Conclusion: The Invisibility of the Gods
The Artemis that the Greeks sensed in a vibrantly fertile land, standing also in a
dangerous relationship to girls and their transition into matronhood, dominating the
wild, and even demanding a selective holocaust of all things living, especially wild
things, is the ‘‘same’’ Artemis that Theseus and his son Hippolytus meet in the
epilogue of Euripides’ playHippolytus(lines 1283–1443). Though dramas are very
much concerned with the inscrutable and worrying actions of the Olympian gods, the
gods themselves are largely banished from the tragic stage: generally they may only
appear, as here, at beginning or end, in prologue or epilogue – outside the action of
the play. These are moments set in that special register where what happens on the
stage stands above or beyond the present plot. In a startling moment, the Chorus has
been singing to Aphrodite who is not present, but it is Artemis that appears (1283)
and, continuing the lyric momentum by chanting in anapaests, announces herself,
then in prose upbraids Theseus for his mortal ignorance and consoles Hippolytus as
he is carried in to die. Artemis is almost certainly up high – on the palace roof (the
roof of theske ̄ne ̄, the stage building), or even on theme ̄chane ̄, that stage crane on
which the ‘‘god from the machine’’ (deus ex machina) typically appeared (cf. Barrett
1964:395–6). The point is that the Olympian god belongs in his or her own element,
the ether, and remains separated from man even in a moment of epiphany like this. It
was even worth inventing a stage machine to bring this about. By convention such
final moments bring out an explanation of events which is only known to the gods
themselves, or to their human equivalents – the tragedians or narrators that manage a
plot with the omniscience of its creator.
However unsatisfactory Artemis’ explanation in this particular play – and the
‘‘justice’’ of the gods always surpasses or disappoints human expectation in tragedians,
above all Euripides – we must not miss its very special nature. Theseus is immediately
overwhelmed by the divine presence and can only react with ‘‘alas!’’ (1313) and
‘‘mistress, I am destroyed!’’ (1325). But Hippolytus, in a particular sort of near-
death experience, senses the divine fragrance (1392) and the presence of the goddess.
In what seems a cold moment to modern audiences, perhaps wrongly, her exceptional
purity as an Olympian divinity prevents her from witnessing his death (1437), the very
same purity which is required in any ritual in order to communicate with these heavenly
beings. Humans frequently turn to oracles for advice on such purity – religious dirt,
miasma, must be avoided or undergo religious cleaning,katharsis.
Even in the epic, gods are rarely seen for what they are. Athene, who often helps
Odysseus, has to reveal herself explicitly to him, only to receive this reaction:
It is hard, goddess, for a mortal who meets you to recognize you,
even if he is very knowledgeable: you take on every shape.
(Homer,Odyssey13.312–13)And elsewhere in theOdyssey(17.485–7) we hear about gods walking the earth in
disguise to check up on the administration of human law and order. What matters for
us here is that gods have a culture of disguise and do not appear in their true form,
whatever that true form might be – Semele discovered to her cost that the true form
Olympian Gods, Olympian Pantheon 53