Dissa pneumata pneis,  Erôs:
Doubling Desire on the Euripidean Stage

Nicholas C. Rynearson (University of Georgia)

One of the most striking features of the encomia to Eros in Plato’s Symposium, is that their primary point of reference is ethical, making both Eros, the divinity, and erôs, the force, a source of human excellence (aretê) and canonical virtues such as andreia and sôphrosunê.  The ethical role that Plato’s symposiasts assign to erôs culminates in Diotima’s excursus of the scala amoris (210a-212b), where erôs becomes the driving force behind the philosopher’s progress, followed by Socrates’ assertion that there is no better helper (sunergos) for human nature in the pursuit of the philosophical life (212b).  This philosophical version of erôs marks a strong departure from traditional literary representations of desire, where erôs is at best ambiguous and more frequently a destructive and invasive force that leads to disease, corruption and madness.

However, while Plato’s elaboration of a theory of erôs in the Symposium is certainly innovative in many respects, the positive role it assigns to erôs is not without precedent.  In this paper I argue that in the late fifth century Euripides already opens a space for imagining a version of erôs that is not only compatible with but even conduces to the attainment of virtues such as aretê and sôphrosunê.  While Euripidean plots often focus on the disastrous consequences of desire, certain characters or choruses offer alternative models of erôs that view both its nature and its consequences in a more positive light.  Among these alternative views, two substantial fragments from Euripides’ lost plays provide the strongest positive evaluations of erôs.  In Fragment 661 Kannicht, from the prologue to the Stheneboea, Bellerophon suggests a distinction between two types of erôs, a familiar destructive one and another that promotes a life of virtue and good repute:

…there are two erôtes nourished in the land:
one is most hateful and leads to Hades,
the other leads to self-restraint (to sôphron) on the path to virtue (aretê),
sought-after (zêlôtos) by those in whose company I would be counted.

(fr. 661.22-25)

Similarly, a lyric fragment from an unidentified play (897 Kannicht) claims that erôs is the foundation of wisdom (sophia).  The speaker, perhaps a chorus, goes on first to reject those who are ‘uninitiated into love’s labors’ (tois d’ atelestois / tôn toude [i.e., Eros’] ponôn mête suneiên) since they are uncivilized (their tropoi are agrioi) and then to counsel the young (neoi) to embrace erôs as a beneficial influence.

In my paper, I offer a detailed reading of these two fragments and place them in the larger context of alternative attitudes towards erôs in Euripides, reflected in several other fragments (especially 388 and 929a Kannicht) and in choral odes from the Medea (627-643 and 825-845), Hippolytus (525-545) and Iphigenia in Aulis (543-557).  The image of a second, positively valued erôs set in opposition to its more traditional, threatening counterpart emerges from the consideration of these passages as a recurrent Euripidean motif that represents a significant development in a changing public discourse of desire in Athens in the late fifth century.