The Complete Aeschylus, Volume I: The Oresteia

  PHLEGREAN PLAIN: Located on the peninsula of Pallene in Thrace; the site of a great battle of the gods and giants in which Athena played a decisive part.

  PHOCIS: Region of central Greece around Mount Parnassus.

  PHOEBE: Titan goddess, mother of Leto and grandmother of Apollo and Artemis.

  PHOEBUS: See APOLLO.

  PLEISTUS: River running through a deep gorge below Delphi.

  POSEIDON: Lord of the sea, brother of Zeus and Hades.

  PRIAM: King of Troy, father of Hector, Paris, Cassandra, and many others.

  PYLADES: Son of Strophius of Phocis; friend and companion of Orestes.

  PYTHIA: The priestess of Apollo who served at Delphi as the mouthpiece for prophecies she received from him in a trance-like state. She is named for Pytho. At Libation Bearers, 1069 / 940, the Chorus can even refer to Orestes as “the Pythian-guided exile” since he has consulted the oracle and acted on its authority.

  PYTHO: A chthonian monster that held sway in Delphi until Apollo killed it with his arrows, according to the standard story that Aeschylus chooses to ignore. Although the monster Pytho is not mentioned in the Oresteia, the association of its name with Apollo and the Delphic oracle makes it natural to refer to Delphi as Pytho, and to the god as king of Pytho.

  SARON, GULF OF: The part of the Aegean Sea directly east of the Peloponnese.

  SCAMANDER: Most important river of the Trojan plain.

  SCYLLA: (1) The female monster, known from Homer’s Odyssey, who preyed on ships in a strait opposite the whirlpool Charybdis. (2) Daughter of Nisus of Megara, who made it possible for Minos of Crete to conquer Megara by accepting his bribe and cutting her father’s hair, which gave him life.

  SIMOIS: River on the Trojan plain.

  SPARTA: Major city of the southern Peloponnese, royal seat of Menelaus and his Spartan wife, Helen.

  STROPHIUS: King of Phocis; father of Pylades; host and guardian of the young Orestes.

  STRYMON: River that divides Macedonia and Thrace in northern Greece.

  SUSA: Capital city of Elam (in what is now Iran); in Aeschylus’ day, it was an important city of the Persian Empire.

  TANTALUS: Son of Zeus and, as father of Pelops and grandfather of Atreus, founder of the Argive royal line. He is said to have killed Pelops and served him to the gods at a banquet. When they discovered this transgression, the gods restored Pelops to life. Only Demeter had eaten from his flesh, but Hephaestus made him an ivory shoulder to replace what she consumed. The gods punished Tantalus in the underworld by placing him in a pool of water that recedes when he tries to drink it, and beneath branches laden with fruits that, whenever he tries to reach them, are blown beyond his grasp by a breeze.

  THEMIS: Titan goddess, daughter of Earth; her name means “right” or “customary law,” and her main function is to punish transgressors of that law; Aeschylus makes her the second giver of oracles at Delphi.

  THESEUS: Greatest of Athens’ early kings, who was believed to have lived in the generation before the Trojan War.

  THESTIUS: King of Pleuron in Aetolia, father of Althaea and Leda.

  THRACE: The most northeasterly region of Greece, whose natives the Greeks considered primitive and ferocious. The “Thracian winds” of Agamemnon, 746 / 654, would be fierce northerly blasts.

  THYESTES: Son of Pelops, brother of Atreus; in the Oresteia, his seduction of Atreus’ wife is the starting point of the chain of crimes that beset the house.

  TRITON: River in Libya, traditional birthplace of Athena.

  TROY: City of Phrygia, on the northwest coast of Asia Minor; sacked by the Greeks after a ten-year siege.

  TYNDAREUS: King of Sparta; husband of Leda and father of Clytemnestra.

  ZEPHYRUS: The West Wind, son of Eos (Dawn).

  ZEUS: Most powerful of the gods, once having chained his father Cronus and the other Titans beneath the earth; chief of the Olympian gods and ruler of the realm of land (as Poseidon is of the sea and Hades of the underworld). Zeus is traditionally associated with the sanctity of oaths, of the relations of guest and host, and of suppliants and beggars. Although he is not regarded in the Greek tradition as omniscient or omnipotent, Aeschylus makes him something close to a supreme being and guarantor of cosmic order.

  FOR FURTHER READING

  AESCHYLUS

  Alex Garvie. The Plays of Aeschylus. London: Duckworth, 2010. A brief, readable, and well-informed introduction to the drama of Aeschylus.

  C. J. Herington. Aeschylus. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1986. An engaging and beautifully written introduction, emphasizing the poetry and idea world of Aeschylus.

  Michael Lloyd, ed. Aeschylus. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007. A collection of influential critical essays, including papers on all the dramas.

  Thomas G. Rosenmeyer. The Art of Aeschylus. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1982. A topical survey of the major aspects of Aeschylus’ artistry.

  Alan H. Sommerstein. Aeschylean Tragedy, 2nd ed. London: Duckworth, 2010. A revised version of the substantial and knowledgeable introduction first published in 1996, with an up-to-date bibliography.

  R. P. Winnington-Ingram. Studies in Aeschylus. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1983. A collection of valuable and always stimulating essays.

  THE ORESTEIA

  Anne Pippin Burnett. Revenge in Attic and Later Tragedy. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1998. A chapter on the Libation Bearers (“Ritualized Revenge: Aeschylus’ Choephori,” pp. 99–118) usefully inserted in a larger study of revenge as a dramatic matrix and theme.

  Desmond J. Conacher. Aeschylus’ Oresteia: A Literary Commentary. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1987. A useful presentation of the trilogy and many of its interpretative problems in the traditional mode of scene-by-scene analysis.

  Simon Goldhill. Aeschylus: The Oresteia. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992. A thoughtful and stimulating introduction to the trilogy, engaging with current methodologies in an accessible way.

  Barbara Goward. Aeschylus: Agamemnon. London: Duckworth, 2005. One of Duckworth’s useful Companions to Greek and Roman Tragedy, this sets the play in its poetic and theatrical contexts and considers ethical, religious, and political issues.

  Mark Griffith. “Brilliant Dynasts: Power and Politics in the Oresteia.” Classical Antiquity 14 (1995): 63–129. An interesting argument for the inherence, alongside the long-recognized celebration of Athenian democratic institutions, of a network of elite family relationships that is essential to the resolution of the conflicts of the trilogy.

  John Heath. The Talking Greeks: Speech, Animals, and the Other in Homer, Aeschylus, and Plato. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005. “Disentangling the Beast: Humans and Other Animals in the Oresteia” (pp. 215–58) shows carefully the blending of human and bestial in the poetic language of the trilogy, and their final separation at its resolution.

  Robin Mitchell-Boyask. Aeschylus: Eumenides. London: Duckworth, 2009. Another Duckworth’s Companion to Greek and Roman Tragedy, this offers an approachable introduction that emphasizes the political and philosophical issues raised by this play.

  David H. Porter. “Aeschylus’ Eumenides: Some Contrapuntal Lines.” American Journal of Philology 126 (2005): 301–33. A stimulating investigation of “contrapuntal undercurrents” that complicate the resolutions at the end of the trilogy.

  Froma I. Zeitlin. “The Dynamics of Misogyny: Myth and Mythmaking in Aeschylus’ Oresteia.” In Playing the Other. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1996, pp. 87–119. A very influential and closely argued examination of the trilogy (and especially Eumenides) as a foundational myth of the patriarchy.

  1. It should be noted, however, that the trilogy was actually performed as part of a tetralogy. At least until sometime after the middle of the fourth century B.C.E., the three tragedies were followed by a satyr play written by the same author for the same occasion. Pithily defined by the philosopher Demetrius of Phalerum as “tragedy at play,” satyr dr
ama remains a somewhat enigmatic genre. Only one complete example, Euripides’ Cyclops, survives, along with a large part of Sophocles’ Trackers and many smaller fragments. Allied to tragedy in language and scenic resources, satyr drama presented a more lighthearted, rambunctious treatment of myth. Its chorus was made up of satyrs, men with physical traits of animals (e.g., goat ears and horse tails), and with emotional and moral traits to match. Satyrs are not creatures of the polis; they represent a world in which culture itself is still coming into being, they precede (and thus transcend) the division of tragic and comic, and they bridge the gap between gods and mortals. Their perspective presumably helped restore a sense of wholeness and offered a comforting closeness to Dionysus in his most benevolent and joyful aspects. One would give a great deal to know how Aeschylus (who was recognized in antiquity as the greatest writer of satyr plays) capped his tragic trilogy, but here our luck lets us down, since we know little more than the title of the lost satyr play, Proteus. The title does, however, offer at least one clue. In the Odyssey (4. 384–570), Proteus is the Old Man of the Sea, a minor deity who has the power to change his shape, but if held until he resumes his own form will answer questions and foretell the future. Agammnon’s brother Menelaus, driven off course on his return from Troy, lands in Egypt and learns from Proteus about his brother’s fate and how to achieve his own homecoming. We can deduce that Aeschylus showed Menelaus surrounded by a band of satyrs on Proteus’ island in the Nile, and contrasted his eventual return home with the terrible homecoming of Agamemnon.

  2. Plutarch, “On Exile,” 11, 604a; fragment 226 in G. S. Kirk, G. S., J. E. Raven, and M. Schofield, The Presocratic Philosophers, 2nd ed. Cambridge, 1983, 201.

  3. Preserved in Simplicius’ commentary on the Physics of Aristotle; fragment 101A in Kirk, Raven, and Schofield, Presocratic Philosophers (see footnote 2), 107.

  4. This is not the whole sordid story of the House of Atreus, but it is as far back as Aeschylus chooses to go. Prior events in the fuller telling of the tale include Tantalus killing his son Pelops and serving him up to the gods to eat. When they discovered what he had done, they brought the boy back to life. Only his shoulder had been eaten by Demeter, and Hephaestus rebuilt it in ivory. Tantalus was condemned to suffer eternal hunger and thirst in Hades. Pelops won Hippodamia as his bride by winning a chariot race against her father Oenomaus; this he accomplished by the trick of replacing an axle-pin of Oenomaus’ chariot with wax. When Oenomaus became entangled in his reins, Pelops killed him. Atreus and Thyestes were among the children of Pelops and Hippodamia. Thus, the family history of treachery, murder of family members, and eating one’s own children stretches out for several generations. See Timothy Gantz. Early Greek Myth. Baltimore, 1993, 531–50, for versions of these legends that Aeschylus and his audience might have known.

  5. The technique here certainly owes something to Homer’s art of foreshadowing. For example, when Menelaus is wounded in Book 4 of the Iliad, Agamemnon in his anger prophesies the fall of Troy. When Hector, Troy’s greatest hero, repeats those very same lines then in Book 6, the repetition has an extraordinary force. Here, the language avoids an entirely formulaic repetition, but the foreshadowing technique is the same, putting Clytemnestra’s thought into the mouth of one of Agamemnon’s own makes it appear strikingly like a fulfillment. Line 598 / 527 is almost identical to line 811 of Aeschylus’ Persians, and for this reason has been suspected, but it is surely authentic here.

  6. Simon Goldhill, Aeschylus:The Oresteia. Cambridge, 1992, 26–37.

  7. See the excellent analysis of the final scenes of the play in Oliver Taplin, The Stagecraft of Aeschylus: The Dramatic Use of Exits and Entrances in Greek Tragedy. Oxford, 1977, 322–32.

  8. Cf. Anne Lebeck, The Oresteia: A Study in Language and Structure. Washington, D.C., 1971,14.

  9. Froma I. Zeitlin, “The Motif of the Corrupted Sacrifice in Aeschylus’ Oresteia,” Transactions and Proceedings of the American Philological Association 96 (1965), 496.

  10. For this concept of “mirror scene” in the Oresteia, see Taplin, Stagecraft (see footnote 7), esp. 356–59.

  11. Robert Parker, Miasma: Pollution and Purification in Early Greek Religion Oxford, 386–88, looks at Orestes’ purification and trial in Eumenides from the perspective of early Greek religious practice and finds that Aeschylus does not “dispute the importance of ritual purification or deny its efficacy.” One may agree, while still pointing out that by making Orestes’ trial the one for which the Areopagus was founded, and by putting the trial after, rather than before, Orestes’ exile, Aeschylus lays particular emphasis on the inability of purification to bring Orestes’ pursuit by the Erinyes to an end. Orestes returns to Argos not because he has undergone the usual combination of purification and purificatory exile that “temporary exiles” underwent, but only after the new dispensation of legal justice has freed him from the Erinyes’ power.

  12. For the history of the Areopagus, see Robert W. Wallace, The Areopagos Council, to 307 B.C., Balrimore 1989. There has been a longstanding and inconclusive debate about Aeschylus’ attitude toward the reform of Ephialtes in 462. For a summary of the reform and of recent discussion concerning Aeschylus’ possible views, see Wallace, 77–93. The drastic limitation of the Areopagus Council’s power was part of a number of changes that gave Athens a fully democratic regime. It is clear that this upheaval was accompanied by political tensions and perhaps even factional strife. Athens’ alliance with conservative and oligarchical Sparta was terminated and a new one made with Argos, Sparta’s traditional rival (see further the note to Eumenides, 885–98 / 762–74). Cimon, the powerful Athenian leader whose foreign policy was pro-Spartan, and much of whose support probably came from the wealthy classes who made up the Areopagus Council, was exiled from Athens for ten years by ostracism. And Ephialtes, an important politician with democratic sympathies who carried the reform of the Areopagus in the Athenian assembly, died suddenly, and was widely assumed to have been murdered by his political enemies. Fortunately, however, Athens avoided further bloodshed, and with Pericles now acknowledged as leader, Athens pursued further democratic reforms.

  13. One indication of Aeschylus’ conscious replacing of the old foundation myth with his own is the fact that he provides a new etymology for the Hill of Ares at 800–806 / 685–90. For its significance, cf. p. 24

  14. Ancient sources from the fourth century onward record that the Areopagus met only on days sacred to the Semnai Theai, that both parties to the trials swore oaths by them, and that those acquitted were expected to sacrifice to them. For sources and details, see Alan H. Sommerstein, ed., Aeschylus, Eumenides. Cambridge, 1989, 10–11.

  15. My view of this aspect of the trilogy owes a good deal to the stimulating discussion in Peter W. Rose, Sons of the Gods, Children of Earth. Ithaca, N.Y., 1992,184–265. For a different view, see Mark Griffith, “Brilliant Dynasts: Power and Politics in the Oresteia,” Classical Antiquity 14 (1995), 63–129.

  16. See above all Froma I. Zeitlin, “The Dynamics of Misogyny: Myth and Mythmaking in Aeschylus’ Oresteia,” Arethusa 11 (1978), 149–84; revised in Zeitlin, Playing the Other, Chicago, 1996, 87–119. If I dissent from some of her conclusions, it is not without grateful recognition of her groundbreaking work in bringing to the fore the many ways in which the “myth of matriarchy” and its attendant anxieties permeate the trilogy.

  17. The best known and most striking account of this version is in the Homeric Hymn to Apollo, 224–384. For the likely originality of Aeschylus’ version, see Christine Sorvinou-Inwood, “Myth as History: The Previous Owners of the Delphic Oracle,” in Interpretations of Greek Mythology, J. Bremmer, ed. London, 1987, 231.

  18. Zeitlin, “The Dynamics of Misogyny” (see footnote 16), 102.

  19. Rose, Sons of the Gods (see footnote 15), 258.

  20. See Page duBois, Centaurs and Amazons, Ann Arbor, 1982; and William Blake Tyrell, Amazons: A Study in Athenian Mythmaking. Baltimore, 1984.

  21. For the so
urces, see G.E.R. Lloyd, Science, Folklore, and Ideology: Studies in the Life Sciences in Ancient Greece, Cambridge, 1983, 86–94.

  22. Athena was said to have sprung full-grown from the head of Zeus, after Hephaestus split it open to let her emerge. Aeschylus’ version of the myth implies that Athena had no mother at all; however, the fullest and best known account (Hesiod, Theogony, 886–900) says that Metis (Good Counsel) was her mother, but that Zeus swallowed Metis before the child could be born in the usual way.

  23. There is a tale (preserved by the mythographers Apollodorus and Hyginus) that makes Athena mother of the Athenian king Erichthonius: pursued by Hephaestus, she ran from him, but he caught her in an embrace and spilled his seed on her leg. Athena wiped it off and threw it on the ground, and from it was born Erichthonius, whom she regarded as her son. Her virgin status remained, however, unchallenged.

  24. See Rose, Sons of the Gods (see footnote 15), 247–48.