The Oresteia
The Oresteia is a trilogy produced by Aeschylus in 458 BC. Trapped in a cycle of lawless savagery, mankind finds its way toward due process and justice.
Introduction
The Oresteia is comprised of three tragic plays produced by Aeschylus in 458 BC. The trilogy is an undisputed classic that has captivated audiences and readers for twenty-five centuries. Aeschylus assumed a certain level of familiarity with the Greek gods and mythology and this could be taken for granted in a society immersed in these characters since childhood. His plays were produced for a wide audience, not for elite scholars. But as the centuries passed, fewer people retained knowledge of ancient mythology.
Christianity displaced the Greek gods, first slowly and then with tremendous momentum. Today, few people outside of academia have the in-depth understanding of Greek mythology required to appreciate and enjoy The Oresteia. This is unfortunate because Aeschylus not only tells a captivating tale but has a broader message about the evolution of human society from atrocious acts of barbarism to what we call civilization.
Most readers who pick up a copy of The Oresteia with no previous exposure to Greek mythology will find the experience frustrating. At a minimum, I would recommend reading The Iliad and The Odyssey prior to reading Aeschylus. Most readers would also benefit greatly by reading Edith Hamilton’s Mythology and consulting this book as a useful reference when approaching the classics. Even after studying these books in great detail, I found aspects of The Oresteia difficult to understand. Fortunately, the translation I read by Robert Fagles includes an excellent introduction as well as comprehensive notes that can be consulted while reading the plays. Even with these useful notes, multiple readings were required before I felt like I really understood what Aeschylus was trying to convey.
In this article, I provide a brief backstory of the characters involved in The Oresteia followed by thoughts on each of the plays in the trilogy. There is no practical way to write about this without including “spoilers” so readers who prefer to read the plays first should do so before reading this article. However, in this case, I think that most readers would benefit from knowing the backstory and the plot before reading the plays.
The Backstory
The House of Atreus was hopelessly cursed. To understand the curse, we need to start at the beginning. Tantalus was one of the many mortal sons of Zeus. He was highly favored by the gods who allowed him to ascend to Mount Olympus to dine in their divine presence, a privilege bestowed on few mortals.
As told by Edith Hamilton in Mythology, Tantalus reciprocated by inviting the gods to a banquet. Attempting to test whether the gods were omniscient, Tantalus killed his son, Pelops, and boiled him in a cauldron. This sacrifice was served to the gods who recoiled in horror when they realized what they were being served. Tantalus was punished for eternity, placed in a pool of water in Hades beneath a fruit tree. Whenever he reached for fruit, it pulled away from him and whenever he tried to drink the water, it receded.
Pelops was miraculously bought back to life and went on to live an honorable life, but the curse of Tantalus skipped just one generation. Pelops had several children. The most prominent of his children were Atreus and Thyestes but these sons did not live honorable lives. Thyestes had an affair with his brother’s wife. When Atreus found out, he secretly killed two of his brother’s children and prepared a feast to be served to Thyestes who proceeded to dine on his own children. When Thyestes found out, he threw up in horror but he was unable to do anything about it since Atreus held insurmountable power as King.
Atreus went on to have children, and the most famous of his offspring were Agamemnon and Menelaus, two of the characters brought to life in Homer’s Iliad. Agamemnon and Menelaus married two sisters —Clytemnestra and Helen. Helen was abducted by Paris, a Trojan Prince, which launched the decade-long Trojan War led by Agamemnon. On their way to war, Agamemnon offended the goddess Artemis by killing a sacred deer. Artemis prevented the Greek fleet from reaching Troy until Agamemnon agreed to sacrifice his daughter, Iphigenia, to placate the goddess. This understandably infuriated Clytemnestra who proceeded to spend a decade in her palace ruminating on the murder of her daughter while Agamemnon was at war.
Thyestes had a son named Aegisthus who was either born after the cannibalistic feast or somehow escaped being killed. Aegisthus might have been the product of an incestuous relationship between Thyestes and his own daughter. While Agamemnon was at Troy, Aegisthus seduced Clytemnestra and effectively took control of Agamemnon’s kingdom. Although this usurpation was well known by the people, Agamemnon was curiously ignorant about his wife’s adultery and the loss of his power until he returned from Troy in triumph. This is the point at which Aeschylus begins Agamemnon, the first play of the trilogy.
Agamemnon
A night watchman on the highest roof of the house of Atreus waged a perennial battle to stay awake despite enduring ceaseless boredom. His job was to monitor the horizon for a signal-fire communicating that Troy had finally fallen to the Greeks. When Troy was pillaged, great fires were burned in succession on the tallest mountains across hundreds of miles. In this way, primitive communications were possible thousands of years before the telegraph. The watchman finally sees light emerge very slowly to the east and realizes that it is a signal announcing the end of the Trojan War.
The watchman is elated. He begins to dance and cannot wait to inform Clytemnestra.
There's your signal clear and true, my queen!
Rise up from bed - hurry, lift a cry of triumph
through the house, praise the gods for the beacon,
if they've taken Troy ...
But there it burns,
fire all the way. I'm for the morning dances.
Master's luck is mine. A throw of the torch
has brought us triple-sixes - we have won!Meanwhile, a group of old men have assembled around a nearby alter used to offer sacrifices to the gods. These men form a chorus, one of the devices Aeschylus uses to tell his story. These men were too old to fight at Troy, and they bemoaned their lack of usefulness in combat.
We are the old, dishonored ones,
the broken husks of men.
Even then they cast us off,
the rescue mission left us here
to prop a child's strength upon a stick.
What if the new sap rises in his chest?
He has no soldiery in him,
no more than we,
and we are aged past aging,
gloss of the leaf shriveled,
three legs at a time we falter on.
Old men are children once again,
a dream that sways and wavers
into the hard light of day.These men are aware of the history of the house of Atreus as well as Clytemnestra’s adultery, and they are quite clearly loyal to Agamemnon. One of the oddities of the play is that no one seems to have warned Agamemnon about the obvious danger to his life as he approaches his home. Agamemnon is blissfully unaware of this mortal peril as he makes his way through the countryside, blessed by the gods with smooth travel from Troy.
Clytemnestra puts on a show for the old men, and perhaps for herself, by preparing an elaborate ritual and offering sacrifices to the gods. She ignores the old men’s inquiries and the reader might imagine that she is plotting her husband’s demise as she prays. It is tempting to view Clytemnestra as a villain. After all, she is an adulteress and plans to kill her husband. However, part of the tragedy is that in her mind she is not a murderer but an executioner, exacting justified retribution for Agamemnon’s sacrifice of their daughter.
While Clytemnestra goes about her rituals, the old men tell the story of Agamemnon’s sacrifice of Iphigenia.
'My father, father!' - she might pray to the winds;
no innocence moves her judges mad for war.
Her father called his henchmen on,
on with a prayer,
'Hoist her over the altar
like a yearling, give it all your strength!
She's fainting - lift her,
sweep her robes around her,
but slip this strap in her gentile curving lips ...
here, gag her hard, a sound will curse the house'Agamemnon faced what he regarded as an impossible choice, at least by the prevailing moral standards of the ancient world. Either satisfy Artemis with the blood of Iphigenia, betraying his own daughter, or betray the forces he led as commander in chief of the Greeks. Failure to satisfy Artemis would doom the Greek fleet and give victory to the Trojans by default. Agamemnon chooses to sacrifice his daughter, perhaps fated by the curse on the house of Atreus that originated with the sins of Tantalus.
Clytemnestra finally speaks to the old men of the chorus, informing them that the signal fire meant that Troy had fallen. The old men seem to find it hard to believe and Clytemnestra feels like she is being mocked. One gets the sense that the old men dislike the queen, no doubt because of her disloyalty to Agamemnon, although they fail to connect the dots and realize that she is plotting murder. Clytemnestra makes a memorable speech about how the signal fires rushed from mountaintop to mountaintop to speed news of the victory, making sure to refer to Agamemnon in glowing terms as “her lord” and pretending to be excited about his impending return. Well, she might indeed have been excited, but not for honorable reasons!
Clytemnestra, having finished with her rituals, goes inside the palace and the old men continue, at times lamenting the high price of war in verse that echoes through the ages.
All through Greece for those who flocked to war
they are holding back the anguish now,
you can feel it rising now in every house;
I tell you there is much to tear the heart.
They knew the men they sent,
but now in place of men
ashes and urns come back
to every hearth.
War, War, the great gold-broker of corpses
holds the balance of the battle on his spear!
Home from the pyres he sends them,
home from Troy to the loved one,
heavy with tears, the urns brimmed full,
the heroes return in gold-dust,
dear, light ask for men; ad they weep,
they praise them, 'He had skill in the swordplay,'
'He went down so tall in the onslaught,'
'All for another's woman.' So they mutter
in secret and the rancor steals
towards our staunch defenders, Atreus' sons.A herald arrives to confirm of the fall of Troy and the approach of the King. Part of the herald’s speech might apply to war in any age. Parts of this moving passage made me think of E.B. Sledge’s account of his service during World War II in the Pacific. It is remarkable how the miseries of war can reach across the centuries resulting in passages that could apply equally to the Trojan War and the Second World War.
A long, hard pull we had, if I would tell it all.
The iron rations, penned in the gangways
hock by jowl like sheep. Whatever miseries
break a man, our quota, every sun-starved day.
Then on the beaches it was worse. Dug in
under the enemy ramparts - deadly going.
Out of the sky, out of the marshy flats
the dews soaked us, turned the ruts we fought from
into gullied, made our gear, our scalps
crawl with lice.
And talk of the cold,
the sleet to freeze the gulls, and the big snows
come avalanching down from Ida. Oh but the heat,
the sea and the windless noons, the swells asleep,
dropped to a dead calm ...Clytemnestra returns with an entourage pretending to be joyful about the impending return of Agamemnon. How to best welcome her lord, she asks? Of course, we know that the plan is really how to murder Agamemnon, but Clytemnestra can hardly murder him openly. By pretending to be excited about his return, she hopes to lull him into complacency.
Agamemnon’s actions in The Iliad reveal a powerful man who is utterly clueless about the effect of his actions on other people. Agamemnon caused enormous damage to the Greek cause when he alienated Achilles by stealing Briseis, a woman who Achilles had abducted during a raid on a nearby city. Similarly, Agamemnon does not seem to realize that showing up with another woman might irritate his wife. Agamemnon enslaved Cassandra, one of King Priam’s daughters, as his personal concubine after the fall of Troy. Perhaps riding into his palace with his concubine was not the best move when greeting a wife who might have still been irritated about the sacrifice of Iphigenia?
Clytemnestra refuses to take the bait and bides her time, claiming eternal love for her husband and bemoaning her loneliness over the past decade. The old men and the audience are fully aware that Clytemnestra was hardly lonely and had been carrying on an affair with Aegisthus, but Agamemnon is utterly clueless. She literally spreads out the “red carpet” for her husband, only the carpet was really a tapestry considered sacred to the gods. Walking on it would be a form of blasphemy, which is obviously the point. Clytemnestra tells Agamemnon that he deserves to walk on the tapestries.
Come to me now, my dearest,
down from the car of war, but never set the foot
that stamped out Troy on earth again, my great one.
Women, why delay? You have your orders.
Pave his way with tapestries.Agamemnon protests that no man should walk on the tapestries but he eventually gives in and enters the palace, albeit after taking off his boots to avoid soiling the sacred tapestries. Agamemnon walks over the threshold of the castle, never to be seen again alive.
Clytemnestra returns from the palace to encourage Cassandra to join them inside, promising to share with her the “victory libations” they are enjoying. Cassandra remains silent. Clytemnestra assumes that there is a language barrier and angrily returns to the palace. With a scream, Cassandra cries out to Apollo in a desperate attempt to save her life. Endowed with the gift of prophesy, Cassandra can see Agamemnon’s fate before her as well as her own impending death.
In a haunting dialogue, Cassandra tells the old men about what is about to happen, connecting these events with the feast of Thyestes and the curse on the house of Atreus. She seems to babble on and on, with the old men at a loss to interpret her ramblings. Soon, she directly tells them that Clytemnestra would murder Agamemnon, although the old men can hardly believe it. Staggering toward the palace and her inevitable fate, Cassandra foresees retribution for their deaths.
We will die,
but not without some honor from the gods.
There will come another to avenge us,
born to kill his mother, born
his father's champion. A wanderer, a fugitive
driven off his native land, he will come home
to cope the stones of hate that menace all he loves.
The gods have sworn a monumental oath: as his father lies
upon the ground he draws him home with power like a prayer.Cassandra enters the palace and there is a scream! Agamemnon shouts that he has been struck deep, calling it the death blow. He is struck again and then there is silence. The old men try to organize themselves to break into the palace but scatter in fear. Soon, the palace door opens and Clytemnestra is standing over the bodies of Agamemnon and Cassandra. The truth is finally revealed. Clytemnestra had wrapped Agamemnon in royal robes and then struck him with a sword. The commander in chief of the Greeks who had slain so many on the plains of Troy was struck down, defenseless, by his own wife.
Far from expressing regrets, Clytemnestra glories in her gruesome deed.
So he goes down, and the life is bursting out of him -
great sprays of blood, and the murderous shower
wounds me, dyes me black and I, I revel
like the Earth when the spring rains come down,
the blessed gifts of god, and the new green spear
splits the sheath and rips to birth in glory!The old men are horrified and appalled, and are not shy about saying so. Clytemnestra justifies her actions based on retribution for the sacrifice of Iphigenia, claiming that there was a double standard at work. No one condemned Agamemnon for killing Iphigenia, yet Clytemnestra was being condemned for what she sees as delivering justice. Why should Clytemnestra be banished and cast into exile, as the old men threaten, when Agamemnon’s actions were never even questioned?
Clytemnestra might have a point regarding double standards, but the old men are not buying it. They bemoan the death of Agamemnon, a “god like man” who they consider a hero and the fact that he will not even receive a proper burial. The old men are ultimately powerless to do anything. Aegisthus arrives and his dialogue with the men soon escalates to the point of imminent violence, but Clytemnestra puts a stop to it. Aegisthus and Clytemnestra walk into the palace and the first play of the trilogy ends.
The Libation Bearers
Agamemnon and Clytemnestra had a son named Orestes who was still a child when Agamemnon returned from Troy. At that time, Orestes was in hiding in a neighboring city because his older sister, Electra, suspected that Orestes might be murdered and sent him into exile. The sole male heir of Agamemnon was an obvious threat to the continued rule of Clytemnestra and Aegisthus in the long run. Several years pass and Orestes returns home as a young man around twenty years of age accompanied by his friend, Pylades.
Orestes arrives at his father’s grave to pray and cuts two locks of his hair to place on the grave. Soon, a group of women arrive in a procession led by Electra. Orestes and Pylades have no idea who these women are so they hide behind the tomb. The group of women, acting as the chorus, have come to offer libations at Agamemnon’s tomb. Clytemnestra has been besieged by nightmares and apparently believes that making offerings at the grave will help give her peace of mind.
Aie! - bristling Terror struck -
the seer of the house,
the nightmare ringing clear
breathed its wrath in sleep,
in the midnight watch a cry! - the voice of Terror
deep in the house, bursting down
on the women's darkened chambers, yes,
and the old ones, skilled at dreams, swore oaths to god and called,
'The proud dead stir under the earth,
they rage against the ones who took their lives.'
But the gifts, the empty gifts
the hopes will ward them off -
good Mother Earth! - that godless woman sends me here ...
I dread to say her prayer.The servants suffer no illusion that Clytemnestra’s offering will actually “redeem the blood that wets the soil” but they offer the libations as instructed. Electra has accompanied the servants and it becomes immediately obvious that she takes the side of Agamemnon and loathes her mother. She encourages the slaves not to hide their true feelings. All seem to revere Agamemnon’s memory and sincerely make their offerings. Electra prays for the return of Orestes who is the only one who might bring retribution.
I go like a slave,
and Orestes driven from his estates while they,
they roll in the fruits of all your labors,
magnificent and sleek. O bring Orestes home,
with a happy twist of fate, my father. Hear me,
make me far more self-possessed than mother,
make this hand more pure.
These prayers for us. For our enemies I say,
Raise up your avenger, into the light, my father -
kill the killers in return, with justice!
So in the midst of prayers for good I place
this curse for them.It seems a bit odd that Electra has taken Agamemnon’s side with absolutely no reservations. After all, Electra’s sister was killed by Agamemnon in a sacrifice. Under different circumstances, the sacrifice might have been Electra herself, yet she is curiously unsympathetic to her mother’s point of view which required retribution against Agamemnon. This oddity is never explained.
Electra notices the locks of hair on the tomb and, after examination, finds that they are indistinguishable from her own hair. Similarly, the footprints nearby are nearly the same as hers, in terms of shape if not size. Of course, this is because these clues were left by her brother. Orestes pops up from behind the tomb. Like Odysseus, he likes to tell tall tales and initially spins a false story but quickly admits who he is. It seems like Cassandra’s prediction that Agamemnon’s son will win retribution is about to come true. The god Apollo has even encouraged Orestes to avenge Agamemnon’s death by killing Clytemnestra.
But, of course, Orestes cannot avenge his father without killing his own mother and this is another layer of tragedy. His duty is to make the killer of his father pay, but he cannot do this without committing the sin of matricide. Orestes wishes that there was some way out of this dilemma, but there is none. It Agamemnon had only died an honorable death on the plains of Troy, Orestes would have been spared his dilemma.
If only at Troy
a Lycian cut you down, my father -
gone, with an aura left at home behind you,
children to go their ways
and the eyes look on them bright with awe,
and the tomb you win on headlands seas away
would buoy up the house ...But Agamemnon died an embarrassing death and this cannot stand. Orestes and Electra come up with a plan. Orestes and Pylades will approach the palace disguised as travelers and seek the customary hospitality extended to strangers. They will claim to bring news about Orestes, ensuring that Clytemnestra will give them an audience. The hope is that this will give Orestes an opening to kill Clytemnestra and Aegisthus.
As expected, Clytemnestra orders her servants to provide the travelers with all of the comforts available in the palace. This notion of hospitality in Ancient Greece is quite interesting and repeated again and again in the literature of the period.
Strangers, please,
tell me what you would like and it is yours.
We've all you might expect in a house like ours.
We have warm baths and beds to charm away your pains
and the eyes of Justice look on all we do.
But if you come for higher things, affairs
that touch the state, that is the men's concern
and I will stir them on.Orestes spins a tall tale and tells Clytemnestra that her son is dead! Clytemnestra is shocked and mourns the supposed death of Orestes. She welcomes the strangers into the halls of the palace and goes off to inform others about the sad fate of her only son.
Meanwhile, the servants who had poured libations on the grave of Agamemnon form a chorus and Cilissa, Orestes’ old nurse from childhood appears, distraught by the news of his death. Naturally, she is grief stricken by the news of the death of a child who she raised from birth.
Red from your mother's womb I took you, reared you ...
nights, the endless nights I paced, your wailing
kept me moving - led me a life of labour,
all for what?
...
and so I nursed Orestes,
yes, from his father's arms I took him once,
and now they say he's dead,
I've suffered it all, and now I'll fetch that man,
the ruination of the house - give him the news,
he'll relish every word.Cilissa is referring to Aegisthus, her new master and a man she clearly despises. The leader of the chorus urges Cilissa to have Aegisthus come alone, without his typical entourage of bodyguards. Aegisthus shows up and pretends to be distressed by the news. The chorus tells Aegisthus to go inside the palace to learn more from the strangers who brought the news of Orestes’ death. Aegisthus walks into the palace, alone, to his death. A scream is soon heard and a servant emerges to tell the chorus that Aegisthus has been killed.
The palace doors open with Orestes standing over the body of Aegisthus with a sword in his hand. Clytemnestra immediately realizes what has happened and recognizes her son, initially begging for her life. Orestes hesitates and asks Pylades for advice. In his only lines of the play, Pylades tells Orestes that he has no choice. After all, Apollo has justified retribution and it is better to make enemies of mankind than to go against the gods. Orestes and Clytemnestra exchange words and finally Orestes drags her into the palace and the doors close. The chorus sings while Orestes kills his mother and the doors open with Orestes standing over the bodies of Clytemnestra and Aegisthus.
Behold the double tyranny of our land!
They killed my father, stormed my fathers' house.
They had their power when they held the throne.
Great lovers still, as you may read their fate.
True to their oath, hand in hand they swore
to kill my father, hand in hand to die.
Now they keep their word.But the chorus senses that the story is not over.
No man can go through life
and reach the end unharmed.
Aye, trouble is now,
and trouble still to come.Orestes feels justified in his actions.
I say to my friends in public: I killed my mother,
not with a little justice. She was stained
with father's murder, she was cursed by god.
And the magic spells that fired up my daring?
One comes first. The Seer of Delphi who declared,
'Go through with this and you go free of guilt.
Fail and - '
I can't repeat the punishment.
What bow could hit the crest of so much pain?Alas, Orestes is nowhere near being free from pain. He has a vision, seen by no one other than himself, of monstrous looking figures approaching. They are gorgons, women who are shrouded in black with hair of swarming serpents. Orestes has seen the first of the Furies, goddesses who pursue and punish murderers. The chorus advises Orestes to seek Apollo’s help. The god might have the power to set Orestes free from the torments of the Furies. The play ends with Orestes running away in utter terror.
The Eumenides
Orestes found himself in an impossible situation. Apollo sanctioned the murder of Clytemnestra and Aegisthus as retribution for the murder of Agamemnon, but the Furies did not see it in the same way. The Furies took the side of Clytemnestra and considered matricide, no matter the circumstances or the approval of other gods, to be a grave sin. From a psychological perspective, a modern reader might prefer to view the Furies as subconscious guilt. Orestes basked in the glory of retribution initially but some part of him understood that retribution came at the cost of committing another sin. When it comes to retributive justice, dispensed by those directly offended, where does the cycle of violence and death stop?
The question of whether there is a better way to deal with crime is the subject of The Eumenides, the final play of the trilogy. Can humanity rise above retribution driven by rage and embrace the rule of law? The dawn of civilization might well be marked by the ability of a society to oversee punishments for crimes with a semblance of objectivity and due process rather than the endless violence of retribution.
Plagued by the Furies, Orestes has fled to Delphi to seek solace at the temple of Apollo. Orestes kneels in prayer at the Navelstone inside the temple surrounded by the Furies. Apollo pledges to never fail Orestes and has made the Furies fall asleep, bringing temporary relief. However, Apollo is powerless to provide permanent relief from the Furies.
Deep in the endless heartland they will drive you,
striding horizons, feet pounding the earth for ever,
on, on over seas and cities swept by tides!
Never surrender, never brood on the labour.
And once you reach the citadel of Pallas, kneel
and embrace her ancient idol in your arms and there,
with judges of your case, with a magic spell -
with words - we will devise the master-stroke
that sets you free from torment once and for all.
I persuaded you to take your mother's life.Permanent relief is only possible if Orestes seeks justice from Athena who Apollo hopes will fairly judge the case. Apollo asks Hermes to guide Orestes to Athens where his case will be heard. When Orestes leaves the temple, the ghost of Clytemnestra wakes up the Furies and urges them to continue hounding her son in retribution for her murder. Whatever motherly instincts she might have once had have evaporated.
Up! don't yield to the labour, limp with sleep.
Never forget my anguish.
Let my charges hurt you, they are just;
deep in the righteous heart they prod like spurs.
You, blast him on with your gory breath,
the fire of your vitals - wither him, after him,
one last foray - waste him, burn him out!The Furies awaken and are enraged that Orestes has escaped from their grasp. Apollo returns to the temple and has a nasty exchange with the Furies, ultimately throwing them out. The Furies respond by reminding Apollo of his guilt in urging Orestes to murder his mother, and Apollo retorts that the Furies sanctioned Clytemnestra’s murder of her husband. The Furies and Apollo will never see eye to eye, despite their shared status as immortal gods. The Furies rush out of the temple to travel to Athens in time for the trial.
At the Acropolis in Athens, Orestes throws himself at the mercy of Athena’s idol, wrapping himself around it in supplication. When the Furies catch up to him, they go on a verbal rampage.
- There he is!
Clutching the knees of power once again,
twined in the deathless goddess' idol, look,
he wants to go on trial for his crimes.
- Never ...
the mother's blood that wets the ground,
you can never bring it back, dear god,
the Earth drinks, and the running life is gone.
- No,
you'll give me blood for blood, you must!
Out of your living marrow I will drain
my red libation, our of your veins I suck my food,
my raw, brutal cups -
- Wither you alive,
drag you down and there you pay, agony
for mother-killing agony!Orestes again appeals to Athena and then prays silently while the Furies dance around him demanding vengeance, reaching toward him, haunting him, and promising ever-lasting damnation.
Finally, Athena enters after arriving from Troy where she just finished seeing the Greeks take the city. This is a somewhat odd chronological detail given that the Trojan War must have ended several years before, but perhaps Aeschylus is aiming for a symbolic effect. Athena asks to be brought up to speed on the controversy and effectively sits in judgment, allowing the Furies to present their case first. Orestes responds by denying that he has come in need of purging, feeling fully justified in taking vengeance in honor of his father.
What an ignoble death he died
when he came home - Ai! my blackhearted mother
cut him down, enveloped him in her handsome net -
it still attests his murder in the bath.
But I came back, my years of exile weathered -
killed the one who bore me, I won't deny it,
killed her in revenge. I loved my father,
fiercely.After noting that Apollo spurred him on and should share responsibility, Orestes tells Athena that his fate is in her hands and he will accept her verdict.
Athena finds the matter too grave to decide on her own. She sees both sides of the case and understands that there might be a crisis regardless of how she rules. To give the decision more legitimacy, Athena decides to appoint a tribunal of judges to settle the matter. Ten of the finest men of Athens are to be selected to sit in judgment of Orestes. With the sound of trumpets, the trial begins.
Athena stands between the Furies and Orestes, much as a judge would separate the plaintiff and defendant in a courtroom. Apollo confirms that Orestes acted on his behalf and accepts his share of the responsibility for the murder of Clytemnestra. Orestes does not deny that he killed him mother and repeats that he has no regrets. The Furies see no justification for matricide, apparently under any circumstances and certainly not for purposes of retribution. Apollo does not really see Clytemnestra as a mother, but more as a vessel carrying the seed of Agamemnon.
Here is the truth, I tell you - see how right I am.
The woman you call the mother of the child
is not the parent, just the nurse to the seed,
the new-sown seed that grows and swells inside her.
The man is the source of life - the one who mounts.
She, like a stranger for a stranger, keeps
the shoot alive unless god hurts the roots.
I give you proof that all I say is true.
The father can father forth without a mother.In Greek mythology, Athena herself was supposedly produced without the need for a mother, springing fully formed from the forehead of Zeus. Apollo presents the example of Athena as proof that a mother is basically irrelevant. It follows that Orestes owed his loyalty to the source of his life, Agamemnon, and had no commensurate duty toward Clytemnestra.
Without further comment, Athena gives the jury instructions and urges them to decide the case fairly. There are ten men in the jury. Before the votes are counted, Athena announces that in the event of a tie, she will decide the matter by casting a tie-breaking vote in favor of Orestes. The vote does turn out to be tied, so Athena’s opinion prevails. It is not clear why Athena did not pick a jury with an odd number of members to prevent a tie from happening in the first place. Unlike modern murder trials in the United States, unanimity was not required for conviction, only a majority of the votes.
Acquitted of the charges against him, Orestes thanks Athena and takes his leave.
The Furies are … furious at Athena. They are beside themselves with grief over the loss of their authority and they view the verdict as unjust. Athena urges the Furies to defer to her judgment and to not view the result as a defeat since it was arrived at through a fair process.
Yield to me.
No more heavy spirits. You were not defeated -
the vote was tied, a verdict fairly reached
with no disgrace to you, no Zeus brought
luminous proof before us. He who spoke
god's oracle, he bore witness that Orestes
did the work but should not suffer harm.
And now you'd vent your anger, hurt the land?
Consider a moment. Calm yourself. Never
render us barren, raining your potent showers
down like spears, consuming every seed.
By all my rights I promise you your seat
in the depths of the earth, yours by all rights -
stations at hearths equipped with glistening thrones,
covered with praise! My people will revere you.The Furies still feel disgraced and feel that their ancient powers are being stripped away unfairly. Athena urges them to see the dawning of civilization as an antidote for perennial strife and civil war. Rather than retributive justice, dispensed by the aggrieved in a never-ending cycle of violence, Athens will now be ruled by due process with judgment and punishment dispensed through the rule of law.
It takes some extended persuasion, but the Furies eventually come to embrace Athena’s vision.
And the brutal strife,
the civil war devouring men, I pray
that it never rages through our city, no
that the good Greek soil never drinks the blood of Greeks,
shed in an orgy of reprisal life for life -
that Fury like a beast will never
rampage through the land.
Give joy in return for joy,
one common will for love,
and hate with one strong heart:
such a union heals a thousand ills of man.The Furies have turned their rage into something more constructive. They have been converted from seekers of bloody revenge to the defenders of justice and protectors of Athenian civilization. Thereafter, they came to be known as The Eumenides, translated as “The Kindly Ones.”
Conclusion
The Oresteia was initially very difficult to understand and required several readings plus close study of the introduction and the end notes before I felt comfortable writing about it. Part of the challenge is simply understanding the role of the gods in Greek society. Reading Edith Hamilton’s books, particularly Mythology, was enormously helpful and the fact that I recently read and wrote about The Iliad and The Odyssey was also important preparation.
While immersion in Greek Mythology is a prerequisite for any meaningful understanding of Aeschylus, I also think that it takes considerable time and effort to get used to reading plays. The role of the chorus is not immediately obvious, but plays a crucial role in each play of the trilogy. It is useful to picture the actors on stage as one reads the plays. Many modern readers have no exposure to plays as a literary form and I was no exception. Now that I have read this trilogy, I hope to have an easier time reading other ancient plays.
Perhaps the most formidable roadblock is that I have a hard time relating to polytheism, particularly the concept of multiple competing gods with highly suspect moral compasses. I am the product of a civilization heavily influenced by the Bible. The God of the Old and New Testaments is nothing like the gods of Ancient Greece. The presumption of a single God, omniscient, all-powerful, benevolent, and just, permeates our civilization and makes the polytheism of Ancient Greece seem utterly bizarre and foreign.
Aeschylus wrote over seventy plays during his lifetime and only seven survive. In my opinion, it is worth the time and effort to understand the message he was attempting to convey. I plan to read his other plays — Prometheus Bound, The Suppliants, Seven Against Thebes, The Persians — next month and will most likely write articles about each of them.
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