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Politics and the Oresteia

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 October 2013

C. W. Macleod
C. W. Macleod
Affiliation:
Christ Church, Oxford
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As a drama and a poem the Eumenides is often regarded with unease. It brings the Oresteia to a conclusion; but its account of Athens and the Areopagus seems to many readers inspired more by patriotism (of whatever partisan tinge) than a sense of dramatic unity. Hence much attention has been devoted to Aeschylus' supposed political message in the play; as a result, the question of its fitness to crown the trilogy recedes into the background or even vanishes. On the other hand, those whose concern is with Aeschylus' poetry tend to ignore his ‘politics’. The purpose of this paper is twofold. First, it seeks to vindicate Aeschylus the artist: to show, that is, how the founding of the homicide court and the cult of the Semnai on the Areopagus in Athens properly marks the end of the troubles of the Argive Atridae, and how the sufferings and guilt of individual men and women are resolved in a city's institutions. In pursuing this aim, it also has to consider, and try to define, the relation of the tragedian to his audience and to contemporary society. My concern, then, is with the individual and the community, both within the play and behind it.

Type
Research Article
Information
The Journal of Hellenic Studies , Volume 102 , November 1982 , pp. 124 - 144
Copyright
Copyright © The Society for the Promotion of Hellenic Studies 1982

References

1 This paper is a revised and slightly enlarged version of one published in Italian in Maia xxv (1973) 267–92Google Scholar. I should like to thank Richard Gordon for acute and helpful criticisms, and to thank again David Lewis, Hugh Lloyd-Jones and Oliver Taplin for their valuable comments on an earlier draft. The Maia article appeared about the same time as Vickers', BrianTowards Greek Tragedy (London 1973)Google Scholar, whose chapter on the Oresteia has said very effectively much that I was trying to say, and more. I hope this paper may be considered complementary to his work.

2 Reprinted, with corrections, from PCPS clxxxvi (1960) 19–31Google Scholar, in his The Ancient Concept of Progress Oxford 1973) 45–63Google Scholar. In what follows I refer to the page numbers of the reprint.

3 Cf. Dover, K. J., JHS lxxvii (1957) 237Google Scholar.

4 Comparable are the Augustan poets' references to Roman power as stretching from Britain to Arabia, or the like: see, e.g., Hor., Carm. i 35. 29–32Google Scholar; iii 5.3–4; iv 14.41–52; Virg., Aen. vi 798–800Google Scholar. See further, Woodman on Velleius Paterculus, ii 126.3. In tragedy, cf. Eur., Hipp. 3–4Google Scholar.

5 Cf. Eur., Schol.Tro. 31Google Scholar; RE i 1143–4Google Scholar.

6 Θησέως τόκοις is like Θησεἵδᾶν in Soph., OC 1066Google Scholar, ᾿Ερεχθεΐδαι in Eur., Med. 824Google Scholar, Πριαμίδαι in Ag. 537 or παῖδες Κραναοῦ in Eum. 1011. The phrase can hardly refer to Theseus' sons in the literal sense since the play gives no indication that Athens is a monarchy.

7 Cf. Dover (n. 3) 237. Jeffery, L. H., BSA lx (1965) 45 n. 21Google Scholar, is more inclined to find a topical reference, but grants that caution must prevail.

8 Probably the corruption in this line is confined to the word πράξομεν but it may be that, as Page suggests, something has dropped out after the preceding line.

9 See Quincey, J. H., CQ xiv (1964) 190–206CrossRefGoogle Scholar; de Ste Croix, G. E. M., The Origins of the Peloponnesian War (London 1972) 183–4Google Scholar.

10 Cf. LSJ, s.v. ξενία, 2. For ξενία abused, see Ag. 1590–93; Cho. 700–6, 914–15, and below on Ag. 699–706 (cf. 60–2, 362–7, 399–402).

11 For the evidence, see Daube, B., Zu den Rechtsproblemen in Aischylos' Agamemnon (Zürich 1938) 11–25Google Scholar note also Od. iv 561–2Google Scholar where it is implied that the Argolid is Menelaus' homeland. The Oresteia's use of Odyssean motifs deserves a systematic treatment.

12 See Jebb, on Soph., El. 4Google Scholar; and in Euripides' Heraclidae Μυκηναῖοι and ' ᾿Αργεῖοι are interchangeable terms.

13 Cf. Daube (n. 11) 24–5.

14 Cf. Taplin, O., The Stagecraft of Aeschylus (Oxford 1977) 392–5Google Scholar.

15 Cf. von Wilamowitz-Moellendorff, U., Aristoteles und Athen (Berlin 1893) ii 333Google Scholar; Jacoby, , FGrH iii b Suppl. pp. 24–5Google Scholar. Jacoby makes it plain that it was Aeschylus who made Orestes' the first ttrial for murder.

16 Nor would Aeschylus speak of his own class in such insulting terms: cf. Jacoby, , FGrH iii b Suppl., Notes p. 528Google Scholar. Dodds' answer (49 n. 1) scarcely meets Jacoby's point.

17 For the metaphor of ἐπιρροαί applied to laws, cf. Plato, , Legg. 793d 5Google Scholar; it need not therefore be used of persons, as Dodds, , CQ iii (1953) 20Google Scholar, suggests.

18 Cf. Thomson ad loc., whose view I share; also H. Lloyd-Jones' translation (1970) 54–5, 75–6.

19 The formulation of homicide law in Athens is normally ascribed to a historical figure, Draco. But the myth of the Eumenides, like the other myths about the foundation of the Areopagus, presupposes a forerunner of Draco's code; and Demosthenes can speak of the Attic law of murder as due to ‘heroes or gods’ (xxiii 70)Google Scholar; see further Dover, K.J., Greek Popular Morality (Oxford 1974) 255Google Scholar.

20 Cf. Hignett, C., A History of the Athenian Constitution to the End of the Fifth Century (Oxford 1952) 210–13Google Scholar; contra, see Andrewes on Thuc. viii 67.2. The same principle is behind the formation of an apparently more short-lived institution, the board of νομοφύλακες mentioned by Philochorus: cf. Podlecki, A. J., The Political Background of Aeschylean Tragedy (Ann Arbor 1966) 96–7Google Scholar.

21 Cf. Dover (n. 3) 234; add Dem. xxiv 24, 139–43; [Dem.] xxvi 25; Aeschin. i 6.

22 For similar language used of the fourth-century Areopagus, see Thomson, on Eum. 704Google Scholar.

23 See further Hirzel, R., Themis Dike und Verwandtes (Leipzig 1907) 416–18Google Scholar.

23a Durkheim, E., De la division du travail social (Paris 1893) ch. ii 2Google Scholar.

24 Cf. Wilamowitz, , Aischylos-Interpretationen (Berlin 1914) 226–7Google Scholar.

25 Arist. u. Athen (n. 15) ii 342Google Scholar.

26 See Dodds 51. The reasons he gives for deleting these lines are far more cogent than his reasons for preserving them.

27 Cf. Aesch., Suppl. 661–2Google Scholar; Pind., Pae. ix 13–20Google Scholar. In general on cult-poetry like the Eumenides' hymn, see Norden, E., Aus altrömischen Priesterbüchern (Lund 1939) 160–1, 268–74Google Scholar.

28 Quoted by Thomson on lines 977–9; he also adduces the Attic skolion on 957–8.

29 Cf. further Ag. 1017–24; Cho. 48, 400–4, 520–1; Eum. 647–8. The language also brings to the mind the symposium: for distorted sympotic imagery, cf. Ag. 1188–93, 1385–7, 1395–8; Cho. 577–8; Di Benedetto, V., L'ideologia del potere e la tragedia greca (Turin 1978) 232–3Google Scholar.

30 Cf. Fraenkel on line 1117. On that passage in connection with Eum. 976–87, cf. Di Benedetto (n. 29) 207–10.

31 Cf. Dodds 45–6; but these things are surely more than ‘straws in the wind’. The presence of a discontented people (δῆμος) when kingship is violated is another Odyssean motif: cf. above all the assembly in Book ii.

32 In these lines Orestes is addressing the chorus. There is no reason to suppose that he enters with some citizen-extras: cf. Taplin (n. 14) 357–8.

33 Cf. on the plane of imagery, Ag. 650–2: fire and water ‘conspired’ (ξυνώμοσαν) to destroy the fleet. Disorder in nature is, as all over the Oresteia, bound up with social disorder. For literal ‘conspiracy’, see Cho. 978.

34 Cf. Jones, J., On Aristotle and Greek tragedy (London 1962) 86–9Google Scholar.

35 See Bain, D., CQ xxv (1975) 13–25CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Taplin (n. 14) 129–34.

36 See further Vickers (n. 1) 100–56.

37 Kitto, H. D. F., Poiesis (Berkeley/London 1966) 74–115Google Scholar demolishes the notion that the Persians is a merely patriotic play. On Eur. Suppl., cf. Collard's, C.commentary (1975) i 29Google Scholar.

38 Miletus, like Athens an Ionian city and originally one of her colonies, was sacked by the Persians in 494 B.C. When the tragedian Phrynichus produced a tragedy about the event, the Athenians fined him 1,000 drachmas for ‘having reminded them of their own troubles’ (ὡς ἀναμνήσαντα οἰκήἳα κακά) and forbade the play to be read or staged again (Hdt. vi 21.2). Now what it did, we are told, was move them to tears; we have no warrant for thinking it was inspired by a political arrière-pensée. And the reason for the Athenians' outrage was simply that, unlike any other known tragedy, it dealt with a disaster for Athens. Phrynichus offended against the nomoi both of the city and its drama. The proper material of Attic tragedy was suffering which could move the audience to pity and fear, but which was not their own; and thus its proper effect required, as all art requires, detachment as well as involvement in its public. For the tragic emotions of fear and pity are evoked by the plight of men like ourselves (Arist., Poet. 1453a4–5Google Scholar) and by suffering we can envisage ourselves or those closest to us undergoing (Rhet. 1385b3–5); Herodotus himself makes the distinction between pity for another's suffering and feeling it as one's own in his story of Psammenitus (iii 14; cf. Arist., Rhet. 1386a17–24Google Scholar); see also Gorgias, , Hel. 9Google Scholar. For a helpful discussion of the Herodotus passage, see Marx, F., RhM lxxvii (1928) 343–8Google Scholar.

39 See also Arist., Pol. 1280b6–12, 1333a11–16Google Scholar; Pl. Protag. 326c–d; Apol. 24d; Isoc. ii 3; Dem. xx 154; [Dem.] xxv 16–17. Note also Isoc. vii 41–2 on the Areopagus in olden times: its function, as in Aeschylus, was to make people good and prevent, not merely punish, wrongdoing.

40 Cf. Andrewes, A., CQ xxxii (1938) 89–91Google Scholar.

41 Cf., e.g., the conventional phrase ‘come to the laws’ aid' (βοηθήσατε τοῖς νόμοις)and the like forensic speeches: e.g. Dem. xxii 1; xxvi 27; xliii 84; xlv 87; xlvi 28; Lys. xxx 35.

42 Cf. Moulinier, L., Le pur et l'impur dans la pensée des Grecs d'Homère à Aristote (Paris 1952) 212–25Google Scholar.

43 See Soph., OC 842Google Scholar (where ἐναίρεται is not to be emended): cf. Schulze, W., Kleine Schriften2 (Göttingen 1966) 181 n. 3Google Scholar, and Solon 4a West (if καινομένην is right); Cic., Pro Mil. 14Google Scholar; II Verr. iv 26Google Scholar.

44 Cf. 451 προδίκοις ᾿Ατρείδαις and Fraenkel ad loc.

45 Cf. Daube (n. 11 ) 125–78; Kaufmann-Bühler, D., Begriff und Funktion der Dike in den Tragödien des Aischylos (Diss. Heidelberg 1951) 59–60Google Scholar; Zeitlin, F. I., TAPA xcvi (1965) 481–2Google Scholar; Lebeck, A., The Oresteia (Washington 1971) 8–10Google Scholar.

46 Cf. Lebeck (n. 45) 204–5.

47 This word can keep its normal sense ‘something taken in reprisal’, if we take it as the Greeks' ῥύσιον.

48 Cf. Daube (n. 11) 108. For violent punishment treated as the exaction of a fine or debt in the Oresteia, see also Ag. 458, 1503; Cho. 275 (where Tucker's interpretation is right), 311, 805; Eum. 319, 624. Ultimately, cf. Hom., Od. xii 382Google Scholar. Note also the grim analogue of legal justice practised by Hades that the Furies appeal to (Eum. 316–20).

49 Wilamowitz, , Aisch.–Interp. (n. 24) 183–5Google Scholar, is an unassailable statement of this view of the calculus Minervae: hers is not a casting vote, it creates an equality of votes.

50 Noted by Taplin (n. 14) 395–407. His suggestion that the text of the trial–scene is gravely disrupted is stimulating, but mistaken; see further ibid. 398 n. 1, 399 n. 1.

51 Cf. Lebeck (n. 45) 40–1; Goheen, R. F., AJP lxxvi (1955) 126–32Google Scholar.

52 For one specific way in which their functions reinforce the state's justice, see Thomson on 935–8: participants in trials on the Areopagus had to swear on oath sanctioned by a curse on themselves and their descendants, and a prosecutor can refer to the nether gods in pressing for a conviction (Antiphon i 31). In general, to punish a wrongdoer's descendants is characteristic of divine, as opposed to human, justice: cf. Hdt. vii 137. 1–2; Lysias vi 20.

53 Cf., broadly, Dover (n. 3) 233. Note also Lefkowitz, M., HSCP lxxxiv (1980) 38–9Google Scholar on a similar passage in Pindar, P. xi 51–4.

54 For the word, see esp. Ag. 14, 976; Cho. 46, 58, 102, though naturally fear is also widespread in the action. Cf. de Romilly, J., La crainte et l'angoisse dans la tragédie d'Eschyle (Paris 1958) 107–14Google Scholar.

55 Cf. OC 650–1.

56 Cf. Dodds 59–62.

57 Cf. Durkheim (n. 23a) ch. ii 1: penal law is a manifestation of ‘la conscience collective ou commune’, which in its turn is ‘le type psychique de la société’. Note also Isoc. xvii 14: the ‘soul’ of the state is its constitution (which determines its laws).

58 For an explicit expression of it, see Eum. 522–5; also, e.g., Thuc. ii 64.6; vi 85.1; Eur., Hec. 903–4Google Scholar; Suppl. 493.

59 An Athenian could at least sympathize with the wife whose husband slept with other women: witness Sophocles' Trachiniae. See also Dover, K. J.Aristophanic Comedy (London 1972) 160 n. 16Google Scholar.

60 Cf. Lebeck (n. 45) 48–9, 68–73; Vickers (n. 1) 421. Note also Lloyd–Jones, H., HSCP lxxiii (1969) 99–104Google Scholar.

61 Cf. Zeitlin (n. 45); Lebeck (n. 45) 60–3; Vidal–Naquet, P., Mythe et tragédie en Grèce ancienne (Paris 1972) 135–58Google Scholar.

62 Cf. Alexiou, M., The Ritual Lament in the Greek Tradition (Cambridge 1974) 178–9Google Scholar.

63 Cf. Haldane, J. A.JHS lxxxv (1965) 37–40Google Scholar; Zeitlin (n. 45) 496–7.

64 See Peradotto, J. J., AJP lxxxv (1964) 378–93Google Scholar; Gantz, T. N., JHS xcvii (1977) 28–38CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

65 Note that the motif of giving birth is Aeschylus' own touch to the tradition about Clytaemnestra's dream: contrast Stesichorus, PMG 219 Page.

66 Cf. Lloyd-Jones, H., The Justice of Zeus (Berkeley/London 1971)Google Scholar, Index s.v. ‘Dikē’; Dover, on Ar. Nub. 1292Google Scholar; Fränkel, H., Wege und Formen frühgriechischen Denkens2 (Munich 1960) 162–73Google Scholar.

67 For δίκαιος and similar words applied to Athens see 805, 912, 994.

68 Cf. Vickers (n. 1) 420.

69 Cf. Solmsen, F., Hesiod and Aeschylus (Ithaca, N.Y. 1949) 215Google Scholar. Pericles praises Athenian democracy for its fear of written and unwritten laws (Thuc. ii 37.3): so too Aeschylus requires fear of the Areopagus and the Erinyes.

70 For a suggestive statement of this point, see Aristotle, , EN 1159a25–1160a30Google Scholar; cf. Cic., Fin. v 65–6Google Scholar.

71 A qualification: Sophoclean drama is certainly concentrated on the lonely individual, but by the same token it concerns his estrangement from his fellow–men or his precarious place among them.

72 For similar passages and a discussion of their sources, see Pembroke, S. G. in Problems in Stoicism, ed. Long, A. A. (London 1971) 121–6Google Scholar. Also relevant to Aeschylus and his period, and foreshadowed in them, is the Stoic idea of the world as a city in which gods and men live together under a natural law: see, e.g., Festugière, A. J., La révélation d' Hermès Trismégiste ii (Paris 1949) 272–8Google Scholar.

73 This is visually represented by the procession in the last scene and by the scarlet over-garments put on them there, which are now used, as the red robes should have been in the Agamemnon (921–2; 946–7), to honour the gods: see further Maia xxvii (1975) 201–3Google Scholar. Red robes are also proper to the cult of the nether gods: cf. Headlam, on Eum. 1028–30Google Scholar (pp. 316–17); Plut., Aristid. 21Google Scholar.

74 See further Moulinier (n. 42) 267–70.

75 Cf. Gould, J., JHS xciii (1973) 94–5Google Scholar. His whole paper is an already classic treatment of supplication; also admirable is the chapter of Vickers, (n. 1) 438–94, on the subject as material for tragedy.

76 On the force of this phrase, note Adkins, A. W. H., CQ xvi (1966) 91Google Scholar: Electra is ‘unworthy' both as innocent and as a noblewoman. Cf. Isoc. xvi 48.

77 The word ἄτιμος is applied to the house in Cho. 408; and the notion that it and the city are enslaved and degraded by the usurpers pervades the whole play: see, e.g., 302–4, 942–5, 961–4, 973–4. In the last passage Aegisthus and Clytaemnestra are evil μέτοικοι (in contrast to the Erinyes at the end of Eum.).

78 Cf. Dover (n. 19) 243–6.

79 Denniston-Page rightly interpret ἄτιμα here as ‘without honour, without privileges’; but I differ over what honour or privilege is concerned.

80 Athena's words in 734–40 correspond to the will of Zeus (797–9), but they are not meant to be a solution: what Orestes did remains a fearful crime, and not for nothing are there as many votes for condemnation as for acquittal (cf. 795–6). Aeschylus expects from his audience enough political wisdom to see that law and judgement are no less necessary because some legal decisions are open to dispute.

81 On the contrast between Cassandra and the other characters (especially Agamemnon), see Reinhardt, K., Aischylos als Regisseur und Theologe (Bern 1949) 90–105Google Scholar; Macleod, C. W., Maia xxvii (1975) 202–3Google Scholar; CQ xxxii (1982) 231–2Google Scholar.

82 On this theme, see Winnington-Ingram, R. P., JHS lxviii (1948) 130–47CrossRefGoogle Scholar, a pioneering article; also Vickers (n. 1) 381, 400–2, 414–16, who corrects an aberration of Winnington-Ingram's on p. 432, n. 33.

83 On this ode, see the valuable analysis by Stinton, T. C. W., CQ xxix (1979) 252–62CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

84 In general on the wife's role as οἰκουρός see Pearce, T. E. V., Eranos lxxii (1974) 16–33Google Scholar. In Ag. 1225 οἰκουρόν (cf. 809) must have—with the bitter irony revealed by οἴμοι— its full sense of ‘guardian of the house’, since it goes withτῷ μολόντι δεσπότῃ. (The following line is rightly deleted by Fraenkel.) So also at 1626, where a large part of the horror is that he who watches over the house in its lord's absence also defiles his bed. The sense ‘stay-at-home’ is also felt in so far as Aegisthus is contrasted with the fighter and general Agamemnon.

85 Cf. Taplin (n. 14) 306–8.

86 For some places where the Oresteia presupposes non-Attic (Homeric) customs, see Fraenkel, on Ag. 245, 1109, 1382, 1595Google Scholar.