18/1/07 - Classical Literature - Aeschylus: 'Libation Bearers' and 'Eumenides'

1. Libation Bearers

Here, there is a cycle of violence and retribution; one crime leads to another. According to Zeus, the way out is "knowledge through suffering." It is a three times old law: the doer must suffer.

"You great powers of Fate, may Zeus grant an ending here
in which justice changes to the other side!
'In return for hostile words, let hostile words be paid' -
in exacting what is due, Justice shouts that aloud,
and 'In return for bloody blow, let bloody blow repay!'
'For the doer, suffering' is saying three times old."
[306-315 (Chorus)]

Orestes makes a conscious decision to kill his mother.

"Pylades, what am I to do? Is such respect to stop me from killing my mother?"
[Orestes' final hesitation and decision, 899]

Everyone is convinced of Orestes' just revenge.

"There came justice at last to Priam's children,
heavy and just in punishment;
there came to Agamemnon's house
a double lion, double warfare ...
Come! Cry celebration for our master's house
in escaping evil and its wealth's erosion by two polluters ..."
[Chorus celebrates the triumph of justice, 935ff]

2. Eumenides

Here, intention does not matter, only the deed itself. There is the juxtaposition of pollution and purification: Orestes goes to Delphi washed in pig's blood. According to ancient law, it is impossible to purify the pollution of murder.

"You must repay us with a gruel of red
to slurp from your limbs while you live;
I shall want my food from you by drinking this grim draught.
And when I have withered you I well lead you off below, alive,
to pay penalty for the matricide and its horror."
[Chorus of Furies to Orestes, 264-268]

Athena settles the matter at court, with a jury of Athenian citizens. Notice her judge-like language.

"To judge this matter is greater than any mortal thinks - and I certainly have no right to decide between pleas about shed blood where angers are sharp, especially since you, Orestes, have been submissive to custom and come in supplication to my temple purified and harmless; and I respect you as giving the city likewise no cause for blame - but these persons have an allotted role not easy to dismiss, and if they do not get an outcome which brings them victory, poison from their proud spirit will later fall to the ground and bring the lands intolerable, everlasting sickness. This is how the matter stands: both courses, for you to stay, Orestes, and for me to send you away, bring harsh pain if there is no wrath against me. But since this matter has descended suddenly upon us here, I shall appoint judges for murder-cases, with respect for oaths under an ordinance which I shall lay down for all time ..."
[Athena to Orestes, 470ff]

Her reason for voting in favour of Orestes is strange and arbitrary: she says that she cannot understand a mother's point of view as she never had one, so the crime of killing a father is much worse than the killing of a mother. The Furies are granted a position as the kind Furies of justice by Athena.

Mythical past is linked to contemporary legal debates in Eumenides. The Furies really were worshipped as the kind divinities of Athena, and the ancient counsel was restricted to cases of homicide four years before the Oresteia was written. So the Oresteia accounts for contemporary customs, and it ends with political compromise.