Dearest Haimon

University Press Scholarship Online

Oxford Scholarship Online

The Tangled Ways of Zeus: And Other Studies In and

Around Greek Tragedy
Alan H. Sommerstein

Print publication date: 2010

Print ISBN-13: 9780199568314
Published to Oxford Scholarship Online: September 2010
DOI: 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199568314.001.0001

Dearest Haimon
Alan H. Sommerstein (Contributor Webpage)

DOI:10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199568314.003.0015

Abstract and Keywords

This chapter, concurring with most recent scholars that Sophocles, Antigone 572 is
spoken by Ismene and not Antigone, examines the implications of the fact that she calls
her cousin Haimon dearest (philtate). No other woman in tragedy applies this
superlative adjective to a man unless he is a very close relation (father, brother,
husband, son), or a bringer of welcome news, or an actual or potential saviour. Ismene's
use of it in reference to Haimon is thus abnormal as abnormal as Kreon's apparent
total lack of philia towards his son, whose betrothed he has sentenced to death without
any consideration for his feelings. Ismene, in contrast, has throughout represented the
principle of unconditional loyalty to (living) kin, and has just shown herself willing to give
her life in solidarity with a sister who had rejected her.
Keywords: Sophocles, Antigone, Kreon, Haimon, Ismene, philia, kin

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Dearest Haimon
Malcolm Davies1 has recently restated and amplified the case for accepting the

manuscripts' attribution of Antigone 572 ( ' , ' ) to

Ismene rather than Antigone, and the increasingly strong scholarly consensus in favour
of this attribution has since been crowned by its adoption in the Oxford edition of Lloyd
Jones and Wilson.2 The arguments in its favour are on the whole powerful: not so much
the arguments deriving from the contribution this passage might make to the
presentation of Antigone in the play as a whole (it is as easyor as hardto extract from
the play a plausible and coherent Antigone who does speak 572 as to extract one who
does not) as those based on formal and verbal features of the immediate context. For
Antigone to speak here would be a breach of the regular conventions of stichomythia.3
Kreon's reply ( ) makes perfect sense if
addressed to Ismene,4 who is pressing him on the touchy subject of Haimon's betrothal
in a manner he would be bound to find highly vexatious, but seems remarkably weak if
spoken to Antigone who is guilty of something, in his eyes, vastly worse. And if Antigone is
addressed, would we not expect her to reply?5 These (p.203) considerations, while not
decisive, do set up a definite prima facie case in favour of the manuscript attribution, and
put the burden of proof on those who would reject it.
[72] There remains, however, one consideration of the same order which should give us
pause. If the manuscripts are right, Ismene apostrophizes Haimon as . Would it
be proper for her to speak of him thus? The question I am posing should be carefully
distinguished from the question whether dearest Haemon is more appropriately
spoken by a fiance than by a mere cousin6 or whether Ismene can be allowed to use
the expression in Antigone's presence.7 The question that needs to be asked is whether it
would be proper in any situation, given a woman and a man placed with respect to each
other as Ismene and Haimon are, for the former to call the latter an issue in
principle quite independent of what Antigone's connections are with Haimon, or indeed of
her very existence.
Some have thought the answer to this question selfevident,8 but an investigation of the
actual use of by women speaking to or about men in tragedy suggests
otherwise. It suggests, in fact, that if Ismene speaks Ant. 572, her use of is
unique in surviving Greek tragedy. The number of relevant passages in the extant plays,
if we omit Ant. 572 itself, is fiftytwo9six in Aeschylus, fourteen in Sophocles, and thirty
two in Euripides. They fall into three classes: (p.204)
1. In the vast majority of cases the person addressed or described as
is a very close member of the speaker's familyfather,10 [73] brother,11
husband,12 or son.13
2. There are two examples (one Sophoclean, seven Euripidean) of the usage
discussed by Gregor (1957), where a person is called because he is a
bringer of what may be best defined as welcome news. News may be welcome
because it is good news (Soph. Tr. 232; Eur. Herakl. 788, Supp. 641, El. 229,
767; at Eur. Hec. 990 the speaker pretends to welcome good news which she
actually knows to be false) or because the speaker hopes it will be good (Eur.

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Dearest Haimon
Hec. 505) or simply because it brings release from suspense (Eur. Phoin. 1072).
3. It is also possible for a woman to address in this way a man who has been, or
who she hopes will become, her saviour. Thus the chorus of Seven against
Thebes so address Eteokles (677) on whom the city's safety, and therefore their
own, depends. Antigone speaks of Theseus and his (Soph.
OC 1103), who have saved her and Ismene from their Theban kidnappers.
Electra (Soph. El. 1354, 1357) ecstatically greets Orestes' paidagogos, whom she
describes as '
. Andromache, supplicating Peleus to save her and her child from
death, apologizes for being unable to make the full suppliant gesture of touching
his (Eur. Andr. 574). With these we may also class Eur. IT
1065 where Iphigeneia brackets herself with Orestes and Pylades as
: (p.205) their coming has given her the chance to escape from
her hated Taurian exile.14
[74] If our line is spoken by Antigone, it can reasonably be assigned to class (1); to be
sure, Haimon is a prospective rather than an actual husband, and to that extent there is
no exact parallel, but the betrothed maiden is not a very frequent charactertype in
tragedy and the absence of a parallel could not really be regarded as suspicious.
If, however, the speaker is Ismene, things are much more difficult. There can evidently
be no possible justification for the superlative under rubric (2) or (3); we are not
informed at any stage in the play of any action at all by Haimon which affected, or was
likely to affect, Ismene directly for good or ill. And Haimon falls, in relation to Ismene, well
outside the category covered by (1), which excludes not only cousins but even, so far as
the evidence goes, closer relations such as uncles, nephews, and grandsons,15 while
Ismene's connection with him as a prospective sisterinlaw is of so little significance that
classical Attic had no word to describe it.16
17 it would be hard to claim

Abnormal as ' would thus be on Ismene's lips,

that this should outweigh the other evidence that favours her as the speaker of 572.
Rather we should perhaps accept the abnormality, acknowledge that the expression is a
startling (p.206) one which would draw attention to itself, and ask whether there are
special circumstances that would explain and justify its use.

Mary Whitlock Blundell18 has seen a special circumstance in Ismene's affectionate

nature. Certainly Ismene is as full of feel[75]ings of towards Antigone as the latter
is barren of them towards her,19 and she has just offered to lay down her life to show
solidarity with and moral support of Antigone, to do honour to Polyneikes (545), and
because for her life without Antigone would not be worth living (548, 566). But despite
Antigone's gibe that Ismene is Kreon's (549), she has said nothing hitherto to
make us suppose that her affectionate feelings extend beyond her immediate kin. Indeed
her first words in the play (11ff.) suggest that for her means, essentially, immediate
kin; if she has heard no word of her since her brothers killed each other, then
Kreon and Haimon, in whose house she and Antigone have been living (cf. 491, 5313),
do not count for her as . No more than Antigone does she think of Kreon as her
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Dearest Haimon
uncle or her guardian: she thinks of him as the ruler and representative of the state (cf.
44 with 47 , also 60 , 63 '
, 67 ).
Thus Ismene's outburst is not only unique in expression; it is also unprepared for.
Nothing has led us to imagine that she regarded Haimon as at all; yet now she calls
him . If her personality, as revealed up to this point, cannot by itself explain this,
can the immediate context do so?
Ismene, we have seen, is unconditionally loyal to her living immediate kin,20 but all her
interactions in the play are with persons who do not show such loyalty. In the opening
scene, on discovering that she is not prepared to sacrifice her life for the dead, Antigone
calls her an enemy (86, 93) and a contemnor of that which the gods hold in honour (77
' ' ). When they meet again, and Ismene gives the highest
possible proof of her (p.207) devotion to Antigone, Antigone not only rejects her self
sacrifice but does so in as cutting and hostile a manner as she can, and Ismene feels that
she has been treated with contempt unbecoming a sister (544 , , '
). But at least Antigone's attitude, however wrong, is itself based on feelings of
feelings that Ismene can understand because she too [76] shares them, though
not to the same extent.21 In Kreon, on the other hand, she finds herself confronted with
someone who seems, to judge by his words, to have no feeling of for his immediate
22; someone who,
kin; someone who, it might be said,
when it is drawn to his attention that he is injuring his own wholly innocent son, can reply
(569) in terms showing no more consideration for the son's feelings than if Haimon were a
ram or a bull.23 Such an attitude is the very negation of everything we have seen Ismene
say and do; no wonder she is moved to speak of it in the same language that Antigone has
used to her and she to Antigone about behaviour that each saw as contempt for the
claims of immediate kin ' . It may be that she speaks of Haimon as
out of fellowfeeling for a fellowvictim of such unwarranted contempt; it may be
that she is not calling him to herself at all, but reminding Kreon that his son is, or
ought to be, to him; at any rate her extraordinary expression is to be
accounted for by, and serves to draw our attention most arrestingly to, the
extraordinary indifference of Kreon to his son.
It is the climax, and almost the end, of her role in the play. Within four lines she has
recognized that in pleading for Antigone to be spared, even for Haimon's sake, she is
beating her head against a stone wall; within nine she has been taken offstage, not to
appear again; at the end of the following scene her condemnation is casually (p.208)
rescinded (76971), and by 941, when Antigone speaks of herself as the only remaining
member of the royal house, Ismene's very existence has been forgotten. But she has had
her moment, and she has had her function: to represent the principle of being
(99), the principle that both Antigone and Kreon in their different ways refuse to
recognize.24
Notes:

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Dearest Haimon
(1) Davies (1986).
(2) LloydJones and Wilson (1990a); cf. LloydJones and Wilson (1990b: 1278).
(3) Cf. Mastronarde (1979: 956).
(4) See (in particular on = the marriage you speak of) Davies (1986: 212);
LloydJones and Wilson (1990b: 267, 128).
(5) Hence there was a certain logic in the proposal of Dawe (1978 b: 1068) to give 574
(and 576) as well as 572 to Antigone; unfortunately the lines are utterly unsuited to her
(see West (1979 b: 108), LloydJones and Wilson (1990b:128), who concur in giving 574
and 576 to Ismene).
(6) Brown (1987: 169) (not his own view).
(7) G. Mller (1967: 111).
(8) For example Knox (1968: 755), who thinks that the argument of Mller (1967) can be
dismissed in view of the frequent occurrence of this form of as a common
salutation and then cites two examples, both spoken by males to males (one by the
leader of a chorus of satyrs!); Hester (1971: 30 n. 1) (the epithet she [Ismene] applies to
Haemon is in no way remarkable); Paduano (1982: i. 2923 n. 39) ( risibile l'obiezione
secondo la quale la cognata (e perch non anche cugina?) Ismene non pu apostrofare
Emone con ').
(9) This does not include such passages as Aesch. Cho. 1051 where the speaker is calling
the addressee not to herself but to some third person.
(10) Aesch. Cho. 496; Soph. El. 462; Eur. IA 652 (curiously, the father is Agamemnon in all
three cases).
(11) Aesch. Cho. 235; Soph. Ant. 81 (Antigone speaking of the dead Polyneikes; the only
place, except 572, where is used at all in this play), El. 808, 903, 1126, 1158,
1163, 1208, 1224, 1286; Eur. El. 1322, IT 815, 827, Phoin. 166, 1437, 1702, Or. 217,
1045, IA 1452.
(12) Aesch. Cho. 893; Eur. Andr. 222, El. 345, HF 490, 514, 531, Hel. 595, 625, 899, 1299.
We should also include here Aesch. Ag. 1654: it is not clear at what moment (if ever)
Klytaimestra becomes Aigisthos' , but she has already publicly avowed their
relationship (14346) and in a few moments, like a bridegroom of the wrong gender, she
will be leading him into her house.
(13) Aesch. Pers. 851; Eur. Suppl. 793, Tro. 757, Ion 1409, Ba. 1298.
(14) Orestes is of course her brother, but we can hardly suppose she calls Pylades
because he is her cousin (91719) and Electra's husband (91315); she has

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Dearest Haimon
this day met him for the first time, and he was not born when she disappeared at Aulis
(9201).
(15) Note that in Euripides' Orestes, though the cousins Orestes and Pylades can speak
of each other as (733, 1233), Orestes can also use language implying that they
with
are not (8046, contrasting with and
).
(16) Classical Attic uses one term, , reciprocally for all male relations by
marriage; there is no general term for a female relation by marriage, and we know (in
prose) of only one specific term, motherinlaw (Dem. 45.70). See Thompson
(1971). Indeed even the elaborate, IndoEuropeandescended set of affinity terms we
find in Homer does not include, and seems never to have included, any term for wife's
sister or for sister's husband.
(17) Even in comedy, Aristophanes and Menander together can show only one passage
(Ar. Lys. 853) where a respectable wife, maiden, or widow addresses or speaks of a man
not of her immediate family as .
(18) Whitlock Blundell (1989: 108 n. 11).
(19) Cf.ibid. 11115.
(20) The qualification living is crucial: she will defy the state and risk her life for Antigone,
but not for the dead Polyneikes. Antigone's priorities are the reverse: in spirit she herself
has long been dead (55960).
(21) She has begged the pardon of her dead kinsfolk for failing to act on their behalf (65
6), and when she offers to die with Antigone she does so partly in order to do honour to
their dead brother (545).
(22) Men. Asp. 11718 (the prologuegoddess speaking of Smikrines whom she has just
described as surpassing all men in wickedness).
(23) This brutality may be compounded by the impersonalsounding plurals of 571
), especially if the audience knew or suspected, from
(
previous dramatic or poetic versions of the story, that Kreon actually had only one
surviving son.
(24) This chapter was originally published, under the title Soph. Ant. 572 (Dearest
Haimon), in Museum Criticum 258 (19903) 716. I am most grateful to Pacini Editore
for giving permission for this republication.

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Dearest Haimon

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