The Eumenides by Aeschylus, translated by Robert Fagles
from The Oresteia, Penguin, 335pp, £7.99, 1979
ISBN 978 0 14 044333 2
With The Eumenides, we reach the end of the Oresteia trilogy. The only extant trilogy from Ancient Greek has brought family conflict, death, psychological battles and it all ends in (to my knowledge) the first trial by jury in Western literature. I have read the Fagles translation of all three parts, and it feels like being led through this story by a sure hand. One of the major themes of the Oresteia is justice. In Agamemnon we see Clytemnestra kill her husband, Agamemnon. In The Libation Bearers, Agamemnon’s son, Orestes, returns to avenge his father, and kills his mother. He leaves the stage pursues by the Furies, and this is where we start The Eumenides.
This play is where we can most clearly see Aeschylus’s point in the Oresteia: an investigation of justice, and a fictionalisation of the Athenian model of the judicial trial system. With a few exceptions, the Greek tragedians told mythical stories, and the Trojan War and its aftermath (the aftermath for Agamemnon is shown in the trilogy) is really the end of Greek myth. Aeschylus was writing in the fifth century B.C., when Athens was developing its ‘golden age’ and starting to formalise systems of justice, juries, and courts. If we look back through myth and earlier literature, we can see how justice was sought: an eye-for-an-eye. We look back to Homer, for example, and Achilles’s revenge mission against Hector after the death of Patroclus. There was no question of Hector going on trial: his punishment would be decided by Achilles, and that punishment was death. Retribution and retaliation was the rule, and there was no formal system by which to judge an action and for the punishment to be given by the ‘state’ rather than the individual.
This is the route that we see the House of Atreus (Atreus was Agamemnon’s father) following in the early plays of the Oresteia. On the way to Troy, Agamemnon had murdered Iphigenia, and Clytemnestra murdered him in revenge. Orestes avenged his father by murdering Clytemnestra, and now Orestes is being pursued for that death. This is a family that has been cursed for generations, the wheel of vengeance continuing to turn: where will it end? In The Eumenides (really the whole Oresteia) it is like Aeschylus draws a line in the sand and says ‘no more.’ This mythical concept of justice does not work in society. Orestes will not be judged by a lone wolf seeking revenge for Clytemnestra, or judged by the Furies, but will be judged by society, and found innocent or guilty based on the weighing of the evidence and the decision of an impartial jury. Aeschylus has brilliantly mapped the development of Athenian justice onto classical myth.
Orestes, with the assistance of Apollo, escapes from the pursuit of the Furies while they are sleeping and ends up in Athens, where he pleads to Athena and she agrees to set up a trial for him. The trial is set on the Areopagus or ‘Ares Rock,’ where homicide was tried in classical times. Athena says that from the heights of the rock “my people’s kindred powers will hold them from injustice through the day and through the mild night.”
The play then takes on the flavour, briefly, of a courtroom drama as Athena leads the jury of twelve Athenians: “The trial begins! Yours is the first word – the prosecution opens.” The Furies lead the prosecution, and Orestes is questioned by both sides while Athena, Apollo and the Furies argue. At the end of the trial, the votes are tied. It is not an easy case as Orestes, no matter his reason, killed his mother: can he be said to be innocent? Athena casts the deciding vote in Orestes’s favour. The god who was birthed from Zeus’s head cannot forgive a woman who kills her husband, Agamemnon the”guardian of their house.” This is in contrast to the Furies, who are of the opinion that Orestes’s crime is less forgivable as he killed a blood relative. It does almost boil down to a utilitarian question: was the murder of Clytemnestra less demanding of censure than her murder of Agamemnon. Essentially, did Clytemnestra have what was coming to her?
The Furies are not happy. The trial system has overturned their authority and Athena has flaunted her power as a new god after the downfall of the Titans. However, Athena makes the Furies an offer. They can be a force for good in Athens, and Athena will gift them “a royal share of our land – justly entitled, glorified forever.” The Furies are tempted: “your magic is working… I can feel the hate, the fury slip away.” Soon, the Furies (or the Eumenides, ‘the Kindly Ones’) are singing a chorus with Athena and they are entrusted to ensure that the concept of justice is passed down from age to age.
We are left in the Oresteia with a profound piece of literature on justice. Aeschylus shows us how the justice that we see in many mythical stories clashes with the contemporary concept of judgement. In Anthony Everitt’s book on the history of Athens, we saw how changes to systems were introduced and jurors could be anyone in society (with the exception of women and slaves). I would imagine that watching the Oresteia gave its audience a sense of pride, and a sense that the institution that they were taking part in when being on the jury was created by Athena as a way of fighting for truth. As Athena says when Orestes flees to Athens: “Two sides are here, and only half is heard.” In this telling of the story in the Oresteia, Athena’s great legacy is giving a voice to the other side.
Western Canon Review 