ERINYS AS AN IMAGE OF TRAGEDY: SEMANTICS AND VISUALIZATION
The paper addresses two issues: a kind of extended commentary on an episode of Dion's biography (55.1) from Plutarch's Lives and, more extensive one, a study of the representation of Erinys, traditionally perceived as the goddess of blood revenge, from Homeric poems through tragedy and vase painting to late antique interpretations. Despite the fact that the perception of Erinys in the tragic genre is undoubtedly de ned by Oresteia, the surviving tragedies more often mention Erinys in the context of the fate of Oedipus and his children than in stories about Atreides house. In the texts of tragedies, the semantic di erence of ρινύς appears quite wide: from the ancient function of fate and parental curse and the idea of retribution to the new shades of meaning - madness and disaster. During the analysis of context and iconography, we can nd some additions to traditional commentary: for example, West's emendation of δμωαί as σμοιαί is not con rmed by vase painting. On the other hand, we can see Erinys on evidently “tragic” vases, but the plot of surviving tragedies does not imply the participation of Erinys in the action. Apart from the traditional explanation of an “other performance”, we can suggest that in vase painting Erinys is an almost universal tragic gure, a convenient element of the visual «tragic formula», indicating the theatrical origin of the vase plot: in tragedy, Erinys means vengeance or misfortune, on a vase Erinys means tragic peripeteia. This is the kind of Erinys seen by Dion in Plutarch's Lives: not a sign of revenge for crimes, but a tragic change in the hero's fate, the transition from happiness to unhappiness, another way of the “dramatic” Plutarch's method of presenting historical material, an example of intracultural reception of tragedy in late antiquity.