Page 13 - GALIET EURIPIDES´MACARIA´S GIFTS: The Angel IV

Galiet & Galiet
tears mix’d with mine do overflow. This world, by waters sent from thee, my heavens dissolvèd so.3
The importance of Iolaus 3⁄4 my background. What the audience shall know, it will come in my becoming. For now, it knows Demophon’s reason, his heart. Demophon has heard Iolaus’ howling pleas, his wounds, theirs and Macaria’s (in disguise). For humanitarian reasons, for kinship reasons and for fear of political disgrace, Demophon succors them and lands them on the land to land on: Athens. First, Demophon knows, all too well, that to deport asylum seekers is impious, unjust. Zeus demands respect. Utter respect. Second, to deport his distant kin is to transgress filial duty and bond. Third, to dishonour Athenian codes of conduct is to reduce, to demote Athens’ reputation, Athens’ name, well renowned for its democratic ideals of justice and freedom. Yet, Iolaus despairs when learning of King Eurystheus’ landing 3⁄4 the enemy 3⁄4 and of the oracle’s request that a virgin from a noble father be sacrificed to Persephone, Queen of the Underworld, to win victory.
The audience clearly apprehends that someone will be the victim, though it wonders who it might be. Nonetheless, the spark of curiosity gleams when Demophon refuses to sacrifice neither his nor any of his noble men’s daughters. The audience, at this point, comes in contact with, understands, the reversals and transience of human fortune: a quintessential theme of Greek tragedy4; fortune, at once it comes, at once it goes. Yet when this sudden reversal from good fortune to bad fortune occurs to a decent man or woman, like Iolaus and Alcmene, and to innocent children, like Macaria and her siblings, it projects unto the audience not only a propensity to feelings of disgust5 but also a vortex-like anxiety at seeing
3 Donne, John. Poems of John Donne. vol I. E. K. Chambers, ed. London: Lawrence & Bullen, 1896. 39-40
4 Odysseus in Sophocles’ Ajax (122-126); Polyxena in Hecabe (349-57)
5 In Chapter 13 of Aristotle’s Poetics, Aristotle says that reversal from good to bad fortune evokes disgust instead of fear or pity particularly when bad fortune arises out of ignorance. Though this is evident in the case of King Oedipus, we don’t see Iolaus acting out of ignorance of a material fact. Rather, he is fully aware of his precarious existence even while helping Heracles.
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