Four Silences in Sophocles' Trachiniae

Abstract

Speakers in Sophocles' Trachiniae call attention to the silences of four characters: Iole, Deianeira, Aphrodite, and Heracles. The silences of the mortal actors differently reflect and respond to the silence of Aphrodite: Heracles approaches the divine through euphêmia ; Deianeira in her manipulation of silence emulates but fails to achieve the agency of the goddess; and Iole in her unbroken silence indicates the possibility for a kind of mortal freedom. In this play that constrains the experience of men to the world of men, it is significantly through silence that men in part express their imperfect connection to the divine.