The Bed and the Tomb

Building on recent work on the materiality of props in Greek tragedy, this article focuses attention on Proteus’ tomb in Euripides’ as a potent stage property that becomes central to the play’s developing discourse of recognition tokens. Analyzing the play’s allusions to 23, this article argues that raises expectations of a bed as sign in the recognition scene between Helen and Menelaus, an expectation that the recognition scene fulfills by positing the as an ‘empty bed’. After the couple’s delayed recognition, the tomb of Proteus replaces the phantom as material sign of the couple’s union, a solid ‘bed’ that enables their escape and is subsequently incorporated into an evolving discourse of signs known only to them. The cenotaph employed in the couple’s escape plan troubles this discourse of signs by replacing the material tomb with an empty one.

Duke Scholars

Author Erika Weiberg Classical Studies