Le concept d’hybris s’applique-t-il à la lecture des Phéniciennes ?

• Main Author: Christine Amiech
• Format: Article
• Language: fra
• Published: Presses universitaires de Caen 2006-12-01
• Series: Kentron
• Online Access: http://journals.openedition.org/kentron/1769

It is customary to see The Phoenician Women as centered on the pleonexia, or excessive covetousness, shown by the two brothers, which relates the play to the political horizon of the fifth century rather than to the question of hubris and its religious connotations, which are necessary to tragedy. Yet the Aeschylean spirit is not absent from Euripides’ treatment of the myth of the Seven Against Thebes. His essential innovation in relation to Aeschylus, i. e. the episode of Menoeceus, provides further reason to revise the traditional view. This episode is inseparable from the body of legends about the foundation of Thebes, which provokes the wrath of Ares. In this respect the episode, which is central to the play, reintroduces the notion of hubris and so places The Phoenician Women among tragedies of the first importance.