Joseph Di Properzio, Fordham University
The literary value of fourth-century tragedy has been debated since Bruno Snell’s 1971 collection of tragic fragments and Georgia Xanthakis-Karamanos’ 1980 study on fourth-century tragedy because of the scanty number of fragments from this period in Attic tragedy. Liapis and Stephanopoulos (2019, 63-5) argue that there is no significant stylistic period which can be called fourth-century tragedy, which in their interpretation is a mere chronological period which serves as a transition from the fifth century to Hellenistic tragedy while retaining stylistic similarities with the former. Dunn (2019, 243) offers another interpretation which acknowledges both continuity and innovation in fourth-century tragedy. Fourth-century tragedy found its stylistic model in Euripides (Liapis and Stephanopoulos 2019, 64). This paper examines representations of women in the fragments of the often forgotten but one of the most important tragedians of fourth-century Athens, Carcinus, and argues that these depictions reveal how this fourth-century tragedian imitates the style of Euripides but also innovates upon the Euripidean treatment of myths by omitting scenes of violence which involve women.
Carcinus, who flourished between 380 and 376, was most famous for his Alope and Medea, both of which departed from fundamental details of earlier representations of these myths (Dunn 2019, 255). Euripides composed tragedies on both of these myths, but Carcinus changes the plots drastically. In the older version of the Alope myth Cercyon punishes his daughter Alope and her son because of her seduction by the god Poseidon, but in Carcinus’ version Cercyon commits suicide after learning that Poseidon is the culprit (Karamanou 2003, 37 and n. 91; Wright 2016, 111). In Carcinus’ Medea the title character does not kill her children but rather hides them from Jason and sends them to Athens for safety (Dunn 2019, 255; Karamanou 2003, 38). Stylistically, however, Carcinus imitates Euripides, as seen in a fragment of Carcinus’ Semele (TrGF 1.70 F3) where the speaker calls woman an evil in imitation of the title character’s diatribe against women in Euripides’ Hippolytus (Hipp. 616-17). In an etiology about the cult of Demeter (TrGF 1.70 F5) Carcinus imitates Euripides’ etiologies which are often placed at the end of tragedies such as the etiologies of female rituals in the Hippolytus and Iphigenia at Tauris (Hip. 1423-40; I.T. 1446-72; Kearns 2023, 11-15). In this same fragment Carcinus uses the rare adjective μελαμφαεῖς (“whose light is black”) which is attested elsewhere only in Euripides’ Helen (Hel. 518). Carcinus imitates Euripides’ style by employing etiology and diatribe but departs from his fifth-century model by omitting murder in his representations of the myths of Alope and Medea. Scholarship has repeatedly noted Carcinus’ “sensitivity” in avoiding involvement of women in murder either as perpetrators or victims (Dunn 2019, 255; Karamanou 2003, 38-40; Xanthakis-Karamanos 1980, 168).
Carcinus’ more genteel treatment than Euripides of female characters can be interpreted as an innovation in fourth-century Attic tragedy to avoid or at least depict female violence less often than fifth-century tragedy.