INTRODUCTION
A PROPER introduction to these plays, even for the reader who knows no Greek, would occupy a whole volume much larger than this little book. Their subject-matter is so near to the core of human feeling, to the central experiences of life from which all human studies take their origin, that the careful reader of them finds himself turning aside, now to history and pre-history, now to philosophy, theology, and ethics, now to the development of drama as an art; and all the time held by the intensity of the author’s poetic conception which springs to life in line after line like an inexhaustible fountain. In the following pages I shall not attempt even to summarize the wealth of learned, imaginative, and critical writing which is available in libraries for the enrichment of our understanding of this work; but merely to give the minimum of information necessary for a first reading. Those who already have some knowledge, even if slight, of the world in which Aeschylus lived will find their desire for further reading best satisfied by selecting from the short list of books given on page 197.
In modern times the Oresteian trilogy has rightly been accorded a place among the greatest achievements of the human mind. Much of the dramatic excitement, much of the philosophic intensity, of this work, perhaps also some hint of its poetic splendour, may reach the modern reader through a translation. But the basis of it all is a story which, like many great stories, grew gradually into shape through several centuries; a story compounded of fact and imagination, reflecting the experience, belief, and aspiration of a vital society, and blending within itself the poetry of common life and the vision of the prophet. It is a long story, and has been told very often. In telling it once more, for the interest of those who read the plays for the first time, I must begin with the remotest myth, and end with documented history.
In the beginning of the world, Ouranos was king of the gods. He was the sky, and Gaia, the earth, was his wife. Of the age during which he reigned very little is known. Certain other deities were already established in power, notably Fate, or Moira. In time Ouranos and his age declined and disappeared, and Cronos his son reigned in his stead.
During the reign of Cronos the human race was created. The number of deities increased, and their functions became more distinct. Man was kept in a state of wretched weakness and subservience; but our race from its first appearance proved a source of irresistible fascination to the immortals. They tried to impose on man certain principles of behaviour; and man in turn tried various ingenious ways of influencing gods and the powers of nature to favour his enterprises. The age of Cronos was in general characterized as the age of anarchy, the time before the institution of property, the establishment of cities, or the framing of laws. We may fairly infer that it was not gods, but humans, who first began to be dissatisfied with the blessings of anarchy; and one god was on their side, Prometheus, a son of the earth, himself the germ of intelligence in a brute universe, the germ of moral order in the midst of blank confusion. Nature itself was similarly dissatisfied, and stirring towards the principle of order. The time ripened for a new dynasty.
So, some time in the third millennium B.C. (a date may establish some relation between myth and history), there occurred that strange and unquestionable event which was the vision Keats realized in ‘Hyperion’. From the sea and the mountains, from forest and stream, young gods and goddesses were born, whose eyes expressed knowledge and imagination, laughter and feeling, order and control. Their chief was Zeus, whose name, which means the sky, claimed direct descent from Ouranos. The old order rallied its forces against the new; but Prometheus belonged by nature to the age of reason and law, and by his help the cosmic battle was won, the age of anarchy defeated, and the Olympian dynasty established.
Prometheus was rewarded for his services with an invitation to dine at the table of the Olympian gods. There, in pity for the sad plight of mankind, he stole a spark of divine fire and conveyed it to the earth. He taught men all the uses of fire, and in particular how to melt metal and shape it into weapons and tools. Zeus, seeing what increase of strength and confidence men would gain from fire, was angry that divine supremacy should be so imperilled, and demanded repentance and complete submission from Prometheus. When the champion of mankind proved defiant, Zeus sent Hephaestus, the Olympian fire-god, to chain him to a rocky peak in the Caucasus mountains. This event forms the opening scene of Aeschylus’ play, Prometheus Bound.
Prometheus continued his defiance of tyranny, and reinforced it by declaring that he knew an ancient prophecy, revealed to him by his mother, the earth (the original holder of all foreknowledge), which threatened the ultimate downfall of Zeus unless he should be warned in time. For a thousand years Prometheus endured the successive torments which Zeus inflicted to make him reveal the prophecy; until at last Zeus turned from violence to reason and offered Prometheus release and pardon in return for his secret. This stage in the story brings us to about the middle of the second millennium B.C.
Prometheus then revealed the prophecy. It concerned one of the sea-nymphs named Thetis, whose destiny was ‘to bear a son greater than his father’. Zeus had relented only just in time; he was already enamoured of this nymph and contemplating a union. Prometheus was released, and Zeus immediately chose a mortal husband for Thetis, a young man named Peleus who had sailed with Jason in the ship Argo. Such delighted interest had been aroused among the Olympian deities by this dénouement, that they consented to attend the wedding-feast in a body.
All the gods were invited, except (naturally) a minor power called Eris, the goddess of strife. Eris, however, came uninvited, and threw on to the table a golden apple inscribed ‘For the fairest’. Hera, the wife of Zeus, Athene, the maiden goddess of wisdom and valour, and, Aphrodite, the goddess of love, quarrelled for possession of the apple. To settle the matter, Zeus sent them to the most beautiful of mortal youths, Paris, the son of Priam king of Troy. Each goddess offered Paris a bribe: Hera offered supremacy in government, Athene supremacy in war; Aphrodite offered him the most beautiful of women for his wife. Paris gave the apple to Aphrodite.
Troy was a rich and powerful fortified city on the eastern side of the Dardanelles. (This modern name is derived from Dardanus, the founder of the Trojan race, who in Homer are called Dardanidae. The name ‘Greeks’, like the name ‘Trojans’, is a Latin word; Greece was ‘Hellas’, and its people ‘Hellenes’.) The Trojan way of life had many features in common with that of the Greeks. Behaviour on the battlefield observed (or failed to observe) roughly the same conventions. Both nations were highly skilled in the training and use of horses. Both recognized as the unit of government a city in which an absolute and hereditary monarch ruled over citizens and the country people of the surrounding district. Both accepted slavery as an institution. But Greeks affected to regard Trojans as typical Orientals, as effeminate and irrational, as slavish subjects of despotic kings, as cruel, primitive, and unreliable. Greek tragedy, which was all written within a few generations of the final overthrow of monarchy in Athens, naturally expresses this contempt for despotism more strongly than Homer, who wrote when Greek cities were always ruled by kings; though it is probable that Greek kings took more notice of advice from their nobles than was customary further east.
One of the most powerful Greek cities in the second millennium B.C. was Argos, in the Peloponnese. Two brothers, Atreus and Thyestes, descended through Pelops from Tantalus (who, like Prometheus, feasted with gods and was punished for betraying their secrets), had quarrelled about succession to the throne of Argos; moreover, Thyestes had seduced Atreus’ wife. Atreus reckoned that the score would be settled once for all if he could trick Thyestes into committing some unclean or sacrilegious act which would render him permanently taboo in the eyes of the Argive citizens. He secretly murdered Thyestes’ two young sons, and served their flesh to Thyestes at a. banquet. Thyestes went into exile and died there; but he had a third son, an infant called Aegisthus, whom he took with him and brought up in exile.
Atreus himself got away with murder; but such debts are not forgotten. His eldest son, Agamemnon, inherited the throne of Argos, and with it the curse that had settled on the family. His brother Menelaus later became king of Sparta in succession to his father-in-law Tyndareos. In the plays of Euripides we find Menelaus generally presented as an unpleasant character; but in the Oresteia (though he does not appear) he seems to command the love and loyalty of Argive citizens almost equally with Agamemnon.
Menelaus as a young man had been one among a great number of noble Greeks who had haunted the palace of Tyndareos king of Sparta. Tyndareos’ wife Leda had been loved by Zeus, who visited her in the form of a swan. Leda bore Zeus twin daughters, Helen and Clytemnestra. (Both are often called ‘daughter of Tyndareos’; but whereas Helen is as often called ‘daughter of Zeus’, Clytemnestra’s divine parentage is seldom referred to.) Helen’s extraordinary beauty attracted innumerable suitors and aroused such emotion that they all entered into a mutual pact: each man swore that he would accept Helen’s choice as final, and offer his armed service to the husband, should his possession of her ever be threatened. By what principle, instinct or calculation Helen was led to choose Menelaus will remain one of the delightful puzzles of history. He was a good fighter; a man of few words and little wit. Almost the only other thing known about him is that he had auburn hair.
Agamemnon’s character is clearer. He was ‘every inch a king’; and he would have liked to be a thorough-going tyrant, but in general recognized the necessity for compromise with inferiors. His resentment at having to compromise was shown in a readiness to deceive on occasion; and itself arose from a deep-rooted weakness of will, and lack of confidence in his own authority. It was Agamemnon’s inevitable fate to marry Helen’s sister, Clytemnestra.
Clytemnestra is the most powerful figure in the Oresteia; one of the most powerful, indeed, in all dramatic literature; but this figure is very largely the imaginative creation of Aeschylus. Other writers of his period, whose works are lost to us, may have contributed something; but Homer gives only a meagre statement of the one act for which she was universally known, that she plotted with her lover to murder her husband. He neither examines her motives nor describes her character. When, however, we meet Clytemnestra in the Oresteia, we find her as vivid and fully developed a personality as the great heroes of the Iliad. She is the only character who appears in all three plays. Clearly Aeschylus intends her part in the drama to be significant. We must defer consideration of this until later, and meanwhile continue the story.
King Priam of Troy sent his youngest son, Paris, as ambassador to Sparta; there he was entertained by Clytemnestra’s sister Helen. Menelaus, with what seems to have been his normal stupidity, found it necessary to sail to Crete on State business and leave Helen and Paris alone. Aphrodite fulfilled her promise. When Menelaus returned, he called upon all those who had been his fellow-suitors to fulfil theirs, and aid him in pursuing Helen to Troy, and burning to the ground that stronghold of Oriental lust and treachery. There was an almost universal response to his appeal, and Agamemnon was made Commander-in-Chief of a vast army and fleet which assembled at Aulis, a bay sheltered by the island of Euboea on the east coast of Greece.
When everything was ready for the start, the wind changed to the north. The usual fair-wind sacrifices failed to have their effect. Days lengthened into months, and still northerly gales kept the fleet harbour-bound, till food-supplies became an acute problem. At length the prophet Calchas pronounced that the anger of the virgin goddess Artemis must be appeased by the sacrifice of Agamemnon’s virgin daughter Iphigenia. Agamemnon protested, and was taunted by his fellow-kings with faint-heartedness. In the end he wrote to Clytemnestra saying he had arranged for his daughter to be married to Achilles, and commanding her to be sent to Aulis. Iphigenia came, and was duly slaughtered. The wind veered, and the fleet set sail. In the ninth year of the siege Paris was killed in battle. In the tenth Troy was captured by the ruse of the wooden horse; all adult males were killed, the women and children enslaved, and the city reduced to ashes.
The play Agamemnon opens in Argos a few hours after the capture of Troy; and its climax is the murder of Agamemnon, on his return, by Clytemnestra. In The Choephori Agamemnon’s son Orestes, who had grown up in exile, returns to Argos at Apollo’s command to avenge his father; he kills both Clytemnestra and her lover Aegis thus, and departs pursued by the Furies. Finally, in The Eumenides, Orestes stands his trial before Athene and the Athenian court of Areopagus. The Furies accuse him, Apollo defends him; the mortal votes are evenly divided; and Athene gives her casting vote for his acquittal. The Furies at first threaten Athens with plagues, but are at last persuaded by Athene to accept a home and a position of honour in her city. Such is the bare outline of the three plays, which will be discussed in more detail later; but first it is necessary to give some brief account of the history and the ideas which form the background of the trilogy.*
In the 800 years between the fall of Troy and the rise of Athens, Greek social and political life underwent many changes. Each city and island for the most part maintained its independence; sometimes one city or group of cities was more powerful, sometimes another. Periods of prosperity and peace, by reducing the necessity for a unified command in the hands of a king, gradually transferred power from the kings to the nobles, then from the nobles to rich merchants who had risen by trade from the ranks of the peasants. By the seventh and sixth centuries merchants of outstanding ability or good luck established themselves in many cities as tyrants; and these tyrants tended to pay tribute to the powerful empire of Persia, which in return would guarantee their position. Finally, about the end of the sixth century a great movement for freedom resulted in the expulsion of most of the Greek tyrants and the establishment of democratic constitutions. The last tyrant of Athens was expelled in 510 B.C. He was with the Persian expedition which in 490 B.C. was utterly defeated by the Athenians at Marathon.
The plays of Aeschylus were all written within some thirty years after the battle of Marathon, while the new Athenian democracy was bursting into full life, and preparing with boundless confidence to take upon itself the leadership of the Greek world. Aeschylus and his contemporaries had spent their youth amidst tyrannies, revolutions, and wars. They were now called upon to govern, to judge, and to legislate. The new moral responsibility of the ordinary citizen was fully accepted and deeply felt. No important burden was delegated either to aristocrats or to officials; the citizens themselves decided in person, by a majority vote, all judicial and political questions. One problem, therefore, occupied their minds insistently: What is justice? What is the relation of justice to vengeance? Can justice be reconciled with the demands of religion, the force of human feeling, the intractability of Fate?
This problem was complicated for the contemporaries of Aeschylus by the fact that religion spoke with a divided voice. There were indeed two religions inextricably mixed: the old religion and the new. The old religion, deriving from the period before the advent of Zeus and the Olympians, was in origin probably a worship of the dead, and therefore was concerned with placating the powers that live under the earth, the ‘chthonian gods’ (from chthon, the earth). The earth itself has, naturally, always been thought of as female, and other female deities were worshipped as well, such as the Fates and the Furies, and Themis, goddess of justice and order, the mother of Prometheus, whom Aeschylus identifies with Earth. The religious rites of the Eleusinian mysteries were also connected with this older religion, for they centred round the worship of Demeter, goddess of crops (the name means ‘mother earth’), and her daughter Persephone, who was queen of the lower world. The Eleusinian rites, however, were mainly joyful in character, while, the worship of chthonian powers was more generally associated with fear and mourning. The worship of the Olympians, on the other hand, was always an occasion of enjoyment; and dancing, athletic and dramatic performances, and feasting, were its natural modes of expression.
Legend described the rise of the new religion in terms of a ‘theomachy’, or battle of gods, in which Zeus and the Olympians overcame Cronos and the gods of the earth. History connects it with the invasion of Greece, some time in the fifteenth century B.C., by a warlike race from the north of Europe who called themselves Achaeans, and whose gods were closely related to the Nordic gods who figure in early English legend. These armed and organized invaders easily conquered the indigenous tribes, built themselves walled cities, and established dynasties, laws, and military traditions. The old order was not simply abolished; many of its cults and customs remained, and some of the older deities were still universally honoured. So by a whole series of expedient compromises the two religions flourished side by side, their opposite characters giving scope for a wide variety of personal preference in religious practice. It seems probable, however, that essential differences between the two religions from time to time made themselves strongly felt; and in the middle of the sixth century Pisistratus, ‘tyrant’ of Athens, did his best to strengthen the Olympian cults by the building of temples, by the establishment of the Panathenaic Festival (of which more will be said in connexion with The Eumenides), and by encouraging the circulation and public recitation of the Homeric poems. None the less, the old cults remained vital and popular, and their rivalry with the official religion was still keenly felt in the time of Aeschylus. The question of the relation of justice to vengeance was also the question of the relation of Zeus to the chthonian gods.
Pre-Olympian religion would roughly equate justice with vengeance; and the Furies were there to see that vengeance was exacted, whether by human or divine action. The function of the Furies was to punish three major sins: blasphemy against the gods, treachery to a host or guest, and the shedding of kindred blood. From very early times these sins were felt to threaten the basis of human society, and therefore to bring a curse on the community which condoned them. Thus the Furies, in hounding such sinners away from their homes, performed an essential and universal service; and for this they were honoured as Eumenides, or Kindly Ones; though the name certainly represented a desire to appease as well as a desire to honour. Their horrible aspect and relentless cruelty became the safeguard of cities. But Aeschylus shows clearly that their principles are inconsistent and unsatisfactory; for while they will punish a son who does not avenge his father, and punish equally a son who kills his mother, they will ignore the guilt of a wife who kills her husband, because he is not her blood-relation. This is an intolerable position; as Apollo points out, it implies a contempt for the marriage-bond; it also shows that the Furies act only by blind rule-of-thumb, and are incapable of dealing properly with a special case like that of Orestes. More than this, as far as the Furies are concerned, a single murder may lead to an insoluble feud and an endless series of murders in successive generations. In larger terms, then, the old religion is no safe moral guide in urgent situations which involve life and death; the quest for justice receives no solution from the chthonian gods.
The next source from which a reliable moral sanction may be sought is Apollo, who speaks through his oracle at Delphi. For many hundreds of years, since before the advent of Zeus, cities and individuals from every part of Greece, when faced with perpelxing problems, moral or political, had commonly sent to consult this oracle; and the college of priests who administered it had acquired a unique position of influence in the whole Greek world, so that in any quarrel between States the support of Delphi might prove decisive. Just as the Hebrew law of the Old Testament, ‘An eye for an eye and a tooth for a, tooth’, imposed an exact limit on the indiscriminate vengeance of primitive savagery, so the Delphic code enjoined the taking of life for life by the next of kin to a murdered man, and then offered to purify the avenger by ritual cleansing, and so avoid further murders and an endless feud. But this principle, though preferable to the blind and unlimited operation of the Furies, is still unsatisfactory. Acting on it, Apollo has instructed Orestes to kill his mother; an act which Orestes himself abhors as deeply as everyone who hears of it, as an offence against the tenderest of all natural affections. Apollo’s code in this instance proves barbaric; and the barbaric basis of it is made very clear by Apollo himself when, in the opening scene of The Eumenides, he abuses those repellent beings whom he had himself used (see Choeph:, p. 113) as a threat to compel Orestes to carry out his command. Aeschylus shows that the quest for justice can hope for no final solution from Apollo and the principle of vengeance. (See further pp. 34–5.)
As Agamemnon is dominated by the relentlessness of Fate, The Choephori by the command of Apollo, so The Eumenides presents the true justice of Athene, expressed in the authority and wisdom of an established court of law, the Athenian Areopagus. In bringing on to the stage this ancient Athenian institution, as a body founded by Athene herself for the purpose of trying Orestes on a charge of murder, Aeschylus achieves two ends. First, as an ultimate solution of the deepest moral problems, he holds up something which we might describe as embodying the ‘Athenian way of life’, in contrast to the primitive ideas of the old religion and the inadequate compromise of the ‘Delphic code’. But at the same time he deals with a burning political question of the day.
For the last 130 years, since the Constitution of Solon (about 592 B.C.), the Areopagus (so called because it met on the ‘Hill of Ares’) had held a dominating position in the political life of Athens. Its powers over every aspect of community life were considerable; and as its members were life-members, its practice tended to become reactionary. Within a generation after the battle of Marathon the progressive democracy of the Athenian Assembly had decided to shake off this curb of freedom. In 462 B.c., four years before the production of the Oresteia, the Areopagus had been deprived of all its powers except that of jurisdiction in cases of homicide. This revolutionary change had aroused intense feeling among both supporters and opponents. The position of the court of Areopagus was guarded by strong religious sanctions. The Eumenides, whose function was closely connected with the judicial powers of this court, had an immemorial shrine in a cavern at the foot of the same hill, and thus represented the guardianship of the chthonian gods. The Areopagites were recruited from the most wealthy Athenian classes. Thus the propertied aristocracy found themselves allied with the old-fashioned country folk in indignation at the radical dispossessing of their ‘House of Lords’. A democratic leader named Ephialtes framed the resolution and carried the reform; he was murdered not long afterwards, and his murderer was never discovered.
It is to the tension caused by this dispute that Aeschylus addresses himself in the second half of The Eumenides. He asserts that the Areopagus from its foundation was not a political executive, but a judicial court. He states its divine sanctions in the highest possible terms; and by showing the Eumenides as yielding ultimately to Athene’s patient persuasion, and accepting both the equal judgement of the Areopagites and Athene’s casting vote, he pleads for a reasonable spirit of accommodation. When at the end of the play agreement is at last reached, those present on the stage are joined by a number of men and women of all ages, and children, who form a procession immediately recognizable as the great Panathenaic procession, the culminating event of the four-yearly Panathenaic Festival. A further link between past and present is found in the fact that one feature of the Panathenaic procession was a numerous contingent of the ‘resident aliens’ who had found a home in Athens; and now the Eumenides are welcomed by the name of ‘resident aliens’ – an honourable name, for Athenians prided themselves on the liberal welcome they extended to immigrants from other cities. Thus the grand drama of justice is made to end in the glorification of Athens and her supreme judicial court, in the reconciliation of the old order with the new, of tradition with progress, of Fate with Zeus. And this final mention of Zeus as lord of the new dispensation inaugurated by Athene is made in such a way as to remind us that at various points throughout the whole trilogy the name of Zeus has been associated also with the earliest phase of man’s development towards a proper understanding of justice; with the unbending primitive law, ‘The doer must suffer’, as well as with the sympathetic wisdom of Athene. The Furies, who derived their authority from Fate, yet were from the beginning the instruments of Zeus, have changed to the Eumenides, the Kindly Ones, and now take their place as embodying that ultimate sanction of fear which underlies the new order, as it dominated the old.
There is a second great question which Aeschylus considers in the Oresteia; and it concerns the central figure of Clytemnestra. She is first mentioned, by the Watchman, as a woman with a man’s will. In her first scene with the Elders, when she has ended her speech with ‘These are a woman’s words’, they reply, ‘Madam, your words are like a man’s.’ Clytemnestra was right about the message of the beacons, and the Elders were wrong. When the Herald arrives, she shocks them into subservience by the boldness of her lying. Confronted with her proud, forbidding husband, who with crushing sourness tells her not to make a woman of him, she takes the man’s part and imposes her will. Once in the play she is defeated: she cannot wrest a word from Cassandra. When the murder is done, she rails at the Elders, whose unmanly indecision had paltered while the king died, for still treating her as a thoughtless woman; and speaks of the man she has chosen for her shield, Aegisthus – who is called ‘woman’ by the Elders, and by Orestes in the next play. Her status as a wife has been touched by both Chryseis and Cassandra – but that, though galling enough, is of minor importance, since convention allowed a soldier his concubine. Clytemnestra’s tragedy both began and ended with outrage to her motherhood, when Iphigenia was taken from her, and when Orestes killed her. In the climax of The Eumenides, the trial-scene, we have a long argument between Apollo and the Furies on the respective rights and status of a man and a woman in marriage and parenthood *; and a brief but emphatic argument on the rival claims to freedom of a husband and a wife finds a place also at the climactic moment of The Choephori, just before Orestes kills his mother. Clearly the relation of man and woman in marriage must be named, after the ‘quest for justice’, as the second great theme of the trilogy. The question remains, in what form was this matter felt as a living issue in Aeschylus’ day?
Athenian society in that period gave to women a somewhat equivocal status, of which a good description is to be found in Professor Kitto’s The Greeks (Penguin Books), pp. 219–36, though he perhaps over-estimates the happiness that women derived from their privileges. Since Aeschylus was born the personal liberty and social and political responsibility of every male citizen had increased immeasurably; and in this exhilarating expansion women had had very little share. Yet the personal qualities which in men produced the greatness of Athens must certainly have been present in women, and, denied proper expression, can only have engendered the poison of resentment and perverted ambition. A generation after Aeschylus, Euripides spoke explicitly for women in the person of Medea, who, like Clytemnestra, satisfied her indignation by murder. There were Clytemnestras in Athenian society in the fifth century, and a study of extant law-court speeches might suggest some names. Aeschylus does not justify his murderess, any more than Euripides justifies his Medea or Ibsen his Hedda Gabler; but he reiterates the dangerous anomalies which must occur when, in a social framework giving every freedom to men and none to women, a passionate and strong-willed wife confronts a weak but arrogant husband. Many Athenian marriages doubtless were based on love and some degree of personal equality, and gave scope to the wife to use her gifts and intelligence; but a woman whose marriage was less fortunate had neither redress nor escape, imprisoned in a position which denied her a due measure of freedom and respect. Athene in The Eumenides gives her vote to Orestes because ‘in all things she is on the father’s side’; that is to say, Athenian society is, and must be, a man-governed society. In such a society men are responsible for the position they impose upon women. Clytemnestra, then, is not merely a murderess, the horrifying instrument of pitiless justice. She is also the mother of Iphigenia, and, in that character, ‘a symbol of all wives and mothers who suffer from the inferior status of the woman in marriage’ (Winnington-Ingram).* She is driven to her murderous act not only by love of Aegisthus, hatred of Agamemnon, jealousy of Cassandra; the deepest spring of her tragedy is the knowledge that she, who has it in her to be the head of a kingdom, if need be, as well as of a family, can be freely ignored as a wife and outraged as a mother by a man she knows her inferior. She thus confronts the Athenians with a problem which it is evident they have not solved.
The other problem, however, the quest for justice in the relation of citizen with citizen, is, if not completely solved, at least shown to be within reach of solution through the wisdom of Athene as expressed in the democratic constitution which Aeschylus’ fellow-citizens had evolved. Aeschylus had some reason for feeling that in the democracy of his day the political and social feuds and struggles of centuries, all conducted in the name of justice on one side at least, and often on both, had at last achieved their end; that the Athenian State offered a hopeful approach to every moral problem of society. His treatment of the theme of feud and reconciliation in the Oresteia suggests that he saw the same principle at work in history. He expresses it in two statements, which recur in various forms: The doer must suffer, and By suffering man learns. These are laws of Fate, and even Zeus must obey them. Zeus learnt in time to compromise with Prometheus and abandon absolute tyranny. So man too learns in the end the folly of misdoing, though it may take several generations of suffering to drive the lesson home. And the lesson which suffering teaches is not merely how to avoid suffering; it is how to do right, how to achieve justice. This is made clear in the third choral Ode in Agamemnon. Similarly in the second Ode the story of Paris, his proud wilfulness, his long defiance, and final overthrow, illustrates the slow but sure working of a moral universe, and prepares our minds for witnessing the same principle at work nearer home, in the family of Agamemnon. The sin of Atreus has to be expiated by his son; but the son too commits sin, by sacrificing his own daughter, and thus doubly justifies the fate which is prepared for him. Orestes is bound by immemorial tradition to exact vengeance for his murdered father; but his deed, even by the primitive standards of the old religion, is a still worse crime than that which he has avenged. In the end reconciliation is achieved. Just as Prometheus suffered for a thousand years, and then made terms with Zeus; so Orestes suffers torment at the hands of the Furies, and is at last granted release. Thus out of sin and struggle, revenge and atonement, there appears at last a new phase in man’s quest for justice.
So the trilogy ends on a note of hopefulness and confidence; and in the final procession of The Eumenides Aeschylus, as it were, hands over to his fellow-citizens the issue of man’s perpetual struggle with sin and vengeance, leaves with them the mystery of suffering and freewill. But the note of hopefulness is only the last note of a long and tragic tune, of which we learnt the refrain in Agamemnon: ‘Cry Sorrow, sorrow – yet let good prevail!’ The prayer answers the cry; but cry and prayer are both always present in the music of humanity. The prayer expresses a long hope for the future, inspired by contemplation of a long period of past suffering. Each man as philosopher or patriot may live by hope; but in his own flesh and spirit he knows neither past nor future, only the present;
Though philosophy and patriotism end the drama in hope, human suffering and despair fill the more memorable scenes. The joy of the final Chorus does not refute the realism of Cassandra’s parting words,
And grief itself’s hardly more pitiable than joy.
For it is only on rare occasions, such as the witnessing of transcendent drama in a unique religious setting, that men are raised by communion of emotion to regard life with the eyes of philosophers. Life itself is lived day by day, and suffering is not sublimated or dramatized but endured. The hopefulness of Aeschylus belongs partly to his own day, partly to those in every age who have the philosopher’s vision; but his despair, his knowledge of suffering and of courage – this is what makes his poetry as true for us as it was for his Athenians; for a large part of truth is necessarily tragic, and tragedy, the greatest of the literary arts, was the creation of Aeschylus.
AGAMEMNON
The play opens with a brief scene in which a Watchman posted on the palace roof by Clytemnestra sees the beacon which announces the capture of Troy. There are two notes in his speech: hope, because Agamemnon may now be expected home; and foreboding, because of the unfaithfulness of the wife who awaits him. Then comes a long lyric passage in which the Chorus, Elders of Argos, express the same mixed feelings, with stronger emphasis on foreboding. It is not only Clytemnestra who arouses their fear – they trust Agamemnon to find a way to deal with her when he returns; but they know that the king himself is burdened with guilt. They recount in detail how Agamemnon, inheriting the family curse from Atreus, found himself faced with a fearful dilemma, and made the wrong choice – to sacrifice his daughter. They point out that Fate is not absolute: Fate confronts man with a choice, and if man chooses wrongly the sin is his.
Clytemnestra now comes to tell them that Troy is captured, and answers their incredulity with a description of the series of beacons she had posted to span a distance of some 400 miles. The Elders listen politely; and, carried away by her eloquence, seem to believe that her news is true. Then in a long choral Ode, they trace the hand of Zeus, which has revealed itself in so notable a punishment of sin – the sin of Paris in seducing Helen. From this sin has resulted, first, the utter destruction of the city and people of Troy; but the Chorus describe a secondary result, the sorrows they have known in Argos, the grief of the deserted king, Menelaus, and the resentment of the people of Greece at the slaughter of their men in a foreign war. Agamemnon will not come home to an easy situation. Success and glory are in themselves a danger. In the end, discouraged by this recurrence of foreboding, they reflect how improbable is Clytemnestra’s story of the beacons, and decide to think no more of it.*
Here an interval takes place, representing the lapse of some days. The Chorus reassemble when Agamemnon’s Herald arrives to announce his master’s return. He describes the hardships of ten years, and the disastrous storms of the homeward voyage. The third choral Ode speaks of the beauty of Helen, and the terrible curse which followed her to Troy. But that curse expressed, not the gods’ envy of mortal happiness, but their anger at mortal sin. Troy fell because, in the person of Paris, she sinned against the holy law which commands mutual trust and respect between host and guest. By refusing to give Helen back, Troy took this sin upon herself, and suffered for it. The Chorus are so deeply occupied with applying the law of retribution to Paris, that they forget the theme of the first Ode; its application to Agamemnon has faded from their minds, as the victorious king enters in his chariot, followed by a second chariot containing spoils of war, and Cassandra, the captive princess of Troy.
The Elders greet Agamemnon; and try, without being specific, to warn him that he may receive some welcomes less genuine than theirs. He replies in a tone of some self-satisfaction; and then Clytemnestra appears. Her speeches in this scene are packed with subtlety. Her welcome is fulsome in its protestation of love. Her reference to his ten years’ absence, which should have sounded like a tender expression of sorrow, by a slight shift of emphasis becomes a bitter accusation of neglect. Every sentence is calculated to cause Agamemnon uneasiness, yet give him no shadow of excuse for expressing it. She harps on one theme – Agamemnon’s death – the many deaths that rumour had given him in his absence. The eagerness with which she had awaited him is extravagantly drawn; and its effect is, as she intended, to awake distaste rather than suspicion. Then she calls upon her maids to spread a carpet of purple cloth from the chariot to the palace door, to receive the feet of the conqueror.
Agamemnon in reply snubs his wife resoundingly, and rebukes her for thus inviting the jealousy of the gods to fall on him. She accepts this without any hint of resentment, and rejoins with a flood of two-faced imagery which rouses in the audience an uneasiness to balance Agamemnon’s. The sea, she says, is an inexhaustible source of purple dye; and Agamemnon can well afford to tread on expensive cloth. But the ‘sea’ she speaks of is the family feud, inexhaustible in hate; the ‘purple dye’ is blood shed for revenge; the ‘one outpouring’, the ‘safe journey’s end’, are alike ambiguous. The ‘unripe grape’ is a word also used for a ‘young virgin’, and therefore means Iphigenia, from whose death springs the wrath of Zeus against her father; ‘coolness’ may be either a shelter from the heat, or the chill of death; and ‘perfected’ is the word used of an unblemished victim upon which all the rites preliminary to sacrifice have been performed. But Agamemnon, self-confident and contemptuous, listens without understanding. (See Appendix, page 195.)
Meanwhile Clytemnestra’s maids have draped the floor and the steps with purple. Agamemnon refuses to set foot upon it. Clytemnestra cajoles, suggesting he is afraid. At last he graciously yields, has his boots removed by a slave, and treads on the purple cloth. Clytemnestra utters a shrill and terrifying cry of triumph, ostensibly to celebrate the king’s victorious return, actually to mark the moment when she feels her own victory assured. Again she has caused uneasiness mounting to momentary terror for the Elders, until her apparent meaning convinces them; only Cassandra knows her real meaning. The king enters his palace. Clytemnestra remains behind for a brief prayer to Zeus, that he will bring her designs to fulfilment; then she too goes in.
This is a significant episode. By persuading Agamemnon against his better judgement to walk on purple to the altar where he himself is to be the ‘perfected’ victim, Clytemnestra achieves three things. First, she demonstrates her personal ascendancy over her husband; however he may disguise his weakness, he knows that he is in her hands. But his yielding is not only folly; it is sin. To a Greek the essence of piety was humility, the conscious acknowledgement that the gods are greater than man, and that man’s greatness is held by their sufferance. Agamemnon in his first speech had arrogantly allowed Heaven a share in his glory as conqueror; to walk on purple would symbolize his appropriation of the whole glory of victory, and be a visible defiance of the gods. It is the kingly ambition of his nature which tempts him to make this visible claim before his wife and his subjects; it is his weakness that admits the momentary pretence, which he knows to be false, that such pride can escape divine anger. The second thing, then, that Clytemnestra achieves is the planting of conscious guilt in his heart. He is about to approach an altar to pray; and he will pray knowing that he addresses an offended deity. The third is the most important of all: this action demonstrates to Argos, and to the audience, that the man whose fall we are to witness is self-doomed; that he is by nature the kind of man who cannot survive in a world ruled by just and holy powers; that he is one whom the gods must inevitably destroy. This realization gives exact meaning to Clytemnestra’s words,
The Chorus, left alone, are now thoroughly aroused to the sense of impending catastrophe. Can evil not be averted? Yes – by one who is ready to pay due respect to the gods. But the king’s lack of respect reminds them again that he is already in debt, for the blood of his own daughter. For the first time a suspicion of the truth touches them; but they dare not name so horrible a thing. At this point we are surprised by a reappearance of Clytemnestra, who comes to call on Cassandra to take her place with the rest of the household at the ritual cleansing that is about to be observed. Cassandra appears neither to see nor to hear her; and the queen retires, leaving the Elders to deal with her.
They already know her reputation as a prophetess. They now learn that this power was given her by Apollo himself, after she had promised to return his love. When she broke her promise, Apollo in anger doomed her to be always a true prophet and always disbelieved; but he still respected her virginity. At the fall of Troy Agamemnon asked for Cassandra as his share of the spoil; and what Apollo left untouched, Agamemnon violated.
Cassandra trembles, possessed by the prophet-god. She speaks of Thyestes’ banquet, and sees the walls of the palace still dripping blood. She sees Agamemnon’s death, and the sword in Clytemnestra’s grasp, and describes her vision in lurid pictorial flashes which the Elders will not or dare not understand. She sees her own body lying dead beside the king’s and weeps for her own pitiful fate; and still the Chorus are obtuse, though sympathetic. Then, abandoning lyrical ejaculation, she makes a supreme effort to control herself and speak clearly, in the ordinary blank verse of dialogue. She moves nearer to simple statement, and at last declares,
Immediately Apollo’s curse operates: the Elders, who hitherto have inclined to belief, retreat in panic from plain truth. Cassandra turns from them to address Apollo, whom she accuses and defies as her destroyer, flinging off and trampling the sacred emblems with which he had invested her as his prophetess. She foretells the further progress of the curse, Orestes’ vengeance upon Clytemnestra; and with a prayer for a quick death, and a short despairing elegy on all human happiness, goes into the palace.
Soon after, the death-shriek of the king is heard; the Elders debate rapidly what to do; and the palace doors open to reveal Clytemnestra standing over the bleeding corpses of Agamemnon and Cassandra.
The impact of Clytemnestra’s exultant and defiant realism as she claims the carnage for her own handiwork cannot be paralleled for power by anything in ancient drama. A long altercation follows; as it proceeds, we begin at last to see behind the armour of ferocity something of the bitterness of suffering which has festered within her since Iphigenia was taken from her and killed; and something of the weariness which the strain of revenge has left behind. Clytemnestra may be a fiend, but she is also a woman. The Chorus are forced to admit that, though they must condemn her act, they cannot see where truth and justice lie; and at this point, to complicate still further the despairing search for justice, Aegisthus enters, and with his first words offers thanks to the just gods.
Aegisthus’ character is described for us by the Elders as that of a coward who would not go with Agamemnon to the war, a lecher who seduced the king’s wife, and again a coward who allowed a woman to wield the sword against his enemy. We must also look at the lines Aeschylus has given him to speak. His statements are free from boast-fulness and from pretence, and his description of events is objective – as far as it goes; we notice, however, that when he speaks of the banishment of Thyestes by Atreus he omits to mention the reason – that Thyestes had seduced Atreus’ wife. For the rest, he makes no claim to be a hero; but as he tells – with a passionate precision which cannot fail to win some sympathy – the ghastly story of what Agamemnon’s father did to his father Thyestes, we realize that the filial obligation which drove him to plot vengeance on the son of Atreus is exactly the same as that which now lies upon Orestes, which we shall see Orestes fulfil in the next play. There is then no point in branding Aegisthus coward because he did not go to fight in Agamemnon’s war. The other two charges, of course, remain; but are they, taken together, a worse crime than matricide? or worse than the crime which Aegisthus had to avenge? The Chorus themselves admit that, unlike Clytemnestra, he refrains from insulting the dead king. His appeal is to justice, and his resolve is to rule. Aeschylus does not praise or excuse Aegisthus; but his insistence on presenting his case fairly ensures that the urgency of the central theme, What is justice? is still further heightened by the closing scene of the play. Challenged by the Elders, Aegisthus makes a show of force; Clytemnestra pleads for restraint; and the Elders withdraw, shouting threats and defiance.
THE CHOEPHORI
Or THE LIBATION-BEARERS
Seven years have passed. Clytemnestra and Aegisthus have ruled Argos firmly, but have squandered the treasure that Agamemnon brought home from Troy. The people are cowed and resentful. Clytemnestra’s daughter, Electra, who some time before Agamemnon’s return conveyed Orestes safely out of Argos and sent him to relatives in Phocis, has continued her defiance of her mother, and is now reduced to a condition of life hardly different from that of a slave, unmarried, hoping only for Orestes’ return. Agamemnon’s body, refused funeral honours, lies under a plain mound of earth outside the city walls.
The text of the opening speech is defective; but the drift is clear. Orestes, now a man, is standing, in the dusk before dawn, at his father’s tomb, to seek his aid and blessing in the duty of revenge which he has returned to undertake. He soon sees Electra coming with some female slaves from the palace, bringing libations of wine to offer at the tomb to the spirits of the dead. He conceals himself, learns by listening why the ‘Libation-Bearers’ have come; then appears, makes himself known to his sister, and with her plots the murder of Clytemnestra and Aegisthus.
Orestes and Electra are not characters in the same full sense as Clytemnestra and Agamemnon in the first play. The one fact known about Orestes, that he was commanded by a god to kill his mother, is so absorbing in its terror that it leaves no room in the portrait of him for incidental features. He is an instrument in Apollo’s ruthless hand, a stage in man’s moral pilgrimage, a battle-ground where justice joins issue with pity and humanity. The consciousness of his mission has filled his mind for a long time. He has brooded on his father’s death, his own deprivation and exile, his mother’s wickedness, and the penalties that will afflict him if he neglects a son’s duty. He suffers the more because he is not hardened, but feels to the full the claim of a mother upon her son. He courageously accepts what Fate has laid upon him; and in the final play we feel that it is his heroic suffering that completes the expiation of the curse, and vindicates the justice of the ultimate settlement.
In the same way Electra’s personal situation is simple and complete, a depth of misery and humiliation lit by a single hope, her brother’s return and vengeance. It is this situation which governs every word and act; all that is required in the way of character is an unswerving resolution, and this Electra has. After the long first scene she does not appear again, nor indeed is she mentioned*. There is no word in Aeschylus of the romantic tradition that she married her cousin Pylades, who appears here as Orestes’ companion and friend.
The Chorus, who are slaves of the palace and intimate with Electra, play a remarkable part in the planning and accomplishment of the revenge. It is they who encourage Electra at first to pray for the violent deaths of Aegisthus and Clytemnestra. As soon as they recognize Orestes they encourage him to action, and place themselves under his orders. They persuade the Nurse to tell Aegisthus to come without his armed escort. The doubt and abhorrence which torture Orestes do not exist for them, either before or after the deed is done. Their outlook is that of the chthonian religion, modified by reliance on Apollo for his promised purification.
To return to the action of the play. At this point begins a very long lyric section in which Orestes, Electra, and the Chorus alternate in a series of stanzas, partly invocatory, partly reminiscent, whose purpose is to awake the anger of Agamemnon’s spirit, and of the powers of the lower world, until they rise to help Orestes in his undertaking. There is a general crescendo of excitement extending over twenty-two stanzas, followed by shorter antiphonal sentences which seem to goad Agamemnon to revenge by recital of his humiliation. The great length of this passage provokes fascinating speculation on the original method of production, and on the use then made of music and choreography; a modern producer will almost certainly play safe, and cut it considerably. When it is concluded the action again gathers pace. The narrative of Clytemnestra’s dream completes the hints given in the opening Ode; and the plot is laid: Orestes and Pylades will come disguised as foreign traders, and gain admittance to the palace by bringing news of Orestes – that he is dead.
The stage proper is now left empty; and the Chorus reflect, with some narrative, on the fearful crimes of which women are capable when roused by reckless passion. Then a new scene is revealed, and Orestes at the palace door is confronted by his mother. He tells his tale; is hospitably welcomed – ‘As our guest, call this your home’; and with Pylades enters the palace.
Clytemnestra’s part in this play is too short to allow of any real development beyond the fully conceived character already presented in Agamemnon. Naturally the Nurse, who is at one with the Chorus in hating Clytemnestra, assumes that she rejoices at heart to hear of Orestes’ death; but the Nurse may well be as much mistaken in this as in her second assumption, that Clytemnestra has arranged to have her son murdered. On receiving the news from the supposed ‘commercial traveller’, the queen makes a show of grief whose wordy metaphors are as unconvincing as Macbeth’s on the discovery of the dead Duncan; but even if her grief were real its expression in the circumstances could hardly sound anything but forced. The truth is that the process of helpless corruption, which the Argive Elders traced in the story of Paris, has worked itself out in Clytemnestra. Seven years of usurpation, suspicion, and guilt have enfolded the once heroic outline in a cloud of obscurity; freedom has vanished in fear, and character in automatic reaction. One nobleness is allowed her at the end, which was given also to Cassandra: the woman, unlike the man, receives her death in silence.
The final scene is remarkable chiefly for the dramatic use which Aeschylus makes of the robe in which Clytemnestra had snared Agamemnon. This robe is mentioned in many allusions to the story, but only here explained. It seems to have been a voluminous bath-gown with cords threaded through loops so that they could be jerked tight in a moment; and this ‘strait-jacket’ Clytemnestra had designed and made herself, and kept in readiness for the day. A returning warrior must cleanse himself from the blood of those he had killed in war. For this ritual he would stand naked; his wife would attend, and throw a gown over him as he stepped from the bath to the altar, where an animal would wait ready for sacrifice, and near it the sacrificial sword. Agamemnon, his arms and legs pinioned by this ‘neat device’, had had no chance either to resist or to escape when Clytemnestra lifted the sword. The robe, pierced and blood-stained, had been kept – possibly by loyal slaves to whom Clytemnestra had entrusted the perfunctory burial. Orestes now makes his attendants hold it up, and turn it round; and by thus displaying its fiendish ingenuity he brings the murderous act vividly before his witnesses. Then side by side with the bodies of Agamemnon’s murderers he lays the last robe which Agamemnon wore in life, and over it pronounces a son’s farewell.
The end of the scene foreshadows the third play and the expiation of the curse. ‘The third, completing draught’ of blood has now been shed. Here an analogy is implied to the ‘three libations’ (the first to the Olympian gods, the second to the ancient heroes, the third to Zeus the Saviour) which by convivial tradition concluded the eating of a banquet and began the drinking. Now blood has been shed in three generations: by Atreus, by Agamemnon and Clytemnestra, and lastly by Orestes. The third libation is to the Saviour. The play ends with the question, Will Zeus now save this tormented house, and bring the curse to an end?
THE EUMENIDES
Hitherto the whole story has been intensely concerned with human actions, with human fete and human feelings. At the same time the pattern of events has been shown as the reflection of a pattern of divine will, as the working-out of divinely ordained moral principles. Zeus is in heaven, judging sin and forgetting nothing; Apollo is in his temple, where his unearthly voice commanded Orestes to act as the instrument of retribution. Man is now at the limit of despair and suffering; it is time for gods to appear and speak.
The scene shows the front of Apollo’s temple at Delphi. It is early morning, and the Priestess is about to enter. She invokes all the gods, old and new, who have held this shrine from the earliest ages; then passes through the doorway. A moment later the solemn silence is broken by her terrified cries, and she staggers out, hardly able to tell what she has seen. Inside the temple a blood-stained murderer crouches by the altar; and round him, all asleep with weariness, lie the Furies, not now invisible, but a sight to horrify piety and melt courage. Aghast at this pollution of Apollo’s shrine, the Priestess withdraws. The temple-façade is rolled aside, and we see what we have heard described; but there are also two figures whom the Priestess did not see. Apollo himself stands by Orestes, and near him is his brother Hermes, the god of journeys. Apollo speaks; comforts and encourages Orestes; and sends him, with Hermes as escort, to seek final deliverance in Athens.
The Furies are left alone, still sleeping; and in their midst appears suddenly another figure, not recognized at first; until she lifts the pale and haggard face of Clytemnestra. Her voice is the piteous whisper of a ghost, and she tries to wake the Furies with passionate reproaches. As they stir, she vanishes; and soon the whole pack of loathsome monsters springs into life, enraged at the escape of their prey. Now Apollo appears again, to drive them from his sacred floor. His eloquent indignation forgets – nor do the Furies remind him – that they are the same fiends with whose torments Apollo had threatened Orestes, if he failed to avenge his father. Apollo now tells them that Orestes is to be tried by Athene in Athens; and bids them go too, and state their case before her.
The scene changes again, to show Orestes clinging for sanctuary to an altar in Athene’s temple in Athens. The Furies arrive and find him; and they recite an impressive Ode which is partly a statement of their eternal function of punishment, and partly a spell-binding song to secure their victim. Athene herself now enters; hears briefly the pleas of accusers and accused; and goes to summon the wisest of her citizens to sit as a judicial court. The Furies, sure of their right, agree to a trial. While the court is being summoned, in a further Ode they pronounce an urgent warning against the dangers of leniency towards crime, and forecast the rise of a ‘new wickedness’, unknown in former ages when wholesome fear guided men’s ways and enforced good behaviour. Moreover, they insist that good behaviour in itself is not enough; it must spring from goodness of heart. They end with a picture of the shipwreck suffered by the man who stubbornly resists the authority of justice. Then twelve Athenian Elders arrive, the court of Areopagus is solemnly constituted, and the pleading begins.
The leader of the Chorus questions Orestes to establish the fact that he killed his mother at Apollo’s command. Orestes is soon at a loss, and calls on Apollo to conduct the case for him. In order that this scene may have its full dramatic effect, it must become evident that the problem is too hard for human solution. The hideousness of the Furies, their blind unreason and ferocity, dispose the audience against them; and Orestes’ case at first sight seems strong. But Apollo now makes four speeches, in each of which, impressive though they may sound at first, he betrays the inadequacy of his position.*
First, he says that his oracles are not his, but all delivered at the express command of Zeus. To begin with, this implies an appeal to authority rather than to reason, an approach which may well be unpleasing to the Athenian audience. Further, Apollo invites the judges to regard the will of Zeus as weightier than the oath they have taken to judge according to their understanding; a suggestion certain to arouse mistrust. Lastly, Apollo claims the authority of Zeus for all his oracles, both personal and political. Now, Delphi was notoriously pro-Persian at the time of the Persian invasion; and if Apollo can mistake in politics, why not in morals?
Apollo’s second speech asserts that Agamemnon’s death was not to be compared with Clytemnestra’s, because Agamemnon was a man and a king, and his wife killed by treachery. But Apollo had commanded Orestes (see Choephori, p. 139) to kill Clytemnestra by treachery; and his valuation of the two deaths completely ignores the added horror attaching to matricide. Further, the phrase ‘for the most part successful’ hints strongly at the part which was disastrous, the sacrifice of Iphigenia, and thus reminds the audience of Agamemnon’s guilt and Clytemnestra’s excuse.
His third speech, begun with violent invective, is a still weaker argument, and by emphasizing the finality of murder plays into the Furies’ hands; for the murder of a woman is as final as that of a man.
Lastly, Apollo puts forward a far-fetched theory of parenthood: ‘the mother is not the true parent of the child; she is a nurse who tends the growth of young seed’, and so on. This again cannot possibly make a clear appeal to any audience, for it denies outright the intimate bond between mother and child. Apollo’s plea ends with the promise of many gifts to make Athens great; and this, the open offering of a bribe to an Athenian court, should finally dispose of any doubt that Aeschylus has intended to present Apollo’s case as, at the best, unsatisfactory. The Chorus-leader answers with a single sentence bidding the judges reverence their oath, i.e., judge according to their conscience rather than in fear of the will of Zeus as interpreted by Apollo.
Athene then announces the perpetual constitution of the court of Areopagus, and bids the citizens (as the Chorus have already bidden them) enthrone fear as the great safeguard of law. Should the votes be equal, she says, her casting vote will be given for Orestes. This is what happens. The case is too hard for human decision; matricide is a fearful crime, against which must be set both the divine command and the long period of suffering and ritual cleansing that Orestes has undergone. Athene’s vote comes into effect; and Orestes, with a solemn pledge of eternal friendship between Argos and Athens, leaves the court a free man.
It remains for Athene to calm the resentment and avert the threats of the Furies. She insists that the trial has been fair; that the even voting means that the Furies are neither defeated nor disgraced; that the position offered to them in Athens assures them perpetual honour and usefulness. Finally they relent, and pronounce blessings instead of curses. Thus violence retires, and ‘holy Persuasion’, the civilizing instrument of the new age, wins the day. The great Panathenaic procession gathers on the stage, and with the Chorus passes out through the orchestra.
THE TEXT
For Agamemnon I have used the edition of Professor A. Y. Campbell, whose work on the very corrupt text of the greatest of all Greek plays seems to me an achievement for which only the future can render suitable thanks. I have also been able, through his help, to take advantage of many notes that he has published in various periodicals since his edition appeared in 1936; so that this is a translation of a text which will not in fact exist complete in print until the appearance of the next revised edition of Professor Campbell’s work.
For The Choephori I have used the edition of Professor T. G. Tucker, and for The Eumenides the ‘Oxford Text’ edited by A. Sidgwick, with some reference in difficult passages to Professor G. Thomson’s Oresteia.
THE TRANSLATION
This is not a very literal translation. Several extremely good and fairly literal translations are available, from which the reader who knows some Greek may guess at the phrase used in the original, and the reader who knows none may gather a vague but perhaps impressive glimpse of a vanished language. I have tried rather to concentrate on fullness of meaning, interpretation, and suitability for performance; not attempting to represent either the peculiarities of Greek poetic diction or the highly individual style of Aeschylus, but hoping for a direct, unconditional impact. Neither have I attempted to reproduce any Greek rhythms or metrical patterns. Most of these belong essentially to an inflexional language, and change their character when adapted to English. Instead I have used the disciplines native to our tongue: simple, strongly marked metres, and rhyme. And in the lyric portions, where the writing is pictorial, compressed, and full of double meaning, I have sometimes expanded for the sake of clarity; occasionally, where an explanatory phrase or line has been added, this is mentioned in the notes. Such expansion, however, is mainly confined to Agamemnon, where many obscurities are made still more obscure by textual corruption.
The highest ideal of a translation from Greek is achieved when the reader flings it impatiently into the fire, and begins patiently to learn the language for himself.
P.H.V.
NOTE
The line numbers in this edition refer to the lines of the original Greek text.
