Dawe ReflectionsAteHamartia 1968

Some Reflections on Ate and Hamartia
Author(s): R. D. Dawe
Source: Harvard Studies in Classical Philology , 1968, Vol. 72 (1968), pp. 89-123
Published by: Department of the Classics, Harvard University
Stable URL: https://www.jstor.org/stable/311076
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SOME REFLECTIONS ON ATE AND HAMARTIA
R. D. DAWE
J v E-rTvy Xapa rovarWv Aoro' Ed. vUTL SE 'Lo T0S c v "77Tv E PE-T7tL aobE'pc
EMAEtS aXVpES. aVayK-7 apa ~v T YKa A XoVra CleOov &7TAov ELVaW( o
7 oTAoVV, W wU7TEp TLxES O(Xa CxKaa FLETaXfAAE & VTVXIoxa0 E

aAAa &' 9&,apTuXv EY(XA-7V 77) oov EJp77TaL 77 'EAXTUVOS /JAXAAOV 77) X"povos
aU7EELov & Ka' 7To yyvdtvov" rrpP(TOV LE v yap OL 7TrOL77Ta TO .TVXOVTady

LVXOovs arT77pl to/ VyV, vv rp 7TEpo'l s oltKLcs at KAALUTra( 7payCxwLcta
yTEvPtvraL,
MEA&aypov Kclotov rrTpt 'AAKpac
&9VEcYT'qV wva Ka,
Kat T4AEqOv KXCOl&7rrovV Ka' c7V/jE'77fKEV
l ots OL AAtot 'OpE/0rr7V Kca3
ITcXELV& SaLm, ?q ITOt1/I7Ut.
Aristotle Poetics 1453a7-22
FEWthought
passages in Greek
as the passage literature can have
reproduced above. Hereprovoked as finest
we have the much
critical mind of antiquity passing judgement on the process which lies at
the very heart of Greek tragedy, and doing so in a way which in the eyes
of many is gravely inadequate, and in the eyes of some hopelessly wide
of the mark. "The idea of hamartia simply will not fit Sophocles...
still less will it explain Euripides," wrote W. C. Greene, and many other
scholars have expressed themselves in similar terms. Whitman even
prefaced the treatment of Sophocles in his book with a chapter on
" Scholarship and Hamartia," in which he poured ridicule on the useful-
ness of trying to apply the term to actual Sophoclean tragedies; ridicule
which would have been more effective if it had not been accompanied by
the sentence (p. 33) " There can be no real doubt that Aristotle meant by
hamartia a moral fault or failing of some kind."
For hamartia, though a familiar word in the vocabulary of every
student of Greek (and even Shakespearian) tragedy, is still a term sub-
ject to widespread misconceptions. There still flourishes, even in other-
wise civilised parts of the globe, the belief that hamartia may mean a
flaw of character. But closer to the truth is the often quoted definition
of Rostagni: "Errore, proveniente da inconsapevolezza, da ignoranza di
4+H.S.C.P. 72

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90 R. D. Dawe
qualche fatto o di qualche cir

appunto ci vuole per indurci
whether hamartia may or may
longer open to discussion; for t
been challenged by P. van Braam
dead by Hey in Philologus 1927, p
uses of the word were given a
The possibility that hamartia m
from our context because it would not consort with the rest of what
Aristotle has to say about tragedy. We are left only with some such
definition as Rostagni's, or what we may more briefly call an error of
judgement. But the error of judgement theory has itself been subjected
to ferocious attack. It will be one of the aims of this article to show that
such ferocity is unmerited.
In the first place to speak of a "doctrine" of hamartia is incorrect.
Aristotle spends much less time on it than he does on peripeteia or
anagnorisis: those two casual references enshrined in the excerpt printed
at the head of this article constitute all that he has to say on the subject.
Any person who comes to the Poetics fresh from reading the Ethics, be
they Eudemian' or Nicomachean, will accept these two references as the
most natural thing in the world. Problems would only present them-
selves to his mind if Aristotle had instead chosen to use the word
atuchema, indeed almost any other word besides hamartia.
But casual or not, these two references in the Poetics to hamartia have
exposed Aristotle to some of the sharpest criticism ever (and often very
properly) directed against that work as an aid to the understanding of
ancient poetry. It is argued that of all the Greek tragedies which
survive, Women of Trachis is the only one where "error of judgement"
appears an adequate diagnosis of the event or events which set in motion
the great chains of catastrophe familiar to us from our reading of the
tragic writers. In particular hamartia appears inadequate when measured
against the events depicted in Oedipus Rex, a play which is clearly in the
forefront of Aristotle's mind throughout the Poetics, and which he
mentions by name in the present context.2 We thus have an unattractive
1 In some respects it seems that the viewpoint of the Eudemian Ethics is the
closer of the two to the Poetics. This is pointed out by I. M. Glanville in CQ
1949 PP. 47-56, in an article entitled "Hamartia and Tragic Error" which forms
an interesting and valuable complement to Hey's investigations.
2 He also mentions Sophocles' Thyestes. Something about this play may be
gleaned from Pearson's edition of the fragments, vol. I, pp. 91-93, 185-197, but
nothing like enough to make it worth further discussion in relation to our present
topic.

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Some Reflections on Ate and Hamartia 91
choice before us: either hamartia in Aristotle's discussion has a meaning
unknown from any of its other very frequent occurrences in Greek
literature (including Aristotle himself), and Aristotle has not seen fit to
add a word of clarification to his casual introduction of this novel con-
cept: or else his words have almost no relevance to Greek tragedy as it
was actually practised, in spite of the sentence UTrLEtOV SE Kat 7T
yLyvdOpEvov; in which case it is equally surprising that he added no word
of explanation to help the aspiring playwright (clv Sc SE & Toxggt ~o(

is how ch. 13 begins) on his way to mastering this new concept, this
revolutionary advance in the treatment of the process that lies at the
very heart of tragedy.
That I am not exaggerating the embarrassment that modern criticism
feels over this dilemma may be seen from three recent discussions, which
I select from the recent literature: discussions which illustrate the sense
of frustration felt by many over this intractable problem. The first is that
of Else in his commentary, who feels that the work of scholars like Hey
has given little help because "'such an investigation will be inconclusive,
because &4papdTa'VEL, c4Lap-ria, and their cognates and compounds display
such a wide range of meanings - all the way from the simple error or
failure to 'sin',3 or as close to it as classical Greek ever comes - that
either interpretation of our passage remains possible." Else then links
hamartia with its converse, recognition, but attempts to give the word a
highly specialised sense: it "would denote particularly a mistake or
error or ignorance as to the identity" of a blood relative. The reason
why scholarship has not come to this conclusion before is "the myopia
with which the sequence of Aristotle's argument has been regarded."
The conclusion to which Else's argument leads him is not likely to
recommend itself to most scholars. It is enough to point out that the
number of Greek tragedies in which a hero passes from good fortune to
bad through failure to recognise a blood relative does not exceed one;
and the brevity with which Aristotle, on this explanation, outlines his
own original theory of tragedy, with its rigorously limited scope, would
remain as puzzling as ever.
A second interpretation may be found in Kurt von Fritz's well-
known article "Tragische Schuld und poetische Gerechtigkeit in der
griechischen Trag6die,"4 in which some excellent remarks are offered
on the absence of any necessary logical relationship between character
3 In support of "error" as against "sin" see Zuntz in Gnomon 1958 p. 24.

' Von Fritz's article first appeared in Studium Generale 1955 pp. 194ff, and is
now to be found also in his volume of collected essays entitled Antike und
moderne Tragddie.

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92 R. D. Dawe
and fate in tragedy. It may be

apprehension in thinking th
equate "flaw" with the Germ
is represented as an act done
being used, with reference to
tive Schuld." The position o
application of the word hama
strike most readers as discorda
authoritatively established b
Fritz nowhere refers). From
seems to be applied almost in
More recently Professor Ad
taking hamartia solely as a " m
of hamartia as a concept usefu
place "Aristotle's usage of &

coinciding with the usage of &
exclude many &'uap-rla in
involved to their detriment"
(sc. ch. 13) any relevance to
accept these conclusions for s
Aristotle has to say in the Po
art of poetry as practised in
show. Second, if chapter 13 is
practised, but instead sets out
brevity renders it either ine
such a case, did Aristotle choo
Oedipus and Thyestes? Third,
Adkins bases himself too e
(supported by others from M
his argument on the broader
mention I. M. Glanville eithe
On p. 89 Adkins considers wh
of meanings, in which case " A
of Greek tragedy." His reaso
believe comes closest to the t
The form of the distinction,

phasis to St' c"ap-criv T-vc; an
far as the fifth century is co
5 A. W. H. Adkins, "Aristotle
78-oz2.

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8var-vXIa involves an &apria; and if any action which precipitates such a

change is an &)capra, &flapria doubtless should be mentioned in the
analysis, but requires no emphasis.
But is there really any very startling emphasis on hamartia? The word is
mentioned in the context of the right character for a tragic hero. Someone
has to pass from good fortune to bad: traditionally there are two well-
marked routes to misfortune: there is (a) the well-merited punishment
of the transgressor which, says Aristotle, is not a suitable subject for
tragedy and which does not necessarily, even in the fifth century, involve
any a&tapriia; or (b) there is the downfall of a decent chap like you or me,
through some mistake or other. There is no abnormal emphasis:
Aristotle is simply recording his opinion, in ordinary Aristotelian Greek,
that what one ought to do is represent on stage not cases of (a) but cases
of (b).
Adkins attempts to give his theory further support by examining the
meaning of TLELKI'S, which he takes as meaning a man notable for his
"co-operative excellences." But are we obliged to treat the word in this
narrow specialised sense? May it not be the "ordinary language" which
Adkins finds present in his discussion on ttcapdv (p. 96)? Adkins has
done us a valuable service in pinpointing the differences in outlook
between Aristotle and the fifth-century tragedians, but I believe he has
laid too great a stress on them. The difference between us is that, though
both of us agree that Aristotle was not ideally equipped to talk about
Greek tragedy and that his interposition between us and it has very pos-
sibly done more harm than good, Adkins would maintain that the
&capdra "doctrine" is almost wholly irrelevant to classical tragedy,
whereas I would continue to maintain that in this respect at least
Aristotle had fastened onto an essential truth on a topic where many of
his successors have gone astray.
We return then to our original problem, which may be defined in
these terms: we have to work with the meanings of hamartia as they
were established by Hey; and we have to show that this concept is
applicable to Greek tragedy as that art was actually practised. Now the
biggest obstacle in our path, as it seems to me, is this: the Poetics
offer us, at this point, a view of tragedy which appears to exclude the r6le
of the gods: and yet every schoolboy knows (even if his knowledge
is not immune from the charge of oversimplification) that what Greek
tragedy is about is heroic figures being sent to their doom by
divine and irresistible forces. How are we to effect the necessary
reconciliation?

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94 R. D. Dawe
The pleasures of polemic must n

begin the more constructive ph
limits of our enquiry. Hamartia
with plays which depict some n
once eliminates from our enqui
down to us under the classificat
apply to Helen, for that play
Eumenides, for that play is a dram
Philoctetes, a study in characte
with these and other plays exclu
left with a sizeable nucleus of dramas which seem to meet some of the
modern as well as all of the ancient requirements of tragedy. We
instinctively recognise that no theory of tragedy is going to impress us
unless it has some relevance to a play like Antigone, Hippolytus, or
Bacchae. If we ask what it is which our "instinctive recognition" has in
common with Aristotle's best type of tragedy, the type which has proved
the most influential in the history of later European tragedy, it is that
they share the concept of some noble person going to his doom. Of the
thirty-three tragedies which survive, not more than ten meet this
description; but the ten would constitute an impressive anthology. They
are Aeschylus' Persians, Seven, and Agamemnon; Sophocles' Ajax,
Antigone, Women of Trachis, and Oedipus Rex; and Euripides' Heracles,
Hippolytus, and Bacchae.
There is one other proviso which must be made before we move
closer to the heart of our problem. We must recognise that in this en-
quiry the application of the word hamartia to the essentially tragic
element of any given play is not intended to exclude the validity of other
assessments. It is apparent to any student of Greek tragedy that the
difficulty in understanding the issues involved is not that the poets fail
to express themselves on the subject, but that they express themselves
in contradictory ways, ascribing the downfall of a hero to fate, or to the
malevolence of a particular deity, or to the ill will of some other human
agent, or simply to the hero himself, either for some defect in his attitude
or to some wrong decision he has taken. It is with the last of these
possibilities that hamartia is most immediately concerned, but in the
course of this article I will try to suggest that hamartia does not exist in
isolation from those other explanations. The principal method by which
I shall hope to show this is by relating it to other concepts with which it
has something in common, and by establishing that an error of judge-
ment is something which can be either entirely the responsibility of the
man who makes it, or can be something induced, normally by the gods

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putting a man in such a position that he has little choice but to make a
decision that will later recoil on him with disastrous, and above all
disproportionate, consequences.
One speculative, but also rewarding, method will consist of bringing

the hamartia concept into some kind of relationship with the force of ate
so often invoked by the tragedians.6 The differences between the two
concepts may not be so profound as the dissimilarity in the appearance
of the words might lead us to suppose. Certainly we must not allow
ourselves to be misled by the nonappearance of the word ate in Aristote-
lian discussion, for it had by that time acquired the old-fashioned
remoteness of a Homeric gloss. The word was at all times almost
unknown to prose, and the decline and fall of its vigour can be observed
within the limits of tragedy itself, its last efflorescence coming in the
famous third stasimon of Antigone. The ties of language which link ate
with hamartia we can examine later. For the moment let us try to get a
clearer idea of what ate actually is; for most works of reference and
criticism surround this concept with a wholly unnecessary cloud of
mystery.
In the first place let us record that the most common meaning of ate
is ruin, destruction, disaster, misfortune. But in addition it has a
narrower, more specialised sense; and it is on this sense that all discus-
sion focusses. Confronted with it, the imagination of critics runs riot.
Greene7 describes it as "something satanic, a very devil"; to Schade-
waldt8 it is "Prdidisponiertheit fiir kommendes Unheil"; to Cornford9
it is "exuberant, sanguine, triumphant, fed by alluring Hope, leaping to
clasp hands with unconquerable Desire"; and Whitman speaks of the
" mercilessly truthful concept of the goddess Ate, whom Professor Jaeger
has described as the 'madness of doom.' The phrase is particularly
6 There is a Gittingen dissertation by Josef Stallmach entitled Ate, Beitrag

zur Frage des Selbst- und Weltverstdndnisses desfriihgriechischen Menschen, which
relieves me of the necessity of treating ate to the full discussion it deserves, and
which I intended to give it before I learnt of the existence of this thesis. The fact
that I have found myself independently in agreement with Stallmach most of the
time does not absolve me of the charge of plagiarism, to which I willingly plead
guilty.
Harvard Studies in Classical Philology 1935 p. 24.
8 Wiener Studien 1955 P. 12, n. 21; Schadewaldt expressed the need for a
special study on the use of Ate in Homer. Stallmach's dissertation, dated 1950,
had however already investigated the topic very competently.
9 Thucydides Mythistoricus pp. I82-183.

141.98.203.108 on Sat, 27 Jan 2024 16:51:46 +00:00
96 R. D. Dawe
felicitous..."10 Such descripti

impossible to hit on a single wo
mental condition which it deno
elusive that we should have to re
Lexicon des friihgriechischen E
explaining the meaning of ate th
explanations put together.11
The first and most importan
Stallmach in his dissertation refu
meaning Schaden (damage or har
give us the meaning Verblendun
specifically to the mental proces
the majority of scholars seem
Verblendung which lead to Schad
up our minds on this topic, becau
the mental processes which lead
lend support to the school of t
tragedies in terms of "those wh
drive mad"; on the other view
man, for the Verblendung is like
the contrary, to be thought of
is almost the only explanation e
tragic poets for bridging the vo
bility, the only link between pr
desirable that we should at leas
way or the other.
The dispute is not new. Its his
10 Sophocles p. 38. It should, howe

goddess at all. She is personified on
latter that Plato Symp. 195d is refe
OE'v rE'7)ULv EtVat Kac' dciallAv. Ate
though one must concede that clo
further statement that Herodotus
hybris, and hybris madness and d
used only twice in Herodotus, at 1.3
men also, and is used in its wider se
11 The treatment given there has b
Chiloniensis (Festschrift for F. Ja
Lexicon's treatment of the word is
12 "Der tragische Irrtum ist etwa
Reinhardt in another connection, S
13 In an article entitled " Zur Semas
fiir vergleichende Sprachforschung 1

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believed that the basic meaning was a blow, which paralyses or otherwise
disrupts the mind. H. J. Seiler14 objects "Aber weder von 'Wunde'
noch von 'Schlag' findet sich in der Funktion von cr-q eine Spur." But
rpcOcaKorda at Aeschylus Agamemnon 223 plainly alludes to the notion of
being knocked from one's senses, and no one has ever doubted that in
function 7fapaKOrad is there either identical with, or else an instantaneous
manifestation of, what the poet elsewhere calls &r; and a-rcdeat is used
in connection with &~7 at Ant. 1097 (see n. 40). Havers had believed
himself able to show that ate belongs etymologically to a group of ideas
where words denoting blows and striking are common currency. Further
references to discussions supporting the a"- = blow theory can be found
in the Boisacq Etymological Dictionary, though that authority expresses
doubt on the validity of such derivations.
Reluctantly granting, therefore, that the etymology of &r-7 is not as
decisive as we might have hoped, we must see what evidence we can
extract from the actual use of the word in the literature. First we may
notice that in Homer the origin of ate is said in a number of places15 to
be Zeus; and it is only in Iliad I and T, which are notorious for contain-
ing religious concepts more advanced than, or at any rate different from,
the rest of Homer, that this kind of ate is acknowledged by the speaker to
be in some way something for which he is himself answerable. More
usually, like so many other things in Homer which in later literature are
described as coming from a man's own personality, it is thought of as
something sent from outside. Those who have had the pleasure of
reading books like Snell's Die Entdeckung des Geistes or Dodds's The
Greeks and the Irrational will require no further demonstration of this.
Let us only remember that "Agamemnon's Apology" is not typical.16
14 In Sprachgeschichte und Wortbedeutung (Festschrift Albert Debrunner) p.
409.
15 B III, Z 356 (and 00oo if we read r-~s for &opX-s with Zenodotus, which
seems necessary), 9 237, H 685. The Erinys is the sender at o 233 (and figures
in a reconstruction of a Hesiodic fragment which ends like o 233: see Studi
Italiani di Filologia Classica 1950 p. 261). The Erinys and Zeus combine with
Moira in the "Apology of Agamemnon" at T 87. Ate is sent by Aphrodite at a
261, 0 223.
16 It exceeds my competence to go into the relationship between Books I and T
of the Iliad. It is however clear to all that the personified Ate of both these books
(more particularly Book I) belongs to a world of ideas unlike anything we are
used to in the rest of Homer. It may however not be sufficiently appreciated that
the author of Book I was the first person of whom we have any knowledge to
attempt to analyse and reconcile the customary attributions of misfortune to the
gods on the one hand and men on the other; and the highly pictorial nature of his
language should not blind us to the boldness of his attempt to evolve a reasonable
balance between the various elements mental, moral, human, and divine,
4*

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98 R. D. Dawe
Secondly, if we examine Seiler

with the verb the tense that occurs most often in Homer is the aorist
passive: a clear sign that ate must originally have described something
done to someone, not something of which he is himself the originator.
Seiler himself believes that these active-passive (and not middle) uses are
late developments: and similarly with the idea of ate being sent by Zeus.
His statistics" do not, however, support him; and the enthusiasm with
which Aeschylus and Sophocles invoked ate does not support his con-
tention that the idea is already reaching the end of its life in Homer.
Then there is one passage in Homer which is inexplicable on the assump-
tion that ate is basically Verblendung. At T I13 we read ZE;s 8' o- 7 -

SoAoqpoc'v qv EvdOaE / AA' ofLtEO/EV tpcyav opuov, rTE/7-a 68 IrroAAE v 0&aca .
If there were any question of Verblendung here, it would have to precede,
not follow, the failure to recognise the trick. It must mean something
like "and thereafter he paid heavily for his mistake," and not, as Seiler
translates it in the Lexicon des friihgriechischen Epos, "und in dieser
Hinsicht = und darauf, wurde er sehr getiuscht."ls Ate, we may recall,
means "penalty" in the laws of Gortyn, and there is an imposing
number of passages in the literature when ate is explicitly opposed to
which contribute towards a personal catastrophe. The poet may be said to have
been in advance of Solon, on whom Greene (Harvard Studies in Classical
Philology 1935 p. 7) commented: "Unexplained, and perhaps unexplainable, is
the affliction with ate of even him who is striving to do nobly; here is the
stubborn residuum of evil that every philosophy finds difficult to justify on
purely moral grounds." It would be difficult to find, even in tragedy, any more
advanced analysis. Margaret Noe, in her book Phoinix, Ilias, und Homer has a
long discussion of these passages. She omits however to stress not merely how
different this author is, but how far in advance of his own time (whatever that
was); and I cannot agree with her when she writes: " Das Wort d'Nq begegnet uns
bei Homer oft und ist auf vielerlei Arten iibersetzbar, deren letzter Sinn jedoch
Uberall auf den Begriff der unschuldigen Schuld hinausliuft." It would in fact
strengthen Miss Noe's case about the uniqueness of Book I if she did not hold
this opinion.
17 Seiler finds the aorist passive io times in Homer, Hesiod, and the Hymns.
The aorist middle comes 6 times in the Iliad (and twice in Apollonios of Rhodes).
The aorist active comes once in the Iliad and 4 times in the Odyssey, and the
present middle only twice, both times in the Iliad. At Hesiod Erga 284 and the
Homeric Hymns Dem. 246, 258, Aphr. 253, the passive element can no longer be
strongly felt.
18 Much of what Seiler writes in the Lexicon follows from his initial premise,
which is unproved and unprovable, "Dem allgemein an dem Verbum fest-
zustellenden semantischen Gehalt entspricht aor. med. seiner Bedeutung nach
am genauesten." Seiler's contributions to the ate words in the Lexicon are not
always easily reconcilable with the treatments given by Mette in the same
columns.

141.98.203.108 on Sat, 27 Jan 2024 16:51:46 +00:00
KEpSo6.19 In Homer Verblendung is certainly not the predominate

meaning. The epic examples can be classed in many different ways, but
here, if only to provide material for others to disagree with, is how I
would divide the occurrences into a broad classification.
i. Misfortune (the idea of deception, prominent at K 391, being

either expressly stated, or not far from the mind, in all these
examples except T 270 and I 372): B IIi (cf. I i8ff), O 237,
K 39I, T 270, 8 261, K 68, fL 372
2. Forced error: r Ioo (Zenodotus), Z 356, H 685, T 136, t 223,
Shield 97
3. Unforced error: A 412 (=1H 274), I 537, A 340, S 28, Hymn
Aphr. 253, Hymn Dem. 246, 258
4. Wrongdoing: 8 Ii5f, II9 (both perhaps better classed under 3),
5 503, 509
5. Stupefaction: Q 480, 805, A 61, 0 296
6. Penalty: T i 13, q 302 (presumably &varl is related to this)
7. The special Allegory cases: I 509, 512, T 88, 91, 126, I29, with
o 233 where the Erinys also sends it.
The small r61e played by Verblendung in this classification will seem

smaller still when we think of those places in Homer where Verblendung
is very much in question, but where Homer declines to oblige the
modern literary critics by using the word ate. Particularly striking is the
fact that it is never used to refer to the conduct of the suitors in the
Odyssey. At K 68 Odysseus says that his comrades have harmed him
(aaaav) but ate is not used of their folly. Those who, like Schadewaldt or
Gundert,20 believe in an ate-stricken Hector, will find nothing in
Homer's actual language to support them. It is however easy to see how,
as the emphasis shifts, ate will provide the missing link bewteen those
theories of tragedy which see men as the hapless victims of the gods, and
those which, taking their cue from passages like Iliad I or the Odyssey
proem, see them as responsible for their own downfall.
19 Hesiod Erga 352, Solon I.74f, Theognis 133, Aesch. Cho. 825, Eum. Ioo007ff,
Soph. O.C. 92f. Hesiod Erga 231 probably implies the same opposition and so
may 413 and 216. Aesch. Suppl. 444 is corrupt, but it seems likely that what is
being spoken of is a restitution "greater than the loss." In Solon I.I3 ate, once
more the instrument of Zeus, is surely financial ruin; but for a different interpre-
tation see Jaeger in Sitzungsberichte der Preussischen Akademie der Wissenschaften
1926 pp. 69ff. I mention finally the proverb 'yy'-q" ir&pa ' dri7.
20 Schadewaldt in Wiener Studien 1955, and Gundert in Neue Jahrbiicher fiir
klassische Philologie I940 p. 227.

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I00 R. D. Dawe
The division of responsib

properly understood to b
speakmore realistically, it
poets did
not recognise any
for a particular event to th
Thus at H 685 Patroclus is
called a fool; and then in a mo
vdoos E'r 7TEp &vpCyv. The
Students of Greek tragedy
that Aeschylus, Sophocles,
minate, or over-determina
ascriptions of responsibilit
authors the means by whic
them to commit an error t
consign men to destruction
with the correct functionin
We have already noted tha
in class I. of the Homeric e
rightly or wrongly, regard
concepts (comparable is t
which caused drv to becom
striking association, indeed
be seen on the Apulian vas
dressed as an Erinys. The li
and T, and there appears to
21 The topic has been discuss

than by Lesky in his " G6ttlic
Epos," Sitzungsberichte der Hei
Klasse, 1961.
22 The idea is not solely ant
words
6E0s yap cal-rav VEL flporoZg
urav KaKx?aca uwatG u 7 7a L ~7l V O'EAL,

Goethe echoes in his own
Ihr lasst den Armen schuldig werden

Dann uberlasst Ihr ihn den Pein.
There is an interesting article by Deichgraber in Gdttinger Nachrichten 194

entitled "Der listensinnende Trug des Gottes" which should be read in this
connection.

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Some Reflections on Ate and Hamartia IOI
Soph. Ant. 603.23 It will be recalled that in Hesiod's Theogony Ate is a
niece of Apate (vv. 217ff), and the connection between ate and deception
appears often in the literature. Besides the Homeric examples (promi-
nent among which is T 97) we may record Aesch. Pers. 94, Suppl. I10
(admittedly unintelligible), Soph. Ant. 617 (and in a sense throughout
the whole of that ode), Trach. 850. 0ASla, the epithet which accompanies
d7r in this last example (cf. Aesch. Pers. 93) is used of rELrco in Aesch.
Cho. 726, rTEL0 being, as we remember from Agam. 385, itself the child
of Ate. 0oAdo'pOv appears as a gloss on Eualopov at Iliad 'F 6o03, along-
side zatracr4pOv and flhalpwov. And almost as a commentary on the
Niobe quotation cited in note 2z we may take the Aeschylus fragment
301 o 17Ta1qS 3StKalaS *OUK T5roraTEL 0EOSX.

For a long time such explanations of tragic downfall appeared perfectly
satisfactory. But with Euripides responsibility of men tends to come
into the foreground and the responsibility of gods to recede: and
correspondingly it is with Euripides that ate is replaced by other words,
and even other processes, concerning the derangement of the mind.
(This progress in ideas would have been applauded by Plutarch [Mor.
I68B] where appeals to a7"- are taken to be characteristic of the super-
stitious man.) Issues become more personal, more emotional; but still
the old vocabulary which described these events in intellectual terms
persists. As we shall see before this paper lurches finally to its conclusion,
when Aristotle uses part of that vocabulary, hamartia, he is making no
radical departure from established practice.
It will already be apparent that ate and hamartia have at any rate
something in common. But how much in common? It may be for
metrical reasons that the noun hamartia does not occur in Homer. But
it is significant that no other word is used (except ate itself) which might
fill the gap. A schematic representation might look as follows:
23 I first saw a picture of this vase in Cornford's Thucydides Mythistoricus p.

194. The references he cites are Naples Mus. Heydemann Cat. 3253; Mon. Ined.
d. Inst. Arch. 9 (1873) Tav. I, li; Annali (1873) pp. zzff; Wiener Vorlegebldtter,
vii 6 a; Baumeister, Denkmdler, Taf. vi, Fig. 449, P. 408. Professor A. D.
Trendall has most kindly supplied me with more recent references, including
Carlo Anti, "I1 vaso di Dario e i Persiani di Frinico" in Archeologica Classica 4
(1952) pp. 23-45, Anna Rocco, "I1 pittore del vaso dei Persiani" in Arch. Class.
5 (1953) pp. 170-186, and Margot Schmidt, "Der Dareiosmaler und sein
Umkreis" (Miinster 196o). It seems clear that the restoration of AJPA as dawa'v
is correct. On the absence of Ate from vases see n. io.

141.98.203.108 on Sat, 27 Jan 2024 16:51:46 +00:00
102 R. D. Dawe
Ways in which good men

come to harm (Ahdg
Ate
Hamartia
Problem: estimate the extent by which the parallel lines opposite ate an
hamartia are separated.
Obviously there is a certain air of unreality about the problem as
posed. The dangers of imposing upon antiquity a system of thought
which exists only within our own minds are only too evident; and I
approach this question not in any spirit of cheery confidence, but with
the hesitancy of an amateur water diviner who thinks, but is not quite
sure, that his stick may be beginning to twitch. If we examine the
occurrence of ate words in the poetry and criticism of antiquity, to see if
by any happy chance ate and hamartia words are ever used in the same
context with reference to the same ideas, instant gratification is our
reward. Let us begin where the coincidences are most striking.
IA. Passages in poetry where ate and hamartia (or &'1TAaKta)24 are linke
Archilochus fr. 73:

7?i~~aKov, KcLI iroJ iiY' dhAov -''V Ti- KLXrUaTO.25
Pindar Pyth. 2.25ff:
aAAca VtV i W/pi ElS . cL'aVcY 7vTEpwaI?aov
cprEv" a aXaS rTaGOv EOLKOT aVwp

Ealp Erov AE EdXOov. Ct o 8 '' &pwLTAaK&
AEpE7TovotL -rEAEov-rT.
24 It may be objected that p7TrAaKov is not the same as qptaprov. But the close-
ness of the two concepts is clear from an examination of the lexicon. &i'TrAaKW4-
aw7a, &alapri-qara writes Hesychius. The confusion at Aesch. Eum. 934 wher
M hasglossing
word &'LrrAaK Llae
the and the
former, otherindeed
unless MSS &,4apvr'Laraa
it is a simplemust derive from
substitution the latte
of a synonym
At Soph. O.T. 472 K'?pEg &va(l)7TAAd17roL are paraphrased by the scholiast as al
ELS qv & Lap-r&vovacu. The same equation reappears in the Euripides scholia at
Hipp. 833 (& rTAaRKtaL" O aTLV, O0 &' V tlv pT-Ptqlr a TLrWpO oat aAAa a 7TpoyowKOdv),
892 (yvdaiqt y&p av'Bt &p~rrAaKCKv: 'XELt y&p yvCOva 7Lt oj7apTEg), and Andr. 948 ( 8''
&LrlTAaKofaa avVVOaEZv aCvr"7 OE'AE: 8' & Lapprooaa &vspds).
Similarity between &L7TrAaKla and dmr- can be shown by comparing Eur. Hipp.
146 with Homer I 537: both refer to the failure (by an oversight) to
sacrifice to the gods.
25 The scansion of 4rq7 is apparently unique, but sense forbids the emendation
ayq; nor do I believe in aA-7, commended by the Stephanus Thesaurus, where the
statements of Herodian and the Et. Magn. in favour of the long a are recorded.

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Soph. Ant. 1259-I260:
&ATXI, &AA'oVK
a..oS oo7pcav
.LaPt V.
Apollonios Rhodios 4.412:
E7TE' TO 7 rpWrova aOrT7y
&J/z7TAa K 1qL.
Hamartia, as a neuter plural, occurs at Aesch. Pers. 676 and Agam.

537. Of the first passage I suspect, and of the second I am sure, as a
Thucydidean orator might say, that hamartia means "loss" or
"penalty," like the instances of ate cited in note 19. At Agam. I192 an
act of ate is one of the hamartiai referred to at 1197. The compound
&Capprivoos at Suppl. 542 also deserves attention in its context. Theognis
327 D &ataprw)Aa y&p pac' &vOpcr'rotaw "7rovrat is strongly reminiscent of
the ate passages in Iliad I and T. Plutarch Mor. 418 E cites from
Empedocles .C.apitas K t aaS Ka rAa.va

IB. Passages in ancient criticism where ate and hamartia appear to be
equated
i. The scholia BT on Iliad B i dr K a7 -qKOVaLOS- ctpapria (for illu-

mination of the term we must turn to Aristotle Eth. Nic. Book 3).
ii. &~'&aOaAa": a&Ka, qLzap-wAa in the Lexici Segueriani Zvvaywyl7

AE'EWV Xp-qc/l[wv, ed. Carl Boysen.26
iii. &'-ra0ahosAo: &pap-rwAXds, 7rap& 'r7v d-rv Apoll. Lex. 46.24-
iv. &aaa-'o: 7yvo77qcEv, glzap~ev Apoll. Lex. 2.9.
v. avaiacpr-g-rog is the ancient gloss on &4a(rog.
26 Now most conveniently to be found in Lexica Graeca Minora, selegit K.
Latte, disposuit et praefatus est H. Erbse, Georg Olms Verlagsbuchhandlung,
Hildesheim I965.
27 J0aroS is a word which has attracted a great deal of attention. For ancient
etymologies see the Lexicon des friihgriechischen Epos. It has been discussed most
recently by A. C. Moorhouse in CQ 1961 p. 12, who objects to the &vaptza'prnoS
explanation. But in all three places (Iliad 3 271, Odyssey b 9I and X 5) avap-
aPproros
would seems
give to me more
a meaning of acceptable than"insatiable,"
"unlimited," the proposed or
fresh etymology,
"most which
exacting." To
object, as Moorhouse does, that in Iliad E 271 the Styx cannot be called infallible
because it is the oath, not the water, which is infallible, is tantamount to denying
the existence of transferred epithets altogether. What the waters of the Styx, in
their capacity as guarantors of oaths, and the archery contest in the Odyssey have
in common is that they are both &vaPtzp-rprog. Moorhouse's further objection
that ate in the Iliad never means injury is to be set against the fact that two of our
three passages come from the Odyssey, where at b 302 ate can mean nothing but
injury, as it probably does at / 372 also.

141.98.203.108 on Sat, 27 Jan 2024 16:51:46 +00:00
104 R. D. Dawe
2A. Passages which establish a corre

a) Passages from poetry.
i. (7 8' "Ar- aOEVap? 7 Kat .CpTt7rOS

TroAAOv V7rrEKTpOOE'L, .O8VEL T8E
flAcrov ' &vOpw7rovs~
Iliad I 505-5
(cf. 512 n va flAaoBd
ii. rpiada A g Ovydar-qp "A-r-q, 77

MoAop'V77y r"7 Lyv 0' a7oaAo' T TES
7ndAvaraI, aAA' apa ~ yE KE ' K va
Ac7Trovv' J vOpc/nrovs~
Iliad T 91-
111. olvds UE 7 1pEL LEAL7s07S, 05 7
. /A CT 31 CT% Wo ?7t,/q " S' a
otvos Ka KEv-ravpov, &yaKAv-rov E
aac' EV pEyapW (LEyaOuLov ELtpt
E Aa7rtas AOO'vO'0' 8' ElTEL ApE'V
,OaWVolEvo09 KaK EplEe l861o0V ra Il pO6 1O23o29 Odyssey b 293-298

(cf. I 011-14)
iv. OOVo y', w va, rdx7ctra vvrElivovcn y&p
OGEWYv 7rOMKELS rTOy KaKOd povagS Bdflpa
Soph. Ant. 103-1104.
It is evident from the language used (cf. also 1097, and i075) that the
BAda% are none other than Ate in a plural form, or perhaps the At-ra
of Iliad I, which has clearly been the archetypal passage.
b) Passages from ancient criticism.

i. &aaKEL is glossed by OOEtpCE, Ad&rrTtE in Hesychius.
ii. &aaav is glossed by r'(v 3fAdcl3Tv in Et. Sym. Cod. V ap. Et. Magn.
497.27 (see Page, Poetae Melici Graeci, no. 973)-
iii. a' K-raV flAc /3v is the gloss of the scholiast on Pindar Nem. 9.41
(p. 155 Drachmann vol. 3)-
iv. aarov is explained as ir 7rohAvfAa4flE', rT O' 8AaflgS, -r /3Aa/3Epdv (and
r darATqpwo-rov) by Apion in his Homeric Glosses. Similarly, "Art7 is
explained as -rqv alt'ova Ka Kativ - Ac~/3Tv, referring respectively to Iliad
1 505
v. and B other
Numerous ix I, and the first
references meaning
which givencan
the curious offind
Jcamforisthemselves
- Ac bdat.
listed under the ate words in the Lexicon des friihgriechischen Epos.
vi. The scholia on Euripides Hipp. give PA/p3'q rrapaqpooirvs' at 276,

ovESgas. flAd3s at 1149, and qavEpdv 'EUXEg 3A6fh3v at i288. In Aesch.

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Pers. 93ff the ' (Diihnhardt p. 42) are referring to 7rdr-q when they
mention r+v tE'AAovaav E7rEAOE-v arW-Jt flAdc3v. In the MSS of Sophocles
which I am collating at present, flAcfl?q appears regularly as the gloss on
Finally let us notice how the word OEo3AS3flEta is used in prose authors
to denote what appears to be the ate process.
2B. Passages which establish a correspondence between "'Apapria and
i. The famous discussion of &rV'X pxa, &ptdaprEtcc, and &l&Kg/la which

occurs at Aristotle Eth. Nic. II 35b classes all three as types of flAdfJ3.
ii. In the Magna Moralia 120ob34 mention is made of a specific
cX)qap-ria committed by a man who knows only in general i7CL T&-
i-roavi ia Obaf!a Xca flAa3Epa'.
iii. In the Rhet. ad Alex. ch. 4 c4xapria is described as rd 8c' yvotav

lAafEpO'v rt 7rpa7-7-ELv.
Lastly, as a demonstration of c'papria occurring not only in an

Aristotelian milieu in connection with fAdg3, we may take the piece of
"ancient poetry" cited by Lycurgus in Leocr. 92, which is tantamount
to a statement of the ate process.
Orav yap cpy'? &apouodvov flA&rr1-rt -WrC,

TOVT owVT o7rpWTOV E(abatp-toat CT pEv)V
TOV VOVV TO EUUAOV, E' 8 77 CV XELPW ,P7TELE

yvav7qv) , tv EL'tstL tLr/V 'v a/LapTrawE.
(We might also compare the flAdrrot of Soph. Ajax 456.)
The representative selection of quotations reproduced above should

indicate to us that there is a relationship between hamartia and ate. It
would not occur to most of us to classify them both as types of gA'da,
but, as the evidence shows, the Greek mind felt no such reluctance.
Further connections28 could be established if we permitted ourselves to
28 In the light of our ate-apate equation we may like to consider Aristotelian
sentences like E'6a7Ta-r-7O4E'Vr4E 7T KAEOZv-wroS ... yvwuOav riv ACIap-riav (Ath.
Pol. 34) or 8t& -r ... wTAEw I lariuaOat Kat rLtzap7- 47KVaL (Rhet. I389bi6). In
note 19 we listed some cases where ate and KEp3o8 were opposed. The same
opposition but with &trWIAaKia in place of ate occurs at Theognis 401oIff:
7TOATAaKL ' E S apeET'V

cTITEVEL &aV7jP KP"OS 0 Lr9LEVOS , OV tzTLVcC &L/LWV
7TpckWV &tES Iya"A-qV cqIZrALXKL V77V pa'yet

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So6 R. D. Dawe
stray further afield to see what else
both these concepts. But for the purpo
it is enough if we can make it clear that
the tragic process often crystallised b
process he would himself no longer h
the word he would have used.29 We ha
poets ate and hamartia are closely all
word depending more on the user'
difference in the result described. We have also seen that of the two
words only hamartia survived, and that this word is used by ancient
criticism to gloss the no longer fully understood references to ate in the
poets. The deduction is now open to us that Aristotle's hamartia might
have some relevance not only to the poets' hamartia, but to its older and
more superstitious sister, Ate.
But "might" is not the same as "must." In this article we are working
throughout on the assumption that Aristotle's hamartia is the lineal
descendant of tragedy's. More usually it has been the practice to examine
Aristotle's use of hamartia in the Poetics in the light of his usage else-
where. Since Aristotle was par excellence the master of specialised
terminology, such a course seems, to put it mildly, sensible. But I would
contend that whichever method one chooses to follow, the result is the
same. If anyone had suggested to Hey that the Aristotelian hamartia was
not necessarily so very different from the Sophoclean ate, he would have
had no difficulty in overcoming his initial surprise. In a revealing foot-
note (Philologus 1927 p. 162 n. 33) Hey wrote: "Die aristotelische
Mustertrag6die k6nnte man, um der Gattung einen Namen zu geben,
etwa (a parte potiore) die 'Trag6die der Verblendung' nennen, wenn
(the significance of that 7rapa-compound will be discussed later) and is implied

at Soph. Ant. 1025-1032. Ate was used of the influence of drink at K 68, A 61,
0 302; in Aristotle drink leads to a hamartia at Rhet. I4oz2b3. Ate is used
of love's effects at the Homeric Hymn to Aphrodite 253, at Z 356, (F ioo), T95ff,
possibly SQ 28, and at 8 261, b 223, in Sophocles at Ant. 862, and in Euripides
at Hipp. 240. Euripides uses hamartia in the same connection at El. 1036, Bacch.
29, Or. 649, Tro. io28, and at Hipp. 320, 323 (the attitude previously described
as ate), 464, 507. It is Aristotle's word for such "indiscretions" too. The trio of
wine, love, and insanity turns up in Plato, Rep. 573.
29 It is unfortunate that the etymologies proposed for hamartia are so specula-
tive that no weight can be put on them. It would be highly convenient if the
suggestion of Prellwitz that hamartia was connected with d&/Elpw "rob" or
&4'pS o "make blind" coincided with the truth. It would be equally satisfactory
if Boisacq were right in giving it affinities with words meaning "forget" and
"neglect." But the stern verdict of Frisk must be our guide: "Bildung und
Herleitung unklar."

141.98.203.108 on Sat, 27 Jan 2024 16:51:46 +00:00
man nicht den griechischen Ausdruck ' Hamartie' adoptieren will." We
have already seen that to some ancient criticism ate and hamartia could
be synonymous. If we take the modern critic's assessment of hamartia,
we may remark, how easy it would be to transpose his comments without
alteration into a discussion on ate:
Was ist das Charakteristische aller dieser Fille aus der &piap-r-vwo-
Gruppe? Sie beziehen sich auf Handlungen, die ausgefiihrt werden in dem
guten Glauben, das Zweckmtissige zu tun, die aber missraten (zu flA?af
werden) infolge mangelnder Einsicht des Handelnden. Sie haben an sich
keine moralische Seite, k6nnen aber eine solche erhalten, je nach dem
Grade, in dem der Handelnde fUr sein Nicht-Wissen selbst verant-
wortlich zu machen ist [p. 143].
Dass die gut (oder nicht bis-) gemeinte Tat zur fAdcr) ausschligt, ist
Schuld der mangelhaften Einsicht (ayvota...... orrav 1t-7E yv rLrE
/-UVrE dE L tlrTE o; EVEKa v7TrEAaCE 7Tpd4't). Dieser Mangel an Einsicht besteht
entweder um einfachen Nichtwissen der fUr die Wirkung der Handlung
in Frage kommenden Faktoren, oder in der voriibergehenden Verdunk-
lung des Wissens durch ein rdcos [in his Resume on p. 1591].
The place assigned by Aristotle to transient iraOrq7 (and what is Ate if
not a transient ?rdBos?) or the failure to apply latent knowledge to particu-
lar cases is admirably discussed by I. M. Glanville (see note i), and in
the pages of the Nicomachean and Eudemian Ethics there is a wealth of
comment by Aristotle which could, if space and energy permitted, be
brought into a fruitful relation with the practice of the tragic poets
themselves. But I renounce such grandiose projects. Instead, and by
way of transition, let me close this section by reproducing two quota-
tions from Glanville's article, for the reader to mull over by himself in
tranquillity: the first is on page 54, the second on page 56:
a) But for the poet, the boundary between the voluntary and the in-
voluntary (i's 87 ayvOOvLEvov, -L% oyvoovLEvvov v ,uV /L r' a1?V-t r' ov,
Sf'iat), the limit of purpose and of happiness, is still the shifting margin
between the human and the divine.
b) ... as the human agent passes from ignorance to knowledge and
attributes his fate directly to the deity, so we, in this moment of intense
feeling, accept &/.apria as a function of the divine will that shaped his end.
It is clear what remains to be done. We have now to look at the plays

named on p. 94 to see if the explanation of a forced or unforced error

141.98.203.108 on Sat, 27 Jan 2024 16:51:46 +00:00
Io8 R. D. Dawe
has a sufficiently wide validity for it
us a reasonable one-word definition
hero to his downfall.30
Aeschylus notoriously receives very little mention in Aristotle, but
the hamartia theory fits his plays at least as well as any other single
explanation could, once we are willing to accept the ate-hamartia link.
In his earliest play he loses little time in making the chorus speak of the
role of ate (Pers. 93ff), doing so in language which the poets of Iliad I
and T would easily recognise. Later in the play we see how ate has
functioned, as we learn of Xerxes' vd'cos- 0pEvJ3v (750), which was
determined by forces superior to himself (Zeus in 740), as well as by the
evil communications which corrupt good manners (753): though
perhaps in the latter we are entitled to see HELO&e at work again.
In Seven the prime mover is the inherited curse, but in all three
generations ate or its equivalent is the medium through which the hero
falls. In 756 we learn that it was riapdvota 0pEv6A-q which brought
Laius and Jocasta together; in 725 Oedipus is called PAa pwcov - we
recognise now the full force of the first half of that compound (an
adjective which Triphiodorus [411] was to link directly with ir-T 900
years later!) - and, then, in what Aristotle would have called his
moment of anagnorisis, at 779, pilt'qpwov. In the present generation it
is ate which sends Eteocles to his doom (687), or at any rate that is
how it appears to the chorus.
Particularly prominent in this play is the r6le of the Erinys, a daemon
associated with ate from the time of the T poet in the Iliad. It would
require another article the size of the present one to demonstrate how
close are the links which exist between Ate, Blabe, Erinys, Moira (and
Moirai), and some of the less common sinister figures that haunt Greek
poetry, like Aisa. A few references will point the way. There are the
obvious links like Agam. I433; but more interesting are places like
Soph. Ant. 603 with its famous OpEvwvY 'Epwv;s. On this J. Hooykaas31
wrote: "qpEvcov 'Epvv's animi statum ex ipsa natura ortum, non aliunde
allatum indicare neque ego primus contendo neque qua ratione negari
possit video." What we have learnt since his time has taught us that the
conflict between external and internal forces need not be so great as was
once imagined. Nonetheless it is evident that to Sophocles, Erinys is not
now being visualised as a goddess like one of the Furies in Eumenides.
Ate, or even fMdfl, could be substituted, just as at Trach. 895 (cf. 842
30 P. W. Harsh wrote briefly on the uses of the word hamartia in the tragic
poets, in Transactions of the American Philological Association 1945 p. 47.
31 De Sophoclis Oidipode Coloneo, diss. Leiden Sijthoff 1896.

141.98.203.108 on Sat, 27 Jan 2024 16:51:46 +00:00
and 850); or compare Ant. 1075 with 11o4. (Contrast Ajax 835ff or fr.
508 E"aaL' used

language 'EpLVVS 70ovaLS
of 7rT E-EI valivov,
at Aesch. which
Pers. 93ff.) reminds
The Erinysusatstrongly of the
Ajax 1034
forges a sword, something done for her by Aisa at Aesch. Cho. 647.
There is almost no limit to these ramifications.32 Such deities may be
said to represent the superstitious side of the ate concept, originating
with Iliad I and T, as hamartia represents its intellectual side. It is
especially important to be on one's guard against the standard English
translation of Moira as "fate." This overlooks her perhaps originally
separate r61le as one of the darker powers, like the Erinyes with whom she
is so often linked. It is more than possible that at Aesch. Eum. 1047,
where, at the very end of the Oresteia, the names of Zeus and Moira are
linked, we are intended not so much to think of the King of the Olympians
and " Fate," but - since this is the guise in which Moira appears most
of the time in the play - of ZERS Kat Mo pa Kat 7EpdOo7T 'EpLv9S.

The Oresteia is not primarily conducted in terms of ate or hamartia:
for although the word ate comes frequently enough, it is usually in its
ordinary sense of Schaden without specific reference to the mind. But it is
significant that when Aeschylus wishes to use a single word to denote
what might be called the tragic acts in the prehistory or posthistory of his
play, his summarising word is either ate or hamartia. At Agam. I197
hamartia is the word used to denote the actions by earlier members of
that distressing household to which the king belonged. At Cho. 519 it is
the word which describes Clytaemnestra's offence. At Agam. 1192 and
Cho. 1076 ate refers to offences which have taken place earlier in the
myth and offences which the chorus fear are yet to come. At Agam. 386
another piece of the prehistory, the rape of Helen by Paris, is described
as the product of a mind under Ate's influence.
As I mentioned on p. 97, rTapaKo7Tr at Agam. 223 - again referring
to the prehistory of the play - is to be considered as not essentially
different from ate. As HELOd) is the child of Ate at 386, so here
7TrapacKO7 is itself alaXPdoLpyrs, and mention of it immediately precedes
the decisive words, TlAa 8' oiv vOwv-p yEVEcrO0( Ovyawrpds. But this
passage presents special difficulties. The 7-dOEv of v. 220 shows that the
7TapaKo7Td follows Agamemnon's apparently rational assessment of his
position, 206ff; and it follows his submission to the "yoke of necessity."
We are not talking of a kind of madness like that which afflicts Orestes in
Choephori. Matricide is an act, whereas Agamemnon's rrapaKo7rr relates
32 Cf. Aesch. Agam. 1535 with Fraenkel ad loc. and Dodds The Greeks and the
Irrational p. 8.

141.98.203.108 on Sat, 27 Jan 2024 16:51:46 +00:00
110 R. D. Dawe
only to his decision to act, as

show, to say nothing of the
like ate.
Aeschylus seems to have p
that he misunderstood the
discussed earlier? Although
are not unknown, this rem
with which we are confron
that I have expressed elsew
different grounds, namely
disturbed at an early stage
tion of the Hymn to Zeus f
as I maintain they do, after
simply the dubious "impos
is, more directly, the will
between Agamemnon's ra
"going mad." The 7d0tv
described in vv. i84ff with
E-TratoL S'7XaLctUL uvLrrvdE
Zeus is followed by a descr
blasts of fortune which fell
to necessity, because IrfpaKo
7TapaKolrd, like ate, is the f
will of man, the latter bei
through its agency; Agame
exactly etymological transl
The simplest way of showi
33 Just as hamartia is the fatal

yIyvE7ra, T ldpr7rLa, ?4 8' &aP
1303b29), so ate is often descr
"ArT7, it 7T prov &cO'&aOv T 36; r
7pdrov, &YL7p7) aE T~AE~TVra Solon fr. .15; (<wroTraatvovaa, , Trpi7rov TrcwpyE I flporv
ELS apKUVa Ta Aesch. Pers. 98f; HENEW I /poflot?Aov na-rs fEproQs wra!s Agam. 386;
7rpa-apxov (~Irv Agam. 192 (as the parallels show, the MS text should not be
changed). We may also compare the dra which is the KaKOv pW7ro 09~pX~v at Sept.
688, and the Lycurgus passage reproduced on p. 105.
34 Eranos 1966. I see, with a mixture of emotions from which satisfaction is
not entirely absent, that Eranos has now published an article of refutation by
Dr. Leif Bergson (1967 pp. 12-24).
3 5 napa-compounds are often to be found in contexts of the type we have dis-
cussed. Cf. K 391, T 6o3, Aesch. Pers. 98, Theognis 404, Pindar 01. 7.24ff, Ar.
Pax go, Eur. Hipp. 240, Timotheos Pers. 76. This would relate easily to the
original meaning of hamartia as missing the mark.

141.98.203.108 on Sat, 27 Jan 2024 16:51:46 +00:00
Some Reflections on Ate and Hamartia iII
accept the transposition is to reproduce Fraenkel's translation, which
we must remember is intended as an aid to comprehension, not as an
exercise in elegance, with virtually no alteration beyond the alteration in
sequence.36 7apaKO7rd can now be Aeschylus' commentary not only on
the 70GEV sentence, to which it must be confined on any natural interpre-
tation of the ordinary sequence, but on the overvtwrov and &vc7YK-q clauses
as well. Etymologically it relates well to lorratoLs (187).
And then the elder leader of the Achaean fleet, not finding fault with
any prophet, letting his spirit go with the blasts of fortune that fell upon
him, when the Achaean folk were sore pressed by famishing delay in port,
while they held the coast over against Calchis, in the region of Aulis,
where the tides roar to and fro, when he slipped his neck through the
strap of compulsion's yoke, and the wind of his purpose veered about and
blew impious, impure, unholy; from that moment he reversed his mind
and turned to utter recklessness. For men are emboldened by base-
counselling wretched infatuation, the beginning of woe.
I say no more about Aeschylus; and when the time comes, I promise
to be just as brief with Euripides. For it is only right that Aristotle's
preoccupation with Sophocles should be ours too. The famous Ate ode
in Antigone (vv. 582ff) is a natural starting place. We have already
noticed that Ate has superstitious connections as well as intellectual
ones - and just as well, for an ode to hamartia would be a strange
thought indeed. And yet from the logical standpoint there is no great
difference. In fact the whole of Antigone is seen in intellectual terms to a
degree found in no other tragedy, with the possible exception of
Oedipus Rex. The kind of language we have been discussing abounds
throughout. As events move towards their crisis, the chorus stress the
need for EtPovAla (Io98); and after the event the messenger sums up in
terms of &a9ovAta (1242) and Creon himself speaks of his own 8vapovAhat
(1269). The closing lines of the play are a homily on qpovEYv. Antigone
herself sees the dispute as one over which side is committing the
hamartia:
&AA' El Lv 0v1 o (3v EUT" Y E'V EOoS5 KCIA,
1TOLEV 7) Kal &pwLv EK&KWC S qSEJ .

(925-928)
36 To be scrupulous, what I have done is to change " So it was then with " to
"And then" (the Greek is KacL 7r0'); to reverse semicolon and comma punctua-
tion; to delete the "and " in v. 218 (taking the S' as apodotic); and to translate the
Greek aorists as aorists, not, as Fraenkel quite legitimately does, as pluperfects.

141.98.203.108 on Sat, 27 Jan 2024 16:51:46 +00:00
112 R. D. Dawe
If her action is wrong, it i

too is the exchange at I050o
TE.oWLTEp,
KP. o"Uw KX.TL.TOV K7/1JXTWV
oMLaL, 7o-tpO-V EVJOVUXY;
7TAEloU,;7 -qc3.
Against this background stands the Ate ode. The first stasimon had
been on the brilliance of human intelligence and the attendant dangers
when it goes wrong, this note of warning being sounded only in the last
antistrophe, where it refers, one can only assume, to Antigone's in-
genuity in burying the body. Our Ate ode is parallel in structure, the
last antistrophe having a special application to the case of Creon, as will
emerge immediately from the following scene with Haemon. The
following chorus is about "Epws: we have already noted the connections
of Aphrodite and "Epws with Ate.3" When we read 787ff we recognise
this as language we have seen before used of Ate:
Kol Or" 0 7 C&O(XV&ZTWV 1LO~o o
0V CILEpLWCv " Y' &vOpdi-

TrrwV, 0 6 EXWL8 IE/V7 'EP.
V KaCL &KClOv SX&Kovs
qp'Vas. apctaurms- Em AwaL ...
When later, in the kommos, allusion is made to Antigone's antecedents

in misfortune, it is to the atai of her parents' marriage that she most
specifically refers (862).38
It seems then to be no accident that the Ate ode stands in the physical,
as it does in the spiritual, centre of Antigone. From it we learn in a
comprehensive form characteristics which we had previously learnt
piecemeal from different sources. It is sent by the gods, in particular
Zeus. Its function is similar to that of drrdrX7, and it is opposed to 0vaaLs,
as elsewhere to K'p8s. It is the instrument by which the gods set men
on the path to destruction, when they choose to "shake a house" (584):
O KXKoV oK80KEL-~T Otro EUOAOv

TULA 8 E1LEV 0TWL q pEVas
8 TOS TV
GEOS .aYEL ' PS . 7XIXV
37 "Eros Tyrannus," a chapter in Cornford's Thucyd. Mythistoricu

supply additional evidence.
S7arpwtaC , not aTrpaCata, is the reading of LR. May this not be
referring to the marriage of Laius and Jocasta (cf. Aesch. Sept. 742-7
thereby avoiding the tautology? This gives fuller meaning to TrploAa-rov, r
to the three generations, and consorts naturally with r70o e po-rep'Tv-rogS
7T0d7LOV AaflSaKI'8atatv.

141.98.203.108 on Sat, 27 Jan 2024 16:51:46 +00:00
It is not difficult to see how this utterance is exemplified in the action
of the play itself. Creon believed himself to be acting rightly in the
interests of the city. Antigone (504f), Haemon (733), Teiresias (passim),
the chorus (here), and Creon himself (post eventum) recognise that he is
in fact mistaken.39 Creon's own evaluation of the causes of his downfall
are as comprehensive as our earlier studies have encouraged us to believe
they would be. The chorus introduce him (i259f) as one
o0K ~Ao7pl'v
oOvVK, &AA"' '3n A
and his first words of lamentation are l' WpEv~wv w8vapdovwv at1apxrpLara.
But in the same breath as he says this, Creon recognises that he is the
victim of the gods. His hamartia too has been their will. But the victim
of ~rr or -&zdr? does not know what is happening to him until it is too
late. So here the chorus (1270) comment o'L' tw 'OS 'oLKas 3OE 7rv 8K 7V
8~Ev and Creon responds oOL ~lx 1Oa lo6v Ehacos. ~daOEL 0 00os- applies
to Creon in a more refined sense than it did to Aeschylus' Agamemnon,
whose ,id0os- does not rise above that enshrined in the formula rOacwv 8 1
rE Vrmo~ lyvw. With Antigone we are now much closer to the 'pr~
LavOdvvw of Euripides; and closer too to Aristotelian anagnorisis.40
39 That Creon is in fact making a mistake, although adhering to the letter of
the law, is something that would have been readily comprehensible to Aristotle,
who (Eth. Nic. II37b) distinguishes between rT 14LELKi and rT &'KaGov. Creon
observed only r SL'KaLov. I reproduce the most relevant sentences: aTrrov S' 7TL
" U4EV vdOLO SaO 'ov lVrTSi, rTEP E&4voJv S' ox otov tE OP OS EITELV r KOZlOdaOV, Ev
ots o3v avYK7y,) /EV EV L OITELV U,KOOV, t otdv TE 8 Ep'0(2, rT (L 29 ' r3 b O AOV AcplCVVEL dJ
VOdLOS, OVK czyvov r Tz'CzaPTaCVOLEVOV. Katl EaLYt ot3Sv 'TTOv OpOw-" ro yap C/LCaPT7/La OVK
Ev TWL VOLWL O V Ev 4 TWL vOLOUOET77tL AA" Ev 7L 9VcTEL tTOV Trpa)'ia01oS Eat7LV, EVOeV yap
TOCVT77 77 TOv 1TrpaZKT(v ;A77 E'arLv. rOCv oi3v A4Ey77tL EV J0 VdOtOS KCOOdAOV, CTVfl2SL 8' ?'iT
TOVTOV 7rraparTO KZOO'AOv, TOTE 0p'wS ECXEL, 7ft it CZPaAEITtL 0 VO1OOET7T7S9 Kclt 77?LPTCEV ca6rAC2
elnv, CTavopOOVv rTO AAEcOLV.

40 Before we leave Antigone, we ought to steal a glance at the textual corruption
of v. 1o97. When doubts assail Creon after his disturbing interview with
Teiresias, who has already made a minatory reference to the Erinyes at 1075, he
voices his fears in a crisp antithesis:
EYVWKC KaVTS KCL 7KTapaaa(OLCatL 4peVCS
TO T' LKaOELV yap SELVdV, aVTLaTaV7a Se

'et27L racz~czkOV/1 E V Cv 8ELVtL TWaPcZ.
(Io95-1097)
The chorus recommend cflovAlo a (io98), viz. IracpEtLKaOiv (1 IO2), and urge the
necessity of speed:
avvrT4LVOvaU y&p
OEWV 7TO8KELS ETOV KaKd0POVCzS PO a flat.

141.98.203.108 on Sat, 27 Jan 2024 16:51:46 +00:00
114 R. D. Dawe
Orthodoxy has always been ready

diagnosis of the tragic error in W
committed under the compulsion
the end of the play (i138f), is c
modern critics have felt, though t
her action, and at 727f treat it as
Hyllus comes to explain her act to
things she ,t-LapTEv oVx EKOVTUa
single line from this play as enshrin
Or
for XPjp"
she is lk' 'JapTEan
fulfilling Xpp-r1g& CtowsEwr.
oracle; but if there isDeianeira's
any moral act must be
evaluation in predestined,
this
piece, it is simply that the heroine "made a mistake." In this respect
Women of Trachis is not different from other plays: it is merely that
other plays tend to be richer in alternative explanations; for even if the
last words are KOV'EV ro7vr0V 0" 7rL 4Z7 Zeiv', it has to be admitted that the
action of the piece is not pervaded by the mysterious interpenetrating
ambiguities which most of us have come to regard as belonging to the
essence of Greek tragedy.
With Ajax we must differentiate between the prehistory of the play
and the events which constitute it: the same division that we shall have
to make with Oedzipus Rex. The messenger speech 748ff relates the
conditional prophecy of Calchas and the two occasions when Ajax had
returned a prideful answer to Athena's offer of help. This information
comes to light in the middle of the play, just before Ajax commits
suicide: it may therefore have been put in by the poet to mitigate the
feeling that Ajax' death is totally unjustified. Earlier in the play (172ff)
the chorus surmise that Ajax' madness is a punishment for a failure to
sacrifice (cf. Homer I 537 where such an omission is called an act
The ,Gdflca we recognise as draL under a metrically more convenient form, or

else as 'EpwtvVes; cf. 1075. As v. 603 shows, this is a distinction without a difference.
They are the personification of the dEla'rr 77 AdJl77 mentioned in v. 1o51. The
scholion explains avvrT7ivovUL as KaTaKdOTTOVUL Kai fl&irwTovat. In the light of
these two pieces of information it had seemed to me that the most probable read-
ing in 1097 was "Arq, nominative, with &vrLwardvra either in the "whole and
part" construction or as the participle in agreement with Ovpdov. Then I found
that this suggestion had already been made by von Blumenthal in Hermes 1942
pp. I of. And later still I found the suggestion anticipated by Ludwig van
Derenter in a disreputable pamphlet De Interpolationibus Quibusdam in Sophoclis
Tragoediis, published as a doctoral dissertation at Leiden in 85I1. 'v ELV<L
remains difficult unless El. zzi is a sufficient parallel. " It is terrible to give way,
but Ate is at hand to strike my spirit (in ruination?) if it resists." Cf. the rd'pa 8'
&r~ in the proverb cited in note 19.

141.98.203.108 on Sat, 27 Jan 2024 16:51:46 +00:00
of ate, and Eur. Hipp. 146 where it is &Ao11haK t).41 But even the hybristic
answer to Athena is itself an act of ate; compare the parallel at 8
502-504 (of A .TS: 4 AOKpdO', said posterity, mindful of the conflict with
the suicide story which the 8 poet may not have known):
KM VV KEY EKcAVYE Kj. al EX otzEVos- 7
El tEptb7 6cXA0 oY E7TOS. EK/3AE Kac ,I1y' aOrc-G).
1^ A' P aEK-g7-tL 0E65Y (VYEvELY ,d ya oaTizla GaAaUUiq-.
Either explanation can therefore be subsumed under the Ate-

Hamartia heading. But so far as the events depicted in the play itself are
concerned, Ajax' downfall is occasioned by the shame he feels at having
slaughtered sheep instead of Odysseus and the sons of Atreus: and the
reason why he confused these dissimilar objectives is because Athena
had visited him with ate. It may seem to us that if guilt attaches to Ajax,
or if he has made any error of judgement, this lies rather in his decision
to kill anyone at all, not in his mistaking sheep for soldiers. It is hard to
reconcile Ajax' description of himself at 364f:
opcus TvO OpCaCV, w v EEVKCCpsOv,

TOY ElV 8a&OLS &T PEUTOV /-kxaLs,
and Teucer's later panegyric over him, with his night sortie on the
commanders' tents. Can it be the case that his mind was already
deranged before he set out at all? A difficulty here would be that at
387ff Ajax, recovered by now from his frenzy, addresses a prayer to
Zeus which contains a wish that he may kill the Atridae and Odysseus
before he dies. Sophocles seems not to have provided us with the
information necessary for a solution of this problem. But that Ajax is an
ate play, no one can doubt. Its language abounds in references to the
sickness of Ajax' mind: and although in the mouth of an enemy it is
Ajax' character which is said to make him specially liable to derangement
of this kind (1358), most comment, including comment from Athena
herself, treats the ate as a divine visitation. When the word itself occurs,
it is not always certain whether on any particular occasion it means
"ruin " in general, or " derangement"; but the latter meaning seems the
more likely at vv. 195, 643, 848.
It is certainly true that Ajax is to a large extent a play of character.
Slaughtering the sheep would not have led to suicide in a man who was
not of Ajax' heroic temper. That amiable victim of ate, Don Quixote,
also slaughtered sheep in the belief that they were soldiers, but long
41 At Iliad Q2 68 Zeus says of Hector that he never forgot to sacrifice:
oi i- fdtAwv 'uLdpr7-avE SMpwv.

141.98.203.108 on Sat, 27 Jan 2024 16:51:46 +00:00
116 R. D. Dawe
after, with his senses restor

granted the data of the play,
wrong act; and this wrong a
by Athena and visited by Ate
the fourth-century critic it
Yielding, as always, to the te
to point out how Ajax corresp
down in the Poetics. Pity and f
side with ate at vv. 12Iff:
E7TOLKTELpco 8 Vw
8&ur-rvov E40MT, KatlTEP oVT-ra 8vcIEV7),
OO0VEK OT7L VyKaTEEUK7Tr KK7)L,

o38'v r 70o Tovy p/iAov qroV V ov'' KOr7TW
and another Aristotelian canon glimpses at us from behind the words of
the chorus at 154-156:
7-1
OUKYvcVplC(pT70L*
y LEYWV K7
[V aLEWtS
V 7LS a EOV
rocra E' AhC~ oVK V TE'OL.
We come now to Oedipus Rex. Aristotle's preoccupation with this
play does not need to be stressed; and indeed he mentions it by name in
the hamartia context. But if we ask wherein the hamartia of Oedipus
lies, more than one answer is possible. In Aristotelian terminology the
unwitting offence of a man killing his father 42 and marrying his mother43
would undoubtedly constitute acts of hamartia. On this supposition we
are talking about a kind of hamartia which does not correspond with ate.
This view of Oedipus Rex is popular today, and there are grounds for
supposing that it was popular in antiquity. It is likely enough that it was
the view of Aristotle himself. Some modern critics prefer to believe that
Oedipus' hamartia consisted in his failure to keep the oracles in the
forefront of his mind night and day, in such a way that he would never
lay a finger on any man nor spend a moment in dalliance with any
woman. It would be possible to quote Aristotle in support of this
interpretation also: &AA' A7TEL &Xws AE'yoEV 7,dE ErTECraircTx (Ka y&p d XOV
utEv o ( XTEVOth. 7L ENc 7TT?71L46. KaA i s XPeconEViS byAE diYETcuasiTntLe),
tOLtEtL x EXovrca tEv /1' OECpoPVra 8 Kat' 7r GECopotvrTa a /tq7S EE

Trrp&TTE (Eth. Nic. 1146b5). Aristotle then continues by discussing the
42 EVSEXETaL SE oV 1V7Tvd/LEVOV 7ralEpa EstaL, 1oV a 8 LrEV avOpWcTo g 7'7 r Cwv apOVTWV
S, YwtroaKELV, OS r-mr7p ,yvoELv (Eth. Nic. I135a28). Corrupt or lacunose?

a' vp
7TE'a E r vL EtT yvoiag(t
Tpc5$lL . Napic.ai3C EEatv, h'.v, w4'TE v /i4'TE /07E Ot 1E bEVEKaz).
(Eth. Nic. I135bb12).

141.98.203.108 on Sat, 27 Jan 2024 16:51:46 +00:00
influence of various r0a'l7 on the judgement. This would bring us closer

to ate, but at a price: first because Aristotle is not talking directly about
hamartia in this context, and second, because Sophocles nowhere
draws our attention to Oedipus' failure to keep his latent knowledge
ever present in his mind.
Should we then remain content with the first explanation - that the
hamartiai of Oedipus were his acts of homicide and incest? This is
certainly possible: it is possible too that Aristotle was thinking of
homicide and incest
aovvEar-vatToE 7v0/when he 70
i COVa wrote BEtO/""
C (7T'a y&p Kat
kTaacvVEV -TO dpav
&LVOIL"EVa Kat o-ow
fPLtTEWV KEl E%'AEE ZV EK T7OC -0V Yt)//(LvOv7v-rcov (7TEP cav ITOCO i- CKO
7p00 OWIrov ,tOlov (Poetics 1453b). It may well be that to Aristo

to posterity at large, the real horror of the story of Oedipus lay
killing of his father and the marriage with his mother, even if th
all lie w 70-o 8pdt"aroi.
But there is reason to think that Sophocles himself, if he had
anachronistically invited to apply the critical term hamartia to h
play, would have returned a different answer. For 962ff of Oedi
Colonus read as though they had been composed expressly f
purpose of refuting this misconception.44
E'TEl KaO' acTv ' o OK cV EeEVPOC SE/LO

C l.. . ..VEL.OS '8% v 6 0'c "
-a8 ES E/CLUVTV T0VSo /IOS 0l 7/zk'0p7avoV.
(966-968)
Sophocles might have chosen to write a story about Oedipus goi

the oracle, and killing his father on the return from it, and marryi
mother shortly afterwards; but he did not, and put those events int
mouth of Oedipus only as a backward glance at the prehistory o
play that he actually chose to write instead. It is not unreas
therefore to look for some hamartia within the action of the play
Only one possibility presents itself. The tragic element in Soph
treatment of the story must lie in Oedipus' insistence on finding
44 It is a commonplace of criticism that Oed. Col. is not to be used
commentary on Oed. Rex. But Sophocles must have mulled over these pr
and is unlikely to have changed his mind drastically, for his religious th
appears not to have undergone any profound changes in the course of his
- at any rate none that we can trace. Walter Jens, Statt einer Literaturge
(ed. 5, 1962) p. 321 refers to work by one of his pupils, Bernd Seidens
tracing in detail the relationships subsisting between O. T. and O.C. No o
yet established the dating of Sophocles' plays, but a large study publis
Heinrich Siess in Wiener Studien 1915 suggests that O.T. and O.C. ma
been written only about ten years apart. See also H. Fischl in WS 1912 pp

141.98.203.108 on Sat, 27 Jan 2024 16:51:46 +00:00
118 R. D. Dawe
truth.45 But an apparentl

suppose that if Oedipus had
well? From the point of view
of course be that no, all wou
view of Oedipus and Jocasta
unhappiness that the poet h
only be that ignorance was
concerned with the plague e
clear from the way in whic
sight once the play is under
cause of the downfall of O
without that discovery he w
would not have blinded himself.
In their moralising over the fate of Oedipus, Aeschylus and Sophocles
have much the same verdict to offer; for although Aeschylus describes
Oedipus as one who killed his father and married his mother (Sept.
752-756), when he moralises on his fate (772-784) his tragedy is con-
ceived as that of a man who was honoured above all men, as the one who
had solved the riddle of the Sphinx, and whose downfall was occasioned
by his discovery of the true nature of his marriage. Exactly the same
moralising is to be found in the last seven lines of Sophocles' play (cf.
Eur. Phoen. I758ff). For Teiresias too, the prophet who had evidently
reconciled his professional conscience to silence for a long time, the
tragedy was the same, one of discovery: IS' ~kE'Pa cV " OEL OE Katl &8w EpEL
(438). It is the discovery itself which constitutes the process JLE-rafl3AAEWv
S. . E E'rVXac ElS &u8vrvXla. It is initiated by Oedipus himself, and he
persists in his resolve against all advice. It must of course have been all
part of the divine plan that Oedipus should learn of his identity: 4%ap
8' awr-vora OEot OE'oav &v0pcolroLwcv as Homer says, A 274. The story
would be pointless otherwise; and it would be very nearly as pointless if
Oedipus did not make the discovery himself. If Oedipus' hamartia
consists in his repeated resolve to pursue his enquiries, this hamartia is
in reality as predestined as the incest and parricide and belongs to the
category of the "forced error" that has occupied our attention in the
earlier pages of this paper; but from the artistic point of view it provides
45 This view was taken also by P. van Braam in "Aristotle's Use of &jlap1rla,"
Classical Quarterly 1912 p. 266, an early attempt to refute the "flaw" theory.
Almost indistinguishable from Oedipus' insistence on finding out the truth is his
unequalled
is correct, capacity
we wouldfor doing
very so. Ifhave
nearly therefore at v. own
Sophocles' 442 Bentley's r'Xvythat
confirmation for r-Xi
this
interpretation of his play was on the right lines. " Die Kunst ist's grade, die dich
niederstiirzt" is Weinstock's translation.

141.98.203.108 on Sat, 27 Jan 2024 16:51:46 +00:00
the satisfactory illusion of a voluntary choice. The tragedy seems in

some way more meaningful seen in this light than if we suppose that to
the mind of Sophocles, as perhaps to the mind of Aristotle, the hamartia
was the incest and parricide committed simply &i'3pEcl')c vdo'L. What
sets Oedipus Rex apart from other plays of the ate-hamartia type is that
this quality seems for once wholly admirable: we can no more censure
Oedipus for his persistence than we can blame the mother in the Hymn
to Demeter whose resolve to save her baby from death by burning is also,
as the event proves, an act of ate. Oedipus does not have his fate thrust
upon him; he eagerly embraces it with a courage which sets our sym-
pathies on his side. Besides qpdo'vqts, to which EVlPovAla is related, he
embodies par excellence that quality of ELcvdrJs- to which Aristotle
alludes at Eth. Nic. I144a25. The old concept of ate, of the kind which
distorted the judgement of Creon in Antigone, is no longer the main-
spring of the play. This is not to deny that it may still exert some vestigial
influence: the speech of Oedipus at 1076ff has the same ring of mad
resolve that was heard long before when Eteocles (Sept. 653ff), smitten
by ate and conscious by now of his destiny, moves towards his end like a
piece of metal coming into the field of a magnet. It seems not impossible
that Oedipus' repeated failure to see the obvious is in some way the
legacy of ate plays. Oedipus' lack of correct response to Teiresias' words
at 447ff, which is no doubt motivated primarily by dramatic necessity,
may be in some measure excused if we superimpose Weinstock's explana-
tion of Verblendung. But with Oedipus Rex we seem already to be at a
time when hamartia has become the more valuable term of criticism. It
is perhaps not too fanciful to designate this play the turning point in the
history of the two words: and not too fanciful to suggest that one reason
why Aristotle mentions it so often is that Oedipus incorporated so many
of the qualities which Aristotle himself commended. It is his very excell-
ences which make his downfall so profoundly disturbing to the student
of right and wrong.
Believing, like Aristotle himself, that in discussing problems of this
kind one cannot do better than pass in review the opinions of others,
devoting more space to them the more sensible they are, I would like to
take this opportunity of explaining why I do not accept the conclusions
reached by Martin Ostwald in his article "Aristotle on Hamartia and
Sophocles' Oedipus Tyrannus," published in Festschrift Kapp 1958
pp. 93-lo8. This article is particularly valuable to those whose linguistic
accomplishments predispose them against ploughing through Hey's
articles in Philologus. It traverses much of the same ground, but lays
much greater stress on the distinction between &papr'la and &p(dprarWi(a,

141.98.203.108 on Sat, 27 Jan 2024 16:51:46 +00:00
120 R. D. Dawe
following the lead of P. Man

gischen Katharsis und Hama
He (sc.
committed, usually considered
Aristotle) reserves c
an institution. &I-apria, on th
coming inherent in the general
tion, something that gives him the capacity of making mistakes.
Accordingly, when we now apply these findings to the A&Iaprta of the
tragic hero in Poetics 13, we can state at once that it consists not in any act
committed
in by him-for
some disposition Aristotle
inherent would
in him havefindings
... Our called that c&/cp-pr7/a--but
enable us, therefore,
to assert that Aristotle did not attribute Oedipus' fall into misfortune
to any specific blunder committed by him, as some scholars maintain,
but to something within him that is part of his disposition.
It looks as though Ostwald is about to tell us that hamartia does, after

all, mean a fatal flaw. But fortunately when he comes to apply his
definition to Oedzpus Rex itself he avoids this fallacy.
But he does not know the one thing of which, according to Aristotle, a
man is least likely to be ignorant: he does not know who he is himself, he
is ignorant of his own identity as son of Laius and locasta and the slayer
of his father and husband of his mother. It is here that his d&paprtla lies,
and it is in this sense that he acts involuntarily. Only this can be his
&~/aprta in terms of the tragedy, for his slaughter of Laius and the
marriage to his mother would be &/qap7'para, and his ignorance of these
facts would be a b&ap-ra relating to events and actions that are not part of
the tragic action proper.
My objections to Ostwald's arguments are these:

I) The distinction between &aap-rla and al-&p-qcprta, which is in any
event not inviolate, as the quotation in note 39 proves (r' y&p ta&pcprvqa
... Ev r7L EL daU roi rpdC'ards ErUrcv), is not between a capacity for error
and the error itself. No tragic hero falls simply through a latent, poten-
tial, and unrealised capacity for error. It is rather the case that &tap-ria is
the subjective word, & ypr-ica the objective. &tmaprla refers primarily to
the false decision in the mind, &p/pr-p to the false act. Clearly in a
philosophic discussion on what constitutes a good tragedy, and in a
chapter devoted to the nature of the ideal tragic hero, &tcapria is much
the more suitable word.
2) Ostwald's definition comes dangerously near to obliterating the
difference between &datap-r1a and 'yvota. But the epithet ILEy r will fit
only the former, for ignorance does not come in a range of sizes from

141.98.203.108 on Sat, 27 Jan 2024 16:51:46 +00:00
Some Reflections on Ate and Iamartia 121
little to big. Certainly, it is not difficult to find a major r6le for pyvoca to
play in the tragedies, but this is because only the gods have perfect
knowledge. yvoicc is a precondition for aclapria, one definition of which,
we recall, is rd ' tyvoYav BlaEpdv L r#arpprraev.
3) On Ostwald's view Oedipus' downfall is caused by his ignorance of
the identity of himself and his blood relatives. The converse of this ought
to be that if he had known these identities, he would not have fallen. But
clearly this would only be true if he had had this knowledge before killing
his father and marrying his mother. However, Ostwald has already
rejected this possibility in the last sentence of the quotation given above,
on the grounds that all this lies outside "'the tragic action proper."
The three plays of Euripides which we isolated for the purposes of

this study were Heracles, Bacchae, and Hippolytus. I promised brevity
with Euripides. Let me now redeem my pledge.
Heracles meets the Aristotelian definition of a tragic hero better than
most characters in Euripides. His fatal act is precipitated by a visitation
from Lyssa. At v. 824 Iris had announced that her arrival was to be a
flAflos for Heracles, and after the event the chorus ask:
(917ff)
Euripides has, suo more, improved on tradition, by making Lyssa herself

reluctant to fulfill her duties, and by making Heracles suffer not so much
from a temporary warping of the judgement as a full-scale maniacal fit.
But it is not difficult to see that the tragic error in Heracles is not
different from, but only a development of, the old idea of Ate, sent from
the gods to interfere with the workings of the mind in such a way that
the hero will cause his own destruction.
The physical presence of Lyssa on stage as the divine power that
forces Heracles to destruction is paralleled by the figure of Dionysus in
Bacchae. The last words of Pentheus were:
OCKTLPE W CW1LL7JTEO 4LLE, 1W?7E ratS gE1Las

cqitaplrtatcrt lVx a 901 KaTraKTaV7(LS.
(I zof)
It was an act of divine a&i7T7r that led Pentheus to his fatal decision to
spy on the maenads. Commentators speculate on the precise nature of
5+H.S.C.P. 72

141.98.203.108 on Sat, 27 Jan 2024 16:51:46 +00:00
122 R. D. Dawe
the power used by Dionysus

lised in the single portento
but clearly we have to do wi
The power does not induce
ability to reason sensibly
known to us which meets t
fashioned to be mentioned
more sensational form. Thi
Bacchae shows archaising te
Heracles and Bacchae showe
bring the hero to ruin. In
beginning and end of the pl
of Greek tragedy in this re
from the action there is obv
their work. It is gratifying t
is exceptionally rich in the
It is most noticeable in the
E6-qra7 1 3a'1tov
cTrEvWo aE 1ztAAov
8 cr' 6 p y JPLEaiv ir
EYV 3Lv rcovW EL
Earlier examples may be su
a) With reference to Hippo
46 A. R. Bellinger in an artic
Yale Classical Studies 6 (1939)
god" and then on the same pa
cruellest penalty of all, the m
perilous state." I do not need
us to Ate.
47 Once more we are reminded of Eteocles in his moment of ate:
EOWaV SLSOVTV o0K aV K*VYOL KaKa' (Sept. 719)

The way in which hamartiai are so liberally distributed over Hippolytus was
noted by Knox in Yale Classical Studies 13 (1952) pp. Iff. It is significant too
that he notes first, "The freedom of the human will and the importance of the
human choice are both, in the prologue of the Hippolytus, expressly denied. In
no other Greek tragedy is the predetermination of human action by an external
power made so emphatically clear." Then in the next paragraph he notes too
how "As we watch the human beings of the drama, unconscious of the goddess'
purpose, work out her will, we are struck by their apparent freedom. In no other
Greek tragedy do so many people change their minds about so many important
matters." The richness in hamartia-type language in this play fits perfectly as the
bridge between the two antinomies to which Knox has drawn attention.

141.98.203.108 on Sat, 27 Jan 2024 16:51:46 +00:00
b) With reference to Theseus: 832, 892, and especially
Ti V seU07)V aCqapTlav
To tL?7 EtSEatXL I-LEV 7TpWTQV EKA&DL KaK7-g
(1334-1135)
c) With reference to Phaedra: 146, 232 (7rapcdbpwv), 238 (rTapaKO''TTEL),

240-241
276, 323,(rrPE7rrTAdyXO?v
(438), 507, 615- yv Wt770S 7ya Os, / d4ld9v, TTEraov 8aot'ovos c-r-),
The results of this survey of the usage of the plays themselves suggest
that the " doctrine " of hamartia is not the inexplicable irrelevance it has
so often been made out to be. What Aristotle understood by hamartia
was no doubt only a part of what the tragedians had understood by it;
but when he wished to choose from the wealth of ideas in tragedy that
vital strand which runs right through their centre, it was the right
strand which he selected.48
TRINITY COLLEGE, CAMBRIDGE
4" I would like to express my gratitude to Professor D. L. Page and Professor

F. H. Sandbach for their criticisms of this article.

141.98.203.108 on Sat, 27 Jan 2024 16:51:46 +00:00

Dawe ReflectionsAteHamartia 1968

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Some Reflections on Ate and Hamartia

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7 oTAoVV, W wU7TEp TLxES O(Xa CxKaa FLETaXfAAE & VTVXIoxa0 E

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qualche fatto o di qualche cir

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of explanation to help the aspiring playwright (clv Sc SE & Toxggt ~o(

3 In support of "error" as against "sin" see Zuntz in Gnomon 1958 p. 24.

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and fate in tragedy. It may be

place "Aristotle's usage of &

The form of the distinction,

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8var-vXIa involves an &apria; and if any action which precipitates such a

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The pleasures of polemic must n

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One speculative, but also rewarding, method will consist of bringing

6 There is a Gittingen dissertation by Josef Stallmach entitled Ate, Beitrag

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felicitous..."10 Such descripti

10 Sophocles p. 38. It should, howe

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Secondly, if we examine Seiler

tion that ate is basically Verblendung. At T I13 we read ZE;s 8' o- 7 -

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KEpSo6.19 In Homer Verblendung is certainly not the predominate

i. Misfortune (the idea of deception, prominent at K 391, being

The small r61e played by Verblendung in this classification will seem

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The division of responsib

21 The topic has been discuss

6E0s yap cal-rav VEL flporoZg

urav KaKx?aca uwatG u 7 7a L ~7l V O'EAL,

Ihr lasst den Armen schuldig werden

There is an interesting article by Deichgraber in Gdttinger Nachrichten 194

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301 o 17Ta1qS 3StKalaS *OUK T5roraTEL 0EOSX.

23 I first saw a picture of this vase in Cornford's Thucydides Mythistoricus p.

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Ways in which good men

Archilochus fr. 73:

cprEv" a aXaS rTaGOv EOLKOT aVwp

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Hamartia, as a neuter plural, occurs at Aesch. Pers. 676 and Agam.

Empedocles .C.apitas K t aaS Ka rAa.va

i. The scholia BT on Iliad B i dr K a7 -qKOVaLOS- ctpapria (for illu-

ii. &~'&aOaAa": a&Ka, qLzap-wAa in the Lexici Segueriani Zvvaywyl7

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2A. Passages which establish a corre

i. (7 8' "Ar- aOEVap? 7 Kat .CpTt7rOS

ii. rpiada A g Ovydar-qp "A-r-q, 77

,OaWVolEvo09 KaK EplEe l861o0V ra Il pO6 1O23o29 Odyssey b 293-298

b) Passages from ancient criticism.

vi. The scholia on Euripides Hipp. give PA/p3'q rrapaqpooirvs' at 276,