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The Theodicy of Aeschylus: Justice and Tyranny in the Oresteia

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  07 September 2009

David Cohen
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Extract

Along with the Oedipus Tyrannus, the Oresteia is perhaps the most discussed literary work of classical Greece. In recent years a substantial part of this interpretative effort has been devoted to various ongoing controversies, such as Agamemnon's guilt, or more generally, the interplay of necessity and freedom in the trilogy, but despite these numerous Streitfragen what is particularly striking about the criticism of the Oresteia is its relative unanimity on certain fundamental questions. This will no doubt sound strange to the classical scholar, all too finely attuned to the various important particulars over which he and his colleagues differ in their reading of the plays, but it none the less seems to me to be undeniable that in their assessment of the general movement of the trilogy, most interpretations are, with some variation and shading, cut from the same cloth. By this I mean that in regard to the fundamental questions of the justice of Zeus, and the resolution of the conflicts developed in the first two plays by means of the famous trial which concludes the trilogy, most critics agree as to Aeschylus’ dramatic intention. In what follows, I will argue that this unanimity arises out of certain shared preconceptions concerning Aeschylus which, in my view, are not supported by the text. I will first discuss the main traditional views concerning Aeschylus’ presentation of what is commonly called the Justice of Zeus, and then try to demonstrate that, in reality, Aeschylus portrays a cosmic and political order which is neither moral nor just, but rather tyrannical, in the sense that its ultimate foundations are force and fear.

Type
Research Article
Information
Greece & Rome , Volume 33 , Issue 2 , October 1986 , pp. 129 - 141
Copyright
Copyright © The Classical Association 1986

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References

NOTES

1. All references to Agamemnon are to Fraenkel's, E. edition (Oxford, 1974)Google Scholar. All references to Choephoroi and Eumenides are to the OCT, ed. D. Page.

2. Studies in Aeschylus (Cambridge, 1983), p. 155Google Scholar.

3. See Cohen, D. and Inoue, E., CJ (1978), 26–33Google Scholar.

4. These three plays are notoriously difficult, and it would be presumptuous of me to attempt a full discussion of a major aspect of them in such a limited space. What I will do is simply to suggest a direction for a different kind of reading of the trilogy in regard to the issue of justice.

5. The Justice of Zeus (Berkeley, 1971), pp. 86–87, 90Google Scholar.

6. Gagarin, Michael, Aeschylean Drama (Berkeley, 1976), pp. 60–61Google Scholar.

7. Lloyd-Jones, , op. cit., p. 88Google Scholar. See also Lebeck, A., The Oresteia (Washington, D.C., 1971), pp. 137–8Google Scholar.

8. Goheen, R. in McCall, M. H. (ed.), Aeschylus (Englewood Cliffs, 1972), p. 113 n. 2Google Scholar.

9. Ibid., p. 118.

10. Ibid., p. 119 (my emphasis). See also the similar confusion in Gagarin, , op. cit., p. 61Google Scholar, and in Jones, J., On Aristotle and Greek Tragedy (London, 1962), pp. 128–37Google Scholar.

11. N. G. L. Hammond, in McCall, op. cit., has attempted to explain away the problem of innocent suffering. But it is simply conceptually incoherent to argue that because the punishment of the innocent is part of cosmic necessity it somehow thereby becomes compatible with a just moral order. The problem is that few scholars like to face the intractability of the problem of evil; they would rather explain it away and believe that justice triumphs, that divinity is ultimately benevolent. As Kant showed with devastating finality, however, in his Ober das Misslingen aller Philosophischen Versuche in der Theodicee (Leipzig, 1921)Google Scholar, v. 4 of Immanuel Kant's Werke), no such comfort is rationally possible. This is, I am convinced, precisely the way in which Aeschylus wished to present the problem of innocent suffering, and easy explanations should not be sought to defuse the force of his argument.

12. Thomson, G., The Oresteia of Aeschylus (Cambridge, 1938), p. 56Google Scholar.

13. Podlecki, A., The Political Background of Aeschylean Tragedy (Ann Arbor, 1966), pp. 77–78Google Scholar; Gagarin, , op. cit., p. 83Google Scholar; Lebeck, , op. cit., pp. 136–40Google Scholar; Otis, B., Cosmos and Tragedy (Chapel Hill, 1981), p. 90Google Scholar. Winnington-Ingram, (op. cit., pp. 171–72)Google Scholar and Kitto, H. D. F., Form and Meaning in Drama (London, 1969), pp. 82–86Google Scholar, offer more complex interpretations, but the fundamental assumption that Aeschylus was seeking to portray and explain a just and moral divine order seems to be the same. Rosenmeyer, T., The Art of Aeschylus (Berkeley, 1982), pp. 343–4, 355ff.Google Scholar, is far more careful in pointing out the unresolved ambiguities.

14. Otis, , op. cit., p. 93Google Scholar.

15. Hammond, , op. cit., p. 101Google Scholar.

16. Kant, Die Metaphysik der Sitten, op. cit., v. 5. 455.

17. Zu den Rechtsproblemen in Aischylos' Agamemnon (Zurich, 1941)Google Scholar.

18. Fraenkel's translation, as for the other quotations from Agamemnon.

19. Note the use of the legal πράκτωρ.

20. See Hammond, , op. cit., pp. 96–97Google Scholar.

21. Note also the use of ἀρωγή as applied to the lawsuit/war (47) and the sacrifice of Iphigeneia (226).

22. The very seed perishes, like the unborn offspring of the hare.

23. In Athenian law the penalty for simple theft was a double fine, a very light penalty by Athenian standards (see my Theft in Athenian Law (München, 1983), Ch. 3Google Scholar.

24. Gagarin, op. cit., Ch. 3.

25. Podlecki, , op. cit., p. 71Google Scholar.

26. See Fraenkel, , op. cit., commentary pp. 371–4Google Scholar.

27. Gagarin, op. cit., Ch. 3.

28. Ibid.; Lloyd-Jones, , op. cit., pp. 86–87, 90Google Scholar.

29. See Rosenmeyer's, acute discussion, op. cit., p. 355Google Scholar.

30. Lloyd-Jones, , op. cit., p. 90 and cf. p. 91Google Scholar.

31. Kitto, , op. cit., pp. 39–53Google Scholar.

32. Cf. 421–2 where Electra acknowledges that they have inherited the savage heart of a wolf from their mother.

33. See Rosenmeyer, , op. cit., p. 245Google Scholar on Apollo as Zeus’ agent.

34. The trilogy begins and ends in darkness.

35. Podlecki, , op. cit., p. 78Google Scholar.

36. Such is the approach of Kitto, , op. cit., pp. 84–86Google Scholar and Winnington-Ingram, , op. cit., pp. 165–74Google Scholar, and it is preferable to the crude utilitarian view that the suffering of the innocent was necessary for the fulfilment of the plan of Zeus, and thus is somehow justified. Such a view hardly deserves consideration as a theodicy.

37. See Winnington-Ingram, , op. cit., pp. 154ffGoogle Scholar.

38. Gagarin, , op. cit., p. 76Google Scholar, and note the implicit contradiction at pp. 77 and 83.

39. Winnington-Ingram, , op. cit., p. 155Google Scholar.

40. Ibid., p. 168ff.; Podlecki, , op. cit., pp. 74ff.Google Scholar; Kitto, , op. cit., 82ffGoogle Scholar.

41. Hammond, , op. cit., p. 101Google Scholar.

42. Thomson, , op. cit., p. 56Google Scholar.

43. See Rosenmeyer, , op. cit., pp. 350ffGoogle Scholar. Cf. Lebeck, , op. cit., pp. 137–8Google Scholar.

44. I wish to thank Sir Moses Finley, Dr. Peter Garnsey, and Professors John Crook, David Daube, Mark Griffith, and Arthur Quinn for their helpful comments and criticisms.