeed, any combination thereof. In any case, the visual difference between the spoof and the ‘‘original’’ is not that great. Finally, it is important to note that the Wurzburg vase depicts a two-figured scene. Artists have little trouble in matching picture to text in simple scenes, but generally stray from the text in more complex ones (Small 2003, 143-53).
Plate 7.5 Telephus threatening Orestes with Clytemnestra. Lucanian red-figure calyx-krater attributed to near the Policoro Painter. ca. 400 bce. Cleveland, Museum of Art 91.1. Photograph © The Cleveland Museum of Art, 2004, Leonard C. Hanna Jr., Fund, 1991.1.
Iphigenia among the Taurians
Roman wall paintings with ‘‘settings’’ are commonly interpreted as scaenarum frontes (stage fronts), such as the painting from the House of Pinarius Cerialis with Orestes and Pylades among the Taurians (No. 11; plate 7.6). Euripides’ Iphigenia among the Taurians opens after Orestes has killed his mother, Clytemnestra, and has been ordered by Apollo to retrieve the statue of Artemis from her sanctuary in the land of the Taurians. Thoas, the king of the Taurians, has the unfortunate habit of putting all foreigners to death as a sacrifice to Artemis. Now comes the Euripidean twist. The priestess of Artemis is none other than Iphigenia, Orestes’ sister, who was miraculously saved by Artemis from sacrifice at Aulis. Orestes and Pylades, his inseparable childhood friend, are captured, bound as prisoners, and taken to Iphigenia. Iphigenia questions them before they are to be sacrificed and offers to save Pylades’ life by sacrificing only his companion, if Pylades will deliver a letter to her brother. Before handing the letter to Pylades, she tells them what it says (760-65). At this point Orestes recognizes Iphigenia and she, in turn, learns who they are. Together the three
Plate 7.6 Orestes, Pylades, and Iphigenia among the Taurians. Roman wall painting. 62-79 ce. Pompeii, Regio III 4, 4, cubiculum a, north wall. Photograph © AUnari 43169/Art Resource, NY.
Plot to escape with the statue from the clutches of Thoas. Iphigenia secretes Orestes and Pylades in the temple. Then she sets up Thoas by telling him the two captured Greeks must be cleansed in the sea before they can be sacrificed to Artemis. She has Thoas order the Taurians to stay indoors, and gets him to purify the interior of the temple, while she takes the prisoners to the sea - supposedly for purification, but in fact for an escape by boat.
Now let us look at the painting. The figures are set within an architectural framework divided into three parts with the center and most important one jutting forward with an elaborate entrance, framed by columns, a pediment, and acroteria. At the top of its steps stands a three-figure group of Iphigenia flanked by two attendants. She holds a branch in her lowered right hand and the statue of Artemis in her left, resting it against her left shoulder. On the ground level, on the right, stand Orestes and Pylades with their hands bound behind their backs. On the left sits King Thoas with an attendant standing behind him. The painting unites the main characters in one visual scene, though they do not appear together in this way in the play. Nothing in the text indicates that Thoas is seated when he talks with Iphigenia (to the contrary, cf. 1159). It is true that he begins their conversation by inquiring about the statue, which in the play, as in the painting, Iphigenia holds in plain view (1157-58). Yet Euripides’ Thoas never sees Orestes and Pylades. According to the play, Iphigenia tells Thoas to ‘‘shield your eyes with your peplos [garment]’’ when the two appear from within the temple (1218). Even if Thoas peeked, the two ‘‘prisoners’’ themselves were essentially ‘‘blindfolded’’ with ‘‘their heads covered with their peploi’’ (1207). Yet the painting shows the two in heroic nudity - remember actors were always dressed - with artistically arranged mantles and bared heads. Moreover, they are standing on the right, waiting and not leaving the temple - the only time when they would be in the presence, if not the sight, of Thoas.
The painting is neither depicting a performance nor trying to illustrate the text of Euripides. What it is doing is showing key elements in the story told by Euripides within a single visual frame. The distinction is important. It is not just that art has a different vocabulary or way of telling the same story. It is that this artist was not even thinking of illustrating the text, because he could have made a number of easy adjustments to avoid the contradictions in the action. He could have shown Orestes and Pylades with their heads covered or, conversely, Thoas avoiding looking at them. Thoas could have been standing. The painting by its backdrop misleads us into thinking that it represents a performance of the actual play. One is, thus, left wondering whether the background is meant to be a scaenae frons or some other building, such as a temple. In fact, the very versatility of such scaenarum frontes makes it difficult to tell when it is a real scaenae frons, such as one sees in permanent Roman theaters. I pass over the fact that real buildings shared similar facades, as do, for example, the library and theater at Ephesus.
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