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.