Eumenides Summary

Eumenides by Aeschylus Background

• Furies = Erinyes = Eumenides (“Erinyes” is the “name that cannot be spoken”; the “Eumenides” means “the kindly ones,” and is a way of addressing the goddesses so as to win favor
  • black costumes
  • very scary masks (children fainted away, women had miscarriages)
    • snaky hair with blood and puss oozing from the eyes
  • women but not women, Gorgons but not Gorgons, Harpies but not Harpies: the sight of a Gorgon turns you to stone, the Harpies are winged females who defecate on you: here is something worse than even the worst horrors created by the ancient mythic imagination!
  • bestial creatures actuated purely by lust for the sinner’s blood: blood of revenge for blood (i.e. kindred) blood-letting
  • images of animals applied to them continually:
    • snakes (127),
    • goats (196)
    • lions (193),
    • unnamed monsters that bloat themselves on human gore (183f),
    • above all, and many times, bloodhounds (first at 131f)
  • female: daughters of female Night, come from Mother Earth
  • goddesses of the older generation: daughters of Night, a primeval deity of the first generation
• Apollo, on the other hand:
  • the Voice of Zeus (19, 622-25, 728f): his principal oracle is at Delphi, where sits his human voice, the priestess known as the “Pythia”
  • male: patriarchy
  • new gods: the third, and now ruling, generation
• Athena, on the third hand
  • female
  • but born without a mother: she sprang fully armed from the head of Zeus (after he ate her mother, Metis): thus directly linked to the patriarchy without any maternal intervention
  • importantly, her birth is the end of threats to the rule of Zeus: for it was said that the son of Metis would be able to overthrow him as he overthrew his father: by swallowing Metis, he circumvents the possibility of a son, or indeed any child of Metis: Athena is therefore in some sense the embodiment of the cosmic fact that the overthrow of divine kings comes to an end in the third generation (that of Zeus)
  • Metis = intelligence, and Athena is, among other things, the goddess most closely associated with intelligence: thus a worthy judge

Eumenides by Aeschylus: The Gods come to the Stage: Fantasy or Reality?

• A nightmare:
  • Orestes: blood magically drips from hands
  • Scene: scenes change, from Delphi to Acropolis to Areopagus magically and effortlessly
  • Players: only Orestes is a major human figure in the play: the rest of the players are gods or demons
• The opposing forces in the play
  • Apollo: himself a principal god and the “voice” of the greatest of gods, Zeus; a new god
  • Furies/Erinyes: close allies of 2 of the oldest & most important female deities in the cosmos, namely:
    • Night (231ff, 428, 760, etc.
    • Fate/Fates (170f, 334f, 401f, 972f
  • Significant that in this play Aeschylus differs from all other recorded Greek genealogies of the gods by making the Furies daughters of Night, who is Fate’s sister. By so doing he both elevates their cosmic status and directly associates them with darkness
• Cosmic and symbolic oppositions, steeped in the mythic traditions
  • Male/light/heaven/Olympian=young god/rational/”liberal”
  • Female/dark/earth/cthonic daughters of Night=old gods/irrational/”conservative”
  • recall alternate myth of the killing of Agamemnon, in the Odyssey, where Aegisthus kills Agamemnon and the male/female problem is not raised: Aeschylus works here as mythmaker, refashioning the myth to play up the cosmic conflict between male and female: why?
• In this context, Athena is invoked
  • able to understand both male and female
    • unusual birth (“fully armed from the head of Zeus”)
    • virgin and yet mighty in battle
    • see more above, under “background”
  • patron city is Athens, the home of the radical democracy, in which not kings or nobles, but common men decide all points of civic policy and justice
  • with the trial in Athens, Aeschylean surrealism reaches its peak: for a jury of humans will sit to vote on a case that has divided the powers of Heaven & Earth, Male and Female, Old and Young:
    • the attorneys for the prosecution: the Furies, daughters of Night and nieces of Fate
    • the attorney for the defense: Apollo, son and spokesman of Zeus, king of the gods
  • A fantasy land!
  • Yet a fantasy that strikes to the heart of the intellectual and political crisis that was upon Athens in 458 BC
    • for in the world of Athens under the radical democracy, the tendency was towards the proposition that everything must be judged by groups of human beings
      • no longer could one be content to leave matters in the hands of the gods, or of kings sanctioned by gods, or even of a nobility more broadly defined
      • for “rationalism” seems to have carried along with it a radical sense of the equality of all free citizens: which we take for granted but which was extremely exceptional in any civilization before the modern era
      • moreover, carried along with all this was the notion of the “rule of law” (which we hear so much about these days!) and of equality under that law: a law however not defined by the gods or by a tyrant (think of Antigone!) but by an assembly of the thousands of free citizens of all classes

The Trial: the odd case of Apollo’s speech in the Eumenides

• The Erinyes’ case, 591ff.
  • Orestes killed his mother in requital for her slaying of her husband
  • Since the mother is his blood kin, but the husband is not her blood kin, the vengeance of the Furies is just
• Apollo’s defence, lines 620ff.
  • Orestes’ deed was done at the behest of Zeus, who as the embodiment of Justice cannot have ordered an unjust act
  • The murder of a man, a hero, has more weight than the murder of a woman, an adulteress
    • Note here though the hint of force (via Zeus), to which the Erinyes react in objection
  • The mother is only the nurse of the implanted seed, not the true parent (“sperm” in Greek means “seed” as well as “semen”, and the woman’s uterus is here conceived like Mother Earth, that is, the place where the seed is planted): that the Father is determinative for the existence of a child is proved by Athena, who has no mother
  • The acquittal of Orestes will result in a treaty between Athens and Argos, much to the benefit of Athena and her city
• How seriously do we take Apollo’s arguments?
  • At least some of the arguments of Apollo will sound like arguments of the Sophists, the high intellectuals of the day famous for their rhetorical ability to “make the weaker argument the better” or even to “make the worser argument the stronger”
  • This resonance with the high intellectuals and liberals of the day would be anathema to the conservatives in the audience, who would consider (just like Henry Hyde!) that these sort of arguments are suspicious inasmuch as they lack a strong moral core
  • That is, the arguments of Erinyes and Apollo are rhetorically reconfigured as arguments between (politically and ethically) conservatives and liberals!
  • The audience reaction would then be as various as the audience reaction to a debate between Republicans and Democrats today: but that it is problematic seems assured

The Ending: A Resolution?

• Many commentators and scholars see the play as one that resolves the problems, and in its final lines glorifies the great civilization and rule of law at Athens; and on the surface it is of course true that the Rule of Law “wins” and that the old avenging deities are changed into a new, “kindly” deity that will protect Athens
• Our own view:
  But the surreal way in which this is done, the strange ambiguity of the vote make us pause (do humans really have any say — see 833ff — does rationalism really hold sway? and how compelling is rationalism anyway, given the sophistic arguments of Apollo? and what sort of “justice” lets go the murder of the mother while condemning the murder of the father?). Learning through suffering: pathei mathos. In the end, yes, it does seem that the cycle of revenge is broken, that the way of the old, avenging divinity is laid to rest, that the rule of law is established. So, yes, after generations of suffering perhaps we do finally learn, learn to change, to progress towards justice. But the questions raised in the Agamemnon are never fully answered: questions about inherited responsibility and guilt, the ultimate justice of blood for blood, or what forms the moral core in such situations. Apollo tells us (620ff) that he never directs but “what Zeus commands: This is Justice.” A trial should also mean justice. But Athena’s deciding vote is cast more on political lines (she allies herself with the male Olympians, the new generation headed by her father Zeus: 750ff) than on moral principle or by rational persuasion. At the end of the play I’m not so sure that we really think that justice has been served, or that we know better what justice is. But we do, I think, feel the need to think through Justice better– especially as “justice” relates to politics and human affairs on the one side, and to duty and religious affairs on the other. And perhaps that is the point.