Shelly's unfathomable fate

A story of Shelly and Sophocles too good not to repeat, with full honors to C.M. Reed and to Michael Gilleland and his blog, Laudator Temporis Acti. 

 

A glance at the 1502 Florentine edition of Sophocles by Aldus Manutius reveals that the choral passages suffered far more than did the remainder of the text in the long transmission from their ancient form to the present. Choruses in the 1502 Aldine text are often an incoherent mess, worlds removed from the polished eloquence of the Sophoclean choruses one reads today. Has any scholarly achievement of the past half-millennium been more neglected than the labors of those who devoted their lives to editing and thus improving these texts? Who outside the circle of classical scholars recognizes names such as Scaliger, Causabon, Bentley, Hermann, Elmsley, or Jebb? Consider the formidable array of tools required for the task — an intimacy with the ancient author’s entire corpus and its manuscript history, an exquisite knowledge of tragic meter, and a first-rate poetic imagination.

Fortunately most of the important printed editions of Oedipus at Colonus since the Renaissance were readily available on the open shelves of Oxford’s Bodleian Library. But a crucial one was missing — a late 18th century edition by a German scholar, R.F.P. Brunck. This, I discovered, was among the Bodleian’s rare book holdings in the surpassingly beautiful reading room known as Duke Humfrey’s Library.

So I filled out a request to have the book fetched and handed it to a librarian, the first in a series of a distinct breed of Oxford lady librarians I encountered over the next six years — middle-aged, tall, pert, razor-thin, with a cultivated accent spoken rapidly in a high pitch that warbled tunefully in its uppermost register.

A week passed. No Brunck. How differently things would have been managed at Harvard, I mused to myself. Up I went to complain to that same librarian, whose tart response made one thing clear: My efforts to come across as a well-mannered southern gentleman had failed; she now viewed me as simply another querulous American.

Several days into the second week the same librarian appeared at my chair in the reading room, silently plopping down a small volume in wretched condition. It looked as if someone, reading in the bath, had let it drop into the water. My first thought was characteristically invidious: “I’ll wager that the Widener Library’s copy at Harvard wouldn’t be in such sad shape.”

Then I opened to the frontispiece and read, “This book was found on the body of Percy Bysshe Shelly (1792-1822) when it floated ashore on the coast of Italy.”

I began weeping. I couldn’t stop! After a few minutes I rose and made my way to the men’s room to wash away the tears. Upon returning, I hurriedly copied out the relevant choral passage and, gingerly picking it up, carried the book back to the librarian at her desk. “Ah, finished so quickly, are we?” she said archly as she took it from my hand. Then she looked up, saw my reddened eyes, and asked, ever so gently and softly, “Would you like me to hold it for you till later?”

Apparently the tales of Shelly's demise owe much to the vivid imaginings of Trelawny, who early on wrote of a volume of Aeschylus found in Shelly's death grip. 

Warm thanks to Dr. Greta Goetz for the citation.

Live from Epidaurus: The Persians

"The Persians" by Aeschylus Live from Epidaurus:

For the first time ever a live ancient Greek drama performance will be streamed globally from the ancient theater of Epidaurus. 🎭

Saturday, July 25, 2020 | 2:00pm (EDT) | 9:00 pm (Athens)

By the Εθνικό Θέατρο / National Theatre of Greece, with the support of the Υπουργείο Πολιτισμού και Αθλητισμού  (Ministry of Culture and Sports). In partnership with Google Greece.

Persian sword - 61cm. Luristan,

1st Millennium B.C.E. Private Collection

As countries around the world are still exploring ways to restart theater in the post- COVID era, and as most festivals across Europe have been unfortunately canceled this year, the Athens and Epidaurus Festival will still take place, albeit in a condensed form, titled "Fragment," adhering to the strictest safety measures.

The play is in Greek with English subtitles and lasts approximately 90 minutes.

It will be streamed through https://www.livefromepidaurus.gr/ and will also be available at the websites of the National Theatre of Greece, the Athens and Epidaurus Festival and the Ministry of Culture and Sports, as well as the National Theatre of Greece’s YouTube channel.

Persia and Greece - The Persians

Notes on Persuasion in Eumenides

Clytemnestra tries to awaken the sleeping Erinyes. 
Apulian red-figure bell-krater, 380–370 BC.

• The path of good speech 

• Precarious Odyssey: Apollo vs. Athena in the Oresteia 

• What are you doing? A failed scene of persuasion in Eumenides 

• There will be blood: Vengeance beforehand 

• Irresistible Athena meets Immovable Furies 

• The manner of Apollonian Justice - a brief digression 

• "The whole fashion of your form" 

• Dancing with Furies: The Persuasion of the Erinyes 

•  Voiceless Informers: A contrast of entrances in the Oresteia 

• Prosaic Peripeteia: How could Aeschylus be so undramatic?

• Clytemnestra vs. Athena: Two peripeteias in the Oresteia 

•  Regarding the Fury: Persuasion and detheatricalization in Eumenides 

Regarding the Fury: Persuasion and detheatricalization in Eumenides

The scope and object of the Oresteia is simply huge. Prior to Dante's Commedia, perhaps no other literary work sounded the matter of Justice to such depths. Its relevance to the survival of the polis in ancient Greece and its occurrence in aftertimes is unending.

From the beginning of Eumenides, Orestes is in crisis:

Πυθιάς
ἐγὼ μὲν ἕρπω πρὸς πολυστεφῆ μυχόν:
40ὁρῶ δ᾽ ἐπ᾽ ὀμφαλῷ μὲν ἄνδρα θεομυσῆ
ἕδραν ἔχοντα προστρόπαιον, αἵματι
στάζοντα χεῖρας καὶ νεοσπαδὲς ξίφος
ἔχοντ᾽ ἐλαίας θ᾽ ὑψιγέννητον κλάδον,
λήνει μεγίστῳ σωφρόνως ἐστεμμένον,
45ἀργῆτι μαλλῷ: τῇδε γὰρ τρανῶς ἐρῶ.

Pythia, Priestess of Apollo

I was on my way to the inner shrine, decked with wreaths; I saw on the center-stone a man defiled in the eyes of the gods, [40] occupying the seat of suppliants. His hands were dripping blood; he held a sword just drawn and an olive-branch, from the top of the tree, decorously crowned with a large tuft of wool, a shining fleece; for as to this I can speak clearly. [45]

In this frozen image, Orestes sits at the fulcrum of the Earth. A suppliant at the Omphalos, he holds the sword with which he killed his mother in one hand, and a "high-born" olive branch wrapped in a shining tuft of wool in the other.

Orestes has come at the direction of Apollo; the hideous Erinyes sit sleeping a few feet away. They are at the Earth's center. How will this portentous balance tip? More than just one mortal's fate clearly is at stake here.

In describing the Furies, the priestess of Apollo speaks of their resemblance to the Harpies she once saw in an image that depicted the filthy bird/women afflicting Phineus. As tempting as it is to explore this allusion in detail (all allusions in Aeschylus fascinate), suffice to say Phineus' tale is another royal house horror show. Thanks to his second wife's lies, he either blinds, entombs, or has his two sons killed; he in turn is blinded and daily endures the Harpies' despoliation of his food.

The priestess's description of the Erinyes smacks of Apollonian taste. Unlike the winged Harpies,

these are wingless in appearance, black, altogether disgusting (πᾶν βδελύκτροποι); they snore with repulsive breaths, they drip from their eyes hateful drops; their attire is not fit to bring either before the statues of the gods or into the homes of men. [55]

The word Smyth translates as "disgusting" is βδελύκτροποι -- it's more a "turning into a loathing for food" - Sommerstein has "nauseating." Thyestian echoes abound.

Treacherous husbands and wives lead to destroyed children -- such tales might lead us to question the sustainability of the oikos. Whatever may be the case with the Harpies, the Erinyes, however nauseating, are not "evil." They do the dirty work of vengeance in a world populated by autocratic Houses that owe allegiance to no one, unless they happen to believe in the gods.

If Orestes on first view appears torn between nauseous vengeance and a high born peace, this is not new. Royal houses are scenes of horrific actions and reactions arising from the capacity of humans to err. For the Greeks, humans have godlike minds and lizard spines -- split natures that make for great stories, but no universal power of Evil is at work. Neither Satan nor Calvin is on offer here.

At the end of the Oresteia, the women, children and Furies of Athens dance out of the theater (on the path of good speech) to the Areopagus. There, where Amazons once nearly took down Theseus and his city, the Erinyes will dwell at a glowing hearth within Ares' rock. The fulcrum of the play's opening has now tipped toward the olive branch.

Is there something further the play tells us about how this portentous turn takes place? Are we persuaded that we understand what Athena means by Persuasion?

I'm not sure. Here's a strictly hypothetical stab at it:

The structure of Eumenides is designed to go beyond logic, reasoned argument, silky rhetoric and legal citation. The institution of Justice only works if all parties -- including the agents of vengeance -- accept something more basic than Reason. To accept, they must understand the power to choose; to reach that understanding, they first must have standing.

One way to look at it: Orestes stands between bloody vengeance and the olive. But it's not about his turning from one to the other -- it's about a turning of vengeance and the olive until they are both on the same side of Orestes.

This re-positioning, or superpositioning of Furies and Citizens, gives them each the power to choose.

For Aeschylus, Persuasion can occur suddenly and wholly, changing the world. Peithous makes that which is unlike what one believes into the reality one cannot disbelieve.

The play's skein of images involving dreaming and waking, image and reality, figure and substance present the performative effect of Persuasion in phenomenal terms.

The first moment we "see" the Furies comes through the eyes of the Priestess: even asleep they're hideous. Then the former Queen of Argus tries to wake them to avenge her murder, but she herself is part of the dream, and vanishes in their awakening. Clytemnestra has no "standing" outside of the dream she is desperate to disrupt.

When Athena arrives at her temple and sees the Furies and Orestes, she notices the suppliant holding the hallowed wooden image of herself. She compares him to Ixion (the text is unclear as to whether Athena says the young man is like Ixion, or unlike him, but it's moot here).

The allusion is to a notorious suppliant driven insane after murdering his father in law. Ixion came to Zeus and was purified. In gratitude he sought to cuckold the Father of Gods and Men, but Zeus saw him coming a mile away. The scapegrace bedded a cloud that looked like Hera, and begat the race of Centaurs, the Ixionidae. Then he got affixed to his ever-turning wheel.

Regardless of what Athena meant by her Ixion reference, what matters is that Orestes goes from holding a wooden image to addressing the goddess. Where Clytemnestra dwindled from murderous Queen to dream image, the statue her murderer clings to brings Athena, who helps restore him to a lordly life.

Clytemnestra is a signifier within a system of signifiers, a dream. Athena, coming from outside, is the substantial referent of the wooden signifier. Their totally different standings lead to distinctly contrary outcomes of their efforts at persuasion. One instantly vanishes; the other achieves the crucial persuasive act that resolves the crisis of Eumenides. 

One would expect Athena's decisive act of persuasion would bear the hallmarks of an unforgettable oration worthy of St. Crispin's Day. Yet as we have seen, the prose exchange in which Athena and the Furies work out their deal stands out precisely for its flat style, spliced between the high strains of tragic kommos that precede and follow.

Within the genre of tragic verse, to sound like "everyday" is to sound like how people talk when they are not in a play -- the vernacular of now. This "modern" scene in the Oresteia is not something that happens as a sequel to an archaic "before." Rather, consonant with its root sense, modern now means "now," when '"now"' is any moment not under the theatrical spell of the archaic.

Think of the citizen assembly. It's not some enchanted event set to rhythm and sung -- it's the ordinary speech of the process of democracy. Yet, says Athena,

ἀλλ᾽ ἐκράτησε Ζεὺς ἀγοραῖος: (973)

but Zeus of the assembly has prevailed.

Consider the issue between Athena and the Furies as posing a choice of genre -- do we stay in the archaic song of automated blood vengeance, or leave it behind?To leave is to wake into the now of modernity. It may happen in an instant, and in fact does so when Eumenides suddenly drops from the sturm und drang of its heightened kommos to the prose parley of Athena and the Furies.

Beginning with line 881 the entire play steps out of its powerful rhythms, emotions and furious mythic violence into prosaic modernity and negotiated choices. (More on that scene here.)

When Athena expresses gratitude to Persuasion (whether goddess or facility of language), she says:

στέργω δ᾽ ὄμματα Πειθοῦς,
ὅτι μοι γλῶσσαν καὶ στόμ᾽ ἐπωπᾷ
πρὸς τάσδ᾽ ἀγρίως ἀπανηναμένας:

I am grateful to Persuasion, that her eyes kept watch over my tongue and mouth, when I encountered their fierce rejections. (Eum. 970-72)

Thanks to watchful Persuasion, the goddess chooses civil forebearance.There is no coercion of divine power, no magic spell, no shock associated with peripeteia, yet there is no question her momentous equanimity turns into the decisive act of Eumenides. It doesn't seem irresponsible to define what she achieves here as a de-theatricalization of the tragic sublime. The choice is no longer Bloody Sword or Olive Branch -- one chooses the new complex entity comprised of both.

The Furies sing:

δέξομαι Παλλάδος ξυνοικίαν 

I will join the house of Pallas   (Eum. 916),

The "house of Pallas" now is altogether different from the archaic oikos. To the extent her citizens model wisdom, the goddess of the play and the people of the House of Pallas coincide. Erasing the "fourth wall," the sign we name the Oresteia points beyond itself to the polis, godlike so long as it can be

κερδῶν ἄθικτον τοῦτο βουλευτήριον,
αἰδοῖον, ὀξύθυμον, εὑδόντων ὕπερἐγρηγορὸς φρούρημα γῆς καθίσταμαι.

. . . untouched by greed, worthy of reverence, quick to anger, awake on behalf of those who sleep, a guardian of the land. (Eum. 704-06)

Together the Oresteia's cast and audience pour joyously into the streets of everyday Athens. Their eyes turn to regard the face of the fury.

Not everything that is faced can be changed, but nothing can be changed until it is faced. James Baldwin.⠀

Prosaic Peripeteia: How could Aeschylus be so undramatic?

One would expect a work as potent as the Oresteia to build to an intense reversal -- a climax of peripatetic power yielding a satisfying denouement. But when the trilogy is taken as a whole, the powerfully energized scenes, some of the most memorable in all drama, involve the murder of the king in Agamemnon, and early scenes of the Furies in Eumenides.

Curiously, the moment late in Eumenides that turns Dike from automatonic vengeance to a mode of human Justice is not highly dramatized. I will explore this below and then address why I believe Aeschylus did it this way.

One way to summarize the story Aeschylus tells is this:

• Long ago, Athens needed to put in place a new, civil kind of Dike to replace primal, unreflective vengeance.
• To that end, Apollo and Athena devise a form providing for a jury of citizen peers to decide guilt or innocence after hearing testimony from accuser and defendant.
• This proves unacceptable to the Furies -- powers older than the Gods who react immediately to familial violence without deliberative procedures.
• Apollo would banish the Furies -- set them outside of Athenian Justice. Athena doesn't agree, and achieves a different resolution.

Ἀθηνᾶ

τάδ᾽ ἐγὼ προφρόνως τοῖσδε πολίταις
πράσσω, μεγάλας καὶ δυσαρέστους
δαίμονας αὐτοῦ κατανασσαμένη.
930πάντα γὰρ αὗται τὰ κατ᾽ ἀνθρώπους
ἔλαχον διέπειν.
ὁ δὲ μὴ κύρσας βαρεῶν τούτων
οὐκ οἶδεν ὅθεν πληγαὶ βιότου.
τὰ γὰρ ἐκ προτέρων ἀπλακήματά νιν
935πρὸς τάσδ᾽ ἀπάγει, σιγῶν δ᾽ ὄλεθρος
καὶ μέγα φωνοῦντ᾽
ἐχθραῖς ὀργαῖς ἀμαθύνει.

Athena
I act zealously for these citizens in this way, settling here among them divinities great and hard to please. For they have been appointed to arrange everything among mortals. Yet the one who meets their oppression does not know where the blows of life come from. For the sins of his fathers drag him before them; destruction, in silence and hateful wrath, levels him to the dust, for all his loud boasting. 

[Eum. 928-35]  (Smyth adapted using Sommerstein's reading)

Note her emphasis on action (πράσσω). She is working to persuade the Furies to dwell in Athens, which calls for Athenians to accept that Dike itself is not separate from, but somehow is intertwined with, the powers of blood vengeance.

In agreeing on this, Athena, the Furies and the citizens remake the basis of Justice for the polis. Dike can no longer be realized through unmitigated brute vengeance, as in the isolate autocratic oikos. Yet while Dike of the polis seeks to use reason, it can not be formalized in a ratiocinative courtroom procedure hygienically unconscious of the horror of crime and the commensurate rage of Justice itself.

Vengeance and the rational verdict of truth enter into a negotiated "truce" that requires a Dike more complex than either of these modes on its own.

But how does one persuade ancient Erinyes to accept this strange new condition? For that matter, given that this new thing carries a potentially intractable opposition within it, how does one get mortal men to accept the presence of Furies within the polis? 

Let's remember how Furies like their humans:

Χορός

ὀσμὴ βροτείων αἱμάτων με προσγελᾷ.

The smell of human blood is smiling at me. (Eum. 253)

Dike and Adikia

The moment of Persuasion is brief, a 34-line prose dialogue (lines 881-915) between two strong kommos segments. The exchange seems emotionally and rhetorically unremarkable compared with the vehement poetry preceding and the jubilant kommos that follows. Shorn of song, dance and poetic power, it presents the kind of negotiation found every day whether in the world of business, or politics, or familial relations -- two parties working out the terms of an agreement. No superpowers, no magical talismans, no oracles, presbyters or heraldic messengers need apply.

With all the Grand Guignol of Clytemnestra and the Erinyes that has come before, it might escape our notice that this exchange produces the peripeteia of the trilogy. What is special, when you consider it, is precisely the absence of any showy portrayal of the numinous. Power is spoken of in contractual terms, where we hear the Furies sound almost like teenagers talking to their mom:

Chorus
Lady Athena, what place do you say I will have?

Athena
One free from all pain and distress; please accept it.

Chorus
Say that I have accepted it, what honor awaits me?

Athena
That no house will flourish without you.

Chorus
Will you gain for me the possession of such power?

Athena
Yes, for we will raise up the fortunes of those who honor you.

Chorus
And will you give me a pledge for all time? 

Athena
It can be done; I need not say what I will not accomplish. 

Chorus
It seems your spells (θέλξειν) enchant; we're letting go our anger.  

Athena
Then stay in the land and you will gain other friends. 

Chorus
What blessings then do you advise me to invoke on this land? (Eum. 892-902)

The "spells" or "enchantments" (θέλξειν) the Furies speak of here do not resemble typical magic spells. Such enchantments here have more to do with the character of an exchange in which these primeval beings are addressed in a modern respectful tone and promised a dignified role within an altered polis. 

Letting go our anger is adapted from Smyth. Sommerstein has I am moving away from my anger.

The words are μεθίσταμαι κότου; κότου can mean ill will, rancor, fury. The verb μεθίσταμαι derives from meta + ίσταμαι: a setting over; substituting one thing for another; changing or putting this for that.

With this mitigation the Furies are no longer quite so enraged, and their power of the curse can be turned. They now ask:

τί οὖν μ᾽ ἄνωγας τῇδ᾽ ἐφυμνῆσαι χθονί;                          902

This question receives different treatments:

Smyth: What blessings then do you advise me to invoke on this land?
Sommerstein: So what blessings do you bid me invoke upon this land?
Lattimore: I will put a spell upon the land. What shall it be?

The verb -- ἐφυμνῆσαι -- seems unusual. Liddell and Scott and other dictionaries I've consulted agree that it means sing, or chant. This would allow:

What then would you have us chant for the land?

The emphasis is placed on voice, the act of chanting or singing.

All of which might underscore the unprecocious, plain style of this prose scene. A major change is occurring here, but is not dramatized -- it takes place in a manner that is virtually tacit, unmarked.

What of it? For one thing, the modality of Athena's persuasion here relies as little upon seductive rhetorical power as it does upon logical argument. What persuades the Furies is the promise of a complex substitution -- of a home for no home, a new use for old rancor, a new status within the polis.

Athena describes this new interrelation of unchanged elements earlier in the courtroom scene, right before the jurors vote.

Ἀθηνᾶ
τὸ μήτ᾽ ἄναρχον μήτε δεσποτούμενον
ἀστοῖς περιστέλλουσι βουλεύω σέβειν,
καὶ μὴ τὸ δεινὸν πᾶν πόλεως ἔξω βαλεῖν.
τίς γὰρ δεδοικὼς μηδὲν ἔνδικος βροτῶν;

Athena 

Neither anarchy nor tyranny—this I counsel my citizens to defend and respect, and not to drive strange terror (δεινὸν) wholly out of the city. For who among mortals, if he fears nothing, is righteous?  (Eum. 696-99)

Interiorizing the Furies within the polis is not possible without the assent of both the citizens and the Furies to a fundamental change in their relations with one another. They each are themselves unchanged; the way they interrelate is new.

Smyth translates δεινὸν as "fear," but the word bears a richer sense of wondrous  awe-inspiring terror and strangeness. Sophocles uses it to speak of man in Antigone. Athena is counseling the citizens to defend and respect δεινὸν. She yokes Dike to δεινὸν and to anger, ending these words of counsel with:

κερδῶν ἄθικτον τοῦτο βουλευτήριον,
705αἰδοῖον, ὀξύθυμον, εὑδόντων ὕπερ
ἐγρηγορὸς φρούρημα γῆς καθίσταμαι.

I establish this tribunal, untouched by greed, worthy of reverence, quick to anger, awake on behalf of those who sleep, a guardian of the land. (Eum. 704-06)

But what kind of new relation is this? How can we come to terms with this curious yoking of old and new?

I'll take a stab at one way of looking at it.

This coming into being is a kind of creation, but not a birth -- instead of a natural product of organic generation, something new is brought about through a substitution  (μεθίσταμαι). The Furies' form of vengeance was bound up with blood ties -- familial bonds. What happens here brings the shock of a non-generative act of conception.

Athena is like a midwife enabling the citizens and Furies to put something new into the world, instantly -- not unlike the birth of Athena from the cranium of Zeus. Except that instead of the new reality of an unmothered goddess, there's a contractual fiat. Citizens and furies remain who they are, but agree to henceforth mean something new by Dike. Athena is bringing them to make a new meaning for an old word.

What's dramatized here is the power, not of gods, but of human language to slip something new into the world -- something that hitherto was nameless -- by taking and using an old word. What was called "Justice" now names something quite different from what it used to mean, both for the Furies and the citizens.

This yoking of old and new seems not unlike an act of language act known to and analyzed by the ancient grammarians. The imposition of a new meaning upon an existing word describes what they knew as catachresis. When a word is torn from its proper meaning in the system of signs to assume a new signification, catachresis occurs.

The root sense of catachresis is "abuse" or "error," as when a word is perceived to be used improperly because everybody knows its proper meaning is something else. The traditional example that always comes up offers something of the violence of this abuse: When a word for the structural support of a table was needed, the word "leg" was torn from its organic connection to our body and given a new, completely inorganic meaning.

Due to the slipperiness of language, its openness to err, be abused or misused, the legs we stand on can run off to mean the structures that a table or chair "stands" on. While Apollo would vociferously disapprove of such license taken with the proper names for things, others defend certain acts of catachresis as necessary, enabling the unutterable to achieve speech.

Improper meanings soon lose their newness and become the new proper. We don't usually flinch when touching the arm of a chair. Athena promises the Furies will "have a share in the land" -- γαμόρῳ χθονὸς (890) -- i.e., dwelling on property they properly hold.

Persuaded by Athena, the Furies and the citizens accept a new complex sense for Dike. If "polis" had been defined as what is NOT the Furies, now those creatures live under it, as a newly installed proper meaning lives "under" an old word.

So the peripeteia of the Oresteia can be said to turn on catachresis -- speaking a Dike that hitherto would have been mute. This doesn't happen through the agency of some numinous mythological power represented in the scene. It arrives via a contractual agreement between humans and gods through the power of speech, in prose.

Varvakeion Athena 

No discussion of this brief scene is complete without the magnificent speech Athena offers in answer to the question of the Erinyes:

Chorus 

What blessings then do you advise me to invoke on this land?

Ἀθηνᾶ

ὁποῖα νίκης μὴ κακῆς ἐπίσκοπα,
καὶ ταῦτα γῆθεν ἔκ τε ποντίας δρόσου
905ἐξ οὐρανοῦ τε: κἀνέμων ἀήματα
εὐηλίως πνέοντ᾽ ἐπιστείχειν χθόνα:
καρπόν τε γαίας καὶ βοτῶν ἐπίρρυτον
ἀστοῖσιν εὐθενοῦντα μὴ κάμνειν χρόνῳ,
καὶ τῶν βροτείων σπερμάτων σωτηρίαν.
910τῶν εὐσεβούντων δ᾽ ἐκφορωτέρα πέλοις.
στέργω γάρ, ἀνδρὸς φιτυποίμενος δίκην,
τὸ τῶν δικαίων τῶνδ᾽ ἀπένθητον γένος.

τοιαῦτα σοὔστι. τῶν ἀρειφάτων δ᾽ ἐγὼ
πρεπτῶν ἀγώνων οὐκ ἀνέξομαι τὸ μὴ οὐ
915τήνδ᾽ ἀστύνικον ἐν βροτοῖς τιμᾶν πόλιν.

Athena 

Blessings that aim at a victory not evil; blessings from the earth and from the waters of the sea and from the heavens: that the breathing gales of wind may approach the land in radiant sunshine, and that the fruit of the earth and offspring of grazing beasts, flourishing in overflow, may not fail my citizens in the course of time, and that the seed of mortals will be kept safe. May you make more prosperous the offspring of godly men; for I, like a gardener (φιτυποίμενος), cherish the race of these just men, free of sorrow.  (Eum. 903-12)

That's Smyth without alteration. There is no noun that means "blessings" in the passage. Athena simply assumes whatever the Furies meant by ἐφυμνῆσαι is understood. So the passage could read

Songs (or chants) that aim at a victory not evil; songs from the earth and from the waters of the sea and from the heavens: 

Song or chant sets tone and inspire, but there is no magic spell. The onus of Dike is on the people.

What's true is that what we all see here, what Athena shares with all in common, is the face of Nature undistorted by dreams or passions. After all the vivid images of houses haunted by the cries of eaten children, of murdered tyrants, of the Furies' pursuit of human blood, this countenance of the world present to the eye in simple, everyday words comes with the shock of an awakening. We are not seeing through the eyes of Furies or murderers or captives or haunted children, but through the eyes of Athens. Yes, Athena is the speaker -- but if an Athenian described the earth and sea and sky like this, we wouldn't bat an eye.

Except for one part.

 I, like a gardener (φιτυποίμενος), cherish the race of these just men, free of sorrow. (911)

One would be remiss not to note this wonderful word φιτυποίμενος, which may have been underserved by Smyth.

Lattimore: as the gardener works in love. so love I best of all the unblighted generation of these upright men. 

Sommerstein: like a shepherd of plants, I cherish the race to which these righteous men belong.

Where Smyth and Lattimore settle for "gardener," Sommerstein discovers the remarkable strangeness of φιτυποίμενος, which yokes two distinct modes of agrarian work: herding and planting. His fine "shepherd of plants" fuses the dynamics of herding with the sowing of seeds.

The result is an absurd image of one who does not simply put things into the earth, but cares for them, gathers them in flocks and leads them (along the path of good speech) to green pastures. The fusion of gardening and herding marries the idealism of culture with the praxis of political action.* It could be considered a new word, or a "blend," but as a synthesis of two old words making something new, we might also think of it as a double catachresis of its own playful invention.

I'll wrap this up soon -- promise.

*I belatedly find that Gilles Deleuze had pondered this very catachresis (apparently without reference to Aeschyus) in his Seminar on Foucault 1985-86, part II.