There will be blood: Vengeance beforehand

The Furies in hot pursuit of Orestes arrive at the temple of Athena sniffing:

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. [245] Follow the hints of a voiceless informer. For as a hound tracks a wounded fawn, so we track him by the drops of blood.

Soon they spot the young man in the temple, embracing the wooden image of Athena Polias. His pursuers speak of the spilled blood of mother, difficult to recall from the earth, and describe with appetite how they will "slurp" (ῥοφέω) thick red blood from Orestes' living limbs, then

καὶ ζῶντά σ᾽ ἰσχνάνασ᾽ ἀπάξομαι κάτω,
ἀντίποιν᾽ ὡς τίνῃς ματροφόνου δύας.
ὄψει δὲ κεἴ τις ἄλλος ἤλιτεν βροτῶν
270ἢ θεὸν ἢ ξένον
τιν᾽ ἀσεβῶν† ἢ τοκέας φίλους,
ἔχονθ᾽ ἕκαστον τῆς δίκης ἐπάξια.
μέγας γὰρ Ἅιδης ἐστὶν εὔθυνος βροτῶν
ἔνερθε χθονός,
275δελτογράφῳ δὲ πάντ᾽ ἐπωπᾷ φρενί.

I will wither you alive and drag you down, so that you pay atonement for your murdered mother's agony. 

And you will see there such other mortals who have acted profanely towards a god or a stranger [270] or dear parents, each having what satisifies justice (δίκης).

For Hades is mighty in holding mortals to account beneath the earth; he watches (ἐπωπᾷ) all things and inscribes them on a tablet (δελτογράφῳ) within his mind. [275]

Clearly they have in mind the most illustrious transgressors -- Tantalos the fountainhead of the House of Atreus, Sisyphus, so clever he cheated death, and Ixion, the suppliant whom Zeus pardoned only to observe him trying to replace the Father of gods and men in Hera's arms.

Orestes belongs with these famed damned louts, say the Furies, and draining his blood, withering him and dragging him to Hades will fix him forever in that god's eternal book.

In a few verses, they've captured their entire role -- for them it's a great role -- the excitement of the chase, the vampiric feast, all in the service of Justice, helping balance the ledger of the god of the underworld.

You can set up a city's legal framework alongside this bloody realm, but it will take some convincing for anyone to accept that a court of law can quench the appetite for commensurate vengeance seething at the heart of things.

Everything Clytemnestra's image urged upon the Erinyes reflects this desire to balance the score. Apollo is clearly not up to it. This has to be Athena's task.

Orestes killing Clytemnestra

Precarious Odyssey: Apollo vs. Athena in the Oresteia

The approach Athena takes toward the Furies (Erinyes) in Eumenides stands in sharp contrast to Apollo's reaction.

Encountering the Furies, Apollo is infuriated. He'd cast them out of the Universe if that were possible -- threatening them with discovering themselves "on the receiving end of a winged flashing snake" (180). His capacity for cruelty, detailed by Cassandra in Agamemnon -- is here seen in action. Speaking to the Furies he says,

. . . your place is where the punishments are beheading, gouging out of eyes, cutting of throats, and where young men's virility is ruined by destruction of seed; where there is mutilation and stoning, and where those who are impaled beneath their spine moan long and piteously. [190] Do you hear what sort of feast is your delight? You are detested by the gods for it. The whole fashion of your form sets it forth. Creatures like you should live in the den of a blood-drinking lion, and not inflict pollution on all near you in this oracular shrine. [195] Be gone, you goats without a herdsman! No god loves such a flock. 

Here is Athena's first encounter with the daughters of Night:

πώλοις 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,410 

ὑμᾶς 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.

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 (θέμις) stands aloof.

Her first sense is of wonder (θαῦμα) -- something new, other, is here - the effect of that otherness preempts aesthetic disgust or moral revulsion.

Orestes purified by Apollo 360 BC

To be sure, Apollo saved and helped purify Orestes so that he could "stand trial." But with the Furies he lacks all patience. For Athena on the other hand, what's afoot is too important to simply cut bait. As she looks into the dark faces of these unknown and possibly irrational creatures, the very possibility of Democracy is at stake.

Consider the courtroom scene, in which the trial of Orestes seems designed to make us think about the challenges inherent in the process of arriving at good judgments.

For the trial, Apollo puts into play a model of the judicial process; Athena gathers the audience of jurors -- the best men of the city.

Apollo scripts the scene. At once he's

• the self-admitted mover behind the killing of Clytemnestra, 
• the attorney for Clytemnestra's killer, and 
• the self-appointed expert witness testifying to the mother's role in human conception.  

Yet despite his Peter Sellers-like versatility and self-assured presentational skills, neither Apollo's words -- which he claims come (unedited and unredacted) from Zeus -- nor his clever technical arguments count for much. The jurors are evenly divided; only Athena's arbitrary rule regarding tie votes saves Orestes from a guilty verdict.

Athena takes a completely different tack.

To assure the possibility of Dike in the all-too-human realm of the polis, she knows she has to go deeper -- beneath the creature called "human" to the unreflective stimuli working on that creature from below. Her dialog with the Furies pits her wits against the blood instincts of feral creatures of the hunt.

She's aware that the efficacy of the judicial process -- with its panoply of trained experts, articulate lawyers, esteemed authorities, diligent scientists and unimpeachable witnesses -- can be hobbled to the point of uselessness by the untutored emotions, peeves, shoulder chips, biases and all random progeny of ignorance that possess crowds and drive multifarious families to extreme ends.

The rational process of Dike that Apollo and Athena provide has no surefire method to parry the forces of unreason. Yet the journey of the Oresteia is about the precarity of a navigation from the sovereign oikos bound by human blood to another, much larger order: that of the polis whose very existence depends on its ability to administer divine justice. 

Hence the need for persuasive power, theatrical charm, negotiating chops, strategic sleight of hand, prudent foresight, and perhaps above all, good-humor and patience. It's clear that the Furies rise from somewhere that is neither the oikos nor the polis. They don't share the same language, frame of reference, or ability to reflect that humans share - somewhat - with gods.

To achieve the end of shoring up a precarious order which the gods are in this kairotic moment seeking to entrust to human reason, Athena has to come to terms with unreason.

This seems a place to pause for a bit.

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

Why does Aeschylus put the task of persuasion at the climax of the Oresteia?

That scene between Athena and the Furies brings about the truce, (σπονδή) that ends the trilogy, and offers what could be called Aeschylus's theatrical vision of wisdom in action. Certain aspects of Athena's dialog with the Furies might be put in relief if compared with the earlier, balancing scene of Clytemnestra exhorting the Furies (l. 94 ff).

An image of the dead Clytemnestra enters and finds the Furies dreaming of pursuing Orestes. An outcast from even the dead, the Queen calls on the hounds of Night to destroy her son, Orestes, who until this moment in fact stood right in front of them.

She begins with sarcastic contempt:

Phantom (εἴδωλον) of Clytemnestra 

εὕδοιτ᾽ ἄν, ὠή, καὶ καθευδουσῶν τί δεῖ;95 

ἐγὼ δ᾽ ὑφ᾽ ὑμῶν ὧδ᾽ ἀπητιμασμένη 

ἄλλοισιν ἐν νεκροῖσιν,

Sleep on! Aha! Yet what need is there of sleepers? It is due to you that I am thus dishonored among the other dead;

As they mutter in their shadowy dogdream, Clytemnestra tries to wake them to consciousness of the fact they are dreaming, and that Orestes has escaped: 

Phantom of Clytemnestra 

ὄναρ διώκεις θῆρα, κλαγγαίνεις δ᾽ ἅπερκύων μέριμναν οὔποτ᾽ ἐκλείπων πόνου. 

τί δρᾷς; 

In a dream you are hunting your prey, and are barking like a dog that never leaves off its keenness for the work.  

What are you doing?

The irony here is almost dizzying. The image (εἴδωλον) of the dead mother is trying to get the Furies to see her living son standing before their eyes at Delphi's Omphalos. Trapped in the stasis of their dream, they just mutter more loudly, pursuing Orestes' image. Instead of disrupting their dream, the eidolon of Clytemnestra gets inscribed in it -- a new image to mutter at in their dream.

When Clytemnestra asks τί δρᾷς; What are you doing?, the question is rhetorical. She is underscoring the failure of the Furies to act.

But suppose, observing Clytemnestra, one were to take τί δρᾷς; literally, and ask: What are YOU doing, O Queen? Her straining to persuade, to move the Furies to action in her pursuit of "honor," has utterly failed. She's not doing anything, vanishing the instant they awaken. If anything, she proves to be more delusional than the objects of her sarcasm.

As I hope to indicate in a further post, the irony of Clytemnestra's failure becomes even clearer when juxtaposed with the final scene. Athena will succeed in moving the Furies -- not to hunt Orestes, but to leave the only dream they've known, these children of Night, for a new stage, in a new theater of operations -- the polis.

Clytemnestra seeking to awaken the Furies

The path of good speech

Near the final lines of Eumenides, Athena asks 

Athena

ἆρα φρονοῦσιν γλώσσης ἀγαθῆς

ὁδὸν εὑρίσκειν;

ἐκ τῶν φοβερῶν τῶνδε προσώπων

μέγα κέρδος ὁρῶ τοῖσδε πολίταις:   988-991

Do they not then intend to find
the path of good speech?
From these terrible faces
I see great profit for these citizens;

The goddesss has pretty much sealed the deal with the Erinyes. Right after this speech, the priestess and various attendants enter, bringing sacrificial animals, torches, purple robes and young temple servants. The chorus of Furies sings χαίρετε χαίρετ᾽ -- "Rejoice rejoice" together with a sense of "Farewell" -- as they are about to take the path to their new house in a deep, large cavern nearby.

Our group started the Agamemnon in September 2018, and we read the last lines of Eumenides Wednesday. I would happily echo the Furies' χαίρετε χαίρετ᾽ even as I admit that the scope of Aeschylus' achievement warrants an instant return to Ag. line 1. Even for our intrepid group that would be a bit of a challenge.

Short of that, however, any effort on my part to write about the Oresteia probably won't amount to much. Instead of a "close reading" of this mountainous work, I'll address one question that might prove useful as a point of entry -- simply this: The last "act" of Eumenides -- from the moment an acquitted Orestes leaves the courtroom until the entire cast dances off the stage -- consists of a single act of persuasion. Nearly a quarter of the play's length, it has the Furies turn away from their ancient ways to be welcomed into the heart of Athens.

Everything Athena (along with Apollo, Hermes, the Pythia) has done to put in place a civic judicial form is only effected if these ancient hags can accept Athena's deal. Yet the scene often receives relatively short shrift, with more attention given to the courtroom scene that precedes it.

Mainly Athena and the Furies square off after the humans and other gods have left. The Erinyes remain Furious that their age-old mission to torment the killer of a blood relative, in this case a matricide, has been aborted. Without some coming to terms, the stability of Dike, the judicial mechanism of a juried trial established by the Goddess, is unstable.

This in itself is noteworthy. The new Court of the Areopagus is not a fait accompli, the result of irresistible divine power. Its very possibility depends upon a coming to terms with the Furies.

How do you win over a creature of Night that only knows how to inflict vengeful pursuit, rampant plague and infinite pain? How do you convince it to "find the path to good speech?" And in these elemental hideous faces, associated with cruel butchery and torture as Apollo had described with vehement disgust, what prompts Athena to "see great profit for these citizens?"

I'll try to make some headway in a couple of upcoming posts.

Birth of Athena