Oresteia V: The Eumenides–the Conclusion
Before going on the Eumenides , let us reflect a little on the theme. The Greeks regarded homicide with awe. Like Montenegrins and Albanians until recently, the brother or father of a murder victim felt a physical burden. The would-be avenger could not eat or sleep until revenge had been taken. The Greeks speak of agos , the pollution that affect an entire community, and the Chorus repeatedly speaks of the fear dripping like blood in the heart.
The pollution that resulted from the killing of a close relative was felt like a physical stain crying out for vengeance. Like other vengeance--seeking peoples—Medieval Germans, Montenegrins and Albanians until recently, a Greek could not escape the claims of vengeance, and the brother or father of a murder victim felt a physical strain that could not be relieved. He could not eat or sleep until revenge had been taken. Greeks speak of agos, the pollution that affect an entire community, and the Chorus repeatedly speaks of the fear dripping like blood in the heart.
Like Anglo-Saxons and Montenegrins, Greeks did have system of blood money and in time, even murder trials. The family was still ultimately responsible and had to press charges, even in Fifth Century Athens--murder was still more like a civil suit. Obviously, the principle of vengeance left unchecked pits clan against clan and destroys the social bonds within a commonwealth. But how do we go about this business of taming vengeance, without losing sight of the basic principles?
In Classical Athens the evolving consensus on questions of justice in murder was paralleled by the rise of Athenian democracy. After the Persian Wars (490-476?) Athens embarked on a radical course of democratization. The reformers were determined to attack the power of the Areopagus council, a bastion of inherited privilege, first by prosecuting individual members and then by passing a law that stripped the Council (made of of ex-magistrates) of powers, which (according to Aristotle, Ath. Pol, xxv) made it “the safeguard of the commonwealth”
This same Council did, however, retain its right to try homicide cases, and in the aftermath of this constitutional revolution, Aeschylus--aristocrat, war-hero, and poet--wrote his greatest masterpiece. The plot, as we have seen, concerns a cycle of revenge killings that culminate in a son killing his mother to avenge her murder of his father. Orestes is unable to enjoy his victory, however, because he is driven mad by the revenge-fiends, the Erinyes or Furies, that are born from his mother’s blood.
In the final play, the ominously named Eumenides (the kindly ones), Orestes is advised by Apollo at Delphi (the same god who had told him to kill his mother) to go to Athens and to put himself under the protection of the city’s patron-goddess, Athena. She sets up a jury-trial on the Areopagus and asks the Athenian citizens to serve as jurors. Athens, in other words, and its citizens--the politeia--are participants in the play.
The two supernatural parties in the case--Apollo and the Furies--represent contrasting visions of justice. While the beautiful young god is brash, rationalistic, and “progressive,” the Furies are hideously ugly reactionaries--even the sight of them nauseates the Pythia--who boast of their terrible destructive power:
We delight in the overthrow
of houses, when a homebred Strife
kills a kinsman. [vv 354-59]
These lines are sung in the binding-song of the Erinyes, the magic spell the weave to capture the soul of Orestes. This scene--sung and danced by the black-robed monsters--terrified the audience; women were said to have gone into premature labor.....
Athena, the patron goddess of Athens, arrives and expresses her astonishment at the spectacle. The furies are respectful and explain their function. When they complain that Orestes will not simply take an oath, whether or not he killed his mother--and if he perjures himself he is punished; Athena answers that they pursue justice in name only, that oaths must not be the means by which injustice triumphs. This is a novel thought for the ladies in black--who must have resembled mourners at a Balkans funeral.
The laws of the Furies, announced repeatedly in the course of the three plays, are simple: blood spilled on the ground cannot be recalled into the body; bloodshed demands more bloodshed; spilled blood, if it is not atoned for by the killer, pollutes him and the community that shelters him. They cannot understand why these fresh young gods should attempt to shield Orestes from his fate, and when Athena suggests a trial, the Furies predict disaster:
If the verdict goes to the plea and the crime
of this mother-killer.
Acquittal will turn the thoughts of all men
to immoral license.
Then many real blows struck by children
remain to be suffered by parents
in the time coming. [492-98]
In other words, rationalistic justice threatens to unravel the entire social fabric.
When Athena, ultimately, votes for acquittal either breaking or making a tie [scholars dispute the vote], the Furies have threaten to inflict Athens with
poison that drops on the earth
unendurably; and from it
a blight spreading over the ground...
killing leaves and killing children....
In other words, rationalistic justice threatens to unravel the entire social fabric.
When Athena, ultimately, votes for acquittal either breaking or making a tie [scholars dispute the vote], the Furies have threaten to inflict Athens with
poison that drops on the earth
unendurably; and from it
a blight spreading over the ground...
killing leaves and killing children....
Athena, however, realizes that no city can thrive without the support of these ancient goddesses. Indeed, her charge to the jury [690], noting that on the Areopagaus reverence and fear will keep the citizens from injustice, echoes their words. The goddess uses all her powers of persuasion to make them accept her offer and become honorary citizens and resident aliens of Athens. In gratitude, the Eumenides or “Kindly goddesses” (as they may now be called) promise to shower blessings on their adopted land, and the play closes with a ceremonial procession in which the goddesses take part, dressed in the red robes worn by resident aliens in the procession that marks the great festival of Athena at Athens--Panathenaia, which is commemorated on the Parthenon frieze. Their joyful red garment will recall the royal crimson fabrics on which Agamemon trampled. The conflict of blood is resolved, just as the imagery is reversed.
Continuing the allusion to the Panathenaia, the torch procession at the end reflects both torch race run at Panathenaia as well as the procession of torch lights across the Aegeanwe hear of at the opening of hte Agamemnon.
Athena’s compromise--or something like it--is the legal basis of civilization. The old laws of blood (very similar to the Germanic codes of the early Middle Ages) had in fact been too severe and uncompromising, but no society, no matter how civilized, can survive, if it is not built on the ancient foundations of kinship and revenge. Indeed, even in civilized Athens, accidental homicide was punished by exile, unless the killer could come to financial terms with the victim’s family. Twentieth century man, like Aeschylus’ Apollo, is contemptuous of tradition and prefers to put his trust in his own reason.
Turning our backs on the ties of blood and the demand for vengeance, we have constructed systems of criminal justice that satisfy neither the progressives, who dream of a non-retributive society, nor the ordinary people who continue to cite the lex talionis , an eye for an eye, tooth for tooth, life for life, as if it were sacred Scripture [wink], and when they are denied or think that their revenge will be frustrated, they are prepared to reassert the ancient privileges of the Furies.
Aeschylus is often regarded as a democratic progressive and supporter of Periclean reforms. Perhaps he was, thiough I very much doubt it. He certainly did not live to see the fruits of Pericles’ policies--ruthless imperialism, suicidal war, moral decay. But it is a moot point. Whatever he thought of the young statesman, Aeschylus is emphatically drawing a line in the sand around the sacred authority of the Areopagus and the powers of the old religion. Civilization depends on our ability to domesticate the forces of blood revenge and turn the Erinyes into the Eumenides, kindly ones, but try to deny the dismal reality of the Furies, and you face utter destruction.
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I will comment on the Eumenides some other time.
I'd like to take this opportunity to wish all Chronicles writers-most especially Dr. Fleming-and all readers a very happy New Year.
I'll be drinking Chianti and Amarone all night.I shall lift a glass,or four,to this worthy website.
All the best.
TJF -
Why are you working so hard New Year's Eve? Take a day off and live in the moment. Look up the stars, find a few that twinkle, and marvel in what God hath wrought....
Amarone? Sempronius is doing well. I did leave work a half hour early yesterday and spent much of the evening at an Italian restaurant listening to Italian pop music (which I provided) and talking to the Sicilians. I wish I were spending New Years Day in Agrigento.
I think you overstate the importance of the oracle in the story.
There are rumors Orestes fled to Athens less because of the oracle, and more with the intention of inflicting vengeage upon a weak and disgusting group of cowards who filled his heart with soul eating disgust and a kind of pulsing rage.
But then because Athena seemed to feel them deserving of mercy, he decided (such as it was a decision) to hold back from some of the more extreme measures he had been giving serious consideration to.
Perhaps it was comfort to the deluded residents of Athens to think it was Orestes on trial, and not Athens itself.
The more you tighten your grip...
The futility, not to mention the idiocy, of attempting to suppress the blood instinct totally can be plainly seen in the ludicrous aftermath of the Rodney King trial. Those who play by the rational rules are the bloodlusters' first victims.
On that note, Happy New Year and if anyone even MENTIONS wine to me...
I do not understand comment #4. I referred to no oracle: The orders were given by Apollo himself. The rest of the comment is not really relevant to the play. To NGPM, I would say, indeed yes. The problem with drink is that one has to lay down a firm foundation of distilled spirits and then follow with no more than a bottle or so of wine.
The majesty of this drama,particularly Athena's,is breathtaking.Where the CHOEPHOROE left me cold,the EUMENIDES captured something inside of me that is difficult to describe.
"Calm this black and swelling wrath;Honour and dignity await you:share with me a home in Athens",captures what I believe to be the heart and soul of this play.Truly beautiful lines worthy of that splendid figure with crested helmet.
Or again,"In Athens you are in the midst of friends",captures both in style and substance that restraint which is the very essence of Classicism.
While reading the EUMENIDES I cant help but suspect that we're getting a glimpse of the invective and verbal repartee,what the Italians call "botta e' risposta",that must have gone on in the Agora,the assemblies,or virtually anywhere noisy,chattering, quarrelsome Greeks gathered.
The counter-points and insults between Apollo the Furies and Athena are evidence of a forthright and clarion manner that is consonant with tough, free, proud and healthy people.
The diminution,but not the elimination,of the power of kinship and revenge seems to imply the diminution of specifically FEMALE power and influence.
The acquittal of Orestes turns on the lowering of the value of maternity within the family and society.The mother becomes a mere incubator of the paternal seed and thereby loses a great deal of her terrible ancient powers.
Patriarchy and civilization would seem to be inseparable.
But by retaining the female element-inviting the Furies to live honorably in Athens-Aeschylus preserves a certain grace and charm for the polis that can only be provided by women.
Too much reason is cold,dry and sterile.
At the risk of sullying this comment I cant help but seeing an Hegelian-like dialectic at work here.
Agrigento?That should be Akragas to you Greeks!Have you ever been?La Valle dei Templi is a most magnificent site to see.Especially at night when the temples are flood-lit.I especially like the simple,rustic surroundings;it sets off the valley in a strikingly noble manner.
Did your Agrigentine companions mention La Festa dei Mandorli in fiore?The holiday of the almond blossoms is one of the pride and joys of the Agrigentini.
Sadly, today Agrigento is over-run with barbarians.Perhaps another Gelon will arise to chase them away.
Incidentally,what does the name LOXIAS mean?
Perhaps I should have said Girgenti. Yes, I have spent about a week in Akragas on two separate occasions and would gladly return.
One may, of course, interpret Athena's lines in the way you do, though I think it is highly unlikely. On a dramatic level, she is in the position of justifying her vote, especially seeing that she is a female siding with males against females. She seems to me more of a reconciliation of the two sets of powers, especially since in Athenian myth she is strongly associated with the early Chthonic kings--Ertechtheus and/or Erechthonius. Her embryology, though distinctive, is not that far from a long-standing opinion that overemphasized the male contribution to reproduction. In general there is altogether too much emphasis on "gendering" in recent approaches to Aeschylus. As for Loxias, the ancients did not know. If it is derived from loxios, slantwise, it is more likely to refer to the ambiguity of his oracle than from the sun's eliptic (as was alleged) but it may well be nonGreek--like, perhaps, Apollo himself, though names in -ias are quite properly formed.
I think you told us once, Tom, about recordings of at least a play or two (I can't recall whose) in the original Greek and set to music, modern or otherwise. Has it been done, with a Greek or translated libretto, for any in this trilogy? I am trying to imagine how to produce this play or another Greek tragedy for a modern audience, and while I have never seen an American production with any music, it is hard to imagine--to speak of the Eumenidies in particular--how the Furies' lines, especially at the end with the repetition, would have significant power without being put to music.
I have seen Oedipus done recently in masks, and I felt as always do that in masks these plays loose their force and become static--a poor service to what is extremely moving and (goodness knows) dramatic poetry. You miss all that the face can convey too much, without music, percussion and dance to give the lines force in another fashion.
I've wondered, too, if Greek drama could be done in something like Noh or Kabuki theatre (heavily adapted, so as to keep it Western and not to have to simplify the lines), with heavy make up but no masks, ritualized movement, and lots of percussion. Or if some of the choral lines could be set to chant. The plays are such a mix of dialogue and ritualized soliloquy or prayer and incantation; it would be fitting to find a way to depict both in an effective way on stage.
Has anyone seen a modern production (of any of the tragedies) he found moving, and if so, how was it done?
I believe Classical Greek Drama is performed live every year,either in late Summer or Autumn,in the grand Greek theater at Siracusa.
Sicily's Greek temples and theaters recommend themselves for a Rockford Institute Convivium,yes?
I forgot to mention in my principle comment what a magnificent scene the finale to the Eumenides must have been,with its torch-lit procession,music and singing.
I'm still not sure if Aeschylus,pace Fleming,endorses the new political regime aborning,or not.
Or is Aeschylus cultivating a certain ambivalence and ambiguity?
We did a Convivium on the Eastern Half--Palermo, Segesta, Marsala, Selinunte, Agrigento, Enna, and are planning one based more on Syracuse, but probably again to include Agrigento.
No one can know for certain Aeschylus' thoughts on the developments in Athens, though we do know he was a patriotic soldier, proud of his fighting against the Persians, and that he had no problem accepting invitations from the rich tyrants of Sicily. He came from the highest of the old aristocracy and, in the absence of family or political ties with the Alcmeonids, the best guess--quite apart from his work--might make him an ally of the Philaids, but here, family and personal ties would mean a lot. In the case of Thucydides in the next generation, it is almost always assumed that he admired Pericles, even though his work is quite critical and despite the all-important fact that he belonged to the same kin-network as the other Thucydides, the leader of the opposition after the death of Cimon. Whatever Aeschylus's views of Pericles and Ephialtes, one thing we can be sure of: He was no kind of progressive--but then, neither was Pericles. The best way--the only way--to begin to understand his plays is to sweep away all the assumptions that have been imported into them by literary critics. Here, I think, a close reading of both the Persians and the Septem is crucial.
What's next? Back to the Fathers or some Florentine stuff? Guido Cavalcanti, for example, or a look at Dante's political views? A Trollope novel?
"Civilization depends on our ability to domesticate the forces of blood revenge and turn the Erinyes into the Eumenides, kindly ones, but try to deny the dismal reality of the Furies, and you face utter destruction."
Certainly a justice system that eliminates our basic instincts and emotions will become useless and absurd. The most obvious example in our legal system is the way rapists and child molesters are let out into the streets. Apparently, this is justified on "rational" grounds, since they are supposedly "not a threat to society." Threat or no, it would seem that justice requires something more to be done with these people. Even the thieves and murderers in prison have a sense of anger and disgust at those who prey on children, as they usually give them a thorough going over on the inside.
Thanks for the commentary, Dr. Fleming. I know it's disheartening that we don't participate more often. I read these plays a year ago in a course in classical mythology. I learned much more from your essays than I did in an entire semester.
If we discuss the Church Fathers, I hope that some of the more vociferous members of the peanut gallery will refrain from the Protestant bashing and generally divisive tone seen on other threads recently in matters of religion. Considering our times, would a reading of Augustine's City of God be in order? At least those parts that deal with the essence and destination of each city. The whole work would take us all year to finish. Knowing how these discussions tend to pewter out, Trollope might be too long and without enough popular appeal. It seems that religious or political works generate the most discussion. Since politics seems rather insane at the moment, I'm more inclined to study works of religious significance. Dante, however, might provide both spiritual and political insight. I'm embarassed to say I've never read the Divine Comedy. I've also thought T.S. Eliot's The Idea of a Christian Society and Notes Toward the Defnition of Culture would make for good discussion pieces sometime.
Both the Commedia and the Civitas Dei are such vast works that once we entered, we would never get out. Eliot, on the other hand, says pretty much what he means and needs no elucidation from me. In the case of Dante, I think we can look at part of the Convivio and read the De Monarchia to get a glimpse of the most perfect expression of a Medieval political view. I've been reading a lot of Dante lately, though not these two works, and having this discussion will force me into taking a serious look. I'll open up with a brief piece with links to the two works.
>Certainly a justice system that eliminates our basic instincts and emotions will become useless and absurd. The most obvious example in our legal system is the way rapists and child molesters are let out into the streets. Apparently, this is justified on “rational” grounds, since they are supposedly “not a threat to society.”Threat or no, it would seem that justice requires something more to be done with these people.<
I 100% agree.
Once we get the victims of the most rank and obscene injustice to think that justice does not require anything more than an indeterminate sentence of little punitiveness as compared to the horror of the crime committed, we are well on the road to destroying people's minds and turning them into brainwashed robots who exist all to follow directives, and nothing to express anything real or true in themselves.
In a cinema theater, an American can long for a world where a man is called on to show courage in defense of his family, as opposed to reality he faces where he is called on by society to show weakness, and to defer to judges who care not for the unspeakable harm their class has inflicted on the men and women of this country.
The real reason a judge exists is that we might avoid blood feud, while still giving justice to those who have wronged (and protection to the citizens).
But our judge class, by and large, know not even what a blood feud is.
And they will not know what it is even if it so happens that their prized metropolitan altars to evil are made nothing but a background and arena to a blood feud that comes to light up the very sky, and melt modernity like a piece of wax.