Una matrigna in frammenti: Ino

Abstract

This paper aims to investigate the role of the ‘murderous stepmother’ in Euripidean fragmentary tragedies, by focusing on Ino, Phrixus and Helle’s stepmother in Phrixus A and B, in order to outline the main features through the analysis of these fragmentary plays and the comparison with other extant plays and fragmentary ones. Specifically, the clues found for reconstructing the tragic plot are the following: Ino turns out to be non-stereotypical character, namely a stepmother who pronounces a gnome concerning stepmothers’ hostility towards stepchildren as a self-warning, not with the intention of dispelling the rumour, but to accomplish her own plan without any obstacles (fr. 824 K); the verb μηχανάομαι attested in the hypothesis of Phrixus A, a key-word of the language of deception, seems to suggest that also fr. 874 K refers to Ino; in fr. 822b K distortion in communication between Ino, who swears up and down in order to get what she wants, and her husband Athamas, deprived of authority from his wife, highlights the opposition between female vs male as a key-theme of the tragic plot; lastly, the analysis of the fragmentary data available suggests that there is a female Chorus beside Ino, who is proven to be only a temporary interlocutor and, as opposed to what usually happens, banishes the stepmother in a condition of deep solitude.