In other words, she is suggesting to him that, due to the coming war and Eteocles’ stubborn adherence to his permanent tyrannical rule, the city of Thebes might end up being burnt, destroyed, or ruined. They both wish to be sole ruler of Thebes. The conflict between the two first arises when two brothers of Antigone, Eteocles and Polynices turn rivals and are killed in a fight for supremacy. Besides, Eteocles adds further, Polynices arrived at Thebes fully armed; he has issued a threat, and should Eteocles now give in, that would be a shame for both him and Thebes; it would also be an insult to his manliness if he accepted a loss–“to pleon” (an accumulation of gains, in Greek), guaranteed to him by his Tyranny, would slip away from his hands. The third stage: Eteocles responds to his brother’s demands. The patterns read as if Eteocles deliberately steals some words from Polynices and reverses their meaning; the former resembles one who steals a sword from his enemy, and then uses it against its original owner; the strategy reminds us also of the imputation of meaning. In that instant Eteocles brings his father's curse to mind and agrees to meet and fight his brother in person before the seventh gate and exits the stage. The reader should also have in mind that Classical Greek drama is generally considered as a rich and inspiring source of social/political advice and theorizing, for which see, for example, Woodruff (2005). As Oedipus predicted in the previous play, Polynices and his brother, Eteocles, killed each other during battle. Both brothers, however, were killed, and their uncle Creon became king. Her speech is much longer than either Polynices’ or Eteocles’, which could mean that Euripides placed some special value in the speech, and perhaps tried to propose his own credo in social or political philosophy. The American Journal of Philology Although Eteocles's forces were victorious, the brothers killed each other. One of the largest publishers in the United States, the Johns Hopkins University Press combines traditional books and journals publishing units with cutting-edge service divisions that sustain diversity and independence among nonprofit, scholarly publishers, societies, and associations. In other words, this tells us that the brothers have made a promise to one another, and also sanctioned the promise by official taking of solemn oaths. “Polynices” becomes an exception who, due exactly to his name’s meaning, needs to be destroyed so that both Eteocles’ claims can be confirmed, one on the lack of shared meanings and the other on the lack of a shared notion of justice and equality. TransConflict » Time for Kosovo to secure its true independence. Interestingly, the Chorus of Phoenician women, who inspired the title to the tragedy and who were interrupted on their trip to Delphi by the conflict between the two brothers, commented approvingly on Polynices’ demands (lines 497-8). Etruscan Terracotta cinerary urn with a fight scene between Eteocles and Polynices, 26 x 43 cm 3rd century BC In this urn we see the power struggle between two brothers called Eteocles and Polynices, who on their father's death inherited the kingdom with the … What are the principles of conflict transformation? Thebes was invaded by Oedipus’ son, Polynices, and his followers. The Journals Division publishes 85 journals in the arts and humanities, technology and medicine, higher education, history, political science, and library science. “The Phoenician Women” (Gr: “Phoinissai” ; Lat: “Phoenissae” ) is a tragedy by the ancient Greek playwright Euripides.It was written between 411 and 409 BCE, and is a variant of the story Aeschylus treated in his play “Seven Against Thebes” in which Oedipus‘ sons Polynices and Eteocles fight for the crown of Thebes, ultimately killing each other. 14 Feeney has argued that when Polynices nearly yields to the exhortations of Pietas and Fides not to fight, he reveals an essential superiority to Eteocles, who shows no such susceptibility. By discoursing Eteocles violates every single value that a discourse between benevolent persons ought to uphold: he states contradictions; denies the thesis that essential moral-political attributes could carry a shared meaning; furthermore, he denies the validity of common criteria and values; openly admits that he intends to continue with violating his own solemn oath; and, as the only argument, he offers his own sense of “a private beauty” (at the very start of his speech he claimed that the term “beautiful” has no common meaning that several individuals could share) that quasi-justifies his “doing of injustice for the sake of Tyranny.” Predictably, the Chorus of the Phoenician women comments on his speech with the following words: “This is not beautiful, but is contrary to justice.”[4]. Project MUSE is a leading provider of digital humanities and social sciences content, providing access to journal and book content from nearly 300 publishers. With a personal account, you can read up to 100 articles each month for free. She delivers a subtle, rhetorically perfect speech that can be divided into three parts: first, she aims to defeat Eteocles’ thesis that equality is “but a name;” we are in advance very well aware that her argumentation might not succeed because Eteocles does not share some important premises on which she relies. Read your article online and download the PDF from your email or your account. daughter of oedipus and jocasta married to haemon niece of Creon. To begin with, negotiations are opened by mother Jocasta: she advises Eteocles in person to be self-controlled, to speak in slow words (bradeis mythoi) that suit wise persons; she also suggests to the two to look one another into the eye and forget for a while about their past; they should look forward to the future and attend primarily to their own current verbal expression. TransConflict is pleased to present extracts from Dražen Pehar’s book, ‘Dediscoursification – how discursive attitudes cause wars’, the key contention of which is that the attitude to language should be theorized as one of the major causes of war. Eteocles and Polynices, sons of Oedipus and enemies, fight for possession of the throne in a terrible struggle that proves fatal for both brothers. The rule passed to his sons Eteocles and Polynices. Polynices. Eteocles delivers a speech that may be taken as a perfect example of a dediscoursifying discourse. Polynices vs. Eteocles The battles end when the two brothers kill each other with swords. Polinice și Eteocles s-au ucis unul pe altul într-o luptă pentru controlul Tebei. His response begins with the following words: “Should the same matter be beautiful or wise to all, a two-tongued quarrel [amphilektos eris – a quarrel marked by “both” discourses, reminding directly of amphibola – ambiguity] would not take place. Then comes the third element–she aims to recover Eteocles’ reasoning capacity: try to imagine, she tells him, that you are faced with the choice between two things: the tyranny/absolute rule over Thebes, on the one hand, and the rescue of Thebes, on the other. Get premium, high resolution news photos at Getty Images Select a purchase Then Polynices calls his sisters, to which Eteocles responds as follows: “why are you calling them, when you are their worst enemy?” In some turns we see an interesting pattern. Your information will *never* be shared or sold to a 3rd party. In Greek mythology, Polynices was the son of Oedipus and either Jocasta or Euryganeia and the older brother of Eteocles. Antigone wanted to bury her brother's body but could not do so under the law of Thebes. He can only mean some kind of “absolute kingly power that does not embrace or unify the multitude; a power that remains private and unrelated to those over whom it rules.”. Instead of Eteocles, she herself is drawing the consequences by imagining that, in such a situation of an extreme choice, Eteocles would still prefer a tyrannical rule. Enter your name and email to receive TransConflict's monthly newsletter! Hence, here we deal with mythic characters; however, we should also keep in mind that Euripides ascribed often realistic contents to those characters that were widely recognizable by the public of the time. Seven Against Thebes, in Greek mythology, the seven champions who were killed fighting against Thebes after the fall of Oedipus, the king of that city. Books Now, Jocasta claims as follows: equality should always be preferred to vainglory because it gave the humans the law; those who have less are an enemy to those who have more. With warehouses on three continents, worldwide sales representation, and a robust digital publishing program, the Books Division connects Hopkins authors to scholars, experts, and educational and research institutions around the world. Literally, it reads as if, using the two warring brothers as fitting examples, Euripides wrote a succinct treaty on dediscoursification. “You see, what now happens between the two of us–that is the norm. It seems that the two’s key motive was to avoid their father’s curse, in which they obviously did not succeed. Her words aim predominantly at Eteocles. Bosnia-Herzegovina – where is our ‘own’ Nelson Mandela? The fifth stage follows. Polynices and Eteocles killed each other in a fight among themselves in the ensuing battle. The negotiation episode can be divided into six stages: first, Jocasta gives to her sons a brief lesson on the principles of effective negotiation; secondly, Polynices presents his case; thirdly, Eteocles responds to his brother; fourthly, Jocasta attempts at mediating; fifthly, Eteocles calls off negotiations and thereby opens the door to war; the sixth stage is one of a logomachia, a battle of words, of the ugliest kind–two brothers exchange threats, humiliations, expressions of rage and hatred, their talk becomes emotional, accelerated, and dense, and starts sounding like a fist fight, or a sword clash, losing completely that quality of calm and measured tone of argumentative and cooperative turns. Euripides was a keen and skilful painter of social interaction who wrote the tragedy in the period of the Athenian decadence, near the end of the Peloponnesian war, which to him offered a rich social-psychological template he incorporated in the dramas that dealt specifically with the human conflict and violence. Free for commercial use, no attribution required. By saying this, however, Eteocles commits another contradiction because he started his response by claiming that language is powerless. The reader will also experience an acceleration of discourse, which connotes the brothers’ excitement and rush, their feeling that the war is around the corner; at the same time, the accelerated speech also connotes a process that is less controllable, or predictable, and which thus becomes a pertinent symbol of the fortune or accident that in all wars plays a major, sometimes even decisive, role. The two brothers decided to rule in an alternating fashion every year; but when it was time for Eteocles to step down, instead he expelled Polynices and kept the throne for himself. Eteocles refused to yield it and so Polynices sought out the help from King Adrastus. The story is a part of the Theban epic cycle which, like Homer’s epic oeuvre, generated many themes of classical Greek literature. He is also the guardian of Antigone and … Eteocles and Polynices, sons of Oedipus and enemies, fight for possession of the throne in a terrible struggle that proves fatal for both brothers. The second major aspect is as follows: at the end of his speech, marking the move toward the conflict of armed force, Polynices states that he must flee his home again, like a slave, though he is a son of the same father as his brother (lines 627-8). Polynices, understandably a little miffed at missing out on being a king, goes to recruit armies to help him get back the throne. Polynices spent his year of absence living a kind of refugee life in Mycenae, hosted by king Adrastus who even gave him his own daughter for a wife. The two sons, Eteocles and Polynices, in order to avoid bloodshed, agreed to rule Thebes in alternate years. We need to add two major aspects of the example of negotiation that, by generating dediscoursification, took a wrong turn, and moved the agents closer to the war instead away from it. brother of eteocles on of Oedipus and Jocasta banished from thebes. Polynices fled to Argos and raised an Argive army led by himself and other heroes. And the godlike Polynices, swiftly drawing his gold-studded sword, rushed upon his adversary, and they clashed together like two savage lions, brothers and siblings of one blood. Eteocles would rule Thebes in the first year, but at then of that year, Eteocles refused to yield the throne to Polynices, breaking the promise made between the brothers. Eteocles guaranteed safety to his brother, and the two then attempted to resolve the crisis in a brief round of negotiating. Journals Yet are we really sure that we would fight at Antigone’s side? However, one also senses that this was a kind of “swan song to discourse;” re-discoursification can take place only if there are two parties to it, and if both sides to a dialogue actively try to re-discoursify a relationship. There is no shared justice, no shared notion of equality; there are only justices and equalities as desired and promoted by particular individuals. Request Permissions. Taney v. others (“Dred Scott” and American Civil War), Chamberlain, Izetbegović, and Arab-Israeli post-242 negotiators – dediscoursifier’s special figures, Stop Rape and Gender Violence in Conflict, Recognition of Every Casualty of Armed Violence, Understanding and combating extremism in Serbia, Institute for Social and Political Research (IDPI), Global Coalition for Conflict Transformation. From: "Tydeus and Polynices from BL Royal 20 D I, f. 6", to "The Oath Of The Seven Chiefs - Project Gutenberg eText 14994". In the sequel to the battle between Eteocles and Polynices, the successors of the fallen Argives, known as the Epigoni, win control of Thebes. Eteocles. Polynices. That they fight over the throne is why Antigone's brothers kill each other in "Antigone" by Sophocles (495 B.C.E. Again, we witness a dediscoursifying agent, someone who does not believe that discourse could, or should, affirm or produce some shared values. brother of polynices son of Oedipus and Jocasta breaks promise to joint rule thebes and banishes polynices. Jocasta replies to it as follows: “You refer to the slave who dares not say what he means.” Polynices to this briefly replies as follows: “One needs to bear the ignorance (incompetence) of those who hold power,” and adds that he himself had to endure such hardship for some short-term gain. MUSE delivers outstanding results to the scholarly community by maximizing revenues for publishers, providing value to libraries, and enabling access for scholars worldwide. Analysis of Antigone. However, because of a curse from their father, the two brothers did not share the rule peacefully and died as a result, ultimately killing each other in battle for control of the city. The master’s discourse may be irrational, lacking, flawed, in need of a correction, but, the slave is one who has to bear such a discourse, one who must not try to correct it; in the public dimension, the slave is one who has to treat a very imperfect discourse as perfect one. He claimed power and drove Polynices into exile. This parallels the Juniper Tree. [2], The theme of the tragedy is as follows: Polynices and Eteocles agreed to share the rule over Thebes by rotating the ruler’s seat every other year. Polynices and Eteocles killed each other in a fight among themselves in the ensuing battle. This then means that a lie, or untruth, is inherent to the slave’s attitude toward discourse; and this also means that those who intend to use discourse in accordance with its inherent moral values are, qua slaves, discouraged to do so. In other words, she is trying to scare him somewhat by presenting to him his own preferences that include his inclination to an empty/illusory value: “To the Thebans, the wealth (ho ploytos) you intend to possess will bring pain in order to satisfy but your own vainglory.” (566-7) Thus she tells him frankly that the wealth he would retain will be of no value; he will be stripped down to his own vanity. The war of the Seven against Thebes resulted from a quarrel between Oedipus' sons Polynices and Eteocles over the kingship of Thebes, which left Eteocles on the throne, and Polynices in exile. In Oedipus at Colonus, Polynices represents the son who wishes to reconcile with his father for self-serving reasons.Wily and somewhat shameless, Polynices dares to compare himself with his father, Oedipus, as a fellow outcast — this, despite the fact that Polynices is … ©2000-2021 ITHAKA. Could the Kosovo story end in Greater Albania? Finally, one should also emphasize that Eteocles has described the whole process of negotiating as an “agon logon,” i.e. As a democracy, Israel shows no moral tenet: El-Halabi’s outcry for justice. He claims that his speech will be simple as pertains to the word of truth (haploys ho mythos tes aletheias ephy, line 469), and he expresses hope that “an unjust logos may be cured by wisdom.” He then briefly recounts the history of the conflict, emphasizing that Eteocles has sworn to gods when he accepted the arrangement of a one year-rotating mandate. This theme was used earlier in Greek tragedy, most famously in the Seven against Thebes by Aeschylus.[3]. However, because of a curse from their father, the two brothers did not share the rule peacefully and died as a result, ultimately killing each other in battle for control of the city. The brothers Eteocles and Polynices, sons of Oedipus, killing each other - From " Mythologie de la jeunesse " by Pierre Blanchard. Hence, we may conclude that Eteocles made Polynices again slave-like not as much by refusing to yield to the demand of “one-year rotating rule” as by reviving in Polynices the view that the use of discourse must remain unproductive, that moral or political problems cannot be resolved with a reasonable exchange of arguments, or by a joint assessment of reasons. RT @TransConflict: #Polynices v. #Eteocles (Phoenician women by Euripides): @TransConflict is pleased to present… https://t.co/tduDWaG1f6, Polynices v. Eteocles (Phoenician women by Euripides) https://t.co/qvYKEMb3NM #Nonprofit, RT @Aktivizmo: Polynices v. Eteocles (Phoenician women by Euripides) https://t.co/qvYKEMb3NM #Nonprofit. Hopkins Fulfillment Services (HFS) Polynices responds by taking a whole army from Mycenae and moving towards, and against, Thebes. JSTOR®, the JSTOR logo, JPASS®, Artstor®, Reveal Digital™ and ITHAKA® are registered trademarks of ITHAKA. To his own mother he releases the final message as follows: “Ending your long advice/lessons (ton makron noythetematon), leave me alone!” (lines 592-3) Then immediately he turns to Polynices and issues a threat: “Leave these city walls, or die!”. The exchange is full of insults and threats. In my presentation of, and citation from, the drama, I follow Euripides (1913) and (1938); I often modify the latter in accordance with the former. Eteocles announces which Theban commanders he will send against each soldier. As Eteocles’ turn came first, Polyneices withdrew to … However, Eteocles, who called dibs on first, refuses to swap when his time is up, and drives Polynices into exile.