Aeschylus II

Aeschylus II: The Oresteia by Aeschylus

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I read the Orestes trilogy for the Online Great Books program The program had just had us read Homer's Odyssey, so the story of Agamemnon, Clytemnestra, and their boy Orestes fit seamlessly into one of the grooves found in that book.

I really recommend that any thinking person read the Oresteia. It actually makes for an interesting and gripping read. The story progresses through Clytemnestra's murder of Agamemnon on his return from victory over Troy, to Orestes taking vengeance on his mother for the murder of his father, to, finally, the trial before Athena as to whether Oreste's will be handed over to the Furies because of his kin-slaying.

The story is told in the form of prose poetry in a play. The reader has to acquaint himself with the forms of the Strophe, Antistrophe and the like, but that's not difficult. This test has a nice glossary that clues the reader into references to gods, myth figures and location, which is helpful for staying on track.

Coming from the Odyssey to this trilogy, I was impressed by what I think I saw in moral development. My sense from Homer is that Bronze Age Greeks were fairly hit or miss on the treatment of strangers and the universality of justice. Homer's world was largely a divine command world and the protection of strangers seems to have rested in the possibility that the stranger you were mishandling might be a god in disguise.

By the time we get Aeschylus, it seems that there may be some norms of justice with the Furies assigned to give teeth to those norms. However, these norms seem to be fairly conditional. Thus, Orestes slaying of his mother gets the attention of the Furies because that involved blood kin, but Clytemnestra's slaying of her husband is outside of their jurisdiction because they are not blood relations.

The gods do take an interest in Agamemnon's vengeance, but that was because he was fairly important. Further, while the gods do provide a way out for Orestes' dilemma, one doesn't get the sense that the Greeks were too concerned with universal forms of justice.

It's worth reading and pondering.