As soon as he has struck her down, Orestes decides to go back to Delphi to beg the god to purify him, for even if innocent he is polluted by what he has done. As the play ends, Orestes runs off, pursued by the ancient, pre-Olympian Furies. These hags, dressed in black and wreathed with serpents, pitilessly avenge wrongs done within the family. Despite their age they seem never to have grown up, for they have no sense of the compromises and uncertainties of adult life. Whatever Apollo may say, they mean to hunt Orestes down and never let him go.
—
In the last play of the trilogy, the scene shifts to the temple of Apollo at Delphi. For now, Orestes has outrun the exhausted Furies, who lie on the temple steps growling in their sleep like dogs. Apollo arrives and, when they wake up, he argues with them, fruitlessly, about the fugitive’s fate. The god claims to have purified him of pollution, but agrees that the court of the Areopagus in Athens shall decide whether to clear Orestes of guilt or to convict him of murder. (The audience will have been aware that one of the reformed Areopagus’s few remaining powers was to try cases of homicide.)
We now move to Athens, where a jury of ten Athenian citizens hears the case. Athena presides. A chorus of the Furies prosecutes and Apollo defends. The jurors vote by dropping a white or a black pebble into one of two different urns. The votes are counted and found to be equal. Athena’s casting vote goes for acquittal.
The Furies are furious. “The old is trampled by the new!” they wail. “A curse on you younger gods who override the ancient laws.”
Athena talks them down from their rage and persuades them to settle as honored guests in Athens. “Share my home with me,” she says, and gives them a cave on the Acropolis to live in.
But she warns them solemnly not to
provoke bloodshed in my land. It damages young hearts, maddening them with a rage beyond drunkenness. Do not transplant the hearts of fighting cocks in my people, the spirit of tribal war and boldness against each other. Let them fight foreign enemies instead.
After so much letting of blood we have, finally, a happy ending. The curse of the House of Atreus has run its course thanks to the new democracy of Athens. In a full and confident hope, the Furies are rechristened the Kindly Ones (in Greek, the Eumenides, also the play’s title).
—
During the opening ceremony of the Great Dionysia, the ten generals or strategoi poured libations and, according to a fourth-century inscription, offerings were made to such political abstractions as Democracy, Peace, and Good Fortune. Key priorities of the Athenian state were given memorable visual expression. It was on this date that the annual payments for the upkeep of the allied fleet fell due. The money was carried into the theater and shown to the audience. We have seen that it did not take long for the Delian League to transform itself into the Athenian Empire. This display, in front of representatives of league members and other international visitors as well as metics and citizens, showed very clearly who was now in charge.
Orphan sons of Athenians who had fallen in battle were brought up at the state’s expense and on reaching adulthood were given a set of costly hoplite armor. They were now formally presented to the audience and were a striking reminder of the military power of the polis. This was Athens being regenerated.
Before the tragedies began, the names of men who had in some way benefited the Athenian state were read out, and they were awarded crowns or garlands. This public honoring emphasized the value the polis placed on loyalty and patriotism.
Taken as a whole, the Great Dionysia was a political event of high importance. Of course, in the first place it was a religious service in honor of the gods. But it is no accident that the invention of drama occurred at about the same time as the invention of democracy. Tragedy and comedy were an additional means by which the demos could think about the great social and ethical issues of the day, without having to take political decisions at the same time. In a word, it was the ecclesia at leisure.
Aeschylus is a case in point. We should remember that he knew Pericles well. He was a democrat, as he made clear in The Oresteia. He diverted the course of the old myth so that it ended up in Athens. What the playwright was doing was to endorse the controversial reform of the council of the Areopagus, pretending that its main role had always been to hear murder cases.
He has Athena say:
Since this is how matters have turned out,
I will select sworn judges of homicide, and
I will establish this court for all time.
So summon your witnesses and proofs
Which support your case; I will…choose the best
Of my citizens, for them to decide this matter truly.
Over and above the particular case of the Areopagus, Aeschylus repeatedly emphasizes the importance of reconciliation. An old order is passing, to be replaced by the new. Violence and despotism have given way to justice delivered by the people. The outmoded principle of vengeance, of an eye for an eye, has been overtaken by the light of reason. The ancient Furies have been persuaded to become good-natured, loyal powers, their night outshone by the brightness of Apollo’s sun.
Athens was not the only polis where democrats were competing with aristocrats and tyrants. Emotions were running high throughout the Greek world. Revolutions were overturned and reaction set in. The outcome was often civil strife and bloodletting.
In the Eumenides, the culmination of his trilogy, Aeschylus has the Furies eat their words and preach peace.
Never let civil war, which eats men,
Rage in Athens; never let its soil
Soak up its people’s blood
And murderous passion for revenge
Destroy the state. May its people find joy
In each other, a common will for love.
And when they hate, they must do so with one mind.
The show ends with a procession. Music plays and torches blaze. The Furies don the scarlet ceremonial robes of the metics, the city’s foreign residents. Everyone sings a final song of welcome as the two divinities, Apollo and Athena, take these “ancient children” into their care and lead them joyfully to their new home.
16
“Crowned with Violets”
Pericles was a contradiction in terms—an aristocrat by temperament but a democrat by conviction or, perhaps it might be better to say, from enlightened self-interest. From the death of Ephialtes in 461 until his own thirty years later he dominated Athenian politics.
How did he accomplish this feat? Part of the answer lies in his personality—or at least how he presented it to his fellow-citizens. After entering politics he adopted a new austere lifestyle, writes his biographer Plutarch.
On one street and on one street only was he to be seen walking, the one that led [from his house] to the
agora
and the Council chamber. He declined invitations to dinner and any other kind of social get-together. During the long period that he was at the head of affairs he never ate a meal at a friend’s house—except when his relative Euryptolemus held a wedding banquet. And then he only stayed to the end of the meal and as soon as the serious drinking started he stood up and left.