Entrances to Ancient Literature
This article takes a look at gates and doors in five pieces of ancient literature, from epic to elegy and from the devastating to the comical. I hope readers who are familiar with ancient literature find it thought-provoking, but I have also written it with the hope that it gives to those readers who are new to investigating antiquity a sense of the variety and value of ancient literature, and that it entices them to explore more.
Homer’s ‘Iliad’ (circa 8th century BC)
The Iliad is an epic poem which takes as its subject the Trojan War, a legendary conflict between the Greeks (also known as the Achaians) and Trojans. In Book 22 of the poem, Hector, the Trojans’ prince and best fighter, stands before the gates of his city, waiting to fight Achilles, the best fighter among the Greeks. The duel, Homer informs his audience, will be the death of Hector (line 5). Hector’s parents, Priam and Hecuba, are also aware of this, and they beg him to come back inside the city wall (56), but Hector refuses, choosing glory over shame. However, as Achilles approaches in his gleaming armour, Hector is terrified and turns from the gate in flight (135–137). Hector is one of the most appealing characters in the poem: in Book 6, we see him tenderly laughing with his wife, Andromache, as their little son shrinks away from the crest of his helmet (6.466–475). It is, therefore, distressing to witness his demise.
In the final book of the Iliad, King Priam travels to Achilles’ camp; the messenger god, Hermes, opens up the gates for him (24.440–460). Priam embraces Achilles and begs for the right to bury Hector, whose body Achilles has taken. He speaks of the loss of his fifty sons and how he has ‘endured to do what no other mortal on earth has done: / to raise to my mouth the hand of the man who killed my son’ (24.505–6; translated by Verity). More than two thousand years after its composition, the scene retains its remarkable poignancy.
Euripides’ ‘Hippolytus’ (5th century BC)
In the opening of Euripides’ tragedy Hippolytus the goddess Aphrodite comes onto the stage. She speaks of her anger towards the eponymous character, who, she feels, has scorned her divine power. She hauntingly predicts (and sets in motion) Hippolytus’ death, asserting that the realm of the dead is ready for his entrance: ‘He does not know that the gates of Hades are standing open and that the light of this day is the last that he will ever see’ (lines 56–58, translated by Morwood).
Much later in the play, Theseus, Hippolytus’ father, is furious with his son. Theseus thinks (erroneously) that Hippolytus has assaulted his wife and, using a wish that he has been given, he condemns his son to death. He states:
‘No longer will I keep this back within the gates of my mouth,
This deadly horror, so agonising to express’ (lines 882–3).
This is a tense, pivotal moment in the play, in which Euripides makes use of dramatic irony: the audience knows (while Theseus himself does not) that Hippolytus has not touched Phaedra, his stepmother, but has been framed. This moment determines Hippolytus’ survival, as the scholar Knox recognises (Knox 1983, 319): ‘In [Theseus’] mouth, at this moment, speech has the power of life and death’. We can take Knox’s statement further. As he prepares his mouth to curse his son, Theseus creates a potent visual image of his lips being opening gates. This neatly links back to the play’s very opening, and Aphrodite’s statement that the ‘gates’ of the Underworld ‘are standing open’ for Hippolytus (56–57). The parallel use of gate imagery establishes a direct connection between Theseus’ actions and Aphrodite’s. In opening the gates of his mouth, he sends his son to the afterlife. Theseus’ lips are death-bringing instruments and he later regrets their potency.
Euripides’ ‘Helen’ (5th century BC)
Euripides’ play Helen takes as its premise the idea that Helen, the supposed most beautiful woman in the world, was never really present in Troy and that the Trojan War was fought over a false image of her. She was held in an Egyptian palace the entire time. To say that the play charts Helen’s emotional reunion with her husband, Menelaus, and their successful escape from Egypt makes it sound purely comical and romantic, but the work is instead a peculiar bundle of wonder, joy, regret, manipulation and violence. I think Zuntz captured its core beautifully when he called it ‘an ethereal dance above the abyss’ (Segal 1971: 613–614 quoting Zuntz 1960: 227).
Helen contains one of my favourite scenes in all of ancient literature. It comes early in the play, when Menelaus has just arrived in Egypt and has not yet been reunited with the real Helen. He stands miserably before the front gates of the palace, looking totally inglorious and unrecognizable, only to be confronted by a defiant old portress.
Euripides is establishing here a core, often poignant element of ancient tragedy — reversal — for Menelaus (a war hero) has suffered great misfortune. Nevertheless, in my view, there is something wonderfully amusing and appealing about this stubborn old woman and her startlingly unsympathetic responses. These include the following comments (all translated by Morwood, from lines 445–65): ‘You may have been a great man somewhere or other — but you aren’t one here!’; ‘Clear off and present your tears to your friends’; ‘I think that I would rue it if I delivered a message from you’; ‘Many people are down on their luck, not just you’.
The old woman’s liveliness, bluntness, and commitment to her job render the scene very memorable and I, for one, wish that she reappeared later in the play.
Scenes with door-keepers form a trope in ancient drama. The comic playwright Aristophanes’ work Frogs, for example, features an enraged porter screaming insults: ‘You loathesome, shameless, insolent scum you! Utter scum! Scum of the earth!’ (line 465 ff.)
Virgil’s ‘Aeneid’ (1st century BC)
In Book II of Virgil’s epic about the foundation of Rome, the central character, Aeneas, relates his story to Dido, the queen of Carthage. He speaks of the destruction of his homeland, Troy, as his mind shivers and withdraws through grief (line 12).
The Trojans think that they have won the war and that their Greek enemies have gone away. They open up the gates, look around the Greek camps and they see the (now infamous) Trojan horse. They are fooled into bringing this horse within Troy’s walls. This is a fatal decision, for the horse is in reality full of Greek soldiers and the other Greeks are lying in wait. Aeneas narrates this story with the benefit of hindsight; the narrative abounds in regret. There is a haunting image in the Latin text as the horse is moved into Troy. Virgil describes the horse as minans inlabitur (‘slipping in menacingly’ — line 240). While minans means ‘threatening’, the verb inlabor can also have a sense of frailty, with the idea of falling or collapsing. So in the phrase minans inlabitur there is arguably a juxtaposition: the counteracting of the seemingly naive and innocent with the dangerous. Ahl captures this best in his 2008 translation, calling the horse ‘meek in her menace’.
Here we come to the significance of gates. Aeneas describes how, as the Trojans try and pull the horse into the heart of their city, the horse stops four times at the threshold of the gate itself and four times the weapons of the Greek men hidden inside make a noise. However, the Trojans are totally oblivious and force the horse in anyway (lines 242–245).
In ancient mythology, there are often sets of three: think three Gorgons (Medusa, who could turn people to stone, and her two sisters), three revenge-bringing Furies, or images of the three Graces. Later in the story of the Aeneid, Aeneas tries to embrace his wife’s ghost three times and he fails three times; then he tries and fails three times with his father’s shade. Yet, here the Trojans have four opportunities — four instances of the deceptive horse stalling at the gate — to abandon their catastrophic act and they miss every one. It is a truly excruciating narrative.
That night, as the Trojans sleep, the Greeks emerge from the horse and kill the Trojan guards. They throw open all the gates to let in the rest of their army (265–267), and they mutilate Troy. How different everything could have been.
Propertius’ ‘Elegies’ 1.16 (1st century BC)
Last, but not least, we come to Propertius’ love poems and the idea of the shut-out lover, a young man who cannot access his girl’s quarters and is left yearning.
Poem 1.16 is a charming piece, written from the perspective of an entranceway. The poor door, guarding his mistress, never has any repose, for it is always being bruised and berated by a man who is desperate to see her. This man slumbers on the door’s threshold from starlit night to icy morning, and kisses the door’s steps to try and win it over. He even competes in volume with the morning birdsong, much to the door’s frustration. It is difficult to determine who can be more miserable, this lovesick young man or the door he harasses.
Bibliography
Aristophanes Frogs; tr. Henderson, J. (2002). Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
Euripides Helen; tr. Morwood, J. (1997). Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Euripides Hippolytus; tr. Morwood, J. (1997). Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Homer Iliad; tr. Verity, A. (2011). Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Propertius Elegies; tr. Goold, G. P. (1990). Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
Virgil Aeneid; tr. Ahl, F. (2008). Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Virgil Aeneid; tr. Fairclough, H. R. & Goold, G. P. (1999). Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
Brown, P. (2008). ‘Scenes at the Door in Aristophanic Comedy’, in Revermann, M. & Wilson, P. Performance, Iconography, Reception: Studies in Honour of Oliver Taplin. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 349–373.
Knox, B. M. W. (1983). ‘The Hippolytus of Euripides’, in Segal, E. (ed.). Oxford Readings in Greek Tragedy. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 311–31.
Segal, C. (1971). ‘The Two Worlds of Euripides’ Helen’. Transactions and Proceedings of the American Philological Association, 102, 553–614.
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