カロン・テアマ : 運ばれてきた将たちの遺体(Eur. Supp.783)

Abstract

When the corpses of the Argive generals are finally being brought onto the stage of the Supplices of Euripides, their mothers, impatient to see them and with mixed feelings, call the spectacle of the corpses ‘kalon theama' (beautiful spectacle). We wonder why the presumably decayed corpses can be described using the adjective kalon. We must consider the meaning of this word and refer to the phrase kalon theama in Il.22.73 and the Leontius episode in Plato's Republic where the sight of the corpse of an executed criminal is described with our phrase in question. Kalon theama must mean, in our context, a spectacle that evokes the image of the generals dying in a brilliant fight that deeply touches the spectators. That spectacle actually makes the mothers and the Argive king burst into wild lamentation, while the end of the spectacle once they are cremated marks the end of such emotions. The display of that spectacle would testify to their honourable death, but Theseus sends them to the funeral pyre without making any occasion for recounting their death or allowing anyone to look on the corpses, for he believes that Argives started an unjust war. Pacifism is one of the conspicuous messages of this play which mainly arises from the emotions for the corpses. Theseus, however, stands with Athene aloof from it all: he holds that everything about war should be decided with a sober mind unaffected by any emotive element of the circumstances.