Erinyes to Eumenides

I'll be honest. I read the Oresteia last year, but I didn't finish it. I think it had something to do with the fact that I was busy trying to apply to an Ivy League school and the resulting constant panic that caused. Noelia, Carrie, and I, in a typical Classics Academy move, read half of the first play on the day it was due while walking around our track during gym class. It may have been a day in advance, but I doubt it. We were all swamped.

Aeschylus follows the return from Troy of Agamemnon, commander-in-chief of the Greek army, universally hailed in Greek lit as a really big asshole. Before the Trojan War even started, he fucked up and boasted that he was a better shot than Artemis, goddess of the hunt. She demanded that he sacrifice his eldest daughter, Iphigenia, or else the ships couldn't even leave port. He does this, in various versions either gagging the girl so she couldn't scream or lying to her, saying she was going to marry Achilles, and sails away to Troy. For ten years. He returns to his country triumphant, bringing along a Trojan concubine Cassandra, and his wife Clytemnestra (or Clytaemnestra, the Greeks love their vowels) kills both he and Cassandra in the bath. During the war, she took a lover, Agamemnon's cousin Aegisthus, to spite him. A lot of shit happens in their family, so basically the death of Agamemnon is just a further step in this curse. Many years pass, and in the second play their son Orestes grows up and (with a little help from his sister Electra), avenges his father's death by killing his mother and their lover. In the third play, Orestes is hounded by the Furies, pre-Olympian earth goddesses of maternal vengeance who demand his sacrifice. Through a trial spearheaded by Athena and Apollo, with a jury of Athenian citizens, Orestes is acquitted of the murder. The Furies, recognizing a sudden power shift, submit to Athena and sublimate their power into hers in order to survive.

This trilogy seems generally ordinary, if you can make any generalizations based on the pithy amount of Greek drama that survives to this day. It is a mythological story, centered around characters well known from the Trojan War. Its subject matter isn't unique; both Sophocles and Euripides wrote other plays about Agamemnon's brood, particularly Electra and Iphigenia. So, you have to ask: why is this trilogy weird?

First: I found out very recently that this is the only trilogy ever written to be performed as a unified set. Everyone's read Sophocles' Oedipus Cycle, but those plays were written out of order, several years apart. They aren't a cohesive trilogy like Aeschylus' is. They were all performed at the same festival (with the traditional fourth play, a satire, unfortunately lost). This trilogy is intentionally a tour de force. Keeping the same characters and storyline, rather than a series of fragmented stories, gives you a chance to root for one character or the other, and it makes the emotion even more powerful. Even when you know the ending to the story, you want to see exactly how everything plays out.

Second: Though he's not a rabid feminist like Euripides, Aeschylus gives an intentionally uneven view of women, stirring up both strong empathy and revulsion, notably Clytemnestra in Agamemnon and the Furies in The Eumenides.

Clytemnestra is coldly rational, planning the death of her arrogant and completely insensitive husband. When I recently reread the trilogy in class, a few people argued that Agamemnon was only doing what he had to do in order to go off to war. I fell back on the strident feminist aspects of Clytemnestra's nature, and how Agamemnon is helpless in the face of her machinations, as well as Agamemnon's utter repulsiveness as a human being. She's had murderous rage brewing for ten years, unable to mourn her daughter properly because of the injustice of her sacrifice and the fact that no one around her seemed to realize how much she hurt.

However, being entirely sympathetic with Clytemnestra doesn't hold. In my mind, she is completely justified in her murder of Agamemnon due to the extreme grief she harbors for Iphigenia, as well as for the 'normal' life that has been completely scrapped by the war. However, her murder of Cassandra is due to petty jealousy, collateral damage to her vengeance. And when we move on to the second play, she is radically unhinged. She is demonized. On hearing of Orestes' supposed death, she smiles, thinking that she is finally safe in her position as queen. The Clytemnestra of the Libation Bearers is more ruthless, seeing ghosts that needle her guilty conscience to the breaking point. After her death, she appears in the Eumenides to urge the Furies on to avenge her. This appearance, even in ghost form, makes her the only character to appear in all three plays, which in itself is a powerful statement by Aeschylus. But really, what do we think of her by the end? She is not avenged; Orestes walks free. I think that in a modern day trial she would be convicted of premeditated murder but released due to insanity. Clytemnestra's grief drives her past all rational action, and everything that she does is based on seeking justice for those wrongs.

You may have noticed, clever reader, that I've used variations on the word "revenge" and "justice" so frequently that they're practically every other word. To help with the precision of the term, let us define these enigmatic concepts. Revenge is fairly easy: to the House of Atreus, revenge is direct retribution. An eye for an eye, a son's death for a son's death. Agamemnon and Cassandra, Clytemnestra and Aegisthus. It has a certain symmetry until Orestes is released from the cycle.

Justice is a really slippery, malleable force in the trilogy. It can be used as a placeholder for any of the characters' motivations. Clytemnestra seeks justice for Iphigenia. Orestes seeks justice for Agamemnon. The Furies seek justice for Clytemnestra. Apollo, who is on Orestes' side, seeks justice that will work out in his favor. Athena, the head of the trial, is really the only one who has a slightly fair concept of justice. She wants the truth, and if Orestes has a good enough reason for why he killed his mother, she's willing to tell the Furies to lay off.

Apollo uses a ton of bullshit arguments to say why Clytemnestra isn't really Orestes' mother, the most absurd being that the woman is only the vessel for the child because the husband "mounts" (anyone who has a vague concept of biology can rightly raise their eyebrows). Orestes has a few solid points. He says (correctly) that Apollo would make his life miserable if he didn't avenge Agamemnon's death. He calls on the conflict he felt when preparing to murder her; he did not act on emotion only, but also from a sense of duty. And he is highly respectful, looking Athena straight in the eye and saying, "Yeah, I killed her. But this is why."

The Furies have several strong arguments, calling Apollo out on how stupid he's being, and are enraged at the verdict that lets Orestes go free. But, almost on a dime, they begin to look at Athena as a potential partner rather than an enemy. They see that they have, shockingly, been defeated in their own domain by these new, upstart Olympian gods. The Furies aren't dumb. They know that the world is changing. They see Athena's offer of a place in the new system of gods, and while they will be far less powerful, they will still be there. Everyone will know and fear them. So they suddenly grovel at Athena's feet, dancing around her in happiness. They go from being Erinyes (furies) to being Eumenides (kindly ones).

What does this say about Aeschylus' view on women? He obviously realizes that they can be cunning and brilliant and powerful, but in the end their power is consumed into the giant machine that is the patriarchal society. Where once cthonic earth goddesses ruled supreme, male Olympians can boss around the most powerful avengers of slighted women.

Long story short, I'd say that it's complicated.

The Trojan Cycle and Classics Academy

Now, I'm afraid that I'm misinforming some of you. Some of you don't know quite how big of a deal I am. (Narcissistic, I know.) (Hey, another classical allusion!)

Again, I'm kidding, but I'm a little serious. Not about the fact that I'm a super big deal, but I think some of my friends from college or more casual acquaintances, or anyone who's stumbled across this by accident (doubtful, I know) really don't know exactly where I'm coming from with this entire enterprise.

First, I understand that a classics blog can be seen as foolish. By definition, everything that I'm talking about is old news. I counter that by saying that, if you believe that, you definitely didn't read the last post.

Second, however, I've said nothing of my background, or even why the hell I'm studying something that has no viable career options except for translator, teacher, or specialist on a History Channel special about perverted Roman emperors (of which there are many). As I've learned, you need to know the past in order to move forward. So, without further ado, my past. (Or the recent past, anyway.)

I started Latin on a whim. As an 8th grader, I'd heard stories of the crazy Latin program at our local high school, and was fed up with mediocre Spanish teachers. Not only was our Latin program actually crazy (see incredibly dangerous chariot races), it was highly effective, and was a consistently growing language program with a large amount of people who continued after they completed their required 2 years of language. Which is weird, because Latin's dead, right?

Junior year, in the midst of the usual college list existential crisis, I found out something very important about myself: I am a teacher. Now, this sounds cornier than Kansas in August, but I've seen teachers who can turn a class from a chore to a haven and somewhere I loved to be. I was lucky to have a series of english teachers who were really good at electrifying a class in this way. So, having decided this, I also realized that I was hot shit at Latin in addition to loving the class, so I may as well throw Latin teacher into the mix.

Because I am an insufferable dork, I jumped at the opportunity to join a small classics themed pilot program that was the brainchild of my crazy Latin teacher called the "Classics Academy."

Best decision of my life.

Over the course of my senior year, I learned how to speak my mind. I was deeply steeped in the classical tradition, devouring the Odyssey, the Iliad, the Oresteia, the Aeneid (translated from the Latin in one of the most protracted, painful experiences in my life), bits of Ovid, Julius Caesar, Antony and Cleopatra, modern takes like Mourning Becomes Electra by O'Neill. The mission statement of the program was to connect the classics to our real and everyday lives, and each of the nine members of our fledgling program created a final thesis on this topic.

My thesis? A retelling of the Trojan War from Odysseus' perspective. I'm not going to lie, I have always had a massive crush on Odysseus, and as we dug into the epics, I was struck by what stories were missing or incomplete. As my friends relaxed during the infamous "second semester senior" slack off mode, I frothed at the mouth attempting to finish my meticulously researched and cross referenced (with my stack of mythology books and primary texts). The sick thing about this is that I enjoyed writing, even though it was sucking my lifeblood as my friends reveled in their college acceptances and lack of work. Masochistically, I loved looking up that warrior's epithet for the third time because it was 2 AM and I'd forgotten it again.

Worth it. Brief recountings of mine and my wonderful incomparable academy-mates and best friends' projects can be found here, but there is nothing that can describe how it felt to stand up in front of a packed room of people and be in total command of my subject. I had become the expert. I knew more about the Trojan War than any other person in the room, including my Latin teacher, the sole exception being my beloved mentor, Ms. Laudadio, who just so happened to have a doctorate in Mythology. And throughout the process, the Greek and Trojan warriors and their wives and children became essential to my being. I am permanently dyed. You cannot separate Meghan the person from Meghan the classics major.

Fast forwarding to now, I am a classical civilization major at Boston University. I'm beginning the confusing process of getting a dual degree with our School of Education so that I will be able to teach English (hopefully) right out of school in 2015. I'm learning Ancient Greek, reading and re-reading the old texts, and browsing through my coffee-stained Robert Graves The Greek Myths when I feel the need to look up alternate accounts of Orestes' return to Argos.

And I like it that way.

"A Dying Breed"

Are classics majors a dying breed?

Sure, I joke about it with my friends who frequent more popular majors. There will never be a lack of English majors, or a dearth of pre-med kids. I pretend that I alone am carrying the wisdom of thousands of years on my shoulders. I recognize the slow extinction of my kind, and I bear the mantle of the classical tradition on my shoulders with a quiet dignity.

No, I'm kidding, I try not to be a self righteous asshole most of the time.

But in reality, the classics are safe. In this fantastic article, Mary Beard points out that the classicists' obsession over our own mortality (which happens to be a classical theme, so we're just going in circles here) means that, because we are hyperaware that they may die, they won't.

This is vain, but the other reason that my future is secure is simply this: the classics are just too damn important to die. They are pervasive, running through modern culture like a virulent strand of smallpox, disfiguring those who they come into direct contact with (myself included) and even irrevocably changing those who don't even know that they were affected. You can barely get a few words into this sentence without tripping over a Greek or Latin remnant. Pop culture references Oedipal/Electra complexes and Achilles' heels. I make it a practice to connect everything I can to the ancient world.

Greek is a living language, but there is a direct and tangible tie with the ancient language that Homer spoke and Plato wrote. It's not like Latin, watered down into the Romance languages. There is a direct lineage that connects them. In a similar way, even though it's not always easy to see, the classics are here to stay. Forever.