Tragic Money

Journal of Hellenic Studies

Volumn 118, Issue , 1998, Pages 119-139

  Seaford, Richard ^a  

^a UNIVERSITY OF EXETER   (United Kingdom)

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EID: 84983050483     PISSN: 00754269     EISSN: 20414099     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.2307/632234     Document Type: Article

References (169)

1. e.g. J.-P. Vernant, Myth and Tragedy in Ancient Greece (trans, by Janet Lloyd, 2nd ed., New York 1988) 23–8.
2. See e.g. P.E. Easterling, ‘Anachronism in Greek Tragedy’, JHS 105 (1985) 1–10
3. whose two paragraphs on coinage are the only treatment known to me of tragic money, apart from occasional remarks on money from a perspective very different from mine in ch.7 of S. von Reden, Exchange in Ancient Greece (London 1995).
4. The cultural consequences of money in early Greece have received far less attention than those of literacy. Notable exceptions are G. Thomson, The First Philosophers (2nd ed., London 1961)
5. M. Shell, The Economy of Literature (Baltimore & London 1978)
6. L. Kurke, The Traffic in Praise: Pindar and the Poetics of Social Economy (Ithaca, NY, and London 1991).
7. For this analysis see e.g. K. Polanyi, The Livelihood of Man (New York, San Francisco & London 1977) esp. 102–6. But on any reasonable definition of money, money barely exists in Homer.
8. PMG 910. This fell on receptive ears, being referred to by Hipponax (or Ananias: Ananias Fr 2 West).
9. as at e.g. Ar. Peace 1201.
10. e.g. J.R. Melville Jones, Testimonia Numaria (London 1993) ns. 46–9.
11. Thuc. 1.80.3–4, 83, 121.2, 141–3; 2.13.2–3.
12. Cf. e.g. [Xen.] Ath. Pol. 3.3
13. [Aristot.] Ath. Pol. 27.3.
14. A good recent overview of the problems of the early development of Greek coinage is by C. Howgego, Ancient History from Coins (London 1995) 1–7, 12–18.
15. Knights 797–8
16. Wasps 787–93
17. Clouds 247–9
18. Peace 1201–1202
19. Birds 301, 1105–1108
20. Frogs 139–41, 718–33
21. Eccl. 601–2, 815–22.
22. e.g. Eur. Su. 239 the useless wealthy are ‘always passionate for more’, $.
23. Hdt. 3.123–5. See §III.
24. It is not in Sappho Fr. 16 Lobel-Page
25. Xenophanes Fr. 2 West.
26. PMG 890
27. also Archil, fr. 19 West (‘I don't care about the wealth of Gyges etc’ continued presumably by specifying what is more important than wealth)
28. Theogn. 699–718
29. PMG 988
30. Eur. Med. 542–44, fr. 659.
31. Eur. fr. 142.
32. Eur. fr. 327
33. cf. also HF 669–720.
34. Eur. Med. 965.
35. Eur. fr. 324.
36. Fr. adesp. 181.
37. Eur. fr. 22
38. also fr. 95.
39. Eur. El. 38
40. cf. on the other hand Eur. fr. 1066 ($ remains).
41. Soph. fr. 354.
42. See 87 and 105 below. Cf. also Soph. OT 542
43. tyranny caught by $, cf. Aesch. Ag. 1638–1639)
44. Eur. Hek. 818 (payment for rhetoric lessons, which bestow power)
45. El. 428–9 ($ permits hospitality [but cf. 394–5] and saves from disease.
46. Eur. Phoen. 439–40
47. also HF 774–6
48. fr. 325
49. Fr. adesp. 294.
50. Eur.fr. 580.
51. Eur. Hek. 865
52. Su. 875–6
53. cf.fr. 1092.
54. Eur.fr. 341
55. cf. Ion 629.
56. Eur.fr. 252
57. Or. 644–5
58. cf also Aesch. Cho. 372
59. Eur. Hek. 1229
60. Tro. 432–3.
61. Eur. Su. 178, 239
62. Hek. 775. Conceivably the word may have lost erotic associations, however, in such passages.
63. Fr. adesp. 129.
64. Eur.frr. 163,542.
65. Eur.fr. 1066.
66. Aesch. Su. 935.
67. Aesch. Pers. 842
68. Eur. Alc. 56–9.
69. Eur. Ion 629–31
70. Med. 598–9
71. Phoen. 552–4.
72. Eur.fr. 543.4–5 (the only thing preferable to wealth).
73. Eur. Or. 1155–1156.
74. Eur.fr. 1046.
75. Fr. adesp. 130.
76. Eur. El. 941.
77. Eur.fr. 405.
78. Eur. fr. 934.
79. Eur. Or. 1156–1157.
80. Eur. HF 643–8.
81. Eur. fr. 527
82. cf. El. 253, 372.
83. John Jones, On Aristotle and Greek Tragedy (London 1962) 82–93 (citation from 88).
84. S. Goldhill, Reading Greek Tragedy (Cambridge 1986) 11.
85. This is a passage in Sitta von Reden's discussion of the scene in terms of how ‘commercial images convey meanings of social disruption in a complex sense’ (in her Exchange in Ancient Greece [London 1995] 161–4).
86. Her general approach to the scene is influenced by Goldhill's reading of it in terms of the manipulation (and openness) of signification in Language, Sexuality, Narrative: the Oresteia (Cambridge 1984) 66–79.
87. Commentators compare Theopompus FGrHist fr. 117 $ (at Colophon), ‘for the purple was being valued as equal in weight against silver’ (i.e. as worth its weight in silver).
88. It is interesting that the (potentially alarming and relatively novel) man-made inexhaustibility of money is envisaged in terms of the natural inexhaustibility of the sea—whether through reticence or anxiety or the need for a concrete analogue for a difficult abstraction. Cf. e.g. Soph. Ant. 1077 $ meaning bribed with silver.
89. Eur. El. 699–746 with Cropp ad loc.
90. IT 196
91. Or. 812–13, 995–1000.
92. The description is from L. Gernet's discussion of such objects in Greek myth (The Anthropology of Ancient Greece, transl. by J. Hamilton and B. Nagy [Baltimore 1981]) 73–111.
93. Ag. 1095–7, 1193, 1217–22, 1242–3, 1583–602.
94. Ag. 1638–1639 etc $…
95. Cho. 135, 250, 301
96. Eum.757–8.
97. W. Burkert, The Creation of the Sacred (Cambridge, Mass. 1996).
98. Hdt. 3.122 $.
99. Hdt. 3.56
100. C. Kraay, Archaic and Classical Greek Coins (London 1976) 30, 36.
101. G. Macdonald, Coin Types, Their Origin and Development (Glasgow 1905) 44–52
102. D. Steiner, The Tyrant's Writ (Princeton 1994) 159–63.
103. For the ‘thalassocracy’ of Polykrates see Hdt. 3.122
104. Thuc. 1.13; 3.104
105. also Hdt. 3.39,44–5.
106. as does, in a different way, the story of Gyges and his seal-ring: R. Seaford, Reciprocity and Ritual (Oxford 1994) 224–5.
107. By far the closest is Od. 14.324–6 (=19.293–5), in which it is said that the ‘bronze and gold and much-worked iron’ gathered by Odysseus as he travelled in search of gain ‘would feed one man after another to the tenth generation’.
108. Cf. also Od. 3.301.
109. Denniston and Page in their commentary write $ (in 1015) is odd here, for this (i.e. the sentence about agriculture) is simply a further illustration of the same theme’, failing to see the contrast, which makes $ appropriate. Cf. e.g. Theogn. 197–202.
110. See also Med. 968
111. Hipp. 964–5
112. cf. Soph. OT 30.
113. See e.g. Mary Douglas, Purity and Danger (London 1994; first pub. 1966) 70: ‘money is only an extreme and specialised type of ritual’.
114. e.g by O. Taplin, Greek Tragedy in Action (London 1978) 79–82.
115. $ at Ag. 921, 960, 963, 1383
116. $- at Ag. 923, 926, 936
117. Cho. 1013
118. Eum. 460.
119. Ag. 910, 957.
120. At Ach.Tat.2.11.5–6 the dye $ is mistaken for blood
121. A.R. 4.668
122. Bion Epitaph.21; etc.
123. R. Seaford, ‘The last bath of Agamemnon’, CQ 34 (1984) 247–54.
124. See esp. Eur. Tro. 377–8: $ (and 390).
125. On the link between $ and the handling (washing and dressing) of the corpse see esp. Soph. Ant. 897–902.
126. Seaford (n.75), ch.3.
127. Seaford (n.4).
128. Cf e.g. Eur. Su. 123, 520–63 (Theseus on the unburied dead at Thebes)
129. Phylarchus FGrHist 81 F 45 ap. Athen. 52Id.
130. That is why, as we saw (§III) at Aesch. Ag. 1008–1014, it may be advisable to jettison the cargo.
131. e.g. Soph. OT 380
132. fr. 88
133. Eur. Su. 450–1
134. Ion 626–30
135. Or. 1156
136. fr. 420. Note the $ of Kimon ([Aristot.] Ath. Pol.27.3).
137. See also Hdt. 1.61, 64
138. Pl. Rep. 338ab, 567d, 568d. The sentiment in OT must have been strongly felt, for it applies in fact to the career neither of Oedipus nor of Kreon.
139. Similarly Eur. Hcld. 678
140. Rhes. 405
141. PI. Crito 45d, 50b2, 54c8, Ep. 328el.
142. LSJ cite, under the meaning ‘because’, this line of Ant. and Ar. Plut. 433–4, which however means ‘you will pay the penalty in return for your attempt to banish me’.
143. Under the meaning ‘wherefore’ LSJ cite PV 31
144. Soph. OT 264
145. Thuc. 6.83
146. Ev. Luc. 12.3
147. Jebb cites Soph. OC 1295; but in all these cases too (except the much later Ev. Luc.) it is a matter of exchange.
148. Further, the replaceability of the spouse (or betrothed)—stressed by both Kreon (526) and Antigone (909)—is analogous to the replaceability of goods by means of money, whereas the natural tie of blood-kin may be, Antigone maintains (911–2), irreplaceable: see S. Murnaghan in AJP 107 (1986) 199
149. Seaford (n.75) 216–8. Similarly Klytaimestra, who implies the unlimited power of money to replace goods (§III), has already replaced her spouse, while ironically praising his uniqueness (895–901—in images associated with death ritual: Seaford [n.94] 254), having just used (888) the same verb ($) of her tears for him having dried up as she later uses to express the inexhaustibility of the sea (as a metaphor, we have seen, for the unlimited power of money). I owe much in this note to Betty Belfiore.
150. See esp. Aristot. Pol. 1257b
151. EN 1133a. Inscribed laws have survived enforcing the acceptability and use of local currency: the Attic inscription referred to below (n.118)
152. also SIG3 218, 525.
153. See e.g. the inscribed Attic law published by R.S. Stroud in Hesperia 43 (1974) 157–88: inter alia the public tester is to neutralise silver coins which are bronze or lead underneath.
154. Kraay (n.72) 58–59.
155. Ps.Aristot. Oeconomica (fourth century BC) 1347a.
156. We may even be reminded of the tyrant described by Thrasymachus in Plato's Republic, whose massive thefts and enslavement of the citizen body are sanctioned by the justice that he himself creates (justice being ‘the interest of the stronger’): Rep. 38e, 344a-c.
157. M. Nussbaum, The Fragility of Goodness (Cambridge 1986) 58 writes ‘By making all values commensurable in terms of a single coin—he is preoccupied with the image of coinage and profit in ethical matters—Creon achieves singleness, straightness, and an apparent stability’. This is perceptive, but money in the play does I believe far more than provide ethical imagery that is analogous to Kreon's habit of mind.
158. See e.g. C. Rycroft, A Critical Dictionary of Psychoanalysis (London 1968) 29–30, 125–6
159. J. Laplanche and J.B. Portalis, The Language of Psychoanalysis (London 1980) 349–60.
160. notably in Pentheus in Eur. Ba., as shown by M. Parsons in BICS 35 (1988) 1–14, who also offers an excellent general defence of the application of psychoanalytic insights to tragedy.
161. IG V 1390.47–8
162. Phryn. Praep. Soph. 30.10 (de Borries).
163. Ps.Plat. De Virt. 378e.
164. Falsely stamped coin is a moral image already at Aesch. Ag.780.
165. Od. 19.390–475; 21.217–223. Odysseus' scar was acquired in a hunt. So too was Orestes’, but as he was a small child, the hunt becomes a playful chase of a fawn inside the house (or courtyard).
166. On the resemblance of the shield-devices in Aesch. Sept. to coin-marks see Steiner (n.73) 53–59.
167. At Eur. IT 813–5 this golden lamb is actually depicted among the scenes woven on the cloth by which Orestes proves to his sister his identity.
168. Soph. OT 541–2
169. cf. e.g. Eur. Phoen. 402–5, which makes it clear that, for keeping friends, money is more important than noble birth.