Actor and Character in Greek Tragedy

Actor and Character in Greek Tragedy
Author(s): Mark Damen

Source: Theatre Journal , Oct., 1989, Vol. 41, No. 3, Performance in Context (Oct.,
1989), pp. 316-340
Published by: The Johns Hopkins University Press
Stable URL: https://www.jstor.org/stable/3208183
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Actor and Character in Greek Tragedy
Mark Damen
There is a well known but little discussed rule of Greek drama that only thr
actors played all the speaking characters in a tragedy.1 The rule had an unquestionab
strong impact on the structure of Greek tragedy, as can be seen, for example,
Jocasta's early exit (Oedipus The King, 1072), which allows the actor to change mask
and costume and return as the herdsman (1110).2 While scholars have researche
the origin and nature of this rule in some depth, relatively little attention has been
given to the ways in which Greek playwrights dealt with the rule.3
Mark Damen teaches at the Utah State University in Logan. He has published papers on Gre
tragedy and Roman comedy, has had his adaptations of classical drama staged, and has also perfor
in plays from the ancient repertory.
'In this study I am heavily indebted to the work of A. Pickard-Cambridge, The Dramatic Festiv
of Athens, 2nd ed. (Oxford, 1968), still the best study of dramatic practices in Athens. A short revie
of ancient actors and the characters they played is found in Z. Pavlovskis, "The Voice of the Ac
in Greek Tragedy," Classical World 71 (1977): 113-23. Pavlovskis's study differed from mine in
sidering possible or likely combinations of roles and discussing Aeschylus and Sophocles at grea
length than I do. This study focuses on Euripides and those role-distributions that can be rec
structed with certainty. Also of great assistance were the recent contributions of J. Michael Wal
Greek Theatre Practice (Westport, Connecticut, 1980), especially 138-44; Francois Jouan, "Reflexi
sur le r6le du protagoniste tragique," in Theatre et spectacles dans l'antiquite in Actes du Colloqu
Strasbourg, November 1981, (1983) 63-80; P. Walcot, Greek Drama in Its Theatrical and Social Con
(Cardiff, Wales, 1976) especially 44ff. Of earlier scholarship, still pertinent are G. Norwood, Gr
Tragedy (New York, 1960); R. C. Flickinger, The Greek Theatre and Its Drama (Chicago, 1936); and
general bibliography, M. Bieber, The History of the Greek and Roman Theater (Princeton, 1961),
n.11. The controversy over the three-actor rule extends back as far as K. F. Hermann, Disputati
distributione personarum inter histriones in tragoediis graecis (Marsburg, 1840); and Richter, Vertheil
der Rollen (Berlin, 1842). It should be noted that this rule does not seem to have applied to
Comedy with the same consistency it did to tragedy: see Pickard-Cambridge, Dramatic Festiv
149ff. and Walton, Greek Theatre Practice, 141-42, who pointed to the many difficulties in distribut
roles among three actors in The Acharnians, Lysistrata, and The Frogs.
2See below, note 47. Jouan ("R6flexions sur le role," 71) pointed out that Aeschylus did much
same in The Suppliants, if it is true that he used only two actors there. Danaus exits at 775, leav
his daughters in danger, because the actor must change costume and return as the Egyptian her
in the next scene.
3The evidence for the development and nature of the rule has been reviewed many times, perhaps
best by Pickard-Cambridge, Dramatic Festivals, 135ff. See also B. Gredley, "Greek tragedy and the
'discovery' of the actor," in Drama and the Actor, ed. J. Redmond (Cambridge, 1984), 1-14; B. Knox,
316

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ACTOR AND CHARACTER IN GREEK TRAGEDY / 317
The purpose of this article is to investigate the combinations of roles that an ancient
tragedian assigned to one actor and to delineate any patterns that exist. Rather than
deliberate upon which of the three actors portrayed which roles in a drama4--an
issue sometimes all too clear (Sophocles' Oedipus is obviously the protagonist's
property) but in many other cases hopelessly unclear (Did the protagonist of Antigone
play Creon or Antigone?)-I will focus instead on an important related question:
what types of roles did one actor play? Were the roles more often alike or different?
Did they cross the lines of gender and age?5 Did actors more often play characters
who are sympathetic or unsympathetic to one another? In this way, I hope to shed
light not only on the range of character depiction expected of actors in the Classical
period but also on the playwright's treatment of plot in light of the limitation in
actors.
To begin, these are the general features of Greek tragic production that pertain to
the specific intentions of this article. Greek tragedies were originally composed for
performance at the City Dionysia, an Athenian festival that hosted at the lowest
estimate ten thousand spectators.6 Prizes were given to the best playwright and actor
at the festival each year, awards of great event in that the winners' names were
publicly recorded on marble victory lists. All speaking roles in tragedy were portrayed
by three actors, only one of whom, the "protagonist," was in contention for a prize.7
Characters not portrayed by these actors could be performed by "mute actors," whose
silence on stage was rigidly enforced.8 All actors wore masks and body-length cos-
tumes hiding their personal features except height and voice. The mask and costume
"Aeschylus and the Third Actor," in Word and Action: Essays on the Ancient Theatre (Baltimore: Johns
Hopkins Press, 1979), 39-55; Jouan, "R6flexions sur le r61le," 66; Walton, Greek Theatre Practice, 138ff.;
Walcot, Greek Drama in Theatrical and Social Context, 37; Bieber, Greek and Roman Theater, 80ff.; O. J.
Todd, Classical Quarterly 32 (1938): 30ff. See below, Appendix (Why Only Three Actors?).
4Many scholars have addressed this question. See Walton, Greek Theatre Practice, 140f.; Jouan,
"R6flexions sur le r6le," 72f.; W. M. Calder, "The Protagonist of Sophocles' Antigone," Arethusa 4
(1971): 49-52 (with reply by F. Brown, 52-54); Pickard-Cambridge, Dramatic Festivals, 144.
5K. Rees, "The So-Called Rule of Three Actors in the Classical Greek Drama," dissertation, Uni-
versity of Chicago (1908) 14, phrased this problem eloquently: "If the economy of the play in the
conventional distribution of the roles forced the same actor to impersonate Antigone, Teiresias, and
Messenger, the actor certainly strove to adapt his voice and manner to the person whose mask he
was, for the time being, wearing. Any other assumption is as much as to say that the Greek playwright
did not seek to create a perfect illusion, but rather to impress upon the spectator the clumsiness of
the histrionic art, by which two incongruous roles were carried by the same actor." However, when
he concluded that role division was not possible because of the variety of roles the actor would have
had to play, he seriously underestimated the ancient actor's talents and his audience's ability to
suspend disbelief.
6See O. Taplin, Greek Tragedy in Action (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1978), 3.
7It is not certain that the term "protagonist" was used of the first actor in the fifth century.
"Deuteragonist" and "tritagonist" as technical terms for actors may also derive from later usage;
see Pickard-Cambridge, Dramatic Festivals, 132ff.
8cf. Orestes 1592, where Orestes answers a question directed to Pylades who is at that moment
being played by a mute actor.

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318 / Mark Damen
lent credibility to the separateness of characters played by the same actor and to that
extent made it possible for actors to play multiple roles.9
This role changing would have been merely an esoteric game between playwrights
and actors if the ancient audience could not have distinguished individual actors
behind their masks. Evidently, however, they could. Because awards were given not
to a company of three actors but to a principal actor alone, it is certain that the ancient
audience could detect at least that actor behind his various masks and costumes.10
Surely they could then also distinguish the rest of the actors. There were only two
others, and the audience would not likely have forgotten the standards by which
they evaluated the performance of a principal actor when they watched the other
actors, potential contenders in future contests."1 Still, that does not address the way
in which the ancient spectators differentiated the actors. Differences in height would
not have been visible from the distance at which most of the audience was seated.
Furthermore, the vast majority of the viewers would have been looking down from
above on the actors, a situation which would make whatever subtle distinctions in
height existed impossible to determine. Clearly, a distinctive vocal tone was the
principal factor involved in differentiating actors.12
Before continuing, I should clarify the methods I have used in determining the
roles one actor played. For the sake of brevity in the body of the article, I have put
the discussion of the application of these methods to specific plays in the notes. It
is not my purpose here to deliberate on which roles might have been given to one
actor but on how role changing affected Greek tragedy. Unless stated otherwise, the
roles discussed below can with certainty be assigned to one actor.
By the three-actor rule one can be sure that one actor played two characters in a
Greek drama only in certain situations. For instance, when three characters (A, B,
'Walcot, Greek Drama in Theatrical and Social Context, 57: "The mask has certainly obvious advantages:
it enables an actor, for instance, to play more than a single role in a play." See also D. Raeburn,
"Greek tragedy and the actor today," in Drama and the Actor, ed. J. Redmond (Cambridge, 1984),
15; T. B. L. Webster, "The Poet and the Mask," in Classical Drama and Its Influence, ed. M. J. Anderson
(New York, 1965), 5-13.
'oPlutarch (Life of Lysander 23.4) cited evidence from later antiquity that the principal actors could
be detected behind their masks, even if they were not playing characters of high social standing:
. in tragedies it happens fairly often that the actor who plays some messenger or servant is a
well-known protagonist and the other who plays a king is ignored even when speaking .. ." From
this it may be gathered that audiences at least in later antiquity could distinguish both principal and
nonprincipal actors; see Jouan, "R6flexions sur le r6le," 74.
"The protagonist's role was surely most often earned by an actor who had succeeded in lesser
roles; see Jouan, "Reflexions sur le r6le," 66.
12Pavlovskis, "The Voice of the Actor," 113f., eloquently discussed the distinctiveness of actors'
voices as the criterion by which ancient audiences distinguished actors; see also Jouan, "R6flexions
sur le r6le," 76ff.; Walcot, Greek Drama in Theatrical and Social Context, 25f. and 73f. That Sophocles
retired from acting because of his weak voice (microphonia) argues strongly for voice as a crucial
element in the ancient actor's art (Life of Sophocles 4). While voice was, no doubt, the most important
factor in identifying the actor in costume, other factors, such as personal mannerisms and peculiar
quirks, surely also helped the audience discern the identity of an actor, even when the actor disguised
his voice.

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and C) are onstage together, one (C) leaves and the others (A and B) remain, and
later another (D) enters, it is certain that one actor played both the character who
left and the one who later entered (C and D). To take the same example I used at
the beginning of the article, in Oedipus The King Oedipus, Jocasta, and the Corinthian
messenger share the stage until Jocasta leaves at 1072. At 1110 the herdsman enters
with Oedipus and the messenger still onstage. One actor must have played Jocasta
and the herdsman.
There is another way to ascertain the roles played by one actor. Although no such
rule is mentioned by the ancients, it is clear from the surviving plays that Greek
actors in the fifth century B.C. were discouraged from sharing roles. No tragedy
produced before 406 requires role sharing, that is, having one character represented
by more than one actor. The famous exception to this unstated rule is Sophocles'
Oedipus at Colonus, his last tragedy, which entails role sharing, in this case possibly
a late innovation and perhaps also a reflection on Theseus' character.13 Therefore, if
an actor played a certain role in one scene, he played that role again if it reappeared
in the play. For instance, in the beginning of Oedipus The King (85-150), Creon,
Oedipus, and the Priest are all speaking characters onstage together. Later in the
play (634-678), Creon, Oedipus, and Jocasta appear together. Even though all three
actors have had opportunities to change mask and costume offstage, one actor must
have played the Priest and Jocasta because the other actors must continue playing
the roles of Oedipus and Creon that they began playing.
One other feature of Classical tragedy assists in reconstructing role divisions.

Nowhere in Classical tragedy except in Aeschylus' Libation-Bearers (891-899) is an
actor required to exit and quickly return to the stage in another guise. "Lightning
changes," as they are called, became popular only after the fifth century B.C.14 In
the Classical age actors of tragedy were always granted a reasonable period of time
(thirty lines at least) to make a dignified change of costume and mask. This means
that one actor did not play characters who follow each other onstage in close suc-
cession. For example, in Euripides' Orestes, Menelaus leaves the stage at 716, Orestes
13Two tragedies, Sophocles' Oedipus at Colonus and Euripides' Phoenician Women, require actors to
share a role. For other reasons it is suspected that The Phoenician Women has been corrupted by later
writers and may not represent Euripides' staging; see Pickard-Cambridge, Dramatic Festivals, 147.
For the role sharing in Oedipus at Colonus, see pp. 142-44, where Pickard-Cambridge made a sensible
reply to E. B. Ceadel, "The Division of Parts among the Actors in Sophocles' Oedipus Coloneus,"
Classical Quarterly 35 (1941): 139-47. It should be noted that role sharing is unavoidable in later Greek
comedy.
14Just as role sharing was a feature of Sophocles' last play, the lightning change in The Libation-
Bearers, one of Aeschylus' final dramas, may represent a late innovation of his that did not catch
on until the next century; see Gredley, "Greek tragedy and the 'discovery' of the actor," 13. Rhesus
626-674 also requires lightning changes, which is a good indication that the play was written in the
fourth century and is not Euripides' play of the same name, a point that has been made on other
grounds, see Pickard-Cambridge, Dramatic Festivals, 148.

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320 / Mark Damen
soliloquizes briefly, and Pylades appears at 725. Menelaus and Pylades cannot have
been played by the same actor in Euripides' day.15
Application of the Three-Actor Rule

On first approaching the issue of how the ancient tragedians dealt with the lim-
itation in number of actors, we are confronted with a question central to the entire
matter, Did actors play incongruous roles in the same play? Pickard-Cambridge has
said, ". .. at times some incongruity may have been felt by unusually severe spectators
when the different roles taken by one and the same performer were very unlike one
another."'6 But surely it was not just severe spectators who took a critical attitude
toward the actors' changes of roles, any more than it was not just severe spectators
who enforced the precise restrictions found in the meters of Greek tragedy. It is
better to understand that an elegant use of the three-actor rule comprised one facet
of the Greek playwright's technical virtuosity, just as did elegance of language, meter,
setting, depiction of traditional character types, or any other conventional limitation
in the ancient art of playwriting. Since one of the actors was competing for an award,
arguably some part of the audience was following and interested in that actor's
performance and would appreciate a thoughtful design in the arrangement of roles
the playwright provided for that actor. It is likely that their interest in the primary
actor's performance of his roles would extend to the other actors' performances also.
We might, therefore, expect to find some congruity, or perhaps purposeful incon-
gruity, in the roles taken by actors.
On the surface, incongruity figured in an actor's assignment of roles to an extent

we might not have anticipated. Actors regularly crossed the lines of gender (Guard/
Ismene, Xuthus/Pythia, Orestes/Clytemnestra, Copreus/Macaria, Handmaid/Poly-
mestor, Electra/Menelaus, Theonoe/Theoclymenos, Stranger/Ismene) and age (Iph-
igenia/Old Man, Agamemnon/Achilles, Dionysus/Teiresias, Pentheus/Agave, Helen/
Pylades). It is safe to say that actors generally were expected to play adults of both
genders and all ages. Nor did actors play characters of consistent social or political
status (Electra/Menelaus, Cadmus/Guard, Odysseus/Trader, Jocasta/Herdsman, Dar-
15Besides Oedipus at Colonus and The Phoenician Women, which have been omitted from this study
because they require role sharing (see above, note 13) and The Libation-Bearers and Rhesus, which
entail lightning changes (see above, note 14), other plays pose difficulties that make them inappro-
priate to this study. How the dead Ajax was represented in Sophocles' play and when a facsimile
was substituted for the actor, who would then be free to play other characters, is a mystery that
makes the distribution of roles impossible to determine with certainty. Adrastus' long silences in
Euripides' Suppliant Women obfuscate reconstruction of the role division by opening up the possibility,
albeit a slim one, that the actor left briefly to portray another character (e.g., the herald). In an age
when three actors were used regularly, Euripides' Alcestis and Medea could have been performed
by only two; see below, note 49. Should the roles be allotted to three actors or two? Along the same
line, many of Aeschylus' plays require only two actors, but he did use three at times. The precise
role division in several of his plays is, therefore, uncertain since it is impossible to be entirely sure
of the number of actors he employed; see Jouan, "Rsflexions sur le r6le," 70ff.
16Pickard-Cambridge, Dramatic Festivals, 138.

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ius/Herald, Aegisthus/Paidagogos, Creon/Messenger).17 Such a variety of character-

ization was regularly demanded of the actor that it is hard not to believe part of the
evaluation of his performance lay in the success with which he depicted disparate
character types. Were it not for plays in which a principal actor took only one part
(Oedipus in Oedipus The King, Hecuba in Hecuba and The Trojan Women, Creon in
Antigone), it would be tempting to say that the depiction of characters differing in
outward appearance was a regular criterion in determining an actor's excellence.',
Besides the superficial appearance of the actor's disguise, there is another way to
view the congruity of the characters portrayed by an actor, a more sophisticated line
of inquiry that fully involves the dramatic action. Simply put, did the roles an actor
took in any way reflect the plot? On first inspection, two general categories of
characters emerge: those who are opposed to each other and those who support the
same cause. Accordingly, I have grouped the roles discussed below into "Allies:
Collaborative or Parallel Roles," those who work toward the same general end, and
"Enemies: Opposed or Contrasting Roles," those who work toward different ends.
On further inspection, we find that not all roles fit neatly into these categories.
Creusa, for example, is at one time Ion's enemy and at another his ally. For lack of
a better name, I call this third category "Mixed Alliances: Victims, Villains, and
Rescuers." Here, an actor in one guise may have portrayed the victim or rescuer of
himself in another guise. We will see that just as an actor often played physically
dissimilar roles, he also played "enemies," characters opposed in terms of the plot,
and that the associations drawn between an actor's characters, especially those less
clear-cut, extraordinary associations, frequently illustrate a deep-rooted irony that may
not be readily apparent to the modern reader but was clearly comprehensible to the
ancient spectator and undoubtedly an integral element of the theatrical experience.
Allies: Collaborative or Parallel Roles
Euripides' Trojan Women pits a spiritually strong but physically weak community
of women against relentless male intruders who gradually defeat the women's hope
and break their spirits. The same actor played Cassandra and Andromache, par
roles insofar as both characters are closely related to Hecuba and both suffer loss o
life.19 Cassandra, Hecuba's daughter and Apollo's prophetess, dies with Agamem
'7Walcot, Greek Drama in Theatrical and Social Context, 53; Jouan, "Reflexions sur le role," 74; Raeb
"Greek tragedy and the actor today," 15.
"1Jouan, "Raflexions sur le rOle," 78f., suggested that the protagonist of Sophocles' Women of Tr
was given the very different roles of Heracles and Deianeira in order to display the range of charac
types he could depict; see below, note 50. If not in one tragedy, an actor would, of course,
had to play different roles in a trilogy of tragedies. It is possible, therefore, to be sure the dep
of different characters was at least one factor in the evaluation of his total performance in the fes
even though, without knowing with certainty which roles an actor played in a trilogy, it is imposs
to say how different those roles were or what range of characterization was demanded of him
"9Line Actor I Actor 2 Actor 3
306-461 Hecuba Cassandra Talthybius
706-798 Hecuba Andromache Talthybius
Because Cassandra and Andromache both appear in scenes with H
must have played the former pair; see Pavlovskis, "The Voice of
assigned to the actors are not intended to portray them as protagonist

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322 / Mark Damen
on his homecoming to Greece. Andromache, Hecuba's daughter-in-law and the late

Hector's wife, sees her only child, Astyanax, taken from her and killed. Both are
Trojan princesses who lose their most precious possession.20 Their differences are
not to be overlooked, however. Andromache's grief for her son contrasts strongly
with Cassandra's mad joy at the prospect of Agamemnon's impending demise, which
she sees as her own revenge for his destruction of Troy. Twice one actor portrayed
the suffering of the Trojan women close to Hecuba. Twice a similar misery is pre-
sented, but in contrasting fashion, mad joy and grief.
In the same author's Bacchae one actor played both Dionysus and Teiresias.21 These
characters are clearly alike in one important respect: they both seek to promote the
worship of Dionysus in Thebes. As advocates of the newly imported cult, they
collaborate to achieve a single goal. Yet again, as in The Trojan Women, the differences
in the characters are notable and give dimension to their similarity. They make the
same argument from contradictory vantage points, almost exclusive of one another.
Dionysus, the god incarnate, manifests his divinity in horrifically real terms, ulti-
mately tearing his opponent to pieces. Teiresias, the mortal prophet, rationalizes in
sophistic language Dionysus' birth and power and strips away the mystery from an
essentially mysterious god. One embodies inexplicable action, the other superintel-
lectualism and the spoken word. Even so, both work toward the same end and were
portrayed by one actor, whose versatility would certainly have been tested by having
to play in succession a youthful energetic god and an aged prophet, ironically both
garbed in bacchic gear as if the actor offstage changed character but not costume.
In Sophocles' Antigone one actor played two superficially different roles, which in
fact share an essential element in light of the central conflict between Creon and
Antigone. A simple guard confronts Creon and suffers an unjust accusation of mal-
feasance in the burial of Polynices' body. Later, Creon calls Ismene, Antigone's sister,
from the house and wrongly accuses her also of complicity in the same crime. One
actor played both the guard and Ismene, characters who are as different as possible
in appearance but are similar in light of their function in the plot.22 Both are innocent
victims and are unfairly punished in Creon's explosion of anger at the real outlaw,
Antigone.
20For the similarities between Cassandra and Andromache, see M. R. Halleran, Stagecraft in Euripides
(Totowa, New Jersey, 1985), 99.
21Line Actor 1 Actor 2 Actor 3
212-369 Teiresias Pentheus Cadmus
657-774 Dionysus Pentheus Messenger
1330-1351 Dionysus Agave Cadmus
Dionysus and Teiresias belonged to one actor, because Teiresia
and Cadmus, both of whom appear later with Dionysus. See Pa
123; N. Slater, "Vanished Players: Two Classical Reliefs and Th
Byzantine Studies 26 (1985): 335f.
386-445 Creon Antigone Guard
526-581 Creon Antigone Ismene
See Pavlovskis, "The Voice of the Actor," 117.

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Returning to the Bacchae, we can see a similar pattern in Euripides' disposition of

actors. Here again superficially dissimilar characters played by one actor perform
analogous functions in the plot. Cadmus, the old founder of Thebes, tries to convince
his grandson Pentheus, the young king, to accept the new god Dionysus into the
city. He reasons that, even if the god is a counterfeit, it cannot hurt to have a native
son, who is also a relative of them both, received as a god. Later, a servant brings
Dionysus to Pentheus and, to the extent a commoner dares counsel a king, reminds
Pentheus of the miracles that the stranger and his women have performed. Through
his awe he implies that the power of the god is so great that human resistance may
be futile. Later again, a messenger arrives and details at far greater length than the
servant had the wonders of the god's initiates. He ends by mentioning to Pentheus
wine and love, the blessings of Dionysus, in hopes of turning the young king from
his mad quest to stop the god. All three characters-Cadmus, the servant, and the
(first) messenger-were played by one actor.23
Just like the actor who played the secondary roles (Ismene and the guard) in
Antigone, the actor who played the lesser roles (Cadmus, the servant, and the first
messenger) in the Bacchae struggled futilely against the greater forces represented by
the actors playing the principal characters. On the level of pure theatre, this "third"
actor tried again and again to stop one of the principal actors (the one portraying
the mortal Pentheus, later also his mother Agave) from resisting the other (the one
portraying the divine forces, Dionysus and Teiresias), first by playing Cadmus and,
when that failed, by playing the servant, and when that failed, by playing the
messenger. Each gives Pentheus a different and valid reason to accept the god.
Cadmus appeals to family and the servant to power and, in a long speech, this actor's
final attempt to forestall the escalating conflict, the messenger describes in gruesome
detail the murderous mania of the god's followers and encourages Pentheus to see
Dionysus' good points. It is as if this actor in his various manifestations sought
repeatedly to mediate the quarrel between his fellow actors, which itself manifests
in different forms (Teiresias vs. Pentheus, Dionysus vs. Pentheus), but ultimately
failed. At the end of the play, he made his final appearance as Cadmus and, along
with the actor who had played Pentheus and now played Agave, was punished by
the angered god. The suffering of the characters they portrayed in the conclusion
can be seen as a product of the composite failure of their previous incarnations, the
failure of one to accept the god and of the other to convince the first to do so. From
an actor's vantage point, then, the entire play becomes a classical theatrical exercise
of antagonistic principals (Dionysus/Teiresias vs. Pentheus/Agave) with a third actor,
who was also very much a third wheel, playing the innocent by-stander caught
between them and crushed in their struggle.

433-452 Dionysus Pentheus Servant
657-774 Dionysus Pentheus Messenger
Teiresias and Dionysus were played by one actor; see above,

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324 / Mark Damen
Euripides may have been inspired to distribute the roles in the Bacchae this way
by a similar arrangement of actors used just three years previously in Sophocles'
Philoctetes. There one actor played Philoctetes throughout the play. Another played
Neoptolemus, also without any role changing. That two actors in a tragedy never
changed roles is in itself a striking occurrence.24 The third actor played the remaining
roles: the wily Odysseus, the lying trader, and Heracles the deus-ex-machina who
enforces the traditional ending on the play against Philoctetes' and Neoptolemus'
will.25 The plot comprises Neoptolemus' struggle to convince Philoctetes to return
with him to Troy and his debate within himself about the morality of forcing Phil-
octetes to return if he should refuse. The third actor in his various guises tried to
convince Neoptolemus to make Philoctetes return to Troy but, like his counterpart
in the Bacchae, failed. However, here the third actor at the end of the play triumphed
over his fellow actors, who had played the principal roles! He won by a cheat, of
course, which is not inappropriate for an actor who has taken the part of the deceptive
Odysseus. He used the traditional god-from-the-machine role not in its customary
manner, to affirm the expected ending, but to turn the plot in favor of the faction
represented by the other characters he has played and contrary to the flow of the
drama up to that point. As Odysseus he plotted, as the trader he lied, and as the
divine Heracles he again subverted reality and, in fact, destroyed the drama itself
in his unyielding will to achieve the ending he desired. The only real difference in
these characters is that what the first two contrive in stealth, the last achieves with
241t is notable that the action of Sophocles' plays more often than Euripides' leaves few or no
options to the actors in dividing up the roles. Whereas the role division of three (of seven) plays
by Sophocles (Philoctetes, Electra, Oedipus The King) is predetermined for all or all but one actor, that
of only three (of nineteen) plays by Euripides (Electra, Bacchae, Iphigenia in Aulis) is similarly set.
Two interesting details emerge from this. First, both Electra plays have predetermined role division
and fewer characters than usual. Was Euripides, whose Electra is often thought to be subsequent
to Sophocles' (see D. J. Conacher, Euripidean Drama [Toronto, 1967], 202-3), imitating the role division
of his rival's drama as well as its subject matter and title? Second, the other two predetermined
plays by Euripides were performed under special circumstances. Both belong to his last trilogy,
written in Macedonia after his exile from Athens. Euripides must have known, or at least suspected,
he would not be able to oversee the production of these plays at the Athenian Dionysia. It is tempting
to speculate that the predetermined role division was an attempt on his part to control the distribution
of roles among the actors when he would not be on the scene. If this is true, it is strong confirmation
of the playwright's interest and involvement in the role division. Jouan (in "Reflexions sur le r6le,"
72) stated that the ancient playwrights were not particularly interested in the role division, but he
later acknowledged that they doubtlessly set out the protagonist's roles beforehand (73), sometimes
with the intention of giving him a chance to display his skills (78f.), and recognized a common
interest with their protagonists in a successful production (74). I would assert that in earlier days,
when playwright and protagonist were one, the playwright was, no doubt, very interested in the
assignment of roles, and that at least in the days following the separation of playwright and actor
the poet retained some interest in the role division as part of his traditional domain.
25Line Actor I Actor 2 Actor 3
539-627 Philoctetes Neoptolemus Trader
976-1080 Philoctetes Neoptolemus Odysseus
1409-1471 Philoctetes Neoptolemus Heracles
See Pavlovskis, "The Voice of the Actor," 119.

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open and blatant disregard for conventional behavior. In this case, it is interesting
to see the actors of the principal characters upstaged by the actor of the lesser roles,
what was surely to the ancient audience in more than one way an unexpected finale.
Finally, in Ion Euripides gave to one actor roles with a clear connection: Xuthus,
the man who will take Apollo's place as Ion's father; the Pythia, the priestess who
has served as Ion's foster mother; and Athena, a dea-ex-machina, who at the end
of the play puts to rest (however imperfectly) the overriding question of the play,
Ion's paternity.26 Xuthus and the Pythia have in common that they are Ion's surrogate
parents, and all three of these characters are agents of the absent Apollo. Each one
represents a different attempt by the god to guide Ion to his ultimate destiny as
father of the Ionian race. Although it is not certain, the role of Hermes, who introduces
the play, and that of the messenger, who describes Ion's near-murder, may have
been originally this actor's property also. Like the others, these characters are also
agents of Apollo. Hermes, at Apollo's behest, rescued Ion as an abandoned baby,
and the messenger narrates how Apollo, by sending a bird, saved his son from
Creusa's plot to murder him.27
It can be said, therefore, that certainly in three, possibly in five appearances, this
actor each time in a different guise introduced Apollo's will, more or less directly,
into the plot: (1) Hermes in the prologue narrates Apollo's rape of Creusa, her
abandonment of his child and his own rescue of the infant Ion; (2) Xuthus is misled
by Apollo's oracle into believing the god's son is his own; (3) the messenger narrates
Apollo's second rescue of Ion from his mother's second attempt to dispatch him,
with a bird replacing the winged Hermes this time; (4) the Pythia, inspired by Apollo,
chooses a crucial moment to reveal Ion's cradle and swaddling clothes; and (5) Athena
at the end of the play defends Apollo's seemingly ignoble actions and his plan for
the happy resolution of the whole affair. The continuity between these characters
elucidates a central question in this drama, Why does Apollo not appear and resolve
the situation in person? On the one hand, if we understand that five times he sends
his agents, all roles played by one actor, to guide the principal characters safely to

392-424 Ion Creusa Xuthus
1320-1368 Ion Creusa Pythia
1549-1622 Ion Creusa Athena
For another pairing of the Pythia and
section, "Mixed Alliances."
77-81 Ion Hermes
1106-1228 Messenger
1250-1260 Creusa
1261-1319 Ion Creusa
Already in the play, birds have been c
A. P. Burnett, Catastrophe Survived (Ox
the Pythia as devices of his own agency

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326 / Mark Damen
a happy end, we can say that he has not abandoned Ion or Creusa nor acted completely
irresponsibly in fathering or raising Ion.28 On the other hand, the conclusion of the
play belies his seemingly good intentions and reveals a streak of cowardice hardly
becoming a god. When Athena appears at the end of the play, it is doubly dissat-
isfying, not only insofar as the plot demands Apollo's presence but also because the
actor who has played Apollo's agents and is free to play the god himself plays instead
yet another surrogate. The plot demands the god's presence, the actor is free to play
him, and still Apollo hides offstage, leaving others to do his dirty work. Building
and then subverting the audience's expectation that the god himself will appear,
Euripides ingeniously highlights Apollo's misdeeds through the distribution of roles.
Enemies: Opposed or Contrasting Roles

An actor in Greek tragedy played characters who oppose each other at least as
often as ones who support the same cause. The pedagogue in Sophocles' Electra
assists in the murder of Aegisthus; both roles belonged to one actor.29 In Euripides'
Iphigenia in Aulis Agamemnon lures Iphigenia to Aulis and sacrifice by sending her
a false message that she is to be married to Achilles. When Achilles hears of the
ruse, he vows to defend Iphigenia, even if it means violence. Agamemnon and
Achilles are clearly antagonists and were the property of one actor.30
Orestes, another late tragedy by Euripides, features a conflict between Menelaus

and his brother's children, Orestes and Electra. In the prologue of the play, Electra
states her hope that Menelaus will save her and her brother from the Argives, who
are angry at them because Orestes with his sister's help has murdered Clytemnestra,
their mother and the queen of Argos. When Menelaus appears, it becomes apparent
he will not save them, will not even defend them. Orestes and Electra are condemned
to death by the Argive assembly. They decide to take revenge on their uncle by
killing his wife Helen and kidnapping his daughter Hermione. The plot seems to
succeed, and near the end of the play Menelaus returns to the stage having heard
that his wife is dead and his daughter is the murderers' hostage. At the end of the
play, siege and conflagration are barely averted by the unexpected manifestation of
Apollo, an improbable deus-ex-machina who suddenly appears and remedies a disas-
trous situation by divine fiat. It is as if Euripides, reacting to criticism that Apollo
28Evidence seems to suggest that in ancient Greece rape was considered a crime deserving less of
a punishment than seduction, see A. R. W. Harrison, The Law of Classical Law (Oxford, 1968), 34.
The prevalence of rapes in later comedy by otherwise sympathetic males argues for this interpretation.
Therefore, by raping, rather than seducing, Creusa, Apollo would have seemed more sympathetic
to the ancient audience.
1326-1375 Electra Orestes Pedagogue
1458-1510 Electra Orestes Aegisthus
Pavlovskis, "The Voice of the Actor," 118, saw only "techn
Aegisthus and the Pedagogue.
-3Line Actor 1 Actor 2 Actor 3
1120-1275 Agamemnon Clytemnestra Iphigenia
1345-1432 Achilles Clytemnestra Iphigenia

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had failed to appear at the end of Ion, produced some years before, now has him
show up almost comically at the end of this play, where the god and his conventional
resolution of the situation are hardly in keeping with the rest of the plot. One actor
played the relatives-turned-adversaries, Electra and Menelaus.31 Another played the
unforeseen victim Helen and her unlikely rescuer Apollo, but the relationship of
those characters is not adversarial and will be discussed later.32
Turning to more complex combinations of opposed roles, let us return again to

the Bacchae. One actor played Pentheus and Agave, son and mother, who are alike
insofar as both resist Dionysus, who in response to their heresy drives them both
mad.33 Their differences, however, far outweigh their similarities. Besides their ob-
vious dissimilarity in age and gender, the dramatic situation calls attention to other
contrasts in these characters. At the outset of the play, Agave is a frenzied worshipper
of Dionysus, whereas Pentheus is the god's sternest detractor. In the course of the
action, Pentheus is driven mad and becomes more like his mother in look and outlook.
While still opposed to each other, they are most similar at the point when they meet
offstage and she leads the maenads in a wild and murderous pursuit. She returns
to stage carrying his head but does not realize what she holds. Her father Cadmus
brings her back to sanity, and Dionysus sends both father and daughter off into
exile. The contrast in the actor's roles is startling; he moved from playing son and
victim to mother and murderer. Euripides, however, made the connection between
these dissimilar characters blatant, horrifyingly real, by having Agave return carrying
the head of her dead child, presumably a property resembling the mask, if not the
mask itself, which the same actor had previously worn.
Euripides presented this actor with an interesting challenge. In his first scene the
actor portrayed the strong and assertive Pentheus, determined to hold off the invading
god. In the next scene, when man first meets god, it is clear neither will win an easy
victory. They struggle to a stalemate. Next, in the "transition scene," Dionysus
destroys Pentheus' resistance, and in the scene following makes him over into a
woman in outward appearance. The god leads his hapless victim to the mountain
where he dies. In her first appearance Agave imagines herself a huntress-or rather
a hunter, for she gives herself the airs of a male conqueror. Cadmus' words finally

632-716 Orestes Menelaus
717-724 Orestes
725-806 Orestes Pylades
1012-1245 Orestes Electra Pylades
See C. W. Willink, Euripides Orestes (Oxford, 1986), xxxv and
not have been played by the same actor since, in order to perfo
had to make a lightning change during 717-724; see above, nn
were not employed in Euripides' day.
32See n.44.

1330-1351 Dionysus Agave Cadmus
Teiresias and Dionysus were played by the same actor; see above

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328 / Mark Damen
bring her back to sanity, and in the harsh light of reason she melts from glorious
vanquisher into mater dolorosa. The actor followed a downward spiral from strong
male to weak male to strong female to weak female, a series of roles that covers the
gamut of age, gender, emotion, and power.
Opposing characters given to one actor fired the imagination of Sophocles too. In
Electra he gave to one actor another homicidal mother-son pair, Orestes and Clytem-
nestra.34 Appearing first as Orestes sent away from home by Clytemnestra and
returning to avenge his father's murder, the actor later played the murderess Cly-
temnestra. Then he resumed the role of Orestes. When Orestes reveals his identity
to Electra, she encourages him to murder their mother, who is at that moment residing
inside the palace represented onstage. Orestes goes in to do the terrible deed, while
Electra waits outside with the chorus. As Electra and the chorus sing, Clytemnestra's
death cries are heard. Orestes reemerges, a blood-stained matricide, and joins his
sister and the chorus in the kommos.
This remarkable alternation between son and mother, victimized murderer and
murderous victim, climaxes with their offstage confrontation, the meeting of one
actor in two guises. It was apparently a custom for the Greek actor who was playing
a certain character also to speak that character's part when the character's voice was
heard from offstage, because in every instance the actor who played the character
speaking from offstage was available to speak the part offstage and was not onstage
in another role. In this case, the actor playing Orestes left the stage to murder
Clytemnestra. Still dressed as Orestes, he announced from offstage his imminent
death as Clytemnestra and then, without changing costume, quickly reentered as
the victorious Orestes. To call attention to this unusually rapid sequence of role
changes, Sophocles gave the offstage voice five lines, a number larger than the normal
two or three for offstage death cries. What is more, he cast the passage in the form
of a responsive kommos. In the strophe, Electra and the chorus comment on the
murder while Clytemnestra calls from offstage. In the antistrophe, Orestes emerges
and joins in their dialogue. One verse features the victim, the other the murderer-
the same actor and the same voice in both sections but vastly different characters!
Euripides combined roles to much the same effect in Heracles. The dramatic action
takes place just after Heracles has performed his last labor, the theft of the hellhound
Cerberus. While he is still in the Underworld, rumors spread on earth that he has
died. The evil tyrant Lycus seizes the opportunity to try to exterminate Heracles'
helpless wife Megara and her children, but Heracles returns just in time to murder
Lycus instead. All would end happily for Heracles and his family, except that a
vengeful goddess sends madness upon the hero. Under the delusion that Megara
and the children are the family of his enemy Eurystheus, the insane Heracles fulfills
Lycus' intention of murdering them. Recovering from his madness and finding him-
'Line Actor 1 Actor 2 Actor 3

77-85 Electra Orestes Pedagogue
660-803 Electra Clytemnestra Pedagogue
See Pavlovskis, "The Voice of the Actor," 118; Jouan, "Reflexions

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self the murderer of his own family, Heracles contemplates suicide, but his friend
Theseus reconciles him to this misfortune and offers him refuge and expiation in
Athens.
One actor played Heracles and Lycus.35 Just as in Sophocles' Electra, the same
person portrayed both murderer and victim, but the actor's first role in Heracles was
victim, not murderer, although Lycus' murderous intentions in his first scene make
the pattern of role distribution in these plays seem at first almost identical. After
playing Lycus and threatening Heracles' family, he returned as the hero himself and
vowed to save Megara and the children from Lycus.36 With Heracles offstage in the
temple, the actor returned again as Lycus to commit the terrible deed. When Lycus
enters the temple, the two characters finally meet offstage--the only way they can,
of course-and Heracles kills Lycus. Again, an actor in one guise killed himself in
another guise.
What has been up to now essentially a simple alternation between murderer and
victim becomes much more complicated in the ensuing scenes. Having stressed the
connection between Heracles and Lycus, Euripides subsequently merged the char-
acters. Upon Lycus' death, it is as if the character Heracles becomes Lycus, just as
the actor playing Heracles had become Lycus. Heracles does what Lycus meant to
do: he brutally murders Megara and the children. The costume may be Heracles,
but the actor is Lycus! Later, all this is brought to an absurd irony when Heracles,
after discovering the murder, threatens to kill himself. The hero Heracles has killed
Lycus and now a Lycus-like Heracles threatens the death of the hero. As so often
in his later tragedies, Euripides pushes the limit of credibility. After all, how many
times can an actor kill himself?
Mixed Alliances: Victims, Villains and Rescuers
This final category encompasses a wide variety of role distributions, generally more
complex than in the categories above and so elaborate as to defy simple definition.
Here we find intricate tapestries of characters who aid in destroying or rescuing one
another. In Euripides' Orestes, Helen unexpectedly becomes the target of Orestes'
anger at Menelaus. Orestes seems to murder her, but in fact Apollo rescues and
transports her to the company of the gods. One actor played the victim Helen and
her rescuer Apollo.37 Another pair of roles taken by one actor is similarly conjoined.
3"Line Actor I Actor 2 Actor 3

138-347 Amphitryon Lycus Megara
514-636 Amphitryon Heracles Megara
"Leading the audience to believe that Lycus is returning when H
Euripides played up the irony of his casting one actor as villain and res
in Euripides, 85: "The arrival that one should expect on the surface lev
that he would return as soon as the victims had put on their robes .
appears but in the wrong costume; cf. Bacchae 169/170, where the prec
one to expect the god will appear; instead the Dionysus actor appears in
but as the aged Teiresias, not the youthful Dionysus-the right actor
character.
37See note 44.

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330 / Mark Damen
In Iphigenia in Aulis Euripides gave one actor the roles of Iphigenia and the old man
who reveals to Clytemnestra Agamemnon's plan to murder their daughter.38 The old
man's intention is to save Iphigenia from sacrifice. He fails, when the girl offers
herself as a willing sacrifice. Here the actor played victim and would-be rescuer. Yet
another pair of roles taken by one actor shows a further permutation of the victim-
rescuer pattern. In Euripides' Heracles, Megara, the wife whom Heracles unwittingly
murders, and Theseus, the friend who later stops him from suicide, make on the
surface an unusual combination of roles for an actor, but this arrangement is sensible
in light of the ones above.39 The former is the victim of Heracles' madness: the latter
is his rescuer after the madness abates. Linked through Heracles, the woman whom
he saves and kills and the man whom he saved and who then saves him comprise
another variation on the victim-rescuer type of role combination.
One actor could also play a rescuer and a villain in the same play. Copreus and
Macaria of Euripides' Children of Heracles stand firmly opposed on the central issue
of the play, the fate of Heracles' children. Copreus, an Argive herald, tries to drag
Heracles' children off to Argos and death. When Demophon, the king of Athens,
stops him, the villainous herald threatens war on Athens. Before battle can erupt,
however, Demophon discovers that the goddess of death Persephone demands a
young woman of noble birth as human sacrifice. Macaria, one of Heracles' daughters,
steps forward as a willing victim and offers her life for the chance to save her brothers'
lives. The villain Copreus and the victim Macaria were the property of one actor.40
These characters are indirectly related through Macaria's death, in which Copreus
abets as representative of the hostile Argives. In one way they work toward the same
end, the realization of war between Athens and Argos, but on opposite sides, one
for the capture and execution of Heracles' children and the other for their rescue.
Macaria is, however, as much a rescuer as a victim, and in that respect she resembles
another of Euripides' heroines, Theonoe, the Egyptian prophetess of Helen. Theonoe
is first depicted as a potential villainess and threat to Menelaus' and Helen's safe
return to Greece. Helen speculates that through her divinatory powers the prophetess
will almost certainly recognize and betray Menelaus to her brother Theoclymenus,
the pharoah of Egypt. This evil pharaoh desires to marry Helen against her wishes
and will surely kill Menelaus if he becomes aware of his rival's presence. When
Theonoe appears, as expected, she recognizes Menelaus, who, with Helen, beseeches
her not to reveal him to her brother. Unexpectedly, Theonoe agrees to protect the
Greeks and even eventually lies to her brother about Menelaus' situation. With
Theonoe's help Helen tricks Theoclymenus into giving her and Menelaus a ship, in

607-685 Agamemnon Clytemnestra Iphigenia
855-895 Achilles Clytemnestra Old Man
Agamemnon and Achilles are played by the same actor; see above, no
514-636 Amphitryon Heracles Megara
1153-1428 Amphitryon Heracles Theseus
"Line Actor 1 Actor 2 Actor 3
118-287 Iolaus Copreus Demophon
474-601 Iolaus Macaria Demophon

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which they escape to Greece. When he discovers the truth, Theoclymenus is enraged
and threatens to kill his sister for her treachery, but the divine twins Castor and
Pollux appear and put a halt to his murderous rage.
One actor played Theonoe and Theoclymenus, who are alike only in that they are
Egyptians and siblings.41 Their differences in gender and, more important, attitude
toward lost Greeks outweigh their superficial similarities. The former aids in Helen's
rescue and return; the latter is her enemy, to be cheated of a ship and marriage. The
actor's progress through these roles was, however, more complicated than this simple
opposition. He began as a dubious foe, the Theonoe whom Helen imagines will
betray Menelaus to the king, but soon became a sympathetic ally who would help
the Greek captives escape. A villain again, he played the evil Theoclymenus who,
after failing to keep Helen in Egypt, threatens to kill his sister, the actor's other role.
As the actor moved from foe to friend to foe and finally foe who threatens to murder
friend, the succession of roles recalls the Lycus-Heracles combination in Heracles,
where again the actor played foe, then friend, then foe, and finally murdered his
alternate role. Besides the obvious difference that Heracles murders Lycus and Theo-
clymenus does not murder Theonoe, there is another interesting variation in the
pattern: whereas the actor who played Lycus changed role to Heracles but did not
change his function in the plot (although playing Heracles, he still murders Megara
and the children), the actor playing Theonoe changed function without changing
role (Theonoe is first imagined as an enemy to Greeks but then shows unexpected
goodwill). Clearly Euripides was playing with the possible permutations of this
pattern of role changing.
From these relatively clear-cut examples of rescuers, victims, and villains played
by one actor, we progress to more complex groupings of roles. The precedent for
giving to one actor all three types of character is found at least as far back as Aeschylus.
In Eumenides one actor, perhaps the protagonist and possibly Aeschylus himself,
played in succession the Pythia, Clytemnestra, and Athena.42 Clytemnestra is clearly
the villainess and Athena the champion of good and the rescuer of Orestes. Trapped
"4Line Actor I Actor 2 Actor 3

857-1029 Helen Menelaus Theonoe
1165-1300 Helen Menelaus Theoclymenus
1-63 Pythia
64-93 Apollo Orestes
94-139 Clytemnestra
574-777 Athena Apollo Orestes
See Pavlovskis ("The Voice of the Actor," 116), who saw
to the Clytemnestra actor. The lack of time between
entrance leaves no doubt in my mind that three diffe
appears later with Apollo and Orestes, one actor mu
Pavlovskis also combined the roles of the Pythia and
on stage; see Pickard-Cambridge, Dramatic Festivals,
at 63/64, allowing the Pythia actor offstage the time
(see N. G. L. Hammond, "More on Conditions of Pr
Roman and Byzantine Studies 29:1 (1988): 25f.), Pavlo
above is so straightforward and tractable that I feel

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332 / Mark Damen
in the struggle between greater forces, the Pythia becomes an innocent victim when
Orestes' presence in Delphi attracts his mother's Furies, her agents of vengeance,
who occupy the holy site and send the old priestess running from her sacred seat.
It is interesting to note that Euripides seems to have imitated this casting as well as
this setting in Ion, which also takes place in Delphi, when he gave one actor the
roles of the Pythia and Athena. Even if it does not explain or excuse Apollo's absence,
this combination of roles in Aeschylus' Eumenides at least roots the substitution of
Athena for Apollo at the end of Ion in the tradition of Greek theatre.
Euripides' Electra also involves a fascinating, if confusing, permutation of the victim-

villain-rescuer combination. The entire play is colored by Euripides' peculiar char-
acterization of Electra, a bitter woman viciously angry at her mother Clytemnestra,
who many years before murdered her husband Agamemnon, Electra's father. Forced
by her mother's lover Aegisthus to marry a poor farmer, Euripides' heroine jealously
dwells on the fine life Clytemnestra leads, the beautiful clothes her mother wears,
her many servants, and eastern splendor. Stripped of the good life and nobility, she
is more a savage animal than the Argive princess of traditional legend. Although the
poor farmer has taken her into his admittedly humble home, fed her, protected her,
and did not force himself on her despite their marriage, she hardly acts the part of
a grateful guest. In spite of friendly words in the first scene, her insistence on
performing menial tasks seems more like self-flagellation than rustic comradery. With
her exaggerated servility she means to punish and cause her mother humiliation.
Early in the play, Orestes arrives incognito and meets Electra. She does not rec-
ognize him but sees instead only a nobleman visiting her miserable abode. When
the farmer graciously invites him into their shack, her disillusionment erupts into
condemnation of her husband's artless generosity, an insult to a gentleman, as she
sees it. Later, an old man arrives with news of Orestes' visit to Agamemnon's grave.
In a famous burlesque of Aeschylus' Libation Bearers, a disdainful Electra point by
point refutes his evidence of Orestes' presence: a lock of hair, a footprint, and a
remnant of the cloth in which Orestes as a baby was smuggled from Argos. Only
when he recognizes a scar on Orestes' forehead - scars were often used in antiquity
to establish legal identity--does Electra concede the possibility that the stranger is
Orestes. After the recognition, the old man urges Orestes to kill Aegisthus, the
usurper of his father's throne, and even provides him the opportunity to do the
murder. Finally, Clytemnestra herself arrives and, penitent in the face of imminent
death and her daughter's acrimony, appears more sympathetic than her self-righteous
assassins.
One actor portrayed the farmer, the old man, and Clytemnestra, all characters wh
in various ways are bitterly chastised by Electra, but that is hardly a distinguishing
feature in a play in which Electra's unremitting animus strikes out at so many target

339-400 Electra Orestes Farmer
549-698 Electra Orestes Old Man
962-987 Electra Orestes
998-1141 Electra Clytemnestra
1233-1359 Electra Orestes Castor

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What was circumscribed by one actor in this case is a variety of characters dissimilar
in appearance and function: two very different rescuers and a villainess. The first
rescuer, the farmer, has the thankless task of keeping his embittered wife safe in the
country. The second and less sympathetic rescuer, the old man, must prove to a
skeptical, sarcastic Electra that Orestes has returned to Argos; he later joins in the
murderous march of folly. By the time we finally meet the reluctant villainess Cly-
temnestra, she could hardly match her twisted and blood-thirsty offspring in villainy.
An unappreciated rescuer, a vengeful rescuer, and a pitiful villain-victim were the
lot of this unfortunate actor. It is fitting then that as his final role he played the deus-
ex-machina Castor, Clytemnestra's apotheosized brother, who observes his sister's
murder with disgust and resignation. Having played by far the more human char-
acters in this pageant of depravity, this actor as Castor gave a reluctant sanction to
the dreadful matricide and brought to a none-too-early close the succession of murders
and brutality.
This colorful amalgam of rescuers, victims, and villains is matched, if not surpassed,
by another tetrad of characters belonging to one actor. Even harder to define than
the combination of roles in Electra is the combination of Helen, Tyndareus, Pylades,
and Apollo in Orestes, a play produced probably a few years after Electra.44 However,
as we will see below, this peculiar medley of mismatched characters forms a pattern
similar to that in Electra. In order of appearance, Helen is Orestes' (eventual) victim,
Tyndareus his bitter accuser, Pylades his zealous supporter, and Apollo his (and
Helen's) ultimate rescuer. The outer pair (Helen and Apollo) are closely linked, while
the inner (Tyndareus and Pylades) are strongly contrasted. Helen and Apollo are
more intimately associated than they might seem at first. The former is a demigoddess,
who is translated to heaven at the end of the play; the latter is a god whose persistent
presence in heaven and not among his mortal supporters on earth poses a continuing
problem in the play. The first is rescued by the second. Conversely, Tyndareus, the
father of Helen and Clytemnestra, savagely denounces Orestes for his daughter's
murder and advocates the death penalty, whereas Pylades loyally stands by his
friend Orestes, even in the face of death, and, when all else fails, conceives the
barbarous plot to avenge Orestes on Menelaus by murdering Helen. Euripides painted
both as brutal, villainous avengers, relentlessly opposed on the issue of Orestes' fate
and both dangerously misguided in the extremity of their passions.45
Clytemnestra is visible from the stage by the time Orestes exits at 987, and even if she can be seen
only by the actors and not the audience, she begins speaking shortly thereafter (998). The Orestes
actor, therefore, cannot have played Clytemnestra because to do so he would have had to make a
lightning change (ten lines or less) into her mask and costume. See Pickard-Cambridge, Dramatic
Festivals, 146; Jouan, "RWflexions sur le r6le," 77.
"Line Actor 1 Actor 2 Actor 3
71-125 Orestes Electra Helen
456-631 Orestes Menelaus Tyndareus
1012-1245 Orestes Electra Pylades
1625-1692 Orestes Menelaus Apollo
Electra and Menelaus are played by the same actor; see above, no
45A puzzling remark by Orestes at the end of the play may, in fac
this actor portrayed. After Apollo's speech Orestes acknowledges
(1668-1669): "And still the fear took hold of me, that I had hea

132.248.9.41 on Tue, 17 Aug 2021 19:49:34 UTC
334 / Mark Damen
From victim to opposed villains to rescuer, the actor followed a progression of

roles similar to his counterpart in Electra, who played the farmer, the old man,
Clytemnestra, and Castor.
Helen Tyndareus Pylades Apollo

victim/rescuer villain villain rescuer and god
farmer old man Clytemnestra Castor
Just as in Orestes, the inner pair in Electra (the old man and
the old man seeks revenge on Clytemnestra and her lover
memnon. The outer pair (the farmer and Castor), not at a
perform remarkably similar roles in the plot: both are rescue
from dire circumstances. Both are also would-be husbands
to Castor before his death -whose mutual failure to meet thei
her pure for Pylades, her traditional husband in Greek legend
in Orestes, this outer pair is not victim and rescuer but two r
pattern of roles is remarkably similar and may represent an a
Euripides. In both tragedies the inner pairs are opposed to
on the surface to be very different, in Orestes in age (Tyn
in Electra in gender (old man and Clytemnestra). The oute
orating mortals (Helen/farmer) and divinities (Apollo/Cast
contrast that Helen is a mortal destined ultimately to live am
was once a mortal but presently lives among the gods. Th
(alastordn) and only thought I heard your voice." On the surface, his
"Your sudden appearance surprised me and I thought I might have
hallucination," cf. 255-276. In view of the ancient theatre and the role divi
however, his words can be seen in a larger context. First, Orestes m
alastdr convincing him that the voice he hears is Apollo's, much as, in
moment impersonating Apollo for the audience. Second, Orestes' wo
evil intentions of the character represented by this voice, recalling th
defined: the man-slaughtering adulteress Helen and the embittered
possibly also Pylades, who in the guise of friend led him down the
struction; see K. Hartigan, "Euripidean Madness: Herakles and Orestes,"
130; and S. L. Schein, "Mythical Illusion and Historical Reality in Euripi
88 (1975): 59: "Euripides undercuts Pylades' apparent virtue by makin
in the midst of his difficulties, hear Pylades' own troubles (763), an
compete jealously with Elektra for the right to dominate Orestes by
Euripides can call attention to the mandatory silence of the fourth ac
for Pylades (1592), he can certainly allude by double meaning to th
representing both villains and rescuer; see F. I. Zeitlin, "The Closet
Myth-Making in the Orestes of Euripides," Ramus 9 (1980): 55-56: "Th
for if Electra is now Apollo, now Erinys, perhaps there was no real dif
makes this point explicitly at the end of the play when he remarks t
was that of a demonic alast6r (1669). Through this technique of unstab
categories, those firm polarities of Aeschylean drama are undermined,
And since those Aeschylean polarities once operated in the service of
a belief in hierarchic stability, Euripidean confusions must be constru
impiety."

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equation of characters may represent the summit of role combinations in Greek

tragedy and perhaps also the limit of our tolerance of such arrangements. However,
it is likely that these few associations we have discussed, the few we can be certain
of, touch only the surface of a much more elaborate system of substructural con-
nections that the ancient playwrights drew among the characters they assigned to
one actor.
Conclusion
We have seen that the roles taken by an actor in Greek tragedy often fall int
discernible patterns: allied or opposed characters or some combination of assailan
and assailed. There are, of course, combinations that have no apparent connectio
on any level, for example, the priest and Jocasta in Sophocles' Oedipus The King
Naturally, it was the playwright's option to highlight the connection between t
roles, and he could also choose not to do so if he liked. It was, however, in an
circumstance advantageous for him to use the given elements of production to some
effect. We can, therefore, often perceive a clear purpose behind the arrangement of
roles, not always meant to be spectacular but seldom without some striking resu
The range of possibilities is very wide, from simple, obvious connections-the act
who returns as a messenger with news about another character he has played, f
example, Oedipus and the messenger (Oedipus at Colonus),46 Jocasta and the herdsman
(Oedipus The King),47 and possibly also Hippolytus and the messenger"--to comp
sequences of victims, villains, and rescuers.

310-509 Oedipus Antigone Ismene
1579-1669 Messenger
1670-1750 Antigone Ismene
The role division in this play, however, must rema
the role division without having actors share th
950-1073 Oedipus Jocasta Messenger
1422-1530 Oedipus Herdsman Creon
The same actor must have played Creon and the messenger:
634-678 Oedipus Jocasta Creon
950-1073 Oedipus Jocasta Messenger
Creon and the messenger are alike insofar as both think they br
both cases it turns out to be bad when the truth is finally reve
decree which, if the Thebans perform it, will rid them of the pla
death of the King of Corinth, Oedipus' (adoptive) father, and the i
to the throne of Corinth.
1152-1267 Theseus Messenger
1284-1341 Theseus Artemis
1342-1439 Theseus Hippolytus Artemis
A very quick, if not lightning, change of costume between 1267 and 12
actor played the messenger and Artemis. More likely, the Hippolytu
messenger.

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336 / Mark Damen
Despite the length of the preceding argument, it is our misfortune that discussion
of this important subject is necessarily so brief, limited to only those roles which can
be assigned to one actor with absolute certainty. The majority of role combinations
is lost because the playwrights dictated them in person and it was not necessary for
the text to be composed so as to require a certain division of roles. In most cases we
can only speculate on the original distribution of parts. Our understanding of how
roles were distributed and how the distribution was designed to highlight the dramatic
action would expand considerably if we could include just the remaining roles in the
few tragedies that survive. Even in the scant light of what we know, it is tempting
to guess at some possible combinations that fit into known patterns. Just as Megara
and Theseus in Euripides' Heracles are Heracles' victim and rescuer, in the same
author's Alcestis Heracles and the title character are rescuer and victim, and possibly
one actor's property.49 Just as Agave murders Pentheus in Euripides' Bacchae, Soph-
ocles' Deianeira kills Heracles in The Women of Trachis.50 Similarly, in Euripides' Ion
the old man attempts to poison Ion but fails."' Since they fall into recognizable
patterns, Deianeira and Heracles seem designed to be the property of one actor, as
do Ion and the old man also.

238-343 Alcestis Admetus Eumelus
1006-1163 Heracles Admetus
This role division is not as uncertain as it seems at fir
415 did not take any other parts in the play but was c
the failure of a third speaking character to appear anyw
one actor would have had to play Heracles and Alcestis
confirmation of this scheme of role division. The Alce
could not speak. It is appropriate, then, that Alcestis a
that the characters are allied (Pheres defends Alcestis a
to die for Admetus whereas Alcestis agrees to). Still this
Cambridge, Dramatic Festivals, 145.
'Line Actor 1 Actor 2 Actor 3
58-93 Deianeira Hyllus Nurse
862-946 Nurse
962-1278 Heracles Hyllus Old Man
The arrangement, which gives to one actor Deianeira an
characters are the most prominent roles in the play and
recognizable pattern of enemies portrayed by one actor. T
Cambridge (Dramatic Festivals, 141), Pavlovskis ("The Voice of
sur le r6le," 77f.), but it is not necessarily a certain one. It r
from the nurse to the old man between 946 and 962. It is,
746 (see Dramatic Festivals, 145), a funeral procession prol
time for the costume change. It would be simpler, how
instead of the old man in the next scene and entered, not
man does, but only just before Heracles first speaks (983),
make the change. Such uncertainties make it impossible to
ment of roles with certainty.
"SLine Actor 1 Actor 2 Actor 3
392-424 Ion Creusa Xuthus
725-1047 Old Man Creusa
If the same actor played Ion and the old man, it ex
after 1250, when one might expect Ion to drag h

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In conclusion, no single dominant pattern emerges from the Greek tragedians' use
of the three-actor rule, but should it, any more than a predictable pattern for the
treatment of particular myths or characters should exist? What emerges clearly is the
ingenuity with which the playwrights confronted necessity. Rather than limit the
scope of roles they continually challenged actors to portray characters of vastly
different appearances and intentions. Rather than limit the number of characters,
they combined roles in a way that complements the dramatic action, sometimes to
great effect. Rather than apologize for a limitation it is hard to believe they endorsed,
they boldly called attention to it at times, making it an end unto itself.
Finally, when so much else of the original form of tragedy is lost on the modern
stage - the music, the style of dance, the regular use of mask, the great public arena -
it is a wonder that such an essential and easily reproducible ingredient as the dis-
position of actors, a factor I hope I have shown was often used quite effectively, is
neglected in the performance of Greek tragedy today. From the success of plays like
The Dining Room and Cloud 9, which employ role changing without the use of masks,
it is clear that modern audiences are well able to grasp and enjoy the utilization of
few actors in many roles. Should they not be granted a glimpse at the heritage and
antiquity of role changing as it was shaped in the hands of unsurpassed masters?
Appendix: Why Only Three Actors?

Why did such a rule exist? Aristotle (Poetics, 4.1449a) saw one facet of the devel-
opment of drama as the emergence of one, then two, then three actors. He attributed
to Aeschylus the first use of two actors and to Sophocles the first use of three. His
failure to add the introduction of the fourth actor is strong evidence that the use of
the fourth actor, if it ever existed, was never accepted. The question, then, is not,
Why is the number of actors held down to three? but, Why did the number of actors
stop growing at three? One can only speculate since no reason for the existence of
this rule is given in reliable ancient sources.
Some reasons that do not seem likely are financial considerations, a scarcity of
good actors, or modifications made in the texts by traveling troupes (Walton, Greek
Theatre Practice, 142-44; Jouan, "Reflexions sur le r6le," 66). First, there is no evidence
in the Classical period that the expense of a fourth actor was so burdensome as to
preclude his employment or that actors were paid onerous sums. Second, even from
accomplice with their scheme to murder him. Even after Ion unwisely leaves him at the banquet,
it is natural for the old man to return to the stage in order to warn and protect his mistress and co-
conspirator. Clearly, the actor who played him was not available. Xuthus in this same play fails to
reappear for the same reason, that the actor must play other roles; see Pickard-Cambridge, Dramatic
Festivals, 146. The congruity of these roles is obvious. Ion and the old man are connected through
Athens' King Erechtheus, who was Ion's grandfather and the old man's master. Yet, through
misunderstanding, these characters are also enemies. The old man plots to murder Ion and nearly
executes the murder, but Ion is saved and extracts the secret culprit behind the plot from the old
man, the actor's alter ego. Ironically, however, these characters are essentially allied despite their
apparent opposition and do, in fact, end up working toward the same goal, securing the succession
of Erechtheus' descendants to the throne of Athens.

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338 / Mark Damen
the meagre evidence for actors of this period, enough high-quality, successful actors
emerge to permit supposing that many good actors were available. Third, consid-
erations of exporting drama can hardly have taken precedence in the Classical age
over those of local interest, nor is it credible that the extant editions of the Classical
tragedies have been so thoroughly contaminated by the texts of traveling actors in
a later age that all that remains are their reworkings, in which the three-actor rule
is universally applied. Furthermore, if this were true, one would expect to find
features of later drama, such as role sharing and lightning changes, with regularity
throughout the dramas of the Classical period, but this is not the case.
It is also unlikely that the circumstances of performance are responsible for the
three-actor rule. Since ancient playwrights could and did write dualogues and tria-
logues, there is no obvious reason to suppose they could not have written tetralogues.
Granted, true trialogues are relatively rare and often follow a predictable change of
speaker (i.e. ABCABCABC . . .). The reason may be artistic considerations rather
than the audience's inability to distinguish which actor was speaking in a dialogue
of three or more characters. Also, the strong evidence for the distinctiveness of the
ancient actor's voice (see above, note 12) argues against the supposition that in
dialogues with more than two characters speaking the audience could not distinguish
the speakers. The scarcity of trialogues can be explained more probably from a
fundamental attraction to simple designs in art, the essentially agonistic nature of
Greek drama, and the predominance of one-on-one conflict, in imitation of the cross-
examinations and general discourse of trial courts; see J. Duchemin, "Les origines
populaires et paysannes de l'agon tragique," Dioniso 43 (1969): 247-75.
There is no easy answer to this question. Many factors, no doubt, contributed to

the limitation in the number of actors. Although the suggestions below are only that,
suggestions, I hope that they will contribute to a realistic assessment of this com-
plicated issue. I will focus on three of the more important factors in the production
of ancient tragedy -the religious community, the principal actors, and the audience -
and attempt to show how such a limitation might address their needs.
Although it was moving in that direction, fifth-century tragedy was not secular
drama. It was still fundamentally a ritual. Even though the text of the ritual changed
each year, its application to the needs of the Attic population seeking the goodwill
of the god did not change. Those in the religious community who viewed the pros-
perity of the society as at least in part the work of the god would certainly have
resisted basic changes in the enactment of the ceremony, especially if the community
at large were prospering, as in fact Athens was throughout most of the Classical
period. Simply stated, one factor that surely must have impeded the emergence of
the fourth actor was a conservative wish on the part of some to maintain a proven
ritual, "Don't fix it if it isn't broken!" Even if conservative viewers and priests had
little to say about the actual production of tragedies, as exponents of traditional
religious ritual they would in general be inclined to rein in the rapidly developing
art form. The power of tradition should never be underestimated. In such circum-
stances the question is not one of why change does not happen but how it happens
at all.

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Another factor inhibiting growth in the number of actors certainly was the pro-
tagonist's need to remain the focus of the drama. Originally all speaking roles were
the property of one central performer. Then two divided those roles and competed
for the audience's attention and favor and later there were three. Protagonists cannot
have favored further diffusion of the audience's attention, especially in the later
Classical period, when they came into contention with other protagonists for a pres-
tigious award.
Finally, audiences must be acclimated to change. They must enter the theatre
knowing in some way what to expect and, if things will not go according to their
expectations, they must be carefully prepared for the change. To that extent audiences
also are conservative. A change in the number of actors entailed to the Greek viewers,
no doubt, a significant reordering of their expectation. It is possible to see clearly
such a reordering well handled by a playwright in Aeschylus' Agamemnon, for in-
stance. In the days before the three-actor rule, when third speaking actors were still
a novelty, Aeschylus brought in a third actor to play Cassandra. That actor waited
silently onstage for nearly 300 lines, through the conversation of Agamemnon and
Clytemnestra, a choral ode, and even an invitation by Clytemnestra to speak. Finally,
when the audience was convinced that Cassandra was being played by a mute actor
who would not speak, Cassandra suddenly erupted into song. Aeschylus presented
his audience with a potential third speaking character and then withheld the reali-
zation of the revolutionary device. He played on the expectation of only two speaking
actors, carefully preparing the audience for a third, even taunting it with the potential
reordering of the customary presentation of action, before he finally delivered the
new product. Such genius for what an audience can grasp and deal with is rare.
Apparently, no playwright in the Classical or post-Classical age could do the same
for a fourth actor, that is, make it a desirable commodity to the audience. If audiences
had demanded it, I doubt that any priests or protagonists could have stood in the
way. To this extent, the audience also contributed to the maintenance of the rule
that only three actors may speak in tragedy.
In conclusion, the employment of only three actors was not, I believe, an ideal
situation for any party involved. On one side, protagonists and established actors
would have looked fondly back to the days when fewer principals commanded the
stage and the audience's attention. Lamenting changes in a proven ritual, the con-
servative element in the religious community would surely have joined them. Al-
though the avant-garde of the audience may have sought new horizons by encour-
aging a relaxation of restrictions, the majority of the audience would need to be
shown the advantage of a fourth actor and won over to demanding such an inno-
vation, as they evidently never were. On the other side, younger actors would have
bemoaned the difficulty they had breaking into the field with so few opportunities
to act in the premier festival. They would, no doubt, have applauded the opportunity
for more actors to play roles and favored increasing the number of actors. Caught
in between, though probably in general supporting a less stringent rule, were the
playwrights left to compose stage action around such an artificial and arbitrary re-
striction, doubtless with less consideration being given to their desires than to anyone

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340 / Mark Damen
else's. In the later Classical age (430-406 B.C.), from which the majority of the
surviving tragedies come, the restriction is probably best seen as a fossil, the relic
of a compromise made in a previous generation (probably during the reforms of the
440s) between various parties with rival interests.

132.248.9.41 on Tue, 17 Aug 2021 19:49:34 UTC

Actor and Character in Greek Tragedy

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Actor and Character in Greek Tragedy

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Actor and Character in Greek Tragedy

Author(s): Mark Damen

Stable URL: https://www.jstor.org/stable/3208183

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One other feature of Classical tragedy assists in reconstructing role divisions.

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Application of the Three-Actor Rule

On the surface, incongruity figured in an actor's assignment of roles to an extent

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ius/Herald, Aegisthus/Paidagogos, Creon/Messenger).17 Such a variety of character-

Allies: Collaborative or Parallel Roles

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on his homecoming to Greece. Andromache, Hecuba's daughter-in-law and the late

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Returning to the Bacchae, we can see a similar pattern in Euripides' disposition of

23Line Actor 1 Actor 2 Actor 3

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26Line Actor 1 Actor 2 Actor 3

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Enemies: Opposed or Contrasting Roles

Orestes, another late tragedy by Euripides, features a conflict between Menelaus

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Turning to more complex combinations of opposed roles, let us return again to

31Line Actor 1 Actor 2 Actor 3

33Line Actor 1 Actor 2 Actor 3

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'Line Actor 1 Actor 2 Actor 3

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Mixed Alliances: Victims, Villains and Rescuers

3"Line Actor I Actor 2 Actor 3

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38Line Actor 1 Actor 2 Actor 3

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"4Line Actor I Actor 2 Actor 3

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Euripides' Electra also involves a fascinating, if confusing, permutation of the victim-

43Line Actor 1 Actor 2 Actor 3

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From victim to opposed villains to rescuer, the actor followed a progression of

Helen Tyndareus Pylades Apollo

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equation of characters may represent the summit of role combinations in Greek

6Line Actor I Actor 2 Actor 3

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49Line Actor 1 Actor 2 Actor 3

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Appendix: Why Only Three Actors?

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There is no easy answer to this question. Many factors, no doubt, contributed to

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