Reading classical works aloud in Sarasota, and talking about them.
Showing posts with label athena. Show all posts
Showing posts with label athena. Show all posts
Wednesday, June 10, 2020
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.
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,
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,
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:
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:
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.
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.⠀
Wednesday, May 27, 2020
Voiceless informers: A contrast of entrances in the Oresteia
[Edited to clean up some minor infelicities - the major ones remain...]
Chorus of Erinyes
εἶεν: τόδ᾽ ἐστὶ τἀνδρὸς ἐκφανὲς τέκμαρ.
245ἕπου δὲ μηνυτῆρος ἀφθέγκτου φραδαῖς.
τετραυματισμένον γὰρ ὡς κύων νεβρὸν
πρὸς αἷμα καὶ σταλαγμὸν ἐκματεύομεν.
Aeschylus's Fury interestingly notes that these signs they've been following are clear even as they are μηνυτῆρος ἀφθέγκτου, "voiceless informers." This characterization of the path of signs suggests both something that can be read unambiguously -- they speak clearly -- at the same time they are unable to speak. Blood here is a natural trace the Furies can read thanks to the materiality of the signifier.
Indexical signs often are proximate to the thing they refer to, just as water on the ground would indicate that it has rained.
When the Erinyes arrive at the Temple, what they see is Orestes clutching the famed wooden statue of Athena -- an icon of the goddess whose help he seeks. The contrast of the two kinds of sign is a feature of the scene.
It's remarkable how Aeschylus's theatrical imagination can offer what seems a barely disguised ideogram of semiotics writ large. Take Clytemnestra's speech, her first important one in Agamemnon that describes each station of her blazing relay. It's a Big Concatenated Sign from Ida that flashed news of the fall of Ilium to her rooftop Watchman.
Here's just the beginning:
Κλυταιμήστρα
Ἥφαιστος Ἴδης λαμπρὸν ἐκπέμπων σέλας.
φρυκτὸς δὲ φρυκτὸν δεῦρ᾽ ἀπ᾽ ἀγγάρου πυρὸς
ἔπεμπεν: Ἴδη μὲν πρὸς Ἑρμαῖον λέπας
Λήμνου: μέγαν δὲ πανὸν ἐκ νήσου τρίτον
285Ἀθῷον αἶπος Ζηνὸς ἐξεδέξατο,
ὑπερτελής τε, πόντον ὥστε νωτίσαι,
ἰσχὺς πορευτοῦ λαμπάδος πρὸς ἡδονὴν
*
πεύκη τὸ χρυσοφεγγές, ὥς τις ἥλιος,
σέλας παραγγείλασα Μακίστου σκοπαῖς:
290ὁ δ᾽ οὔτι μέλλων οὐδ᾽ ἀφρασμόνως ὕπνῳ
νικώμενος παρῆκεν ἀγγέλου μέρος:
Clytaemestra
We could spend time on the significance of these fires as images of both Troy and an impending event in Hellas, etc. But staying with Peirce we'll note that they've become conventional symbols thanks to the pre-arranged sign system set up by the Queen. The iconic has become a symbol with a meaning that it does not resemble.
What's more, the rich descriptive details of the watchmen along the way vividly enact precisely how messages move from sender to receiver, each in his own context, working with his own materials. A semiotician might observe that all relayed messages depend on contingent means that are supposed to faithfully replicate the message. Describing her chain of messengers, Clytemnestra notes that the warder at Macistus could have fallen asleep and missed the signal.
Her telling itself of this barreling relay of fires itself catches fire. Flame seen from a mountain where goats roam stimulate flames that don't simply "answer," but grow with ungovernable autonomous energy. As the flames swoop, leap, are stoked to be larger than ordered, inevitable contingency at play around each link of the chain inserts itself. Anyone who has played telephone knows how messages can go astray, or get out of hand.
In foregrounding both the import of the message and the contingencies along its path, Clytemnestra, like many messengers in Greek plays, gives us insight into who she is. Her role as her husband's surrogate has assumed new energy, a life of its own. Exulting in the alacrity of those tending her voiceless informers, she paints an epic picture and demonstrates with a field marshal's grasp of the Great World -- all its moving parts, and what can go wrong. We know her better after she's done.
Athena's first speech comes as she enters the temple of Athena Polias, where she finds Orestes clinging to her image, and the Furies ready to drain him.
Ἀθηνᾶ
πρόσωθεν ἐξήκουσα κληδόνος βοὴν
ἀπὸ Σκαμάνδρου γῆν καταφθατουμένη,
ἣν δῆτ᾽ Ἀχαιῶν ἄκτορές τε καὶ πρόμοι,
400τῶν αἰχμαλώτων χρημάτων λάχος μέγα,
ἔνειμαν αὐτόπρεμνον εἰς τὸ πᾶν ἐμοί,
ἐξαίρετον δώρημα Θησέως τόκοις:
ἔνθεν διώκουσ᾽ ἦλθον ἄτρυτον πόδα,
πτερῶν ἄτερ ῥοιβδοῦσα κόλπον αἰγίδος.
405πώλοις ἀκμαίοις τόνδ᾽ ἐπιζεύξασ᾽ ὄχον
καινὴν δ᾽ ὁρῶσα τήνδ᾽ ὁμιλίαν χθονὸς
ταρβῶ μὲν οὐδέν, θαῦμα δ᾽ ὄμμασιν πάρα.
τίνες ποτ᾽ ἐστέ; πᾶσι δ᾽ ἐς κοινὸν λέγω:
βρέτας τε τοὐμὸν τῷδ᾽ ἐφημένῳ ξένῳ,
410ὑμᾶς θ᾽ ὁμοίας οὐδενὶ σπαρτῶν γένει,
οὔτ᾽ ἐν θεαῖσι πρὸς θεῶν ὁρωμένας
οὔτ᾽ οὖν βροτείοις ἐμφερεῖς μορφώμασιν.
λέγειν δ᾽ ἄμομφον ὄντα τοὺς πέλας κακῶς
πρόσω δικαίων ἠδ᾽ ἀποστατεῖ θέμις.
Her speech offers many telling details that contrast with both Clytemnestra and the Furies. Busily engaged in public affairs, she hears a call from afar that arrives without need of fire warders. Her reference to her mode of travel has a blithe tone:
Her entrance offers interesting theatrical possibilities. If we consider the audience might have been terrified just moments before by the Furies' magniloquence:
Χορός
τίς οὖν τάδ᾽ οὐχ ἅζεταί
390τε καὶ δέδοικεν βροτῶν,
ἐμοῦ κλύων
τὸν μοιρόκραντον ἐκ θεῶν
δοθέντα τέλεον;
Χορός
μάλα γὰρ οὖν ἁλομένα
ἀνέκαθεν βαρυπεσῆ
καταφέρω ποδὸς ἀκμάν,
375σφαλερὰ καὶ τανυδρόμοις
κῶλα, δύσφορον ἄταν.
Their showy awfulness is instantly defused as Athena exhibits wonder and curiosity, but no dread:
Ἀθηνᾶ
καινὴν δ᾽ ὁρῶσα τήνδ᾽ ὁμιλίαν χθονὸς
ταρβῶ μὲν οὐδέν, θαῦμα δ᾽ ὄμμασιν πάρα.
τίνες ποτ᾽ ἐστέ; πᾶσι δ᾽ ἐς κοινὸν λέγω:
After the thrilling dance of the Erinyes, (reputed to have caused infants to expire and women to miscarry) Athena's entrance is clothed in the language of daily life -- she speaks in prose.
The Athenians would notice. Here's their goddess, the embodiment and protectress of their city, yet instead of some stagy entrance replete with flashy signifiers and an entourage of devotees and hangers on, she appears as one speaking "to all alike."
This seems the very pith of what Aeschylus is getting at. Athena is wonderful, and fresh and beautiful and powerful and fearless -- and she's also sublimely natural, simple, and open. What the Furies will eventually come to see, but what we might already sense, is that Athenian democracy doesn't sound like Homer, possess wings, or look like darkly haunted demons. This goddess who came when called isn't simply wise -- she's good humored, unpretentious, and, in this her city, wonderfully one of us.
I really thought I'd get to the finish line with this -- almost there. A few final remarks will follow.
Chorus of Erinyes
εἶεν: τόδ᾽ ἐστὶ τἀνδρὸς ἐκφανὲς τέκμαρ.
245ἕπου δὲ μηνυτῆρος ἀφθέγκτου φραδαῖς.
τετραυματισμένον γὰρ ὡς κύων νεβρὸν
πρὸς αἷμα καὶ σταλαγμὸν ἐκματεύομεν.
Aha! This is a clear sign of the man. Follow the hints of a voiceless informer. For as a hound tracks a wounded fawn, so we track him by the drops of blood. (Eum. 244-47)If Charles Sanders Peirce were here he might make note that whatever else is going on here, the Furies are reading the track of Orestes as a set of indices. The scent of blood neither resembles Orestes nor is a conventional signifier.
Aeschylus's Fury interestingly notes that these signs they've been following are clear even as they are μηνυτῆρος ἀφθέγκτου, "voiceless informers." This characterization of the path of signs suggests both something that can be read unambiguously -- they speak clearly -- at the same time they are unable to speak. Blood here is a natural trace the Furies can read thanks to the materiality of the signifier.
Indexical signs often are proximate to the thing they refer to, just as water on the ground would indicate that it has rained.
When the Erinyes arrive at the Temple, what they see is Orestes clutching the famed wooden statue of Athena -- an icon of the goddess whose help he seeks. The contrast of the two kinds of sign is a feature of the scene.
It's remarkable how Aeschylus's theatrical imagination can offer what seems a barely disguised ideogram of semiotics writ large. Take Clytemnestra's speech, her first important one in Agamemnon that describes each station of her blazing relay. It's a Big Concatenated Sign from Ida that flashed news of the fall of Ilium to her rooftop Watchman.
Here's just the beginning:
Κλυταιμήστρα
Ἥφαιστος Ἴδης λαμπρὸν ἐκπέμπων σέλας.
φρυκτὸς δὲ φρυκτὸν δεῦρ᾽ ἀπ᾽ ἀγγάρου πυρὸς
ἔπεμπεν: Ἴδη μὲν πρὸς Ἑρμαῖον λέπας
Λήμνου: μέγαν δὲ πανὸν ἐκ νήσου τρίτον
285Ἀθῷον αἶπος Ζηνὸς ἐξεδέξατο,
ὑπερτελής τε, πόντον ὥστε νωτίσαι,
ἰσχὺς πορευτοῦ λαμπάδος πρὸς ἡδονὴν
*
πεύκη τὸ χρυσοφεγγές, ὥς τις ἥλιος,
σέλας παραγγείλασα Μακίστου σκοπαῖς:
290ὁ δ᾽ οὔτι μέλλων οὐδ᾽ ἀφρασμόνως ὕπνῳ
νικώμενος παρῆκεν ἀγγέλου μέρος:
Clytaemestra
Hephaestus, from Ida speeding forth his brilliant blaze. Beacon passed beacon on to us by courier-flame: Ida, to the Hermaean crag in Lemnos; to the mighty blaze upon the island succeeded, third, [285] the summit of Athos sacred to Zeus; and, soaring high aloft so as to leap across the sea, the flame, travelling joyously onward in its strength,The entire speech is stupendous -- revealing on the level of story that this relay of fires was set up by Clytemnestra to have the earliest news of the downfall of Troy. It moves through distances with the dexterity of a winged goddess, and her description blurs from that of the architect of this system of signals to an omniscience that sees the warders at every site quickly kindling this blazing message.the pinewood torch, its golden-beamed light, as another sun, passing the message on to the watchtowers of Macistus. [290] He, delaying not nor carelessly overcome by sleep, did not neglect his part as messenger.. . .
We could spend time on the significance of these fires as images of both Troy and an impending event in Hellas, etc. But staying with Peirce we'll note that they've become conventional symbols thanks to the pre-arranged sign system set up by the Queen. The iconic has become a symbol with a meaning that it does not resemble.
What's more, the rich descriptive details of the watchmen along the way vividly enact precisely how messages move from sender to receiver, each in his own context, working with his own materials. A semiotician might observe that all relayed messages depend on contingent means that are supposed to faithfully replicate the message. Describing her chain of messengers, Clytemnestra notes that the warder at Macistus could have fallen asleep and missed the signal.
Her telling itself of this barreling relay of fires itself catches fire. Flame seen from a mountain where goats roam stimulate flames that don't simply "answer," but grow with ungovernable autonomous energy. As the flames swoop, leap, are stoked to be larger than ordered, inevitable contingency at play around each link of the chain inserts itself. Anyone who has played telephone knows how messages can go astray, or get out of hand.
In foregrounding both the import of the message and the contingencies along its path, Clytemnestra, like many messengers in Greek plays, gives us insight into who she is. Her role as her husband's surrogate has assumed new energy, a life of its own. Exulting in the alacrity of those tending her voiceless informers, she paints an epic picture and demonstrates with a field marshal's grasp of the Great World -- all its moving parts, and what can go wrong. We know her better after she's done.
Athena's first speech comes as she enters the temple of Athena Polias, where she finds Orestes clinging to her image, and the Furies ready to drain him.
Ἀθηνᾶ
πρόσωθεν ἐξήκουσα κληδόνος βοὴν
ἀπὸ Σκαμάνδρου γῆν καταφθατουμένη,
ἣν δῆτ᾽ Ἀχαιῶν ἄκτορές τε καὶ πρόμοι,
400τῶν αἰχμαλώτων χρημάτων λάχος μέγα,
ἔνειμαν αὐτόπρεμνον εἰς τὸ πᾶν ἐμοί,
ἐξαίρετον δώρημα Θησέως τόκοις:
ἔνθεν διώκουσ᾽ ἦλθον ἄτρυτον πόδα,
πτερῶν ἄτερ ῥοιβδοῦσα κόλπον αἰγίδος.
405πώλοις ἀκμαίοις τόνδ᾽ ἐπιζεύξασ᾽ ὄχον
καινὴν δ᾽ ὁρῶσα τήνδ᾽ ὁμιλίαν χθονὸς
ταρβῶ μὲν οὐδέν, θαῦμα δ᾽ ὄμμασιν πάρα.
τίνες ποτ᾽ ἐστέ; πᾶσι δ᾽ ἐς κοινὸν λέγω:
βρέτας τε τοὐμὸν τῷδ᾽ ἐφημένῳ ξένῳ,
410ὑμᾶς θ᾽ ὁμοίας οὐδενὶ σπαρτῶν γένει,
οὔτ᾽ ἐν θεαῖσι πρὸς θεῶν ὁρωμένας
οὔτ᾽ οὖν βροτείοις ἐμφερεῖς μορφώμασιν.
λέγειν δ᾽ ἄμομφον ὄντα τοὺς πέλας κακῶς
πρόσω δικαίων ἠδ᾽ ἀποστατεῖ θέμις.
Athena
From afar I heard the call of a summons, from the Scamander, while I was taking possession of the land, which the leaders and chiefs of the Achaeans assigned to me, a great portion of the spoil their spears had won, [400] to be wholly mine forever, a choice gift to Theseus' sons. From there I have come, urging on my tireless foot, without wings rustling the folds of my aegis. As I see this strange company of visitors to my land, I am not afraid, but it is a wonder to my eyes. Who in the world are you? I address you all in common—this stranger sitting at my image, and you, who are like no race of creatures ever born, [410] neither seen by gods among goddesses nor resembling mortal forms. But it is far from just to speak ill of one's neighbor who is blameless, and Right stands aloof.
Her speech offers many telling details that contrast with both Clytemnestra and the Furies. Busily engaged in public affairs, she hears a call from afar that arrives without need of fire warders. Her reference to her mode of travel has a blithe tone:
From there I have come, urging on my tireless foot, without wings rustling the folds of my aegisThe impression is that she moves effortlessly, in strong contrast to the exhausted Furies at their first entrance. Her reference to the aegis has an unaffected, offhand quality. She seems approachable, down to earth.
Her entrance offers interesting theatrical possibilities. If we consider the audience might have been terrified just moments before by the Furies' magniloquence:
Χορός
τίς οὖν τάδ᾽ οὐχ ἅζεταί
390τε καὶ δέδοικεν βροτῶν,
ἐμοῦ κλύων
τὸν μοιρόκραντον ἐκ θεῶν
δοθέντα τέλεον;
ChorusAthena's chatty absence of dread can be played to conjure a gentle comic contrast. The mention of her foot recalls that the dread chorus had just moments before sung of -- and presumably danced with vehemence -- their power to trip up even speedy mortals:
What mortal, then, does not stand in awe and dread when he hears from me the law ordained by Fate and accepted by the gods?
Χορός
μάλα γὰρ οὖν ἁλομένα
ἀνέκαθεν βαρυπεσῆ
καταφέρω ποδὸς ἀκμάν,
375σφαλερὰ καὶ τανυδρόμοις
κῶλα, δύσφορον ἄταν.
Chorus
For surely with a great leap from above I bring down the heavily falling edge of my foot, my limbs that trip even swift runners —unendurable ruin.
Their showy awfulness is instantly defused as Athena exhibits wonder and curiosity, but no dread:
Ἀθηνᾶ
καινὴν δ᾽ ὁρῶσα τήνδ᾽ ὁμιλίαν χθονὸς
ταρβῶ μὲν οὐδέν, θαῦμα δ᾽ ὄμμασιν πάρα.
τίνες ποτ᾽ ἐστέ; πᾶσι δ᾽ ἐς κοινὸν λέγω:
Athena
As I see this strange company of visitors to my land, I am not afraid, but it is a wonder to my eyes. Who may you be? I speak to all alike . . . (Eum. 405-7 Sommerstein's translation adapted here.)
After the thrilling dance of the Erinyes, (reputed to have caused infants to expire and women to miscarry) Athena's entrance is clothed in the language of daily life -- she speaks in prose.
The Athenians would notice. Here's their goddess, the embodiment and protectress of their city, yet instead of some stagy entrance replete with flashy signifiers and an entourage of devotees and hangers on, she appears as one speaking "to all alike."
This seems the very pith of what Aeschylus is getting at. Athena is wonderful, and fresh and beautiful and powerful and fearless -- and she's also sublimely natural, simple, and open. What the Furies will eventually come to see, but what we might already sense, is that Athenian democracy doesn't sound like Homer, possess wings, or look like darkly haunted demons. This goddess who came when called isn't simply wise -- she's good humored, unpretentious, and, in this her city, wonderfully one of us.
I really thought I'd get to the finish line with this -- almost there. A few final remarks will follow.
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