Making verbal note of the suppliants’ symbolic accoutrements, the speaker indicates that he recognizes the formal nature of the scene into which he has entered. At the same time, the question he poses suggests that he does not know the import of the suppliants’ action. His ignorance might, however, be feigned. The situation is reminiscent of a scene early in the Iliad when the goddess Thetis, knowing full well the answers to her questions, nevertheless asks Achilles, who is supplicating her with outstretched hands (1.351): “Why then, / child, do you lament? What sorrow has come to your heart now? / Tell me, do not hide it in your mind, and thus we shall both know” (1.361-3). This parallel supports a supposition already present in the minds of the audience that the speaker now addressing the suppliants might yet prove to be a god. Indeed, when he says μοι “me” (2), while he could simply mean to invite the suppliants to tell him the purpose of their supplication, the pronoun, positioned as it is beside the verb θοάζετε (“sit [here: in supplication]”), seems to express his assumption that the suppliants are sitting to him—that their highly ritualized gesture is intended to supplicate him. His words and behavior thus continue to allow that he be either god or mortal. If mortal, however, and if his words are construed as “sit in supplication to me,” his impertinence has climbed to a new height his language bespeaks a self-perception indistinguishable from that of a god. At the very least, given the charged atmosphere of the religious ritual into which he has intruded, his physical movement and verbal expression both seem careless; they express an insensitivity towards the gods, towards those who believe in them, and towards conventions of pious behavior and expression. Thus, again the audience’s inability to ascertain whether the speaker is man or god attenuates its own ambivalence. If he proves to be divine, the audience’s inclination to see him as a man would be offensive to the god. If he proves to be mortal, his insensitivity to the dictates of piety will have impugned his own character. [Ap]
This dilemma is heightened if, as Vernant suggests, the special wool-wrapped branches are recognized by the Athenian audience as paraphernalia appropriate to the thergalia, the festival of purification, in which case the individual marked out as clearly different from the rest should be supposed to be the sacrificial victim. The question he poses would then itself be part of the ritual. It would indicate that he does not know (or is required to act as though he does not know) the role he is to about to play in the purification of his community. His selection for sacrifice would be rendered meaningful and justified by the impertinence of stepping into the space set aside for the god on the presumption that the supplication is directed to him. But how does the audience feel about his victimization? Does it blame him and so approve his sacrifice, or does it identify with him and so find that the expectation of its own tacit approval serves only to subjugate it to an oppressive and coercive system? Might it blame the gods who would demand the sacrifice of that man who represents the city’s best hope of deliverance from its woes? Should such traditional practices be allowed to retain their value, or would it be better to repudiate them in order more directly to meet present challenges to civic wellbeing? [P]