Speaker 1: Hello, this is let's talk about Mitts baby, and I'm
Speaker 1: your host, she who loves Euripides with a fiery passion,
Speaker 1: particularly having read The Alcestis Live today, I am here,
Speaker 1: as promised, with more on the Alcestis, including more historical
Speaker 1: details that are going to blow your mind. Today, I
Speaker 1: spoke with fan favorite guest you all know and love
Speaker 1: her from the episode on Persephone from last year. That's right,
Speaker 1: it's Dr Ellie mack and Roberts, who also has a
Speaker 1: badass TikTok about ancient nursery ages ago. Ellie suggested that
Speaker 1: she would want to come back on the show to
Speaker 1: talk about the alchoustics, So when I knew I was
Speaker 1: going to cover it, I reached out immediately. And when
Speaker 1: I started actually getting into the play and writing the episodes,
Speaker 1: who oh, I only wanted to talk to her about
Speaker 1: it even more. This play is fucking wild. You will
Speaker 1: hear how eager I was in the very beginning of
Speaker 1: this episode, because truly I have finished recording the episodes
Speaker 1: for the play, and then I was like, oh my god,
Speaker 1: I just can't wait to talk about it some more
Speaker 1: because it is so fascinating and Ellie's insights Oh my God,
Speaker 1: only add so so, so so much more to the
Speaker 1: way that I told the story. So I'm so excited
Speaker 1: for you all to hear all of this, so much
Speaker 1: more context, historical bits and pieces, so much Euripides talk.
Speaker 1: But oh my god's the alcestis right. Like I said,
Speaker 1: Ellie and I talked about Euripdes his career, how tragedy
Speaker 1: performances came to be, when and where they were performed,
Speaker 1: and in which competitions and circumstances, what he maybe is
Speaker 1: or is not doing within the Alcestis, and so much more.
Speaker 1: We talked for a while too, so I'm just going
Speaker 1: to dive right into that conversation because Euripides and the
Speaker 1: Alcestis and wild and wacky tragic comedy or whatever on
Speaker 1: earth Euripides has bestowed upon us within this play, fuck
Speaker 1: all of them so much. He's so weird and wonderful.
Speaker 1: Plus bonus dicks on sticks, so many dicks on sticks.
Speaker 1: Just you wait. Conversations Roadinger's Alcestis theories on the how
Speaker 1: and why behind euripides play with Dr Ellie Mack and Roberts.
Speaker 1: Thank you so much for doing this again. I'm so excited.
Speaker 1: This is like one of the only times I've come
Speaker 1: into a conversation just being like I have so many
Speaker 1: things to both say but also ask you about. But
Speaker 1: I'm going to this play. No, so only like so
Speaker 1: just the background on it is that I had never
Speaker 1: read it, and I had just yes, so awesome, Like
Speaker 1: I had never read it. All I knew was it's
Speaker 1: a Euripides tragedy and it involves a woman dying in
Speaker 1: heracles bringing her back from the debt, and that's all
Speaker 1: I knew. So my brain went like, cool, this is
Speaker 1: an Euripites tragedy in the vein of back guy Madeia
Speaker 1: like Venetian Women, like all these different plays that I
Speaker 1: and I was like, oh my god, what it is?
Speaker 1: And I just had so much fun retelling it just
Speaker 1: now because yeah, because oh no, no, it's not any
Speaker 1: of those things. It is the weirdest, most ridiculous but
Speaker 1: also like wonderful in how ridiculous it is. Yeah, and
Speaker 1: so yeah, like what makes this a play that? I mean?
Speaker 1: I also specifically remember you were just like I'll talk
Speaker 1: about Alchustics and so as soon as I was going
Speaker 1: to cover it was like, great, perfect, I have this
Speaker 1: guess lined up. So what makes it the play that
Speaker 1: you just want to talk about. I just love it.
Speaker 1: I just think it's like it's unlike any other play
Speaker 1: that we have extent. I mean that doesn't mean that
Speaker 1: it's unlike any other play that was staged mm hmm.
Speaker 1: But you know, I don't know. Some of the things
Speaker 1: that I love about it kind of feed into, you know,
Speaker 1: a lot of my other interests around death and and
Speaker 1: concepts of death and staging death and and ideas around
Speaker 1: who dies and why and how. Um. But there's also
Speaker 1: like a really interesting political background to that. You know,
Speaker 1: we don't have a lot of real detail about, um,
Speaker 1: but there are some like you know, interesting kind of
Speaker 1: tidbits that that sort of lead on to, you know what,
Speaker 1: why this play was even staged, potentially why this play
Speaker 1: was staged? Um. And I mean like I can just
Speaker 1: jump in if you want please, I mean what, I
Speaker 1: know what I read it like just I basically just
Speaker 1: read the introduction to the addition that I have, which
Speaker 1: was pretty interesting. Um. But it was like it's his
Speaker 1: earliest extent play that we have, right, Like it's the
Speaker 1: earliest surviving one, but he was writing for a long
Speaker 1: time before that. Is that right? Oh? Yeah? Definitely like
Speaker 1: he had staged his first place that we know, I've
Speaker 1: staged his first play eighteen year prior. Okay, so he'd
Speaker 1: been writing for quite some time. Um, So we don't
Speaker 1: know how many times he was selected in those eighteen
Speaker 1: years to participate in the Dinasia. Um, Like there are
Speaker 1: other dramatic festivals that he maybe was also participating in.
Speaker 1: But so for for the City Dinasia, three playwrights were
Speaker 1: selected to present four plays each, and we don't really
Speaker 1: know how that process went. Whether you know, they just
Speaker 1: had like a bit of an idea about what they
Speaker 1: wanted to put on and they went to the archon
Speaker 1: and said, Oi, I'd quite like to put these plays on.
Speaker 1: What do you reckon? Do you want to pick me?
Speaker 1: Or whether they you know, composed sections of the plays
Speaker 1: or however that went. Um, but it's likely that he
Speaker 1: had been picked like at least sort of three or
Speaker 1: four times. It wasn't a period of time. No, um,
Speaker 1: he this set of plays came second Ah to Sophocles,
Speaker 1: I don't know what play should have looked at this
Speaker 1: and I just didn't. Um. I don't know what plays
Speaker 1: won that year, but they're not plays that we have excellent.
Speaker 1: Do we know what other plays that Euripity staged with this,
Speaker 1: so we do. The play were four unconnected plays. So
Speaker 1: this so I think people often have this idea that,
Speaker 1: particularly because we have East class are a styre, that
Speaker 1: trilogies were the standard way that and that it just
Speaker 1: wasn't We know that there are three sets of trilogies
Speaker 1: that we know about, one of which is they are
Speaker 1: a styre um. But it seems like by the time
Speaker 1: Euripides was kind of rising, and definitely by the time
Speaker 1: this set of four plays was staged in four eight,
Speaker 1: that the practice of having trilogies was gone. So there
Speaker 1: were four unconnected plays. There were Cretan women our common
Speaker 1: in suffice Um Telephus and alcestas Um Telephone is a
Speaker 1: really interesting play as well. The other three players are
Speaker 1: not excellant. Tell Us is often called euripides most famous
Speaker 1: lost play, and it's about this Greek hero who by
Speaker 1: marriage becomes the king of this town in the Troad.
Speaker 1: And then so during the Trojan War is on the
Speaker 1: side of the Trojans, and it's kind of about anyway
Speaker 1: he gets wounded by Achilles, and this is before the
Speaker 1: war happens he gets wounded by Achilles and he has
Speaker 1: to He gets told that the only way that the
Speaker 1: wound will heal is if the perpetrator heals it with
Speaker 1: the weapon that cut him. So he sneaks into the
Speaker 1: Greek camp and holds the baby, arrestes hostage, and it
Speaker 1: kind of gets Achilles to come and heal him, and
Speaker 1: it's sort of all fine, But then it plays with
Speaker 1: this really interesting kind of aspect of this Greek hero
Speaker 1: who is the king of the Trojan aligned town and
Speaker 1: where does his loyalty life And in the end, you know,
Speaker 1: from what we understand, it seems like he helps the
Speaker 1: Greeks get into Troy, not into the city, but um
Speaker 1: sort of around helps them get to Troy in some way.
Speaker 1: But yeah, it plays with this this idea of what
Speaker 1: loyalty is to you know, his wife and her family
Speaker 1: and you know his adopted city or to you know,
Speaker 1: his heritage, which is great. So yeah, it's really interesting.
Speaker 1: Um it's one of those many times where I think,
Speaker 1: why do we have so much Menanda and we don't
Speaker 1: have this play. I mean, the players that I want
Speaker 1: to read, like, I just want to read all of
Speaker 1: them makes me so angry. I think you want it
Speaker 1: all the time. Just yeah, we used to play this,
Speaker 1: well sometimes we still do. When I was like an
Speaker 1: undergraduate and during my master's we used to play this
Speaker 1: game often at the pub, which I'm not sure made
Speaker 1: us the most popular pub going. But it was like
Speaker 1: what would you give back to take? And you had
Speaker 1: to do like an exact one for one, um, and
Speaker 1: then everybody else in the group had to decide whether
Speaker 1: you're one for one was a genuine one for one.
Speaker 1: So like I used to always say, like I would
Speaker 1: give back menandez parachromine because I had to translate that
Speaker 1: entire play in my last year and I absolutely hate it,
Speaker 1: So I would give that back and I want es
Speaker 1: plus as if agenia. But that never was like considered
Speaker 1: a one for one trade, like you've always got to
Speaker 1: give more back, well, especially with I mean especially with Mona. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I can't even name anything. No, it's more like I
Speaker 1: don't even like if you would have told me to,
Speaker 1: like name somebody, and I would have just never even
Speaker 1: I feel like I've never encountered any of his so
Speaker 1: and granted, like I'm not as deep in the drama yet,
Speaker 1: because I'm getting closer and closer, but like, yeah, I know,
Speaker 1: it doesn't seem like a one for one no, no,
Speaker 1: but that sounds like a game that like just for alcestics.
Speaker 1: And I appreciate trades these, yeah, yeah absolutely, but I
Speaker 1: mean as for alcestics, it's not a fair one for
Speaker 1: one trade. I just the idea that, like the whole
Speaker 1: of the play is like, Oh my god, what a
Speaker 1: great wife she was. She gave up her life for you.
Speaker 1: She's just so great, What a great lady. She's so loyal,
Speaker 1: she's so honorable, she's so wonderful, And it's like, can
Speaker 1: we all look at just the whole concept of this generally,
Speaker 1: the very notion that like this man is going around
Speaker 1: and there's I don't know if there's an argument to
Speaker 1: be made that he is forced to do this, but
Speaker 1: to me, it really seems like he could just be like, Okay, no,
Speaker 1: I'll just die, like I'll just go ahead and do
Speaker 1: what the fates originally said, like, in which case it's
Speaker 1: it's just a matter of him being no, I really
Speaker 1: don't want to somebody else do it for me. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I've got I've write down this really great quote um
Speaker 1: from an article called Euripides Alcestus Female Death and Male Tears,
Speaker 1: which is brilliant by Sagal and he says this admits
Speaker 1: is grieving, starts out with a load of egotism and
Speaker 1: selfishness that probably remains too heavy to be lifted by
Speaker 1: his experience of change. And that to me, just like
Speaker 1: sums up who admits us is as a person, um like,
Speaker 1: he's very selfish and egotistical and in a lot of ways,
Speaker 1: I think, you know, I definitely a very hard on
Speaker 1: him as a person. I don't like him, and I
Speaker 1: think a lot of people are very hard on him.
Speaker 1: But he's not tragically flawed mm hmm, Like he's just
Speaker 1: a very like he's he's flawed in myriad way, but
Speaker 1: not tragically flawed. Like he does seem to be trying
Speaker 1: to do the right thing to do, you know, a
Speaker 1: thing which you know, this God has has done this
Speaker 1: amazing given him this amazing gift, and it's almost like
Speaker 1: he sort of doesn't really know what to do with it.
Speaker 1: But he's he's just this man who has lived this
Speaker 1: very incredibly privileged life, who you know, was given this
Speaker 1: gift and he just assumed that he would be able
Speaker 1: to find some body two to you know, take on
Speaker 1: this burden for him, and he does, and it's a
Speaker 1: person that he doesn't want to have to do that.
Speaker 1: And I think in a lot of ways, like you feel,
Speaker 1: he feels really trapped between you know, like giving up
Speaker 1: alcestis sort of allowing her to die in this way,
Speaker 1: to sacrifice herself, and you know, like it's a very
Speaker 1: it must be a very difficult position to be put into.
Speaker 1: Have a god say to you, you know, you've been
Speaker 1: really kind to me, and therefore I want to give
Speaker 1: you this gift and then to turn around and say,
Speaker 1: actually thanks, but no thanks um, because that also wouldn't
Speaker 1: have ended really well for them, hum one imagined you know. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I often I have wondered about that because to me, like,
Speaker 1: of course, I mean, it is the gods, so you
Speaker 1: have to assume they'd be piste off just that, like
Speaker 1: their will got kind of discounted. But to me, like, uh,
Speaker 1: play that and I mean this this says a lot
Speaker 1: about what I think Euripides is trying to do with
Speaker 1: this play. But like a play that wants to be
Speaker 1: a tragedy in the vein of more traditional tragedies would
Speaker 1: have this whole question ended with him sacrificing himself, you know,
Speaker 1: like it would it would be more a play about
Speaker 1: the choice and falling on the side of no, I
Speaker 1: don't want my beloved wife to die for me. I
Speaker 1: will just go and kill myself, you know. And I
Speaker 1: think that's what makes his choice interesting that you say that,
Speaker 1: because I think that's what makes his decision to make
Speaker 1: this like a tragic comic, like a thing that is
Speaker 1: more instead of examining the question of sacrifice and life
Speaker 1: and death and and yourself versus somebody you love that much,
Speaker 1: instead of being that question, it's more of a question
Speaker 1: of like, Okay, well, what if somebody is so so
Speaker 1: selfish and narcissistic that they simply can't visit that question. Instead,
Speaker 1: the choice is made because they just like, no, I'm
Speaker 1: not gonna die, so who's gonna die for me? It's
Speaker 1: not a question of whether I die or not. It's like, Okay,
Speaker 1: how do I deal with the person who does die
Speaker 1: on my behalf? Because he clearly like it, just having
Speaker 1: just read like every second of it and with my
Speaker 1: head like perpetually exploding. Uh. He doesn't ever look at
Speaker 1: it and think like I made this call. He just
Speaker 1: is like it's so sad for me, Like, how can
Speaker 1: I live without her? I want to throw myself in
Speaker 1: her grave. And I'm just like, you literally could have
Speaker 1: died instead of her. Yeah, that's the one thing that
Speaker 1: I just listening to him, like I can't live without you,
Speaker 1: And it's on and on and on and on. Um.
Speaker 1: And you know, I get that he's like going through
Speaker 1: this really deep process of grief and loss and anger
Speaker 1: and probably for somebody like in his hyper privileged position,
Speaker 1: you know, and not kind of a grieful loss that
Speaker 1: you would ever imagine going through. M not that you know,
Speaker 1: these kind of people didn't lose wives in particular. They
Speaker 1: would have probably in childbirth very frequently in the real well,
Speaker 1: not very frequently, but you know, frequently enough in the
Speaker 1: real world. Um. It's interesting that you say that to
Speaker 1: make it a tragedy for you, it would be him
Speaker 1: sacrificing himself, because I though it would be her, But
Speaker 1: it would be like about that instead of the call
Speaker 1: has already made you know. Oh yeah, Okay, that's interesting
Speaker 1: because I would say that, like to me, the obvious obvious, um,
Speaker 1: you know, point of it becoming a tragedy is that
Speaker 1: he gets to the end and makes the other decision,
Speaker 1: so we can't see. What I mean is like he's
Speaker 1: gone through this massive process of grief and loss. He
Speaker 1: makes these promises and kind of says these things which
Speaker 1: are really very unrealistic. He promises Alcestis that he'll never
Speaker 1: get married again. He completely denounces his family, Uh, you know,
Speaker 1: he says he's never going to stop mourning. He kind
Speaker 1: of really becomes this solo entity, like completely consumed by
Speaker 1: her dying and and like unaware that he is the
Speaker 1: reason that she's dying, like you know, as you said, um,
Speaker 1: and it's really unbearable. But as he's kind of starting
Speaker 1: to come out of this really volatile stage of grief
Speaker 1: after her funeral, sort of right at the end, um,
Speaker 1: that's when the table really gets flipped on him and
Speaker 1: heracles comes back with this woman who he says, he's
Speaker 1: one in an athletic contest. Ah. And to me, like
Speaker 1: the point of tragedy would be if he didn't eventually
Speaker 1: acquiesce and take Alcestis, who he doesn't know is Alcestis back.
Speaker 1: If he had been like, no, I'm not going to
Speaker 1: do it, I promised Alcestis. I'm deep in my grief.
Speaker 1: I can't think of anything beyond my own grief. And
Speaker 1: you know, but he doesn't um And that's the point
Speaker 1: that it kind of turns from tragedy two not tragedy
Speaker 1: when he marries her again. And you know, this is
Speaker 1: a really symbolic, a really interesting symbolic thing about Like
Speaker 1: it's very clear Heracles is very clear that he can't
Speaker 1: just get somebody else to take her into the house.
Speaker 1: He has to grab her. He grabs her with his
Speaker 1: by the wrist, with his right hand, Like this is
Speaker 1: a really clear symbolic, stereotypical marriage gesture. We see it
Speaker 1: in marriage iconography, we say it in other literature on marriage,
Speaker 1: like this is the point when a man grabs his
Speaker 1: bride by the rest, Like that is the thing that
Speaker 1: we know that pots are marriage scenes because they have
Speaker 1: this gesture. And there's some other stuff that, like other
Speaker 1: kinds of iconography that's verts that. And this is kind
Speaker 1: of Euripides innocence playing with I think, I don't know,
Speaker 1: playing with that subversion almost like subverting the subversion of it,
Speaker 1: you know, And that's when it becomes kind of when
Speaker 1: Heracles is like, yeah, this is what's going on, right,
Speaker 1: She's not going to speak for three days until like
Speaker 1: you've got to purifyer, and then she's not going to
Speaker 1: speak for three days. But then everything will be like
Speaker 1: that's a normal, it'll be great, and you know, Admetus
Speaker 1: is like, ah, let's have a party, and then it's all.
Speaker 1: You know, back to Admetus being like the person who
Speaker 1: everything works out for all the time, which completely explains
Speaker 1: his attitude throughout the entire play. Like I think, you know,
Speaker 1: that would be the point of it being tragic if
Speaker 1: he stayed resolved and didn't didn't she just got she
Speaker 1: got taken away and then back in. Yeah, but then
Speaker 1: for it to be tragic, it would have to be
Speaker 1: revealed to him that it was Alcestis in the same
Speaker 1: way that like at the end of Hip Politics, after
Speaker 1: it's already too late and Apolitics is going to die,
Speaker 1: Theseus gets told that actually, like he was innocent the
Speaker 1: whole time, and then Theseus has to kind of live
Speaker 1: with that, which I don't mind, because Thesis is a prick. Yeah,
Speaker 1: but you know, it meets Us, isn't it. Meets Us
Speaker 1: is not a bad guy. He's a horribly insufferable man,
Speaker 1: but he's just a guy who has had everything handed
Speaker 1: to him and everything has always magically worked out for
Speaker 1: him before. And you know, that's like the whole backstory.
Speaker 1: And you know, I'm sure that you kind of went
Speaker 1: into this in your like deep diet episodes, Um, not
Speaker 1: just kind of retelling the play, but kind of going
Speaker 1: into that background that Euripides doesn't really talk about. He
Speaker 1: kind of alludes to it. No, I think I did
Speaker 1: not do any of this, So please share, because I
Speaker 1: do not have access to academic stuff. I'm like, I'm
Speaker 1: going to retail the play with what I can, but
Speaker 1: so please tell me. Okay, Um, So there's a two,
Speaker 1: i mean two very interesting stories about animates, the second
Speaker 1: being his marriage to Alcestras, right, but the first is
Speaker 1: why Apollo is there in the first place. And Euripides
Speaker 1: doesn't really go into the background of this, but he
Speaker 1: does put in like a couple of little interesting, like
Speaker 1: almost easter egg kind of tidbits that like obliquely allude
Speaker 1: to this background. So the basic story is really like
Speaker 1: the fullest version that we have is in Pseudo Apollodorus,
Speaker 1: which is like the first second century CUM. It's very
Speaker 1: likely that at least some of this was told in
Speaker 1: hes lost catalog of women. Um, there's a reference to
Speaker 1: it in the Iliad. There is an earlier play, like
Speaker 1: a generation earlier than Euripides, that was an Alcests. We
Speaker 1: don't know what part, like was it the same, We
Speaker 1: don't know by Frenicus. Ah some scholars think it was
Speaker 1: a truessett to play rather than a tragedy, But actually
Speaker 1: I think most scholars more recently consider it to be
Speaker 1: a tragedy, which kind of demonstrates that the Orchestra is
Speaker 1: a tragic story. So that was thirty to forty years
Speaker 1: before Euripides play that would have been staged. And then
Speaker 1: the earliest really version of the Apollo backstory is early
Speaker 1: fifth century b c. A. Obviously that's a lost sort
Speaker 1: so this is really retold with fragmentary inclusions in Pseudo Apollodorus.
Speaker 1: And so essentially ah Zeus had killed Apollo's son a
Speaker 1: Sclepias because he had learned to raise the dead using anywhere.
Speaker 1: That's not that's what I want to retell all of us.
Speaker 1: But I'm realizing this is the first time ever that
Speaker 1: I didn't go to Theoi dot com. I just read
Speaker 1: through the play because I was unfortunately I'm rushing things
Speaker 1: right now before I leave, and I'm like, man, what
Speaker 1: was I thinking. I'm always the one who's like going
Speaker 1: to go through and find all these random little sources
Speaker 1: and things. So yeah, but now you get to hear it. Yeah,
Speaker 1: So that so this all begins when Zeus kills a Sclepis,
Speaker 1: and at some point the chorus of old men in
Speaker 1: Euripides play says, if only we had an Asclepis to
Speaker 1: come and raise alkest Us after she died, So it's
Speaker 1: kind of like, yeah, that little oblique reference. So anyway,
Speaker 1: Apollo is pierced off about this, but obviously he can't
Speaker 1: like take his avengeance out on Zeus because that would
Speaker 1: be never cure idiocy. So instead he kills the cyclopes
Speaker 1: who make Zeus's thunderbolts, because of course you do. And
Speaker 1: then Zeus is like really really annoyed this, and he
Speaker 1: is going to send Apollo down to Tata's, but Leto
Speaker 1: comes in and kind of smooth things over with these,
Speaker 1: and so Zoos decides in the end that he's just
Speaker 1: going to send a polo to serve mortal for a year.
Speaker 1: In some versions it's longer nine years, nine years is
Speaker 1: a really interesting purification mythic purification related number. And so,
Speaker 1: for instance, Apollo is exiled for nine years after killing
Speaker 1: Python as in purification Um, so he's sent to serve Admeters,
Speaker 1: and this kind of then intersex that story then intersex
Speaker 1: with the meeting of Admeters and Alcestis Um. There's a
Speaker 1: really interesting retelling of this by Catherine Beautna in a
Speaker 1: novel that's just called Alcestras. Although I think she kind
Speaker 1: of plays with some of the details, it is a
Speaker 1: genuinely really good retailing from Alcestus's perspective of the whole
Speaker 1: the whole saga. So, Alcestras's dad sets a challenge for
Speaker 1: suitors for Alcestras. Obviously that's a thing that you know,
Speaker 1: powerful mons. Yeah, and so in some versions he sets
Speaker 1: this test that whoever can yoke a lion and a
Speaker 1: bore to a chariot will win her hand. In other
Speaker 1: versions this is just put to Admetus for various reasons.
Speaker 1: Obviously it's completely like impossible to do. But our Gustus's
Speaker 1: father does not know that Admetus is servant is divine,
Speaker 1: and so with Apolo's help, he pulls this chariot with
Speaker 1: a lion and a boar and gets wins Alcestis, but
Speaker 1: then on their wedding night, he doesn't appropriately sacrifice to
Speaker 1: Artemis at their wedding feast, and then on their wedding
Speaker 1: night she fills their marriage chamber upwards, snakes and curses
Speaker 1: Admetus to an early death. And so that's how this
Speaker 1: all begins. And then a polo get essentially gets the
Speaker 1: Moirai drunk, and that gets them too to agree to
Speaker 1: this trade sulfur soul, and then no one wants to
Speaker 1: do it. In Betna's novels, there's this really brilliant kind
Speaker 1: of are they just roommates relationship that Apollo and the
Speaker 1: Meters have, which is not born out in the ancient
Speaker 1: source material, but I like that. I mean, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1: Apollodorus records that there are two different potential endings. The
Speaker 1: first is the one that Euripides tells, where Heracles fights
Speaker 1: Thanatos at the grave side. I like the word faith.
Speaker 1: He squeezes a real tate. Yeah, there's It reminds me
Speaker 1: a lot every time I read it. I think of
Speaker 1: Olympic Greco Roman wrestling. Mm hmm. You know, really like
Speaker 1: very highly not scripted because it's not scripted, but you
Speaker 1: know that that constrained by rules. But then the other
Speaker 1: version that Apollodorus pseudo Apolodorus records is that she actually
Speaker 1: dies and Persephone sends her back to Admetus, So that's
Speaker 1: quite lovely. Um. It is possible that these sort of
Speaker 1: the two separate myths, like the Apollo punishment going to
Speaker 1: Admetus and the Alcestis story death story, were originally two
Speaker 1: separate myths, and that they had just kind of been
Speaker 1: joined together by Whether that was because you know, Apolo
Speaker 1: served Admetus and Alcestis married Admetus, and maybe originally there
Speaker 1: were different admetus Is and then got mashed up together
Speaker 1: or not. We don't really know, and we don't really
Speaker 1: know like how much of this background story euripides Is
Speaker 1: audience would have known. Certainly older members perhaps would have
Speaker 1: remembered that earlier play, though probably it was long enough
Speaker 1: ago that they wouldn't remember details like specific plot points.
Speaker 1: It seems likely that there were, you know, in the
Speaker 1: by the early fifth century that this parts of this
Speaker 1: story were well known, but we don't really know how
Speaker 1: much of what a Polydorus relates would have been known
Speaker 1: in the early fifth century and then certainly like in
Speaker 1: the four thirties. That's what I found interesting in reading
Speaker 1: the introduction and stuff. It's just like the idea that
Speaker 1: unlike a lot of the tragedies that we know of,
Speaker 1: at least, like they wouldn't have been super familiar with
Speaker 1: the method all and sort of a bit a bit
Speaker 1: more of like a mystery. I do like, uh of
Speaker 1: the part of the story that I did tell was
Speaker 1: just whatever is included in in the little like prolong
Speaker 1: that Apollo gives. But that is one of the other
Speaker 1: things that I found so interesting. It's just I mean,
Speaker 1: the structure of this play broadly is really interesting. Um,
Speaker 1: but like just that it starts out with Apollo and
Speaker 1: then it's like, oh, well, here comes Sanatos, like we're
Speaker 1: gonna have a little bigger and then the gods are gone,
Speaker 1: and then the fact that the god's opened the play
Speaker 1: and then just leave and don't company is really interesting. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: because usually you do get that kind of like D
Speaker 1: S X marking at the end in Euripides especially, you know,
Speaker 1: but like you know, we have like a handful of
Speaker 1: plays out of hundreds and hundreds of plays. Um. I
Speaker 1: was reading something like tan gentially the other day about
Speaker 1: a lecture um and this you know argument that like, oh,
Speaker 1: Electra must have been a particularly good tragic subject because
Speaker 1: we have three plays about her. But like you know,
Speaker 1: we have to alcestics is just because we don't have
Speaker 1: them exta um. We have several ifigenias, you know, we
Speaker 1: have like weird tragedies. Actually, my friend sent me a
Speaker 1: text shout out to Kate Cook, who I've been talking
Speaker 1: about alcestics with for the last couple of days, as
Speaker 1: I kind of like perculate my thoughts which you're telling
Speaker 1: me about this very weird, an insane story where the
Speaker 1: guy and the snake and the resurrection and some sort
Speaker 1: of competition about describing a mulberry bush and divination. We
Speaker 1: don't know anything else about the play except that that's
Speaker 1: what happens. That's don't even a name of it. It's
Speaker 1: just that's it. That's it. And you know, we have
Speaker 1: several naobes um. You know, so the idea that I
Speaker 1: don't know. It's difficult because on the one hand, we
Speaker 1: have to work with the corpus that we have right um.
Speaker 1: But on the other hand, yeah, you know, we make
Speaker 1: these sweeping judgments about like, oh, orchestras is so weird.
Speaker 1: But is it weird? We don't know, Like, we just
Speaker 1: don't know how weird it is. Um. The thing that
Speaker 1: I think is particularly weird about the orchestras is not
Speaker 1: actually to do with it. It's to do with the
Speaker 1: fact that it's not a say to play, that it's
Speaker 1: presented in the Sata slot. Yeah, that's one thing. I
Speaker 1: didn't bring it up often because I figured you and
Speaker 1: I would talk about it because that alone is really interesting. Yeah.
Speaker 1: So it's like presented in this fourth spot, um, and
Speaker 1: which is normally a say to play. And these are
Speaker 1: normally the same kind of subject mythic subject matter as tragedies,
Speaker 1: but far more free in there in what the playwrights
Speaker 1: can do with them, like they can invent news stories,
Speaker 1: particularly about you know, these established mythic characters interacting with
Speaker 1: satyr's uh. And of course, you know, the most well
Speaker 1: known fact about Sata Place is that the choruses are satyrs.
Speaker 1: And there's lots of like massive dicks. Can I say decks? Yeah, please, Okay,
Speaker 1: there's a lot you can say worse. You know, they'll
Speaker 1: wear these huge fallacies and you know that's I think
Speaker 1: probably people have this idea that like, oh, it's really subversive,
Speaker 1: but like if there's three of them every year, isn't
Speaker 1: that subversive? Probably not. The dion Easia too, like the
Speaker 1: whole procession also to like start the celebrations. Didn't that
Speaker 1: also involve a whole lot of like dicks on sticks
Speaker 1: and just falacies everywhere? Oh, I mean, like the cold
Speaker 1: Greek world is dicks on sticks, you know they I
Speaker 1: had a TikTok taken down for breaking community guideless violations
Speaker 1: today because I had made another video with just like
Speaker 1: an sort of an excerpt from part of Thostrato, and
Speaker 1: someone had commented, oh, there's no pawn in you know
Speaker 1: the age when Lost two was written, So I just
Speaker 1: made his video was just like there's really I'm not
Speaker 1: surprised it got taken down, but just like there's really
Speaker 1: explicit like images on parts. I mean a pottery alone,
Speaker 1: Like yeah, yeah, I didn't include but one of my
Speaker 1: favorite parts is that of a woman who is like
Speaker 1: just dressed nice. She's got like a basket of what
Speaker 1: appears to be seeds and she's like sewing them on
Speaker 1: the ground and growing dicks and they're they're just you know,
Speaker 1: so it's not you know, and of course they had
Speaker 1: the horns protected. Who I mean, who doesn't love like
Speaker 1: a slab with a face and a dick. I mean,
Speaker 1: I've taken upon myself, I think, to tweet or just
Speaker 1: say but it's become like a running joke between me
Speaker 1: and particularly the women of ancient history. Fangirl but just
Speaker 1: love a herm, love her. Just let me talk about
Speaker 1: herms at any given time. The fact that they were
Speaker 1: just a head on a plant with the dick all
Speaker 1: over town is just one of the greatest facts there
Speaker 1: is about ancient Greece generally, and the fact that they
Speaker 1: were like very clearly highly highly revealed. Um. And you know,
Speaker 1: we know that from a lot of reasons, but particularly
Speaker 1: from the fact that when one night all the dicks
Speaker 1: disappeared that the it was like a huge like a
Speaker 1: political crisis. Yeah didn't not, which is like flee the city.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, yeah, yeah yeah he did. Um. And you
Speaker 1: know it was like credited with the downfall of Athens
Speaker 1: supremacy because you know, well like so our Sobrides was
Speaker 1: meant to lead the Sicilian expedition, this whole mutilation of
Speaker 1: the terms thing happened. This is like the quick and
Speaker 1: dirty versions fucked off. Yeah, it's my ninety percent. And
Speaker 1: then I mean I do know that because I listened
Speaker 1: to Yoush. I appreciate being com and yeah, so he's gone.
Speaker 1: So Nikkias takes over the Sicilian expedition and it is
Speaker 1: a disaster for the Athenians. This is really like a
Speaker 1: turning point in the Peloponnesian War for the Athenians. And
Speaker 1: you know, like a lot of people hate our Sobietes
Speaker 1: and with good reason. I know very little about him.
Speaker 1: That isn't a feature of Assassin's Creed Odyssey, I'll admit,
Speaker 1: but I definitely learned the herm story at some point,
Speaker 1: which is a true thrilly. And how good looking he
Speaker 1: thinks he is, well, I mean that is clear from Odyssey.
Speaker 1: Like just I've been walking around with no clothes and
Speaker 1: asking for sex all of the time. It's wondering. He's
Speaker 1: a man who's good tickets on himself. As my mom
Speaker 1: would say, yeah, dicks everywhere basically, but I'm happy to
Speaker 1: talk about it. Oh yeah, okay, there are no dicks
Speaker 1: and al castus but no, well does it mateus? True? True? True?
Speaker 1: Actually that's funny you say that because at one point
Speaker 1: I just isn't no. I think I call Heracles a
Speaker 1: dick because the way that his his whole um discussion
Speaker 1: with the attendant when he's like, you really should be
Speaker 1: nicer to me, Like I'm a guest right now, Like
Speaker 1: why aren't you happy? Why aren't you dancing around? Why
Speaker 1: is everyone so sad? God? Like, it's just I know
Speaker 1: someone died, but it wasn't someone important me. That's the thing.
Speaker 1: This whole like the structure of this play is so
Speaker 1: interesting because it just bounces so quickly between these these
Speaker 1: moments that I think are certainly meant to be taken
Speaker 1: like at least mostly comedic, because it feels impossible not
Speaker 1: to and I you know, I tragically don't read ancient Greek,
Speaker 1: but the translation I'm using it's I mean, it's really
Speaker 1: I certainly like it. It's Rachel's Rachel kid singers um,
Speaker 1: but it it's just like, it just is so impossible
Speaker 1: not to read these bits as funny because they're so like,
Speaker 1: I'm gonna reveal this thing to the audience that the
Speaker 1: other person doesn't know, and then the other person is
Speaker 1: going to find out about it. In most awkward of ways,
Speaker 1: and it's just so like overtly wonderful in that way,
Speaker 1: like like no, no, no, my wife she's kind of
Speaker 1: living and she's dead. Yeah, like she's living and she's dead.
Speaker 1: So it's okay, you're not mourning anyone important. No, some
Speaker 1: other lady died. It's it's totally fine. It's fine. Go inside.
Speaker 1: I've got something to do over here, but you go
Speaker 1: ahead inside. Yeah, And then it just proceeds to get drunken. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: get drunk and starts singing, doing the thing that, like
Speaker 1: hours before, had been promised would not happen in that house.
Speaker 1: But like it's Heracles. He's getting drunk. I love that.
Speaker 1: It's very exposed. He is drinking his wine unmixed, unmixed,
Speaker 1: did not even put any water in it. He's an
Speaker 1: absolute rush, can you believe it? And yeah, just then
Speaker 1: then the whole story with the intendant and then the
Speaker 1: reveal and like the really slow reveal of like uh,
Speaker 1: like Heracles has his whole speech about well, you know,
Speaker 1: I'm going to teach you about life and death. You
Speaker 1: only live once. All of us are going to die eventually.
Speaker 1: You should have some fun, can attendance, Like, I mean,
Speaker 1: like this is just not really the time though, like
Speaker 1: like and then that he's like just immediately like stereotypically Heracles,
Speaker 1: He's like, wow, obviously I'm going to go and rescue. Yeah,
Speaker 1: obviously the only solution for one. Also, he like the
Speaker 1: attendant finally reveals that it's Alcestis and and Heracles like
Speaker 1: does not say a word. Well, I guess he does
Speaker 1: say a word to him at some point he the
Speaker 1: attendant says something that like definitely could use a response,
Speaker 1: and instead Heracles is like, no, I'm going to bring
Speaker 1: her back from the dead, Like that's my only solution.
Speaker 1: I was so rude. Obviously the answer to my rudeness
Speaker 1: and a thing I did not know I was explicitly
Speaker 1: not told, so like it really ultimately is not his fault,
Speaker 1: like because like, no, I was sore. The only answer,
Speaker 1: the only answer to make up for this is I'm
Speaker 1: just gonna have to bring her back from the dead.
Speaker 1: Like that's just that's it. That's the only possible response. Well,
Speaker 1: you know, there's actually some really interesting things to say
Speaker 1: about Heracles's character and like concepts of Senia and Philia,
Speaker 1: like guest friendship and like proper friend friendship, um, because
Speaker 1: you know, like Heracles is obviously in other Euripides plays
Speaker 1: and elsewhere, you know, this all or nothing character like
Speaker 1: he is in in for a penny, in for a pound,
Speaker 1: and I think, like, you know, he is about taking
Speaker 1: things to their extremes, and this really is taking you know,
Speaker 1: that guest bond, that ritualized friendship that Heracles and Admetis have.
Speaker 1: Whether they have like a proper like a genuine friendship
Speaker 1: what we might call a friendship or not, or whether
Speaker 1: they just have this ritualized friendship kind of doesn't matter
Speaker 1: because but we know they're not strangers, which is interesting.
Speaker 1: He's not just like rolling up on a stranger store
Speaker 1: step like they do know each other, because yeah, it
Speaker 1: would be kind of weird if you just well, I
Speaker 1: guess you heerically is like maybe you can just roll
Speaker 1: up to a king's but like that's the idea of
Speaker 1: anyway rights like you can like you can request like
Speaker 1: a guest host relationship. Yeah, I mean historically there's some
Speaker 1: really interesting or not just historically, but literarily, you know,
Speaker 1: this is a very elite practice. This is not something
Speaker 1: that normal people would have done, like in you know,
Speaker 1: and that's what makes it so interesting. In the Odyssey
Speaker 1: Um where Odysseus kind of just goes to all these places,
Speaker 1: he wouldn't like you would never as like a shipwrecked
Speaker 1: nobody get into a palace through ritualized friendship, like you
Speaker 1: just wouldn't. It just wouldn't happen, like it's a very
Speaker 1: elite thing, which you know, that's also saying something about
Speaker 1: men who thinks just magically happened for and are overprivileged
Speaker 1: and full of themselves. Oh this, yes, no, no never.
Speaker 1: But you know, Heracles just takes this to the extreme
Speaker 1: and in his mind, I can I can understand for
Speaker 1: Heracles as the character, how he jumps from oh my god,
Speaker 1: I have completely transgressed this ritualized friendship that we have
Speaker 1: and now I must bring Augustus back from the day
Speaker 1: and the Heracles is really the only person who would
Speaker 1: get to that point. Yeah, yeah, you can. You can't
Speaker 1: see even any other hero saying that. But then also,
Speaker 1: like we know, and the audience knows that, you know,
Speaker 1: Heracles does go to the underworld, he goes to get Cerberus,
Speaker 1: but he hasn't done it yet, right, no, because he's
Speaker 1: the he's getting that he's on exactly the man eating mares,
Speaker 1: so he hasn't got carborus yet, he hasn't had to
Speaker 1: do that yet. So we know, as the audience and
Speaker 1: the audience that ancient audience would have known that, you know,
Speaker 1: this is actually something that Heracles is capable of doing
Speaker 1: and will do, you know, and not very many people
Speaker 1: are capable of doing this, and you know, most of
Speaker 1: the other people who do it fuck it up, like well, yes, yeah,
Speaker 1: That's what I find so interesting is that, you know,
Speaker 1: I mean, yeah, enthusiast sucks it up, but oh my god, anyway,
Speaker 1: we all love that he sucks it up. But but like, yeah,
Speaker 1: nobody really successfully does this. And so the fact that
Speaker 1: the one successful instance I mean, first of course it's Heracles,
Speaker 1: but also that it happens in this way is so
Speaker 1: entertaining to me because like, for one, he doesn't I
Speaker 1: always imagine he went to the underworld, but it's like, no,
Speaker 1: it just happens to be like right after somebody dies,
Speaker 1: like the god of death is just gonna be slurping
Speaker 1: up some blood so you can catch him there, which
Speaker 1: is magnificent. And so that it that it happened like
Speaker 1: that is so interesting like it's so much more comedic,
Speaker 1: it's so much more simple. But the fact that it's
Speaker 1: still this like huge feat Like I mean, I couldn't
Speaker 1: think of another instance of somebody being successfully brought back
Speaker 1: from the dead. No, yeah, and so yeah, the fact
Speaker 1: that it happens this way, it's like what, like, it's
Speaker 1: just so much more interesting And and a wrestling match.
Speaker 1: I mean, grant, did I do prefer the translation he
Speaker 1: squeezed and he didn't let go. Um. But yeah, I mean,
Speaker 1: just the fact that that's how it happens and it works,
Speaker 1: and and I mean, and add to that that she
Speaker 1: doesn't get to speak, even though like in terms of
Speaker 1: the three actor rule she could have spoken, like there
Speaker 1: isn't anyone else on stage that prevents her from speaking.
Speaker 1: She just doesn't speak, Like there's just so many really
Speaker 1: interesting choices being made here. Yeah. And then so her
Speaker 1: last the last thing that she says in the full
Speaker 1: pay is farewell um when she does and then yeah,
Speaker 1: she doesn't speak again. I'm just looking up in my
Speaker 1: translation that I read this afternoon, what it is that
Speaker 1: Heracles does. Oh great please. It's one of the only
Speaker 1: times I've only done one translation because it's all I had,
Speaker 1: but I really liked it, and it's a newer one.
Speaker 1: Well I read um, it's just today. I to add
Speaker 1: of the library, I hadn't read it before, and Carson's
Speaker 1: should I have that book? I have that? Damn it.
Speaker 1: I could have been referring to it this whole time.
Speaker 1: I didn't realize that the Alcastus was in this. Okay.
Speaker 1: He says, if I lie in wait, I can leap out,
Speaker 1: grab him, get him in a grip. He won't escape
Speaker 1: until he sets the woman free. That's what he says
Speaker 1: when he's going to do it, And then when he
Speaker 1: gets her back, he just says, I seized him from ambush.
Speaker 1: Oh that's boring, it is, Oh, well, the kids in
Speaker 1: are translations great because it's like I'm going to squeeze
Speaker 1: him and not let go. I mean, that's a slight paraphrase,
Speaker 1: but I'm pretty sure the word squeeze is used. I
Speaker 1: love that. I love the image of Heracles squeezing yeah,
Speaker 1: because it's so Heracles. It fits perfectly. Like it sounds silly,
Speaker 1: but it also it's just like no, that checks out,
Speaker 1: Like he just grabbed him real tight. It's like, Nope,
Speaker 1: I'm not gonna let you go unless your free. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean the whole thing is just so interesting. But
Speaker 1: the the other like big comedic chunk, because I feel
Speaker 1: like it begins with like the you know, the bizarre
Speaker 1: kind of like God introduction, and then the first sort
Speaker 1: of third is is sort of the more obvious tragedy.
Speaker 1: The sad part is just like the first third of
Speaker 1: the play where we just watch Alkestis die and it
Speaker 1: is quite emotional, like there's the whole thing with her children,
Speaker 1: you know, it's quite it's that's the sad part, and
Speaker 1: she dies, like she actually dies, we see her die, yes, yes, yes,
Speaker 1: so yeah. The only like unambig with death right, which
Speaker 1: is so unusual. The only other time that I can
Speaker 1: think of that I'm pretty sure in extent tragedy where
Speaker 1: someone does on stage is hip politics. And again the
Speaker 1: actual thing that's caused his death happens off stage, and
Speaker 1: he's like dragged on right at the end. That's interesting
Speaker 1: and it's really just a torture the SIUs. But most
Speaker 1: deaths in tragedy involved violence in some way, and there
Speaker 1: is a sort of like quiet violence in Alcestis's death,
Speaker 1: um as you know, like a sacrifice. Sometimes it's kind
Speaker 1: of referred to almost as a suicide. But she just dies.
Speaker 1: She just dies, And it's interesting that it happens on
Speaker 1: actually on stage that we see it. And then the
Speaker 1: laments are sung over her body, which is still just
Speaker 1: sitting there with her children, which is horrific. I was
Speaker 1: thinking about that as well. Um, oh, yeah, so this
Speaker 1: the introduction here. Um says that in the this is
Speaker 1: more a little bit more unambiguous than Hippolytus. She says
Speaker 1: the title care could be alive barely at the close
Speaker 1: because I guess they don't announce that he's dead. Is
Speaker 1: that what or maybe if this is yeah, because I
Speaker 1: think it ends with like right at that point where
Speaker 1: Theseus is like, oh my god, and um, m Artemus says, oh,
Speaker 1: I've got to go because I can't I can't see you.
Speaker 1: I love you, but I can't see you die because
Speaker 1: I'm a god. I can't be tainted with you be
Speaker 1: like ye, and then she laves. Well that that's interesting.
Speaker 1: That's what Apollo says too, as soon as he gets
Speaker 1: has Anatos is like, well, I can't watch Alcastus die.
Speaker 1: I gotta leave. Yeah, but that I mean that's also
Speaker 1: different because Apollos doesn't really have a relationship with Ah
Speaker 1: without Castus. His relationship is with Agnetus. But like God's
Speaker 1: in general, in tragedy, don't hang around to watch people die,
Speaker 1: which they do in so much other literature. Mm hmm,
Speaker 1: so okay, hold on. So I found the other translation,
Speaker 1: Um so the kid sing are. One that I read
Speaker 1: was if I ambush him and and grab hold, clasping
Speaker 1: him in the circle of my arms and crushing his ribs,
Speaker 1: no one will release him until he gives up the
Speaker 1: woman to me. Oh, that's amazing, Like the idea of
Speaker 1: crushing Thanatos's ribs. Yeah, it's it's so like explicitly like nope,
Speaker 1: I'm gonna grab him and not let go, particularly because
Speaker 1: like so when he first comes out, like right at
Speaker 1: the beginning and the time we save Fantos, we know
Speaker 1: he's got a sword. We don't know anything else about
Speaker 1: how he was presented, but it's probably most likely that
Speaker 1: he is presented sort of like as a warrior, because
Speaker 1: that's how iconographically we normally say him. So I think
Speaker 1: you know, a lot of people kind of imagine Thanatos
Speaker 1: is like more of a grim raper kind of drawn
Speaker 1: and sullen and with his big flowy cap and whatever.
Speaker 1: But actually he probably would have been presented as like
Speaker 1: relatively young and fit and strong and in the guise
Speaker 1: of a warrior, and he's got a sword, and so
Speaker 1: the idea of Heracles being like I'm just gonna grab
Speaker 1: him and squeeze him and crush his ribs, it's even better,
Speaker 1: and it's even more Heracles. Yeah, it just suits. It
Speaker 1: suits so perfectly. I yeah, I really, I really enjoyed it.
Speaker 1: You were talking about the comic interlodes. Oh yeah, well
Speaker 1: just yeah, the way that it is kind of like
Speaker 1: separated off. So Alkestis dies, it is very sad, and
Speaker 1: then it's sort of immediately transitions to a comedy because
Speaker 1: Heracles comes on and and we have this very weird
Speaker 1: interaction where we're, like we were saying earlier, Advertists specifically
Speaker 1: is like she's not dead and she's not dead, and uh,
Speaker 1: you know, kind of a back and forth like what
Speaker 1: exactly is going on, But ultimately it's like, no, Heracles,
Speaker 1: I insist used to come on in, and then immediately
Speaker 1: we get the father, who who's definitely the next character
Speaker 1: to talk about because it's just so interesting because I don't.
Speaker 1: The way I read it, Admetist does not get any
Speaker 1: redeeming moment, Like he is just continually ridiculous, and he
Speaker 1: just like he doesn't concede anything. He's just like you
Speaker 1: should have died for me, and now I hate you
Speaker 1: because you didn't. And his father has such well said
Speaker 1: and like reasonable arguments to be made, like I think
Speaker 1: one line is like you didn't die for me, why
Speaker 1: should I die for you? Or you wouldn't and so
Speaker 1: why should I? Or there's another that's like you like
Speaker 1: your life, why wouldn't I like mine? Like it's just
Speaker 1: so explicitly like, so, no, people shouldn't have to die
Speaker 1: for one another. That that doesn't make me a bad
Speaker 1: father because I didn't want to like to think about
Speaker 1: this rationally here I'm not a bad person and and
Speaker 1: literally like he just has all these deeply rational and
Speaker 1: rational and reasonable points and then just like no, no,
Speaker 1: you should have died for me. There is no other options.
Speaker 1: I will not listen to anything you say or take
Speaker 1: any constructive criticisms on how I have handled the situation.
Speaker 1: That's it, Like yeah, and then you can really tell
Speaker 1: that Fairies just gets completely like exasperated when he and snapped,
Speaker 1: and he kind of has that like you're just gonna
Speaker 1: like keep marrying people so you never have to die,
Speaker 1: Like how is this going to work for you? And
Speaker 1: that kind of is the moment where I think, you know,
Speaker 1: because then after that is after that or before that?
Speaker 1: I think it's after that that it made us. Then
Speaker 1: kind of goes on his lack, well, I don't have
Speaker 1: any parents, Alcestis is my parents now, Alcestis is my
Speaker 1: mother and my father and goes on this like deeply
Speaker 1: weird cutting himself off from like everything, ah, and yeah,
Speaker 1: just has a tantrum. Yeah. At one point he's like,
Speaker 1: you're not even my parents to begin with, Like I
Speaker 1: bet you you guys stole me from somebody and snuck
Speaker 1: me into the palace and pretended like I was my
Speaker 1: mother's son. Like he It's just it's so over the top.
Speaker 1: That's I think how he starts the conversation. It really
Speaker 1: starts it off with a bang of yeah really just
Speaker 1: really nice and reasonable guy. It's just it's so interesting
Speaker 1: because it is truly like you were not supposed to
Speaker 1: I mean, I think in other points you are supposed
Speaker 1: to sympathize with him for sure, like he he is
Speaker 1: sympathetic in other parts of the of the play, but
Speaker 1: in this moment speaking to his father, like he is
Speaker 1: not remotely sympathetic at all. He's just so over the
Speaker 1: top and ridiculous. Yeah he's I know I keep saying this,
Speaker 1: but like he is an overprivileged, posh white man who
Speaker 1: went to Oxbridge even though he didn't deserve it, you know,
Speaker 1: like he is that type of type of or went
Speaker 1: to an ivy even though because his dad made a
Speaker 1: massive financial contribution to Harvard. You know, he is that person.
Speaker 1: M M. And at every point his tantrum, at every
Speaker 1: point of that conversation with his dad, you know, he's
Speaker 1: increasing throwing his toys out. The prime tantrum just reinforces
Speaker 1: that and you can see almost that like dawning realization
Speaker 1: where his dad is like, oh my god, I probably
Speaker 1: did this. Yeah yeah yeah. It's like okay, dude, Like
Speaker 1: if this is how you're going to be, like, I'm
Speaker 1: not gonna deal with you. Like it's so reasonable. It's
Speaker 1: like I wouldn't I wouldn't deal with that. I die
Speaker 1: for yourself. Yeah yeah, just like you can't put every
Speaker 1: everything onto others like you have to take responsibility for
Speaker 1: like at least one thing in your life, just like
Speaker 1: a time bit of responsibility. Even the chorus seems to
Speaker 1: try to get him to do that at certain points,
Speaker 1: you know, like they're they're really on his side throughout,
Speaker 1: But there's there's one moment where he's complaining about death
Speaker 1: and and how he didn't die instead of her, which
Speaker 1: is hilarious. Like there's so many at times where he
Speaker 1: was like, there's no point living. I might as well
Speaker 1: be dead along with her. We'd both be dead. And
Speaker 1: it's like you know that there was an alternative. This
Speaker 1: never had to be her, let alone both of you.
Speaker 1: But yeah, at one point, the chorus stops him and
Speaker 1: they're like, you made this decision. You knew what was
Speaker 1: going on, Like what what exactly are you doing now?
Speaker 1: Like what is the point kind of of of your
Speaker 1: all of your expositions about this, because it really is
Speaker 1: like constant. I had to stop myself in even in
Speaker 1: the episode from just repeatedly like judging him by like
Speaker 1: reciting all of his points. Is like every time he
Speaker 1: says something, I just want to scream back like you
Speaker 1: did this, you made this decision. This did not happen
Speaker 1: at random. We would all feel really bad for you
Speaker 1: if she died for almost any other reason, Yeah, like
Speaker 1: we really would. You could be narcissistic as hell, but
Speaker 1: if your wife died because you know, through some actual
Speaker 1: trap magedy, like you're gonna be a more sympathetic character.
Speaker 1: But instead, it's like with every complaint, he just gets
Speaker 1: worse and worse. But because I read this in the moment,
Speaker 1: it's a like it happens to be with most I
Speaker 1: think I've covered all of the plays that I have
Speaker 1: read in the past, so now I'm constantly like reading
Speaker 1: things for the first time as I write the story,
Speaker 1: and it almost works better because often there's like reveals
Speaker 1: that I do accidentally or like I was writing the
Speaker 1: first episode of this and and I did find myself
Speaker 1: sympathizing with advotist, and I was I was pretty explicitly like,
Speaker 1: I don't think it's gonna last, but I'm going to
Speaker 1: tell you right now that for right now, like as
Speaker 1: he's with his wife dying, you do feel for him,
Speaker 1: you know that, like, yes, he made this decision, and
Speaker 1: like it's not ideal, and please stop making her into
Speaker 1: a martyr. It's a real bummer. Um, But at the
Speaker 1: same time, like you do feel for him. And then
Speaker 1: the more he talks and the more he reveals about himself,
Speaker 1: You're like, no, I don't at all. I'm sick of you.
Speaker 1: I'm over it. Get out of here, because the only
Speaker 1: ever talks about himself. Yeah. Yeah, And and how great
Speaker 1: she was? Everyone only ever says how great she was.
Speaker 1: What a good and noble wife, a wife who will
Speaker 1: die for her husband. It's like she she's not like Penelope,
Speaker 1: but I feel like there's such a similar vibe of
Speaker 1: like the thing that makes you perfect is so unreasonable,
Speaker 1: Like the thing that makes Penelope perfect is just that,
Speaker 1: like she didn't want any of these other guys. And
Speaker 1: the thing that makes alcast is perfect is that she
Speaker 1: just killed herself for her husband. Like that is not
Speaker 1: a thing that should make anybody an ideal human alone.
Speaker 1: Of course, the key is it's an ideal woman. An
Speaker 1: ideal woman will choose a man's life over hers. Um.
Speaker 1: I don't sort of want to get ready bugged down
Speaker 1: into like they vocabulary of the play. But also that's
Speaker 1: fun um sometimes Yeah, so she is called best you know,
Speaker 1: as you just said, Aristos, is you know this common
Speaker 1: masculine word for this kind of like best nurs that
Speaker 1: we find of men all over the place, like in
Speaker 1: Homer and Tragedy in everywhere. Um And she is called aristare,
Speaker 1: and that's really uncommon to have this kind of very
Speaker 1: male dominated esque word applied to a woman. Um And.
Speaker 1: At one point, and this doesn't like come out, at
Speaker 1: one point, Admitus refers to her in the masculine, and
Speaker 1: that doesn't come through in a translation because we don't
Speaker 1: have you know, masculine agreements, and it's you know, a
Speaker 1: word which wouldn't obviously translate into the masculine. But he
Speaker 1: does refer to her in that way. I think it's
Speaker 1: in the section where he's talking to his dad about
Speaker 1: his now relationship to her now that she's dead and
Speaker 1: she was the best, and he kind of goes through
Speaker 1: that talking about how his dad could have saved her,
Speaker 1: and does it such a reasonable request? So reasonable so
Speaker 1: as it's never used of a woman in Pinder or East.
Speaker 1: It's only used of women three times in Sophocles, but
Speaker 1: Alcestis is called at nine times on nine separate occasions
Speaker 1: in this play, and she gets called glorious even um
Speaker 1: Fetz says that Alcestras made life for all women more glorious.
Speaker 1: So like she's kind of put this like noble nous
Speaker 1: is really kind of thrust upon her and almost like
Speaker 1: a glorification of her in this very kind of masculine
Speaker 1: way through her death. You know, this is one of
Speaker 1: the points that I think Segal makes in Female Death.
Speaker 1: Male t is such a great name for an article.
Speaker 1: It is so perfect that, you know, death masculinizes Alcestras
Speaker 1: and feminizes Admetus in his grief and his failing. You know,
Speaker 1: he takes on these really the stereotypically the male activities
Speaker 1: lament greet you know, um, this outpouring, which is very
Speaker 1: traditionally a female role, but he doesn't take on any
Speaker 1: of the physical female roles. In the preparation of death.
Speaker 1: A pestis does that herself. Mm hmm. You know, before
Speaker 1: she dies, she washes her body, she anoints herself for death.
Speaker 1: And that's really interesting that, you know, even in that
Speaker 1: he's emotionally feminized but doesn't take on physical female roles,
Speaker 1: does say explicitly that he's going to become a mother
Speaker 1: to his children. Yes, that part was so notable. This
Speaker 1: um the translation I've used has really great footnotes for
Speaker 1: stuff like that, so it's very very helpful and it
Speaker 1: comes to, yeah, the kind of clarifying that stuff that
Speaker 1: doesn't come across just in a straight translation into English. Um.
Speaker 1: But it was curious, like there is also a line
Speaker 1: where he it's he's noted to have cut his hair.
Speaker 1: Is that a thing men died? Or is that everybody did? Okay? Cool? Yeah? Um.
Speaker 1: Haircutting is like a really interesting general thing that happens
Speaker 1: at a lot of different points of people's lives, mainly
Speaker 1: around rites of passage. And in a sense, in that way,
Speaker 1: morning is a right of passage. It's it's the cutting
Speaker 1: of hair as the celebration of the right of passage
Speaker 1: for the person who's died. Um. And that's you know,
Speaker 1: you can see a parallel between like a funerary procession
Speaker 1: and a marriage procession. Um. And that's why the end
Speaker 1: of this play kind of works as that. You know,
Speaker 1: we talked about the risk grabbing marriage motive, but that
Speaker 1: action turns this funerary procession into a wedding procession because
Speaker 1: they contain all the same elements. It's just sort of
Speaker 1: the difference between like singing laments and singing praise songs.
Speaker 1: So essentially you just make your like sad songs happy
Speaker 1: and it's the same thing. So interesting, and I was
Speaker 1: curious to like just in relating all the stuff around
Speaker 1: her death. So and I think you briefly mentioned this
Speaker 1: and I meant to clarify, But so she would have
Speaker 1: been like, obviously she does die on stage. That's like
Speaker 1: a huge, big part of this um. And then like
Speaker 1: based on you know, what we can figure out. Obviously,
Speaker 1: stage directions are all is inserted by the translator, but
Speaker 1: it seems to me that, uh, that she remains on stage,
Speaker 1: and so there was probably an actor on stage as
Speaker 1: a dead woman throughout a lot of it. If not, like,
Speaker 1: do you think that basically do you think that they
Speaker 1: would have switched it out at some point or would
Speaker 1: it No, I think she would have her body would
Speaker 1: have been taken back in inside the house after the
Speaker 1: art so she dies and the chorus things this long
Speaker 1: lament um and admitts has proclaims that there's going to
Speaker 1: be this year of mourning, and then he and the
Speaker 1: children go back inside. I think her body would have
Speaker 1: been taken back inside at that point, because later the
Speaker 1: stage is completely cleared twice, which is also really unusual,
Speaker 1: and for that to work, her body has to not
Speaker 1: be there. Yeah, it's just that before basically when he
Speaker 1: comes out to go bury her, that's when he sees
Speaker 1: his father before he's left. So like, at least in
Speaker 1: these stage directions, it has the body coming out with
Speaker 1: him to go bury her. But maybe that wouldn't necessarily
Speaker 1: have happened, just because it basically that's all to just
Speaker 1: get to the point of it seems to me that
Speaker 1: having her body there on stage while he and his
Speaker 1: father have this like absurd bickering fast. Oh, I think
Speaker 1: her body comes back out. Yeah, so it would have
Speaker 1: been there for that, which because it was so powerful,
Speaker 1: they have to kind of and then they would take
Speaker 1: it away on their yeah, funerary procession exactly, and then
Speaker 1: then like then they're gone again and the stage is cleared. Yeah. Yeah,
Speaker 1: because the the idea of a father and son having
Speaker 1: that argument while her body is just there along hid
Speaker 1: them is it's just it adds so much to the
Speaker 1: absurdity of the whole thing. Quite a common piece of
Speaker 1: stage equipment was this kind of wheeled platform mhm, and
Speaker 1: they would have just like she probably would have been
Speaker 1: that the actor, he would have been sitting on that
Speaker 1: as she the character died, and then it just would
Speaker 1: have been wheeled back in and probably, like I imagine,
Speaker 1: then she would have come back out. He she would
Speaker 1: have come back out again on the ecky claimer mhm.
Speaker 1: But as laid out, so you know, laid out and shrouded,
Speaker 1: and you know, like these days, if you were to
Speaker 1: stage that, you probably wouldn't even have a real person there.
Speaker 1: And it could be likely, we don't know, it could
Speaker 1: be likely that there wouldn't be a real person. It
Speaker 1: just would have been like I don't know, some cushions
Speaker 1: m hm or whatever. One thing. I have to remind
Speaker 1: myself more and more as I study these plays, because
Speaker 1: they are so different from myths in that way. It
Speaker 1: is the idea of masks too, and how those would
Speaker 1: have been used in any given play, and it's something
Speaker 1: I want to I just want to make sure I
Speaker 1: say it more. I guess in in my retelling, so
Speaker 1: I often forget um or like it's more it lives
Speaker 1: in my head and so I forget to remind people.
Speaker 1: But I think it is so it adds so much
Speaker 1: to imagine that everyone is wearing these masks for their characters.
Speaker 1: Becau's actually a really also interesting thing here about masks.
Speaker 1: And you know, perhaps the technical details of Admetus is mask.
Speaker 1: Oh is it that Admetus his mask at the beginning
Speaker 1: has long hair and then the mask has sewn hair
Speaker 1: cut hair it? Or is that something which is then
Speaker 1: just implied by the audience, like to what extent would
Speaker 1: the masking have also reflected other aspects of the characters
Speaker 1: that change because he couldn't have had cut hair in
Speaker 1: that first scene because she has not died yet. Um,
Speaker 1: but then he very clearly does when he comes back
Speaker 1: out later. So is that's something which and again you know,
Speaker 1: like we can hypothesize about this until the cows come
Speaker 1: home and we'll never know, but you know, it's an
Speaker 1: interesting do we hypothesize that the masks in some way
Speaker 1: also had or showed hair changing? Mm hmm. Well, even
Speaker 1: just you saying that makes me wonder too, because while
Speaker 1: she is dying, there are a lot of references made
Speaker 1: to how she is like kind of already half dead. Um,
Speaker 1: like she there's a there's a lot of notes about
Speaker 1: you know, she's living in she's dead, she is half
Speaker 1: dead already, So I almost wonder like would he have
Speaker 1: prepared himself already, like would his hair have been short already?
Speaker 1: And that's maybe part of the referencing that they're making
Speaker 1: to her being living in dead and even to his
Speaker 1: character being so prepared for her death because it's happening
Speaker 1: instead of his that he's like she's so half dead already,
Speaker 1: that he's already started mourning. Because there are also references
Speaker 1: and granted it is after she dies, but like heracles
Speaker 1: makes another like a couple of references to of like, well,
Speaker 1: I know your wife's going to die, but like you
Speaker 1: shouldn't be mourning her until she's actually dead, like when
Speaker 1: advatance is pretending that she isn't. And so, yeah, it's
Speaker 1: just I don't know if that's it's interesting to think
Speaker 1: of how how much he and his personality, which we
Speaker 1: know to be so deeply about his own grief and
Speaker 1: victimhood in this situation that like, how much would he
Speaker 1: have prepared an advance for his wife's death. Yeah, imagine
Speaker 1: like watching this on stage for the first time. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean I just like just even the experience of
Speaker 1: reading it blew my whole mind. It's one of the
Speaker 1: only times I've done, and granted it's also because I'm
Speaker 1: on time constraints, but like where I wrote all three
Speaker 1: episodes of this play in the course of three days,
Speaker 1: and and that means like I mean obviously reading it,
Speaker 1: but also like piecing it all out and basically writing
Speaker 1: like fourteen to fifteen thousand words on this play over
Speaker 1: the course of three days. And I'm just kind of
Speaker 1: like it was not only like that alone is an
Speaker 1: interesting experience, but also it is just it just kept
Speaker 1: surprising me. It kept it just kept getting more and
Speaker 1: more like absurd in the most interesting and fascinating. I
Speaker 1: use those words too often because I'm constantly feeling that,
Speaker 1: but like it just completely blew my mind and just
Speaker 1: kept doing it, like a number of times that I
Speaker 1: said out loud to nobody in my apartment, like what
Speaker 1: is this play? Like what is it doing? What is
Speaker 1: going on? Like I mean, I've read more Europodies than anyone,
Speaker 1: granted because we have more, but also because I love him.
Speaker 1: And even still I was like, what's happening here? What
Speaker 1: are you doing? I love wondering, like I just want
Speaker 1: to talk to Erypody is so bad, But I think
Speaker 1: that all the time okay, So can I tell you
Speaker 1: something which is going to blow your mind again? Please?
Speaker 1: So say to plays traditionally much shorter than traditional tragedies,
Speaker 1: the question I had to keep going great, And so
Speaker 1: the audience would perhaps have been expecting this to end
Speaker 1: around kind of Lion nine hundred ish, which is so
Speaker 1: there's still just over two hundred lines to go, and
Speaker 1: where people would have expected it to end would be
Speaker 1: sort of around where Admeter says to Heracles he has
Speaker 1: just bought this woman back to her says, I have
Speaker 1: won this woman in a contest, admits. He says to him,
Speaker 1: don't beat me while I'm down. I look on her
Speaker 1: and see my wife. She makes my heart pound, my
Speaker 1: tears for a bitter grief tastes. And so that or
Speaker 1: another hypothesis that scholars have is slightly before that, before
Speaker 1: Heracles comes back, just after the chorus have sung their
Speaker 1: final lament, and then that would be the end. So
Speaker 1: both of those points, ah, you know, deeply, deeply tragic
Speaker 1: points of the play. And then it goes on. It
Speaker 1: takes a hundred lines also for Heracles to convince Admetus
Speaker 1: to take Alcestras back, and then all of a sudden
Speaker 1: it's like this resolution that the audience probably wouldn't have
Speaker 1: been expecting, like they would have had this kind of cathartic,
Speaker 1: grief filled moment. We are one imagined at either of
Speaker 1: these two like the lament point or this woman who
Speaker 1: the audience maybe knows is or has surmised as Alcestis,
Speaker 1: and Admetus says, no, take her away, and then that's
Speaker 1: the end. But then it goes on and it's like
Speaker 1: this lovely happy ending. Well, and it's another that's the second,
Speaker 1: the third, like third of the play, you know, being
Speaker 1: the in when I'm looking at it in all these
Speaker 1: like weird little comedic chunks. But because the interactions between
Speaker 1: Heracles and Adventists while they he's trying to convince her
Speaker 1: to him to take Aucastis is ridiculous. Like all I
Speaker 1: can see is Heracles like winking dramatically or like basically
Speaker 1: like a nudge nudge like hey, like you can take
Speaker 1: this moment, come on, doesn't like, oh you already said
Speaker 1: she looks like your wife, like oh no, I promise,
Speaker 1: like I know things like you should take her Like
Speaker 1: it's just so it's so not serious, I guess, and
Speaker 1: it makes just being so wilfully idiotic about it because
Speaker 1: one of the first things he says is you look
Speaker 1: just like my wife, and then he goes on to
Speaker 1: be like, no, I won't take her. And it's like,
Speaker 1: you know, if someone but I mean, like, I guess
Speaker 1: if he had just died, this would be like quite freaky.
Speaker 1: But if someone brought my husband to me wearing a veil,
Speaker 1: I would still know that it's him, you would hope, Yeah,
Speaker 1: like a veil. It's she's not completely covered, she's veiled,
Speaker 1: because he says she looks like her. Yeah, he looks
Speaker 1: just like my She looks just like my wife. It's
Speaker 1: just it's just so beautiful. It's it's such an incredible play.
Speaker 1: I'm never going to get over it. So Okay, there's
Speaker 1: one more thing that I really want to tell you about,
Speaker 1: which is not to do with the content of this
Speaker 1: play as much as it is to do with the
Speaker 1: context of the play, which I think makes it even
Speaker 1: more like immensely fascinating, deeply deeply fascinating. So as we know,
Speaker 1: this is presented in the position of a safe to play,
Speaker 1: but is this Euripides wilfully misinterpreting Ah subversively misinterpreting maybe
Speaker 1: a law that a new decree that the Ecclesia the
Speaker 1: Assembly had passed in the previous year four forty nine
Speaker 1: UM under the archon Makads, which forbids comic satire. Now
Speaker 1: this is probably about actually forbidding make directly making fun
Speaker 1: of well known politicians public figures, you know. But because
Speaker 1: there's a lack of technical language about person focused satire
Speaker 1: um making satirical comments about public figures, and because they
Speaker 1: perhaps didn't want to be like, don't make fun of us,
Speaker 1: the way that the decree is written is very vague,
Speaker 1: and so it is just about forbidding comic satire. So
Speaker 1: is this the presentation of this play Euripides presenting a
Speaker 1: non say to play in protest, And is that a
Speaker 1: part of why this play is so off taped, ridiculous,
Speaker 1: that it's like a tragedy a comedy, It's like Heracles
Speaker 1: being Heracles. It's like it's got everything. So there is
Speaker 1: also this like and we know that Euripides plays with
Speaker 1: local not local contemporary politics in other ways. UM, I
Speaker 1: mean other playwrights do too, but Euripides particularly is very
Speaker 1: politically engaged in his work, perhaps even more Interestingly, the
Speaker 1: next year, in four seven, a comic play right calliass
Speaker 1: presented a an old comedy, like a comedy but in
Speaker 1: that style of old comedy called Satyrs, which is lost unfortunately,
Speaker 1: but what we think essentially was was the Satas from
Speaker 1: Euripides say to play the year before, complaining about the
Speaker 1: fact that they had just been missed. So they had
Speaker 1: been missed out of their own play. I love all that.
Speaker 1: I know. It's amazing, isn't it. Ah, it's just like,
Speaker 1: I mean interesting generally, like the idea of it as
Speaker 1: a protest and all of those things, but I mean
Speaker 1: separately completely comedically, like just the idea of being like,
Speaker 1: that's a great comedy idea, like where were they like
Speaker 1: Wies was writing Ancestras. Yeah, and that it's presented because
Speaker 1: it's not a stay to play, it's genuine comedy, and
Speaker 1: so it would that is also quite subversive to put
Speaker 1: Satyr's into a comedy when they're typically reserved for a
Speaker 1: sader play. But then also that they're like complaining about
Speaker 1: the fact that they you know, like so it's this
Speaker 1: kind of very meta circular like and in my you know, headcannon,
Speaker 1: can we call history things headcannon. I guess we can
Speaker 1: right in my own headcannon hypothesis about this. It's Callias
Speaker 1: being intentionally bringing up this political issue so that people
Speaker 1: don't forget about it, because they, you know, the comic
Speaker 1: playwrights are the ones who really were constrained by this decree.
Speaker 1: So is it about like Callias being like, hey, don't forget,
Speaker 1: We're not allowed to make fun of politicians anymore. And
Speaker 1: you guys, like you guys being the audience. You guys
Speaker 1: like it when we make fun of politicians because you know,
Speaker 1: it's hilarious. But then there's also another part of me
Speaker 1: that's like, this is a play that Callius's play Satire
Speaker 1: at Satan's that is deeply written for one person and
Speaker 1: one person only, and that is Callias maybe Euripides. It
Speaker 1: has an audience of two, and I just love that.
Speaker 1: But then you know, I also love that you know,
Speaker 1: we as I said already, you know, we know that
Speaker 1: Euripides is really politically engaged, and the fact that he's
Speaker 1: making potentially making this protest play about a theatrical degree
Speaker 1: that doesn't really concern him, Like it doesn't really have
Speaker 1: anything to do with the type of plays that he
Speaker 1: predominantly produces, right, And so there's also kind of like
Speaker 1: something really lovely about, you know, that the deeply unselfish
Speaker 1: nature of writing a political protest a piece about political
Speaker 1: protest piece that has nothing to do with the art
Speaker 1: that he personally makes, um, and really has very little
Speaker 1: to do actually with anything that's politically important, you know, Like,
Speaker 1: I know, we can say that, you know, the constraining
Speaker 1: of the ability to make fun of politicians is damaging
Speaker 1: two public policies, but in a direct democratic system, um,
Speaker 1: you know, maybe it isn't as damaging as it is
Speaker 1: like when you know, we have like constraints on the press. Um.
Speaker 1: But also I think it's like just to kind of
Speaker 1: bring it round to be one of those people who
Speaker 1: does this, Like it's actually really pertinent right now that
Speaker 1: you know, huge debates about cancel culture and freedoms of
Speaker 1: the press and you know what it means to be
Speaker 1: allowed to make fun of public figures. Mh. And so
Speaker 1: I think that that's really pertinent as well. And I
Speaker 1: think it's also something probably not a lot of people
Speaker 1: know about Alcestus and the context it. So yeah, no,
Speaker 1: I think that adds so much. I mean, I think
Speaker 1: I mean not only adds so much, but I also
Speaker 1: think it does like at least suggest a bit of
Speaker 1: an answer as to why it's so weird, why it
Speaker 1: doesn't fit what, like it is just so very out
Speaker 1: of place, you know. And and that alone, I mean, yeah,
Speaker 1: that alone is so interesting. So to have like a
Speaker 1: possible answer or at least like a contributing factor, it
Speaker 1: is wonderful. And then in one sense, does that yeah,
Speaker 1: obviously again hugely couched. This is clearly a hypothesis and
Speaker 1: something would never be able to know. But with all
Speaker 1: the constraints off, does that mean that this is the
Speaker 1: type of play that Euripides himself wanted to make? Mm hmmm,
Speaker 1: you know, as a piece of you know, because theater
Speaker 1: is so deeply constrained in so many ways, both tragedies
Speaker 1: and say two plays and comedies. And so is this
Speaker 1: like a wow, if there's no rules, if I'm going
Speaker 1: to break the rules, and they as well create the
Speaker 1: work that I you know, I want to ride. Mm hmm.
Speaker 1: So again heavily couched. Still it's interesting. Yeah, it's just interesting. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's interesting to think about. Yeah. I find Euripides generally
Speaker 1: to just be I mean and I need to just
Speaker 1: basically settle down and read every single one of his
Speaker 1: players that we have um but like, his work is
Speaker 1: just so different in a lot of ways to the others,
Speaker 1: in a lot of ways that I personally just like
Speaker 1: enjoy and identify with. But also in a lot of
Speaker 1: ways it does does make him seem to be more
Speaker 1: of like a rule breaker, like more interested in in
Speaker 1: like playing with what he's doing, maybe less interested with
Speaker 1: the actual winning of contests, and more interested with what
Speaker 1: he is saying and how and like making statements about
Speaker 1: life and the world through his work. And so yeah,
Speaker 1: just to have that additional thing like you know, I
Speaker 1: couldn't I couldn't see this play being written by Sophocles
Speaker 1: or you know, like no, they just wouldn't be interested
Speaker 1: in the things like a lot of what I talked
Speaker 1: about in and just generally discussing it is that he
Speaker 1: seems to be just kind of examining the question of
Speaker 1: sacrifice and life and death and familial obligations like what
Speaker 1: you should and should not expect from your family members,
Speaker 1: like what they should and should not have to do
Speaker 1: for you, and and like he does kind of seem
Speaker 1: to suggest how he feels about it, but he also
Speaker 1: doesn't like you know, he's just kind of like voicing
Speaker 1: these thoughts without like hammering in a point to you.
Speaker 1: He's just making making like it's like he's just philosophizing
Speaker 1: on stage, you know, like there isn't an end moral point.
Speaker 1: He's just like spouting off thoughts and ideas and like
Speaker 1: playing with them before an audience. But there's the things
Speaker 1: that you know, he comes back to again and again
Speaker 1: in both the iphigenia's Um, in his electra Um, you know,
Speaker 1: in his Heracles plays, these sorts of ideas about the
Speaker 1: home and the family. I mean, even though you know,
Speaker 1: obviously the schools deals with these things, and Suffocles deals
Speaker 1: with these things, but they don't deal with them in
Speaker 1: this like homely, genuine way that Euripides does. And that's
Speaker 1: you know, one of the things that I think is
Speaker 1: so resonant about Euripides as a playwright, Like why so
Speaker 1: many people's favorite play, right is euripides Um not mine,
Speaker 1: but you know it is. And undergraduates in particular, I
Speaker 1: think find Euripides a lot easier two to approach because
Speaker 1: he does deal with this sort of like homely sorts
Speaker 1: of things in really genuine ways. I like him a
Speaker 1: lot for its violence, but also ye of these things,
Speaker 1: I'm like, ba, guy madea just give me all the
Speaker 1: gore and the like God's fucking with people. But I mean,
Speaker 1: even even in that, you know that violence, like Medea,
Speaker 1: the Heracles plays Hypolytis, you know that violence also plays
Speaker 1: with what it means to be in relationships with people,
Speaker 1: and how much you can ex act people to give
Speaker 1: of you and for you um or for you, and
Speaker 1: how much of yourself you you know, realistically have to
Speaker 1: expect to give and and sort of what it means
Speaker 1: to be desperate within these relationships comes down to, like
Speaker 1: I just want to talk about Greek tragedy all of
Speaker 1: the time. I mean, God, thank you so much for
Speaker 1: doing this. This is so much fun. I'm so glad
Speaker 1: you wanted to talk about this play and also like
Speaker 1: kind of spurred me to cover this play, So thank you.
Speaker 1: But no, I mean, I genuinely think everybody should read it,
Speaker 1: probably before any other play except maybe Euripides Helen mm hmm.
Speaker 1: But yeah, that Alcestis is wonderful, Like I can't there's
Speaker 1: no she is the best and it is the best. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean I love weird. I'm like, give me all
Speaker 1: the weird. So it was just extras. Really, I think
Speaker 1: that's why I like your bodies too, because he goes
Speaker 1: for weirder. Yeah, yeah, he's weird. He's far more weird
Speaker 1: sloss stuff for QUI. Well, I mean again, yeah, thank
Speaker 1: you so much, But why don't you tell my listeners
Speaker 1: where to find you? Is there anything you want to
Speaker 1: promote or share? I don't think there's anything I want
Speaker 1: to promote. I would like to thank both Kate Cook
Speaker 1: and Emma Coole for listening to me spout ship about
Speaker 1: avcastus for the last two weeks, for the last couple
Speaker 1: of days while I kind of fully pulled on my
Speaker 1: thoughts together for this um. You can find me on
Speaker 1: Twitter at Ellie m roberts on TikTok at Ellie mac
Speaker 1: and roberts. Ah, that's pretty much it. Wonderful. I'll link
Speaker 1: to all those things because you really are putting out
Speaker 1: some incredible TikTok content, and oh I love TikTok except
Speaker 1: when I get things taken down for community gadlines violations.
Speaker 1: I'm just posted that a whole pile of pictures of
Speaker 1: men sucking dicks I mean, but it's Greek pottery. Fine, yes,
Speaker 1: and it's so good. H Euripides am I right? Thank
Speaker 1: you all so much for listening. As always, it is
Speaker 1: just so fun and huge. Thank you to Ellie for
Speaker 1: coming back on the show, and stay tuned because she's
Speaker 1: going to have more amazing things to share with us
Speaker 1: in the future. For now, though, make sure you follow
Speaker 1: her on TikTok for some truly fascinating ancient Greek content
Speaker 1: I am such a fan for. I'm just so thrilled
Speaker 1: to have learned more about your rippit ees and alcasts.
Speaker 1: But obviously I've always loved Rippides because of Mandaya and
Speaker 1: back Gay and so much more. But I'm just becoming
Speaker 1: more and more interested in him as like a person
Speaker 1: and in learning about the actual process within these tragedy competitions,
Speaker 1: like how and why they were staged and how that
Speaker 1: might have influenced the content of the actual plays themselves.
Speaker 1: And oh man, did Elli deliver on that. I learned
Speaker 1: so much. I wrote so much down. It was so
Speaker 1: much fun. Fucking Athenian tragedy is so cool, all right?
Speaker 1: Do you think I've yelled about Rripid is enough? Never? Right?
Speaker 1: I agree, but It's enough for now, because I am
Speaker 1: working to create so much more content in advance for
Speaker 1: you guys, so that I can go to Greece and
Speaker 1: we'll write some cool things that hopefully you'll read one day. Plus,
Speaker 1: I hope to share lots of content with you over
Speaker 1: there on my Instagram and Twitter, and maybe more live
Speaker 1: Q and A is from Greece to come, that is
Speaker 1: for sure. So stay tuned and follow me if you
Speaker 1: don't already. It's just Smith's baby everywhere all right now,
Speaker 1: I'm talking too much about not Euripides, and that is
Speaker 1: not acceptable. This is all about him and the brilliance
Speaker 1: that is the Alcestis. Let's talk about mis Baby is
Speaker 1: written and produced by me Live Albert Michaelis. Smith is
Speaker 1: the Hermis to my Olympians. She just is perfect and
Speaker 1: wonderful and handled so many things. For the podcast, Stephanie
Speaker 1: Foley works to transcribe the podcast for YouTube captions and accessibility.
Speaker 1: The podcast is hosted and monetized by a cast. Thank
Speaker 1: you all for listening. It means the whole fucking world
Speaker 1: to me that you love this show and that you
Speaker 1: love these conversations and that you love them enough to
Speaker 1: send me to Greece is truly life goals. You are
Speaker 1: all the best. I am live, and I love this
Speaker 1: ship very much.