Tyche: fortune and chance in Euripides and fifth-century historiography

This thesis is a study of tychē (success, good or bad fortune, chance, unexpected circumstances) and fortune talk in Greek literature, especially fifth-century tragedy and historiography. This concept is examined as part of popular beliefs about gods and other powers of fate, as an agent in contexts of causation, and as part of fortune talk and the rhetoric of success and failure (exhortation and consolation). It emerges that tychē language, moira language and god talk constitute alternative ways of expressing human uncertainty, ignorance and frailty in the face of the unforeseen future, danger or critical circumstances. The choice of word is important, as it expresses an attitude to events as well as an intellectual explanation of them. Calling events tychē points to their lack of any purpose or shape, and may also suggest the randomness of human life or the transience of all things mortal. Calling events ‘god-sent’ or ‘fated’ points to their acceptance as inevitable and as universal markers of the limits of the human condition. In Homer we find a distinction between broad, or large-scale, patterns of events - which tend to be attributed to the divine - and the small details which occur in their working out, which may be seen as chance circumstances. Similar instances of this juxtaposition of long-term and short-term causation can be found in Herodotus and Euripides. This juxtaposition often takes the form of different perspectives: an ‘as-it-happens’ limited perspective tends to be linked with tychē, whereas an ‘in-retrospect’ and post eventum perspective tends to be linked with the divine or moira. The tychē-gnōmē, tychē-technē and tychē-pronoia tensions occur in a variety of contexts and form part of fifth-century intellectual debates. Euripides, in his use of both fortune talk and god talk as well as in his adaptation of earlier ideas about them, turns out to be the most inclusive and inconclusive tragedian.