Everything about The Eumenides totally explained
The Oresteia is a
trilogy of
Greek tragedies written by
Aeschylus which concerns the end of the
curse on the
House of Atreus. Though originally written as
tetralogy, it's the only surviving example of a trilogy of
ancient Greek plays; the fourth play,
Proteus, a
satyr play that would have been performed as finale, hasn't survived. The
Oresteia was originally performed at the
Dionysia festival in
Athens in
458 BC, where it won first prize. Overall, this trilogy emblemizes the shift from a
monarchal system of
vendetta in
Argos to a
democratic system of
litigation in Athens.
Agamemnon
Introduction
Agamemnon details the homecoming of
Agamemnon, King of Argos, from the
Trojan War. Waiting at home for him is his wife,
Clytemnestra, who has been planning his murder as revenge for the sacrifice of their daughter,
Iphigenia. Furthermore, in the ten years of Agamemnon's absence, Clytemnestra has entered into an adulterous relationship with
Aegisthus, Agamemnon's cousin and the
scion of a dispossessed branch of the family, who is determined to regain the throne he believes should rightfully belong to him
Storyline
The play opens to Clytemnestra awaiting the return of her husband, having been told that the mountaintop beacons have given the sign that
Troy has fallen. Though she pretends to love her husband, she's furious that he sacrificed their daughter,
Iphigenia. This isn't made clear here, but it would have been familiar to the audience. A servant stands on top of the roof, reporting that he's been crouching there "like a dog" (
kunos diken) for years, "under the instruction of a man-hearted woman". He laments the fortunes of the house, but promises to keep silent: "A huge ox has stepped onto my tongue." However, when Agamemnon returns, he brings with him
Cassandra, an
enslaved Trojan princess, as his
concubine. This serves to anger Clytemnestra further.
The main action of the play is the
agon between Clytemnestra and Agamemnon. She attempts to persuade Agamemnon to step on a
purple (sometimes
red) tapestry or carpet to walk into their home. The problem is that this would indicate
hubris on Agamemnon's part, and he doesn't wish to do this. Eventually, for reasons that are still heavily debated, Clytemnestra does convince Agamemnon to cross the purple tapestry to enter the
oikos, where she kills him in the bath: she ensnares him in a robe and as he struggles to free himself she hacks him with three strokes of a
pelekus. Agamemnon is murdered in much the same way an animal is killed for sacrifice with three blows, the last strike accompanied by a prayer to a god.
Whilst Clytemnestra and Agamemnon are offstage, Cassandra starts discussing with the
chorus whether or not she ought to enter the palace, knowing that she too will be murdered. Cassandra has been cursed by
Apollo for rejecting his advances. She has the gift of
clairvoyance, but the curse means that no one who hears her prophesies believes them. In Cassandra's speech, she runs through many gruesome images of the history of the
House of Atreus as if she'd been a witness of them, and eventually chooses to enter the house knowing that she can't do anything to avoid her fate. The chorus, in this play a group of the elders of Argos, hear the death screams of Agamemnon, and frantically debate on a course of action.
A platform is soon rolled out displaying the gruesome dead bodies of Agamemnon and Cassandra, along with Clytemnestra, who attempts to explain her action. Later, Aegisthus struts out and delivers an arrogant speech to the chorus, who nearly enter into a brawl with Aegisthus and his henchmen. However, Clytemnestra halts the dispute, saying that "There is pain enough already. Let us not be bloody now." The play closes with the chorus reminding the
usurpers that
Orestes, the son of Agamemnon, will surely return to exact
vengeance.
The Libation Bearers
Introduction
The Libation Bearers (also known as
Choephoroe) is the second play of the
Oresteia. It deals with the reunion of Agamemnon's children,
Electra and
Orestes, and their revenge.
Storyline
In the palace of Argos, Clytemnestra, who now shares her bed and the throne with her lover Aegisthus, is roused from slumber by a nightmare: she dreamt that she gave birth to a snake, and the snake now feeds from her breast and draws blood along with milk. Alarmed by this, a possible sign of the gods' wrath, she orders her daughter, the princess Electra, whom in the meantime Clytemnestra has reduced to the virtual status of a slave-girl, to pour
libations on Agamemnon's grave. A group of women (the libation bearers of the title) are to assist her.
Electra arrives at the grave of her father and comes upon a man by the tombstone, who has just placed a lock of his hair on the stone. As they start to speak, it gradually and rather agonizingly becomes apparent that the man is her brother Orestes (who had been sent away to the royal court of
Phocis since infancy for safety reasons), and who has, in her thoughts, been her only hope of revenge. Orestes believes that he's the snake in his mother's dream, so together with Electra they plan to avenge their father by killing their mother Clytemnestra and her new husband, Aegisthus.
Orestes wavers about killing his own mother, but is guided by
Apollo and his close friend
Pylades, the son of the king of Phocis, that it's the correct course of action. Orestes and Pylades pretend to be ordinary travelers from Phocis, and ask for hospitality at the palace. They even tell the Queen that Orestes is dead. Delighted by the news, Clytemnestra sends a servant to summon Aegisthus. Orestes kills the usurper first, and then his mother. As soon as he exits the palace, the
Erinyes, being only visible to him, begin to haunt and torture him as he flees in agony. This delineates the
crimes of
Clytemnestra and Orestes. The Erinyes don't hunt down Clytemnestra for killing her husband, but they do hunt down Orestes for his crime of
matricide as is their function: to them, crimes against blood bonds are far more significant than crimes against marriage bonds.
References in other Greek Dramas
Pietro Pucci of Cornell University argues that in referencing
The Libation Bearers in his own
Electra, Euripides made a social commentary on the relationship between truth and evidence. Euripides criticized the scene of recognition when Electra realizes that the lock of hair on Agamemnon's tomb belongs to Orestes. In his own play
Electra, Euripides has Electra make a scathing remark about the ridiculous notion that one could recognize a brother solely by a lock of hair, a footprint and an article of clothing. What Euripides (presumably purposefully) ignores in Aeschylus' play was the religious significance of the act of placing a lock of hair on a tomb, which was a much more powerful clue as to who left the lock than the actual nature of the hair. Only a friend of Agamemnon's would dare approach his grave and leave a lock of hair, and even more importantly, this ritual had a specific father/ male heir significance. Aeschylus' Electra, therefore, recognized her brother based on her faith in a religious act. Euripides' Electra, on the other hand, judges the situation solely on evidence, and comes to the wrong conclusion that Orestes can't be present, when in fact the audience knows that he's there and the two characters have just spoken to each other. This commentary suggests that Euripides is referring to the then pertinent argument over evidence and truth, an issue which had no weight when Aeschylus was writing.
The Eumenides
Introduction
The Eumenides (also known as
The Furies) is the final play of the
Oresteia, in which Orestes, Apollo, and the
Erinyes go before Athena and a jury consisting of the Athenians at the
Areopagus (Rock of Ares, a flat rocky hill by the Athenian
agora where the homicide court of Athens held its sessions), to decide whether Orestes' murder of his mother, Clytemnestra, makes him worthy of the torment they've inflicted upon him.
Storyline
Orestes is tormented by the Erinyes, or Furies,
chthonic deities that avenge
patricide and
matricide. He, at the instigation of his sister Electra and the god Apollo, has killed their mother Clytemnestra, who had killed their father, King Agamemnon, who had killed his daughter and their sister, Iphigenia. Orestes finds a refuge and a solace at the new temple of Apollo in
Delphi, and the god, unable to deliver him from the Erinyes' unappeasable wrath, sends him along to Athens under the protection of
Hermes, while he casts a drowsy spell upon the pursuing Erinyes in order to delay them.
Clytemnestra's ghost appears from the woods and rouses the sleeping Erinyes, urging them to continue hunting Orestes. The Erinyes' first appearance on stage is haunting: they hum a tune in unison as they wake up, and seek to find the scent of blood that will lead them to Orestes' tracks. Ancient tradition says that on the play's premiere this struck so much fear and anguish in the audience, that a pregnant woman named
Neaira suffered a
miscarriage and died on the spot.
The Erinyes' tracking down of Orestes in Athens is equally haunting: Orestes has clasped
Athena's small statue in
supplication, and the Erinyes close in on him by smelling the blood of his slain mother in the air. Once they do see him, they can also see rivulets of blood soaking the earth beneath his footsteps.
As they surround him, Athena intervenes and brings in a jury of twelve Athenians to judge her supplicant. Apollo acts as attorney for Orestes, while the Erinyes act as advocates for the dead Clytemnestra. During the trial, Apollo convinces Athena that, in a marriage, the man is more important than the woman, by pointing out that Athena was born only of
Zeus and without a mother (Zeus swallows
Metis). Before the trial votes are counted, Athena votes in favour of Orestes. After being counted, the votes on each side are equal. Athena then persuades the Erinyes to accept her decision. They eventually submit. (However, in
Euripides'
Iphigeneia in Tauris, the Erinyes continue to haunt Orestes even after the trial.) Athena then renames them
Eumenides (The Kindly Ones, a
euphemism), and that'll now be honored by the citizens of Athens and ensure their prosperity. Athena also declares that henceforth hung juries should result in the defendant being acquitted, as
mercy should always take precedence over harshness.
Proteus
Although
Proteus, the satyr play which originally followed the first three plays of
The Oresteia, is lost, it's widely believed to have been based on the story told in Book IV of
Homer's
Odyssey. In 2002,
Theatre Kingston mounted a production of
The Oresteia in the translation by
Ted Hughes and included a free reconstruction of
Proteus based on the episode in
The Odyssey and loosely arranged according to the structure of extant satyr plays.
Analysis and themes
That the play ends on a happy note may surprise modern readers, to whom the word
tragedy denotes a
drama ending in misfortune. The word didn't carry this meaning in ancient Athens, and many of the extant Greek tragedies end happily.
Social progress and justice
Worth noting here's the
metaphorical aspect of this entire drama. Initially, in their role as avengers of bloodshed, the Erinyes are classical equivalents to the Code of Hammurabi and the Torah, which demand “an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth”. Thus, they initially embody the concept of
lex talionis, or “law of retribution”.
The change from an archaic self-help justice by personal revenge to administration of justice by trial symbolises the passage from a primitive society governed by
instincts, to a modern
society governed by
reason:
justice is decided by a jury of peers, representing the citizen body and its values, and the gods themselves sanction this transition by taking part in the judicial procedure, arguing and voting on an equal footing with the mortals. This theme of the
polis self-governed by consent through lawful institutions, as opposed to
tribalism and
superstition, recurs in Greek art and thought.
The dramatization of societal transformation in this myth (the transition to governance by laws) is both a boast and justification of the then relatively new judicial system. The concept of objective intervention by an impartial entity against which no vengeance could be taken (the state) marked the end of continuous cycles of bloodshed, a transition in Greek society reflected by the transition in their mythology--the Erinyes are a much greater part of older Greek myths than comparatively more recent ones. The reflection of societal struggles and social norms in mythology makes plays like these of special interest today, offering poignant cultural and historical insights.
Philos-aphilos
"Philos-aphilos" (love-in-hate) is a vigorous force throughout the trilogy. All of the bloodshed throughout the play is “murder committed not against an external enemy but against a part of the self.” This can be interpreted literally: Orestes slays his mother, his own flesh and blood; Aegisthus is Clytemnestra’s accomplice in the murder of his cousin Agamemnon.
“A part of the self” can also be interpreted more figuratively as a significant other, such as a spouse; thus, Clytemnestra’s feelings for Agamemnon are characterized as ‘philos-aphilos’ as well. As Richmond Lattimore defined it thus, “the hate gains intensity from the strength of the original love when that love has been stopped or rejected.” Clytemnestra’s love for Agamemnon has been quashed by his sacrifice of Iphigeneia and his return with Cassandra as a mistress. Likewise, Orestes’ sentiments toward his mother are intensified by anger at her murder of his father and resentment at the fact that she chose her lover over her children – essentially, they're “the price for which she bought herself this man.” These conflicting feelings are embodied in Clytemnestra’s dream about nursing the snake.
Lattimore also draws a parallel between the
Oresteia and
Hamlet, suggesting that the sensation of ‘philos-aphilos’ engendered by
Prince Hamlet’s emotional connections to his mother,
Queen Gertrude, and to
Ophelia, who are both on the side of
King Claudius – himself a close blood relative who might have held Hamlet’s affection and regard before usurping the throne – are what make the play a tragedy.
Further Information
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