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|b This research sought to study one of the fragments that reached us out of the missing Sophocles’ works, it is the only remaining fragment of a play called “The image – bearers” which is unique and study worthy in the researcher’s opinion, due to its new unprecedented ideas, and the questions it arises on the part of the researcher, because of the nature of the topic it deals with, as well as the style of Sophocles, regardless of the fact that such fragments hadn’t been widely studied either by Arab or foreign scholars. The researcher attempted to comment on this fragment and analyze the ideas it embraces, in the light of the available literary sources, to know all about it, set the date of the play performance and the status it has among the other Sophocles’ plays. The researcher concluded that this play is closely related to the events witnessed by the city of Athens during the period between 416 and 415 B.C., when the Athenians laid siege the Melians in 416 B.C. as a result of refusing to pay the yearly tribute to Athens. Although the Melians had surrendered due to starvation, the Athenians entered the city suddenly killing men and youth, capture women, children and aged men, and sold them in the slaves’ market. The news was spread that the gods had abandoned Melos after the city had been void of the worshipers. Consequently, Athenians felt shocked in the evening that witnessed the preparations of the campaign against Sicily, Unknown people destroyed and distorted the statues of the god Hermes. That was a bad omen for the campaign which ended with the Athenian fleet being destroyed and the Athenian Empire broken down. In the light of connecting such given information with the title of the play and the only remaining fragment, the researcher dates the play to 414 B.C., as Sophocles wanted to warn the Athenian society against the consequences of neglecting the rights of gods, disrespecting their sacredness and insulting their holy symbols. Sophocles found that gods’ abandonment of Ilion, which had become like a proverb, is an appropriate topic reflecting his massage. Thus, he modified the narrative to make clear that gods were very keen on protecting their holy rites from being insulted. He made the gods carry the statues worshipped on their shoulders on leaving the places of their worship in Ilion. The researcher came up with the fact that there is a connection between the topic of this play and the two plays: “Laocoon” and “Locrian Ajax”, both of which were missed, except for a few fragments, as far as the idea and narrative sequence are concerned, according to the mythical traditions. So, the researcher suggests that the play under study represents, in addition to the other two plays, a connected tragic trilogy. It is likely they were performed all together during the Dionysia feasts in 414 B.C. The researcher also attempted to identify the play characters, the sources that Sophocles had derived his topics from, and the effect of his focusing on the political work. He was also keen on defining whether this fragment was a text derived from the play context or an overall summary of its topic. The researcher used both the analytical and comparative approach.
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