嘆願と死と乙女-「ダナイデス」三部作における『ヒケティデス』

Abstract

The Suppliant Women of Aischylos is unique in its elaborate descriptions of the supplication which the Danaids make twice and in the repeated expressions of their readiness to kill themselves. Supplication and self-killing are the main features of this first play of the Danaid Trilogy. This paper explores the function that these two features perform in the whole trilogy while minimizing the conjectural reconstruction of the trilogy. Their act of supplication in the first play reveals their egotistical, godless and aggressive character, while their aspiration for death evidences their indiscretion in speech, unstable faith and mental weakness. The self-indulgent behaviours of these man-hating maidens shortly bring their host city Argos into war with the Egyptians and cause the massacre of their cousins. But the trilogy as a whole is a story that deals with Hypermestra, one of the Danaids, who deadly hates her cousins at the outset but marries one of them by the end. It is very probable that the matrimonial union is justified and the marriage of Hypermestra is given divine sanction in the third play. The Ancient Greeks believed that marriage was the means of bringing a woman from savagery to civilized order. Then, what the Danaids' supplication and desire for self-killing in the Suppliant Women presented to the Greek audience was precisely the wild maidens who would have to be domesticated at a high expense.