The conflicts and resolution of the Oresteia are strongly colored by the difficulties the Athenians were facing in the 450s: clashes with the Persians, the First Peloponnesian War, and political upheavals within their own city. An outstanding feature of Agamemnon is the poet’s use of naval power and protracted warfare conducted in distant lands as a metaphor for a perversion of natural order and a threat to the political stability in Argos. Unlike Homer’s Agamemnon, Aeschylus’ king is called ‘‘the elder leader of Achaean ships’’ (184-85) and ‘‘commander of ships’’ (1227). Agamemnon wonders how he can become ‘‘a deserter of the fleet’’ (212), and the chorus refers to the corrupt sacrifice of Iphigenia as the ‘‘preliminary sacrifice for ships’’ (227). The expedition acquires additional negative connotations when Ares, god of war, is called the ‘‘gold-changer of bodies’’ (438) and the long siege in distant Troy generates political problems at home (Rosenbloom 1995, 97-98, 105-11).
Eumenides finally brings an end to the ancient cycle of violence we see continued in Agamemnon and Libation Bearers. As the trilogy moves from Argos, in the first two plays, to Delphi and Athens in Eumenides, so too it moves historically from the earliest generations of the house of Atreus to the trial of Orestes on the Acropolis, where the mythical past borders on the audience’s present. But the Acropolis is not the only backdrop shared by Eumenides and its fifth-century audience.
The extraordinary topicality of Eumenides is undisputed (e. g., Podlecki 1966a, 74-100); for example, despite differences in details, the alliance Orestes promises the Athenians (762-74) alludes to Athens’ treaty with Argos in 462. It is equally certain that when Athena gives the jury of Athenian citizens the power to try cases of murder, the poet alludes to Ephialtes’ reform of the Areopagus, which still retained this power in 458. In response to the Erinyes’ threat to bring civil war in retaliation for Athena’s decision to free Orestes, the goddess pleads with them not ‘‘to fix among my citizens war against kin, furious battle against one another’’ (862-63). She asks instead for war against external enemies (864). Once appeased the Erinyes - soon to be the Semnai (‘‘Reverend Goddesses’’) - pray for the city to be free of civil war (976-87). Macleod cautions that ‘‘to pray for a city that it should be free of faction is natural and normal at any time’’ (1982, 130). Nonetheless, spectators who two or three years earlier had witnessed the factional conflicts sparked by Ephialtes’ reforms were likely to be reminded of their own experience.
Athena successfully appeases the Erinyes by incorporating them into the new order: they will be installed in a cave beneath the Hill of Ares, where the cult of the Semnai will be established for them (see Pausanias 1.28.6). If given their due, the chthonic goddesses will guarantee the fecundity of the city. If dishonored, they will bring disease and its political analogue, civil war. Aeschylus’ myth of the origins of the cult of the Semnai is yet another link to the world of fifth-century Athens, since it reflects contemporary Athenian religious practices.
Despite the play’s topical references and its generally optimistic ending, Aeschylus deftly avoids wholesale endorsement of democratic policies (e. g., Pelling 2000, 171-77), in particular by avoiding exact correspondences with contemporary Athenian events or institutions. The terms of Orestes’ alliance, for example, are not those of Athens’ alliance in 462 (cf. Thucydides 1.102.4). Instead, as Macleod (1982) has shown, the Athens of Eumenides is the mirror image of the world of disorder in Agamemnon and Libation Bearers. Athena’s decision reverses the confusion of gender relationships that led to Clytemnestra’s murder of Agamemnon. The heir of the rightful king is returned to power over his own house and Argos. As Semnai, the chthonic Erinyes promise real fertility, in contrast to the rain of blood that Clytem-nestra described as spurting from her husband’s wounds (1388-92). It is equally important that Eumenides resolves the trilogy’s conflicts by holding tensions in balance. Female is not utterly defeated by male. Despite the negative connotation of naval conflict in Agamemnon - or for that matter the negative picture of the king himself - Athena does not rule out war, but prays for war against external enemies. The Erinyes are incorporated into the new order, yet retain their former powers.
The real cessation of the cycle of violence in the Oresteia comes when Athena establishes the Areopagus as a court of law. It takes an Olympian to restore order, but she does so with the help of mortals. Aeschylus does not offer an idealized Athens, but he does lend authority to the origins of an Athenian institution by moving it into the past and associating with heroes and gods.
World History
