Rappresentare la condizione ibrida di un τέρας
L’identificazione delle Danaidi con la donna-giovenca Iò nelle Supplici di Eschilo
Abstract
In Aeschylus’s Suppliants, the Danaids, being represented as Egyptian women who seek asylum in a foreign country, are introduced as the Other, both in an ethnic and cultural sense. Soon, however, Aeschylus characterises the Danaids as being at the same time foreign and Greek, hence as having a hybrid identity. The aim of this paper is to show that the newcomers’ peculiar condition is actively constructed by the Danaids themselves through the claims, actions, and gestures that they enact on the scene. Accordingly, the paper claims that the Danaids’ relationship with their ancestor, the hybrid cow-woman Iò, plays a fundamental role in revealing such a hybrid identity. The paper concludes that the Danaids’ Otherness and complex ethnic-cultural identity constitute not only specific traits of their characterisation, but, most importantly, pivotal themes of the play, which are repeatedly brought to the audience’s attention and discussed in their multifaceted and contradictory shades.
open access | peer reviewed
Presentato: 26 Novembre 2025 | Accettato: 12 Gennaio 2026 | Pubblicato 27 Febbraio 2026 | Lingua: it
Keywords Performance • Aeschylus • Identity and the Other • Suppliants • Otherness • Monsters and the Monstrous • Hybridity
Copyright © 2026 Mattia Boscarino. This is an open-access work distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction is permitted, provided that the original author(s) and the copyright owner(s) are credited and that the original publication is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. The license allows for commercial use. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.