Skip to main content Accessibility help
×
Hostname: page-component-848d4c4894-m9kch Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-06-08T00:43:50.628Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

Chapter 7 - The Tablet-Writing Mind of Hades

Omniscient Ethical Judgment

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 September 2022

Amit Shilo
Affiliation:
University of California, Santa Barbara

Summary

The Eumenides contains one of the earliest descriptions anywhere of Hades as a universal judge. The Erinyes threaten Orestes with a continuation of his punishment after death by “the great assessor of mortals beneath the earth.” This passage contains the first extant catalogue of Hades’ ethical concerns: he is said to punish human–divine, parent–child, and guest–host transgressions. Although he “sees all things,” the name Hades derives from a-idein, literally the “unseen,” a moniker that exemplifies the human inability to confront this nonpolitical, absolute judge. By differentiating Hades from the Erinyes, this chapter draws out the dynamics of his character and ethical law. Like them, Hades’ connection with blood and punishment entails pollution, but unlike them, he is never subordinated to Athens. The analysis then contrasts Hades’ law to the “new law” that Athena creates. It argues that Hades represents an alternate, yet still valid ethical code that can be used to critique the jingoistic and bellicose politics of the trilogy’s ending.

Type
Chapter
Information
Beyond Death in the Oresteia
Poetics, Ethics, and Politics
, pp. 176 - 212
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2022
Creative Commons
Creative Common License - CCCreative Common License - BYCreative Common License - NC
This content is Open Access and distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution licence CC-BY-NC 4.0 https://creativecommons.org/cclicenses/

Introduction

The culmination of the afterlife as a challenge to the value systems in place in the Oresteia is the justice of Hades. Although allusions to underworld punishment occur in each play of the trilogy, the only explicit reference to Hades’ ethical concerns is a brief, often-overlooked passage in the Eumenides. In fact, verses 267–75 are one of the earliest descriptions in extant Greek literature of Hades as a universal judge. The Erinyes declare that after they kill Orestes, he will see every impious mortal punished by Hades, “the great assessor of mortals beneath the earth” (273–4). Crucially, the passage contains the first catalogue of Hades’ specific ethical concerns.Footnote 1 Since the punishment of Hades has rarely been included in discussions of justice in the Oresteia, its significance for understanding the trilogy as a whole has been neglected.Footnote 2

The role of Hades’ code in the Oresteia’s contest over justice is undervalued mainly because one must extrapolate both its layered ethical effects and the singular features of its divine agent from a few lines. Again a recursive technique is necessary. The first section offers a preliminary reading of the poetics of the Hades passage. The second section then analyzes the wide network of references and allusions to Hades and afterlife punishment throughout the trilogy. Drawing on this background, the third section returns to a deeper reading of the processes of Hades’ justice, his ethical concerns, and his divine characteristics. The fourth section addresses the troubling questions raised by the trilogy concerning the very relationships that Hades ostensibly protects. It also uncovers the problematic language used for the punishing divinity himself. In lieu of a Summations/Connections section, the final section argues for an implicit clash between the justice of Hades and that of Athena. Their divine values and laws are antithetical in vocabulary, legal techniques, and political effects. The contrast enables audiences to critique Athena’s “new law” on grounds internal to the Oresteia. Hades’ justice is thus not only relevant within the trilogy but also illuminates a set of tensions within Greek religious-ethical-political thought.

Jurisdiction of Blood; Justice of Vision

The Hades passage is a revelation of specific and targeted divine oversight of human action. It is heavily colored by the concerns of its speakers, represented as embodied demons of vengeance.Footnote 3 The framework, then, is the Erinyes’ obsession with blood and refusal to acknowledge Orestes’ human or divine purification.Footnote 4 Not only does maternal blood compel them (ἄγει γὰρ αἷμα μητρῷον, agei gar haima mētrōon, Eum. 230), they also use blood to determine jurisdiction over Orestes. Immediately before the Hades passage, the Erinyes acknowledge that Orestes desires to be brought to trial before Athena (257–60) but claim that his mother’s blood prevents it (αἷμα μητρῷον, haima mētrōon, 261–3). Instead, the Erinyes must capture Orestes in order to suck his blood in requital (ῥοφεῖν ἐρυθρὸν ἐκ μελέων πελανόν, 264–7). Finally, they threaten to send him, depleted of blood, to the underworld for further punishment (267–75):

καὶ ζῶντά σ’ ἰσχνάνασ’ ἀπάξομαι κάτω,
<ἵν’> ἀντιποίνους τίνῃς μητροφόντας δύας·Footnote 5
ὄψῃ δὲ κεἴ τις ἄλλος ἤλιτεν βροτῶν
ἢ θεὸν ἢ ξένον τιν’ ἀσεβῶν
ἢ τοκέας φίλους,
ἔχονθ’ ἕκαστον τῆς δίκης ἐπάξια.
μέγας γὰρ Ἅιδης ἐστὶν εὔθυνος βροτῶν
ἔνερθε χθονός,
δελτογράφῳ δὲ πάντ’ ἐπωπᾷ φρενί.
And having drained you dry while living, I shall haul you off below,
so that you may pay in requital matricidal sufferings.
And you will see – if some other mortal has transgressed,
dishonoring a god, or a guest-friend,
or their dear parents –
each one getting due recompense of justice.
For Hades is the great assessor of mortals
beneath the earth;
he watches over all things with his tablet-writing mind.

The Erinyes in this passage expose the universal rules concerning transgression and requital. Their own function is thus only part of a larger system of punishment, one that extends past the loss of blood, the loss of life. Whereas the immediate context is Orestes’ matricide, they claim that every mortal (τις … βροτῶν, tis … brotōn 269, 273) is subject to scrutiny by an omniscient judge and infernal torturer.Footnote 6 Any human who commits crimes against a god, guest-friend (xenon), or parent must pay for it in the afterlife. Since the Erinyes are chthonic divinities, their depiction of the underworld comes across as authoritative.Footnote 7 Despite the statement’s seeming novelty within the trilogy, it is not presented as an establishing moment. Rather, the Erinyes draw back the veil on the preexisting divine schema.

This vision of justice is a justice of vision. The Erinyes themselves track the scent of blood, but they stress Hades’ preternatural sense of sight.Footnote 8 His comprehensive gaze (πάντ’ ἐπωπᾷ, pant’ epōpa, 275) encompasses all human actions.Footnote 9 Hades’ recording memory (δελτογράφῳ … φρενί, deltographō … phreni, 275) then fixes these actions in a metaphorical written record, presumably to be read at the time of death.Footnote 10 The optical emphasis of overseeing and reading subtly parallels Orestes seeing (ὄψῃ, opsē, 269) the punishment of others below. Thus, in this passage bristling with visual ideas, Aeschylus poetically inverts the popular etymology that derives the name Hades from “the unseen.”Footnote 11 The poet creates an image that is no image: The invisible judge is the universal spectator.

Hades and the Afterlife throughout the Trilogy

Such paradoxes (the punishment of the bloodless and the vision of the invisible) are felt also in earlier allusions to afterlives in the trilogy. Previous chapters of this book have examined such multivalent references from the perspective of characters, uncovering the relationships between their ethical positions and their understanding or ignorance of afterlife possibilities. Now, in order to frame the Hades passage in the poetic context of the entirety of the Oresteia, we return to the most relevant antecedents, which may be split among three categories: allusions to the divinity Hades, references to humans existing in the underworld, and lyrical passages about divine justice after death.

The name “Hades” is rarely used in the Oresteia, and only once does it refer to the divinity himself in the OCT text (in our Eumenides passage).Footnote 12 Instead, invocations of the underworld god – perhaps counterintuitively for us – twist into invocations of Zeus. The trope is common in Archaic Greek literature and Greek religion across time periods; references to Zeus in chthonic contexts routinely signify his reflection below.Footnote 13 In Aeschylus’ Suppliants, the poetics of this usage is made explicit: the Chorus of Suppliants call on “the most hospitable Zeus of the Dead” (Supp. 157–8), and Danaus refers to the story (ὡς λόγος) of a judgment of the dead “in (the house) of Hades” (’ν Ἅιδου, ’n Hadou) by “another Zeus” (Ζεὺς ἄλλος, 228–31). Thus, a binary relation between the “highest” and “lowest” divine brothers is explicit. Are Zeus and Hades enforcing the same law in different realms? Do they have opposing functions? The full answers to these questions must wait until the contrast between the law of Hades and that of Athena (which she associates with Zeus) at the end of this chapter.

The references to Zeus by humans in vengeful contexts in the first two plays provide the necessary background. The first putative example is the subject of editorial controversy, however. Clytemnestra, having killed Agamemnon, pours the third libation, traditionally reserved for Zeus, to “Hades (Ἅιδου, Hadou) under the earth, the Savior of the dead” (Ag. 1386–7, following the codices). The OCT and Loeb editors, among others, here “improve” the text by substituting “Zeus” (Διός) for the codices’ “Hades” (Ἅιδου). They do so without any textual support. The idea behind the emendation is that Aeschylus should have written “Zeus under the earth,” a phrasing similar to that in the Suppliants, rather than the seemingly redundant “Hades under the earth.” Against these, Reference MeddaMedda (2017), iii.323–4, retains the codices’ “Hades,” with comparanda from tragedy.Footnote 14 Medda rightly asserts that the original reading only adds to the blasphemous nature of Clytemnestra’s speech, which also affixes one of Zeus’s traditional epithets, Savior (Σωτήρ), to Hades.Footnote 15 For our purposes, regardless of the text one chooses, the reference to Hades is clear, as is the perversion of the characteristics of Zeus.

This Zeus–Hades pairing structures the characters’ invocations of chthonic power in the Choephoroi as well. Among the numerous mentions of underworld forces, Orestes calls on “Zeus, who sends up from below avenging ruin” (Cho. 382–5, cf. 1, 18–19).Footnote 16 Electra, too, refers to Zeus in close proximity to chthonic gods (394–9, cf. 124a–b, 462, and her prayer to Persephone in 490). Each of their numerous appeals to infernal forces specifically solicits action or power in the living world (Chapter 4). They correspond to Clytemnestra’s invocations, yet their dynamics are inverted. Clytemnestra’s libation to Zeus of human blood from the husband whom she slaughtered is a further blasphemy. She does gain divine champions, the Erinyes, but these are first treated harshly, then lose the trial, and finally abandon her cause. By contrast, since Apollo’s oracle condemns Clytemnestra, it validates the vengeance that Electra and Orestes seek from chthonic divinities, as does the run of the Eumenides. Thus, although both mother and children connect Hades and Zeus in service of bloody kin-murder, the trilogy manipulates audience sympathies to treat the invocations of chthonic divinities oppositely.

Depictions of humans in the underworld earlier in the trilogy constitute the second set of necessary background references. Grouped together, certain new patterns emerge. The Chorus of the Agamemnon allude to the myth of Asclepius “leading up” (ἀνάγειν, Ag. 1023) Hippolytus from the underworld. This introduces the possibility of return from the dead for humans in exceptional circumstances and simultaneously reinforces its impossibility otherwise. The violent reaction from Zeus to Asclepius’ resuscitation models direct divine punishment, but only for aberrant, superhuman transgressions (Chapter 2). In another example, Cassandra suggests she might continue to sing prophecies by the rivers of the underworld (Ag. 1160–1). Despite her second sight, the reference is ambiguous: It could mean an eternal extension of Apollo’s curse. Since she never mentions any punitive agent or injurious alteration of her state, her couplet does not reveal any structured view of afterlife punishment (Chapter 3).

Still in the first play, after murdering Agamemnon, Clytemnestra insists that he should not boast in Hades (ἐν Ἅιδου, en Hadou, Ag. 1528). She also imagines his underworld reunion with Iphigeneia by the “ferry of grief” (πόρθμευμ‘ ἀχέων, porthmeum’ akheōn, 1555–9), a reference to the underworld river Acheron. Hers is a poetic construction, outside of any claim to divine support. By contrast, among the songs of lament for Agamemnon, the Chorus of the Choephoroi in verses 354–62 depict him as potentially regaining the honor due to a king in the afterlife. They thus open the door to a change of status after death but never claim that this has actually happened. In the numerous, contradictory references to Agamemnon in the underworld, at his tomb, or spiritually present, neither the Chorus nor his children ever suggest chastisement for Agamemnon’s killing of Iphigeneia or of innocents in the Trojan War (Chapter 4). Lastly, in the Eumenides, Clytemnestra’s Ghost depicts her shameful wanderings, blame, and suffering among the dead (Eum. 95–8).Footnote 17 Even in this context, the Ghost does not mention the divinity Hades or any sort of ethical punishment but rather a type of human dishonor projected below.

Such brief references allude to the afterlife as a possibility or create relationships to it. Yet they do so without definitive statements or sure, divine knowledge – even from the prophet Cassandra. The human Choruses, especially, refer to myth and counterfactual situations, again without the suggestion of true knowledge and with little effect on the following action. Since none of these references depicts Hades as ethical punisher, at first glance one might categorize them as mere ignorance of the afterlife justice that is later revealed. Yet each has elements that escape the context of their scenes. Together, they offer a catalogue of character speculation on the divine framework of the world.

The ostensible ignorance of humanity makes the third set of background references a striking counterpoint. Once in each play of the trilogy, the Chorus sing a condensed tale of structured divine punishment. Just as it is the Erinyes who reveal Hades’ punishments in the Eumenides, the Choruses of the Agamemnon and the Choephoroi each allude to a tripartite system of divine ethical retribution: in life, leading to death, and after death. In the Agamemnon, the Elders warn of the potential consequences of the Trojan expedition for its leader (Ag. 461–8):

τῶν πολυκτόνων γὰρ οὐκ
ἄσκοποι θεοί, κελαι-
ναὶ δ’ Ἐρινύες χρόνῳ
τυχηρὸν ὄντ’ ἄνευ δίκας
παλιντυχεῖ τριβᾷ βίου
τιθεῖσ’ ἀμαυρόν, ἐν δ’ ἀί-
στοις τελέθοντος οὔτις ἀλ-
κά·
For the gods are not
heedless of men who kill many,
and dark Erinyes, in time, make faded
the man who prospers without justice
by a reversal of fortune, by a wearing down of life,
and there is no defense for him
being among the unseen.

With generalizing language, the Chorus broaden their critique from the immediate referent, Agamemnon. They first apply the Erinyes’ punishment to all those “who kill many” (461). They then further expand it to anyone who “prospers without justice” (464). This universalizing move in the context of the overturning of fortune in life, followed by death, followed by punishment in the afterlife is a precursor for the Hades passage in the Eumenides.

The Elders’ specific terminology also presages the Erinyes’ song. In the first part, the Elders draw attention to the visual aspect of divine oversight, when they claim that the gods are “not unwatchful” (οὐκ ἄσκοποι, Ag. 461–2). They turn to the obverse of the theme by referring to dead humans as “among the unseen” or “in the unseen realms” (ἐν … ἀίστοις, en … aistois, 466–7). This type of reversal is later echoed in the Hades passage, in which Orestes will “see” (Eum. 269) the punishments that the etymologically invisible Hades dispenses, who himself “watches over all things” (275).

The analogies continue in the overturning of human luck and escape from punishment. The Elders sing that the Erinyes reverse the fortune (παλιντυχεῖ, Ag. 465) of the fortunate man (τυχηρόν, 464) and wear down his life (τριβᾷ βίου, 465); whereas the Erinyes themselves sing of “withering” or “draining dry” (ἰσχνάνασ’, Eum. 267).Footnote 18 Using visual terms again, the Elders describe how the Erinyes “make faded/obscure” (τιθεῖσ’ ἀμαυρόν, Ag. 466); similarly, in the Eumenides, the victim of the Erinyes becomes a shadow (σκιάν, Eum. 302). The songs of the Choruses of the Agamemnon and Eumenides thus reinforce each other through echoing terms, patterns, and metaphors. Yet there is one crucial difference between the passages: The only crime specified by the Elders, that of “killing many” (Ag. 461), is omitted from the Erinyes’ later list of transgressions. We shall soon see how that this subtle exclusion is politically meaningful and consistent with Hades’ purview.

A second passage about punishment, this time by the Chorus of the Choephoroi, operates along similar lines. Its intricate construction and possible corruption (being unmetrical) make it interpretively challenging. Yet the similarities in structure and vocabulary to the Agamemnon and Eumenides passages are unmistakable (Cho. 59–65):

τὸ δ᾽ εὐτυχεῖν,
τόδ᾽ ἐν βροτοῖς θεός τε καὶ θεοῦ πλέον·
ῥοπὰ δ᾽ ἐπισκοπεῖ Δίκας
ταχεῖα τοὺς μὲν ἐν φάει,
τὰ δ᾽ ἐν μεταιχμίῳ σκότου
μένει χρονίζοντας ἄχη,
τοὺς δ᾽ ἄκραντος ἔχει νύξ.
Prospering,
this, among mortals, is a god and more than a god.
But the scale of Justice watches over,
soon, those in the light,
but pains await those spending time
in the borderland of darkness,Footnote 19
and faint night holds others.

Due to its allusiveness and intricate syntax, this passage does not appear meant as a clear and definitive theological statement. Moreover, the Slave Women are not seers; despite their being foreign and having a role in the mourning rituals, they are never said to have contact with divinities or to interpret signs.Footnote 20 Therefore, one must take this passage as either speculation or a statement of culturally accepted beliefs (Greek or foreign), rather than as a divine revelation.

Similarly to the other two choral passages, the song in the Chorephoroi contains three temporal periods, in this case marked by progressively less light. Yet, whereas light and darkness seem to indicate life and the lack of life (as they normally do), the middle term, “in the borderland of darkness” (ἐν μεταιχμίῳ σκότου, Cho. 63–4), is disputed.Footnote 21 This twilight zone alludes either to the edge of death or to death itself. In both interpretations, however, the “faint/dim/powerless night” (ἄκραντος … νύξ, 65) poetically evokes the afterlife, in which the dead are both less visible and less powerful.Footnote 22

Besides its corresponding structure, this passage exhibits numerous associations with the other two choral passages about the afterlife in terminology and ideas. The Slave Women represent divine judgment through the “scale of Justice” (Cho. 61), which, in an instance of hypallage, “watches over” (ἐπισκοπεῖ, episkopei, 61) those who have overstepped reverence (σέβας, sebas, 55). This maps closely onto the Elders’ “not unwatchful gods” (οὐκ ἄσκοποι θεοί, ouk askopoi theoi, Ag. 461–2) and the Erinyes’ depiction of Hades with his “tablet-writing mind” (Eum. 275), who “watches over” (ἐπωπᾷ, epōpa, 275) anyone who acts irreverently (ἀσεβῶν, asebōn, 270). The visual metaphors of watching over and fading light (σκότου, Cho. 63, and ἄκραντος … νύξ, 65) connect to the Elders’ phrase, “among the unseen” (Ag. 465–7; cf. Eum. 267, 274–5, 565), and to the Erinyes “making faded” the transgressor until he or she is a shadow (Eum. 302). Lastly, the emphasis on good fortune (τὸ … εὐτυχεῖν, to … eutukhein, Cho. 59) ties in with the Elders predicting the reversal of fortune through the Erinyes for the man without justice (παλιντυχεῖ, palintukhei, Ag. 464–5; cf. Eum. 553–65).Footnote 23

The tripartite division and the metaphors of the three choral passages are so strongly reminiscent of each other that they show a hidden thread of concern with ethical punishment after death running through trilogy. The Erinyes’ revelation of Hades is reinforced for the audience by the repetition of elements from the two previous songs. Moreover, the human Choruses’ speculations are retroactively justified. Despite the human Choruses having no specific contact with the divine, the connections to later revelation bolster the notion that choral songs are meant to give some insight into the operation of the universe.Footnote 24 Yet the fact that the Erinyes give a far clearer presentation of the mechanism modifies our understanding of what human Choruses can know. The intersections and contrasts among these three passages demonstrate that humanity can intuit the divine structures in which it is embedded, but only partially and ineffectively.

The third set of background references comes from the Erinyes’ allusions to Hades and the underworld. Since the only earlier mention of Hades as underworld punisher is not by name, it has sometimes been missed. When the Erinyes awaken, they sing that Orestes will never escape punishment (Eum. 175–7):

ὑπὸ δὲ γᾶν φυγὼν οὔποτ’ ἐλευθεροῦται,
ποτιτρόπαιος ὢν δ’ ἕτερον ἐν κάραι
μιάστορ’ εἶσιν οὗ πάσεται.Footnote 25
Even fleeing under the earth, he will not ever be free,
and, although he turns as a suppliant, he will go
where he will get another polluter (miastōr) on his head.

The Erinyes create a continuum between Orestes’ flight from them (φυγών, 175), his suppliancy to men and to Apollo (ποτιτρόπαιος ὤν, 176), and his ending up “under the earth” (ὑπό … γᾶν, 175). There has been some discomfort in connecting this ἕτερον … μιάστορ’ (heteron … miastor’, “another polluter”) to Hades. However, that the Erinyes are here describing Orestes entering the underworld is evident when the earlier choral passages are taken into account. This passage also resonates with the Erinyes’ other references to the underworld. First is the Hades passage, in which he is the assessor of mortals “under the earth” (ἔνερθε χθονός, Eum. 274, cf. Ag. 462–8).Footnote 26 Second is that those who do wrong “go under the earth, and dying they are not very free” (γᾶν ὑπέλθῃ· θανὼν δ’ οὐκ ἄγαν ἐλεύθερος, Eum. 339–40). The third characterizes this punishment as occurring in a locale of gloom, for there is no “endpoint” (τὸ τέρμα, to terma, 422) to the Erinyes’ chase besides the place “where joy is not customary in any way” (423). The referent of “another polluter” is thus manifestly Hades.

These human and demonic references together form the ideational framework for Hades’ punishments. They overlap to characterize the ubiquitous “old law” of the Erinyes: All human transgressors are subject to them in life, and once they enter the underworld will be eternally bound and punished by Hades, without any possibility of release. The passages from the first two plays provide insight into the human perspective on divine ethical punishment. The human Choruses appear to tap into a true understanding of punishment, yet they have only a vague picture of the divine mechanism. The Erinyes’ claim that every transgressor of particular laws will suffer from the divinity amplifies the previous choral claims. Such punishment is revealed to be an intrinsic part of the consequences of human action above. It thus raises the stakes for all ethical decisions.

Ethical punishment must be feared in order to be effective and must be known in order to be feared.Footnote 27 Crucially, however, no human character ever mentions it during the numerous discussions of consequences for violent action. It is not even present in any depictions of the afterlife by individual characters; neither Cassandra nor the Ghost of Clytemnestra discloses a structured divine punishment below. Thus, the revelation of afterlife ethical judgment in the final play condemns retrospectively the blindness of previous ethical decisions. Conversely, it stands apart from the frameworks in which justice is presented. Both of these insights characterize the judgment of Hades in the trilogy as a law that operates absolutely, yet one that humans fail to heed.

The Great Assessor: Laws and Process in the Underworld

Corporeality and Incorporeality

The human Choruses of the previous two plays allude in abstract terms to punishment after death, but it is fleshed out, so to speak, only in the Erinyes’ Hades passage. Returning to their description uncovers the poetic force of the passage, the mechanism imagined for human continuation after death, and the ethical import of Hades’ laws. The Erinyes’ few lines about the underworld avoid any details of punishment, whereas these demons are otherwise pervasively concerned with imposing physical vengeance and suffering.Footnote 28 The passage is thus in proximate tension with the Erinyes’ threat to deprive Orestes of the liquid necessary for biological life (Eum. 264–7).Footnote 29 From the poetic contrast derives a difference in method: In a paradox familiar from religions with infernal damnation and exploited already in Archaic Greek poetry, Hades punishes only the bloodless.Footnote 30

The tension between physical and immaterial differentiates Hades’ punishment from instances of human vengeance in the Oresteia, which turn the living into corpses. The tableaux scenes in particular emphasize this corporeality of the dead: Clytemnestra stands over the bodies of her victims (Ag. 1372 ff.), and Orestes does so in turn over her and Aegisthus (Cho. 973 ff.). The audience might, however, be dramatically prepared for the sufferings of the immaterial dead by previous ghostly manifestations in the trilogy: Cassandra sees the mutilated Children of Thyestes as “the forms of dreams,” whose entrails are visible (Ag. 1218, Chapter 3). Clytemnestra’s Ghost points to her physical wounds, which might be visible to the audience (Eum. 103, Chapter 6). In those scenes, characters and audiences alike interpret the marks of punishment on corpses and ghosts. The continuing wounds of these figures infest life and propel further vengeance.

The Hades passage gains its dynamism from an opposite movement. Rather than the dead reappearing to affect the living world, the living seem to breach the underworld. The verse depicting the handoff between the Erinyes and Hades is deeply unsettling in this regard. In the first verse, the second-person pronoun for Orestes is the object of both being drained dry while living (ζῶντά σ’ ἰσχνάνασ’) and being dragged into the underworld (σ’ … ἀπάξομαι κάτω, 267).Footnote 31 The transition between the two realms thus reads as almost corporeal, with the Erinyes hauling the clearly still-sentient Orestes past the barrier of death. Their use of active verbs in the second person (ἵν’ … τίνῃς, “so that you may pay,” 268; and ὄψῃ, “you will see,” 269) furthers the impression of a living katabasis. Notable in this regard is that the Erinyes do not refer to souls, phantoms, images, or merely the phrenes of humans in the underworld, as Archaic literature does.Footnote 32 Instead, the term they use for dead humans in the underworld is “mortals” (τις ἄλλος βροτῶν, 269, cf. 273). The poetic blending of life and death lends an eerie proximity to the punishments. The more terrifying the afterlife is, the more it ought to have ethical effects on the living, since the Erinyes aver that fear of punishment ought to moderate human behavior (e.g. Eum. 517–28). It is thus not for Orestes that dread is most relevant, since he has acted and is already trapped. Rather, the Erinyes sing of Hades for us.

The abstraction of corporeality in this passage has a second dynamic: It distances Hades from the physical world. The use of phrēn illustrates the maneuver. In the Erinyes’ lines elsewhere, phrēn can be a locus either of physical suffering or of incorporeal sentience. When used physically, referring to the “midriff” or internal organs, phrēn links the Erinyes’ own embodied suffering with the afflictions they cause to humans.Footnote 33 In its nonphysical aspect, phrēn mostly stands for understanding and decision-making in Aeschylus.Footnote 34 This is especially true in the Oresteia in passages related to the Erinyes. For example, because of their assault, Orestes’ phrenes spin into madness at the end of the Choephoroi (Cho. 1024).Footnote 35 In the Eumenides, the Erinyes’ song binds the phrēn of their victim (δέσμιος φρενῶν, desmios phrenōn, Eum. 332), destroying it (φρενοδαλής, phrenodalēs, 330) to the point that a person cannot comprehend his own fall, since it renders him “witless” (ἄφρονι, aphroni, 377). In these passages, then, phrēn interweaves the physical and abstract aspects of the Erinyes’ justice.

The Erinyes’ sometimes-physical phrēn is dramatically relevant in the Eumenides. Athena – who herself is given the capacity to think well by Zeus (φρονεῖν, phronein, 850) – reverses the Erinyes’ negative uses of phrēn. She offers them a place free from their own internal pain (893) and directs their mental energy (φρονοῦσιν, phronousin, 988) toward “intending good” (εὔφρονας εὔφρονες, euphronas euphrones, 992). For Hades, by contrast, the terminology of phrēn is only abstract. It is the locus of his writing: “he watches … with his tablet-writing mind” (δελτογράφῳ … φρενί, delographō … phreni, 275). Hades does not act in the world physically, as the Erinyes do. The metaphorical phrase even marks the absence of material writing: No one else can read the tablets of Hades’ mind. Their relationship to corporeality and incorporeality thus differentiates Hades from both the Erinyes and the Olympians – who act in the living world – in ways that have significant consequences for the application of his law.

Chthonic Process and Athenian Terminology

Comparing the judicial terms used to depict Hades to those used for the Erinyes, humans, and Olympians in the Oresteia locates his justice more precisely. The tension between vengeance and legal language in the Hades passage combines several of the themes related to the Erinyes. First is their insistence on the rigid correspondence between punishment and crime.Footnote 36 In the Hades passage, they connect Orestes paying a penalty (τίνῃς, tinēs, 268) to his mother’s suffering with the term ἀντιποίνους (antipoinous, or with the adverbial ἀντίποινα, antipoina, both meaning “in requital,” Eum. 268). As elsewhere in the Oresteia, this formulation welds a word or prefix of exchange (ἀντι-, anti-) to one of justice or penalty (the ποιν-, poin-, stem).Footnote 37 The Erinyes’ presentation of justice here fits into the universal ethical pattern they consistently disseminate, that of every mortal receiving “due recompense of justice” (τῆς δίκης ἐπάξια, tēs dikēs epaxia, Eum. 272). That is, each human gets the “deserts” (ἄξια, axia) for their impious acts. The phrase “due recompense of dikē” is, in fact, a pleonasm, in the sense that the Erinyes have been using dikē throughout to mean reciprocation in kind for evil acts. Whereas this rigid relationship between crime and punishment might seem too obvious to mention, the very circumstances of Orestes’ case draw attention to it. The only explicit target of the Erinyes’ pursuit in the trilogy is never actually punished but is rewarded with a return to kingship. The Hades passage thus emphasizes the “balancing” aspect of the Erinyes’ justice at the very moment it is being discarded.

Throughout their time on stage, this balancing is always in tension with the Erinyes’ superfluidity, endlessness, and overwhelming violence. Their infringement of all boundaries in pursuit of blood typifies their legal vocabulary as well. At the start of their binding dance, the Erinyes expand on their judicial functions (Eum. 312–20):

εὐθυδίκαιοι δ’ οἰόμεθ’ εἶναι·
τὸν μὲν καθαρὰς χεῖρας προνέμοντ’
οὔτις ἐφέρπει μῆνις ἀφ’ ἡμῶν,
ἀσινὴς δ’ αἰῶνα διοιχνεῖ·
ὅστις δ’ ἀλιτὼν ὥσπερ ὅδ’ ἁνὴρ
χεῖρας φονίας ἐπικρύπτει,
μάρτυρες ὀρθαὶ τοῖσι θανοῦσιν
παραγιγνόμεναι πράκτορες αἵματος
αὐτῷ τελέως ἐφάνημεν.
We consider ourselves straight-judging:
no wrath from us creeps upon
the one presenting clean hands,
and unharmed he goes through his lifetime;
but whoever, having transgressed, just like this man,
conceals his murderous hands,
being present as upright witnesses
for the dead we appear with final authority
against him as debt collectors of blood.

The theme of balance is evident when the Erinyes refer to themselves as “debt collectors of blood” (πράκτορες αἵματος, 319). Depriving the one who sheds blood, in turn, of his own blood is their method of redressing the asymmetry through the lex talionis, indicated by the technical language of debt.Footnote 38 But, in fact, their method and violence tilt the scales too far.

The Erinyes are intent on hoarding every judicial role. They declare themselves “witnesses” (μάρτυρες, 318), “judges” (εὐθυδίκαιοι, 312), and executioners, since they collect the bloody debt with “final authority” (τελέως, 320).Footnote 39 Yet, no matter how “correct” their judgment (εὐθυ-, 312; ὀρθαί, 318), in unifying all the functions that are segregated in human courts, the Erinyes undercut the purpose of each. First, they hear no argument and thus forestall conflicting opinion.Footnote 40 Secondly, they allow no influence from others on their decision. Lastly, they have no respect for suppliants, a sacred Greek obligation (176). They thus discard all continuing relationships that hearing out the context of a transgression, giving a temporary reprieve, or even granting forgiveness can offer society – the very features of Athena’s new law that benefit Athens. The Erinyes exclude any amelioration that, in the ending of the Oresteia, characterizes both the Olympian mandate and human judicial processes.

Returning to the Hades passage, we find even more specific allusions to Athenian law. Most consequential for understanding the function of Hades is his designation as the “great euthunos of mortals” (εὔθυνος, 273). Euthunos is literally “straightener,” and thus came to mean “assessor” or “auditor” in its technical use in Athens for “one who audits magistrates after their term in office.”Footnote 41 This is reinforced by ἀπάξομαι (267), from ἀπάγω (“to lead before a magistrate”).Footnote 42 The legal color to the language thus shades dikē (272) toward its more technical meaning of “trial,” which it increasingly adopts in the Eumenides.Footnote 43 Even the tablet of Hades’ recording mind (the δέλτος in δελτογράφος, 275) may allude to the tablets used in the Athenian legal system to receive complaints and transfer cases between jurisdictions. Aside from specific vocabulary, it has been suggested that the phrasing “seeing all things” should be read in light of the fact that magistrates were scrutinized for both private and public actions.Footnote 44 The technical terms of the passage thus prompt comparison between Hades’ process and both Athena’s new law and the contemporary Athenian legal system.

Instead of a legal process affected by human contingency, the Erinyes present the law of Hades as absolute and supreme. Their language reinforces the notion of ultimate sanction through a theme we have analyzed in the speech of human characters: Hades geminates Zeus. This is the other facet of euthunos, for Aeschylus has previously used the very same term for Zeus himself. According to the Ghost of Darius, Zeus is the “chastiser of overly arrogant minds” and is a “harsh assessor” (εὔθυνος βαρύς, euthunos barus, Pers. 827–8). This is the only other occurrence of the term euthunos in Aeschylus, and it is also in a punishing context, delivered by an underworld denizen. The thematic and linguistic connections include Queen Atossa’s earlier attempt to clear the Great King of Persia from ever being subject to scrutiny or assessment by his people, using this very vocabulary (οὐχ ὑπεύθυνος, oukh hupeuthunos, Pers. 213). By depicting Zeus as a euthunos, the Ghost of Darius not only undoes this defense of the Great King but also expands the purview of ethical retribution to all humanity.Footnote 45 The Oresteia’s Hades passage formalizes this universalization through itemizing the violations and relocating the arena of punishment to the afterlife.Footnote 46 In the realm of Hades, there should be no doubt about the divine nature of such punishment. The vocabulary of Hades’ justice overlaps with that of the king of the gods in the final procession of the Oresteia, as well. The members of the procession sing that “all-seeing Zeus” (Ζεὺς πανόπτας, Eum. 1045) supports the Athenians.

The law Hades administers below and his power over men are thus sanctioned by his total perception and auditing of all humankind, both characteristics that, in other contexts, Aeschylus reserves for the highest Olympian. Whereas the vocabulary surrounding underworld justice often alludes to the Athenian system, the analogies to Zeus as the great auditor and to the Erinyes’ unified functions tend toward a singular, divine version of law. The Erinyes present the judgment of Hades as undivided and unappealable.

The Code of Hades: Defining Ethics

Never before in Greek literature are the violations punished by Hades specified. In enumerating them, the Erinyes appear to be outlining a simple, preexisting, universal code. The seeming self-evidence of the list is bolstered through its distinctly condensed phrasing (Eum. 270–1):

ἢ θεὸν ἢ ξένον τιν’ ἀσεβῶν
ἢ τοκέας φίλους
dishonoring a god, or a guest-friend,
or their dear parents

On closer examination, however, the list of transgressions manifests particularities both in its selection and how its terms play out in the trilogy.

According to this catalogue, Hades is solely concerned with a human breaking preexisting bonds with another being or beings. That is, he governs violations of sacred relationships, an act labeled irreverence (asebeia, implied in ἀσεβῶν, asebōn). These relationships are referred to by naming the party to whom one is obliged: the human–divine relationship, broken by dishonoring a god (θεόν, theon); the guest–host friendship of xenia (ξένον, xenon); and the parent–child kinship, philia to one’s begetters (τοκέας φίλους, tokeas philous).Footnote 47 The Erinyes only accuse Orestes of the filial violation. They enumerate the others to demonstrate their broader concerns. These are evident also from their later urging of the cultivation of similar sacred relationships between humans: reverence to parents (τοκέων σέβας, tokeōn sebas) and honor to guests (ξενοτίμους, xenotimous, Eum. 538–48). Such bonds between anthropomorphic beings (humans or gods) involve requiting good already or potentially given. Thus, the code amounts to a guideline for being an individual at the barest level: reciprocity. In the Oresteia, Hades is the god of ethics.

The concern with only ethical, individual actions is – perhaps surprisingly – consistent throughout the Oresteia’s references to Hades. For one, the relationships itemized in the Hades passage are cleanly distinct from politics. This contrasts with the other references to punishment in the trilogy, nearly all of which are intertwined with political concerns. Specifically absent in his code is any reference to the killing of many and the sacking of cities, which were precisely the circumstance in which the Chorus of the Agamemnon had first sung of such underworld punishment (Ag. 461–8). Additionally, the purview of Hades’ laws is universal. None of the three Choruses describe them as culturally specific or delimited by membership in a polis. The Erinyes, in fact, assert that all mortals must obey them. They thus differentiate Hades’ law from the thoroughly polis-based law of Athena.

In its exclusion of competing jurisdictions, chthonic justice rejects the claims of other forms of justice in the Oresteia. First, the Erinyes deny that other divinities participate in the balancing of the universe. They repeatedly accuse the Olympians of transgressing justice by hindering the Erinyes’ punishing role (Eum. 155–61, 711–12, 747, 780 = 810, 839 = 873). In their telling, the Olympians have nothing to do with the dishonor and pollution of ethical punishment (350–66, 385–6).Footnote 48 Other divinities cannot override the Erinyes’ law nor provide release. Thus, the Erinyes reject Apollo’s purification of Orestes and, initially, the appeal to Athena as judge. Secondly, the Erinyes also reject structured punishment by humans. Trials have no place in their justice. The Hades passage confirms the exclusion of human justice due to the absolute disparity of power between humans and gods. The deliberate structural antithesis is evident in the two juxtapositions of βροτῶν (brotōn, “of mortals”) with a god (θεόν, theon, 269; Ἅιδης, Hadēs, 273). Humans make their choices in life, and those who transgress are the object of chthonic punishment thereafter. The civic legal structure instituted by Athena, therefore, specifically opposes the jurisdiction of Hades.

In sum, the Erinyes and Hades monopolize ethical punishment and give it a strict schema. The code of Hades outlines certain relationships the Greeks commonly considered sacred: reverence to gods, guests, and parents. Yet the transgressions mentioned are, in fact, a specific subset of societal concerns. They are focused on the individual and are decidedly nonpolitical.

The whole of the Erinyes’ justice, including the references to Hades, is framed in universal and divinely validated language, which has consequences. First, the notion that the underworld is the endpoint for humans gives a sense of permanence. Secondly, the distinctions between the Erinyes and Hades, both chthonic, are subtle, but crucial. In part, they correspond to embodiment in general, which is mimicked on stage. It is the distinction between operating in the world and being at a distance. The Erinyes emphasize their physical phrēn and change their mind, ensconcing themselves in Athens for festivals and honors. Hades’ exclusively mental phrēn connects with the lack of blood in his realm, his invisibility, his distance from the upper world, and thus his disregard for honors bestowed by humans. The difference between the Erinyes and Hades on these fronts leads to unresolved issues concerning the validity of underworld justice.

Regarding authority and law, the terms for Hades’ code differentiate it from the other examples of divine and human justice. The twinning of Zeus and Hades, especially through the shared vocabulary of overseeing all things, provides the latter a cloak of absolute authority.Footnote 49 Yet the natural conclusion that divine law is continuous between Olympian and chthonic powers is incorrect.Footnote 50 The trilogy itself explicitly contradicts such a structure through repeated denials of any Olympian connection to ethical punishment. In terms of human justice, the legal language used for Hades ties it to Athenian practices, specifically through the reference to him as a euthunos. Implied in this universal projection of the Athenian term is a technocratic concern with justice. On the other hand, the trilogy registers deep unease concerning the structure of Hades’ justice and the content of his laws, to which we now turn.

The Dark Side of Hades’ Law and Character

Precarious Relations

It is not immediately obvious why the transgressions that Hades punishes should be problematic, for they are a précis of the disorder and violence within the Oresteia. Moreover, Hades’ justice is represented as an eternal, sacred, stable ethical code overseen by an impartial judge, which punishes only criminals. Yet examining the three named relationships exposes significant difficulties concerning the application of Hades’ justice. The extraordinarily overdetermined nature of each relationship in the trilogy already subverts it at the moment of its articulation.

Most evident thematically is the fraught vocabulary of kinship. Neither the general context of the trilogy nor the specific language of the confrontation between parties in the Eumenides allows for tokeus (“parent,” Eum. 271) to remain a neutral term.Footnote 51 The Erinyes are pursuing an instance of a child rising up against his parent, yet the motif of parents behaving murderously toward children resounds throughout the trilogy, reversing the order of the rule as represented by the Erinyes. What of Agamemnon murdering his daughter? The question is asked by Clytemnestra, who sometimes conceptualizes herself as a manifestation of a demonic avenger (e.g. Ag. 1433, 1501; Chapter 6). What of Clytemnestra murdering her husband? This is the grounds on which Orestes and Apollo challenge the Erinyes (e.g. Eum. 604). Naming the transgression of child against parent insufficiently accounts for the blood-crimes that animate vengeance in the trilogy. Consequently, the phrasing of the ethical code itself draws attention to its incompleteness.

Even more directly applicable to this seemingly straightforward relationship are two related subversions in the trial, which have been widely discussed. First, Orestes and Apollo disavow any biological link between mother and child. Apollo, especially, attacks the notion of a mother “begetting” (the verbal idea behind tokeus) and names Athena as an example of a motherless child (662–6). The second subversion is that Athena approves this explanation as part of her reason to acquit the matricide: She was born of no mother (736). This line of argument is inapplicable to human beings. Thus its use in the trial destabilizes any solid foundation for an ethical code built on the parental relationship and, even further, on biology or kinship.Footnote 52 Consequently, through an unexpected dramatic turn, the foundational moment of the new law actually denies the very relationship that both human vengeance and the old law uphold.

The same dynamic is at work with the second relationship, xenia, a notion critical to the unfolding vengeance scenes of the Choephoroi. In that play, Orestes is a prime example of one who abuses the hospitality afforded to a xenos.Footnote 53 His violation of this bond reenacts Atreus’ crimes against Thyestes, his brother and guest, for which Aegisthus (a hidden xenos, as it were) eventually takes vengeance.Footnote 54 During the trial, Apollo’s uncoupling of a mother from being a tokeus turns her into a “stranger” (ξένη, xenē) to her baby, also a “stranger” (ξένῳ, xenō, Eum. 660). Again, the arguments at the trial undercut the old law that chastises the violation of the sacred rights of strangers.Footnote 55 In acquitting Orestes of killing a stranger, who is simultaneously his parent, the new law pointedly disregards both transgressions.

The last – and seemingly most stable – of Hades’ concerns, the relationship between human and divine, follows this pattern as well. In the early part of the trilogy, humans catastrophically subvert this relationship. First Agamemnon’s obliteration of the temples of Troy and the chain of human sacrifices surrounding the house of Atreus devastate the sacred ties Hades is supposed to protect.Footnote 56 The transgression that the Erinyes condemn therefore occurs without any mention that Hades punishes Agamemnon for it. Secondly, Clytemnestra commits acts that (other characters deem to) violate every aspect of piety (e.g. Ag. 1409–11), yet the Erinyes claim that Clytemnestra is “free by virtue of being killed” (Eum. 603). Thirdly, it is arguable that an infraction against two rules together is contained in the story of Zeus imprisoning his own father (641–2), the violence of divine child against divine parent. Availing themselves of this myth (which both they and Apollo treat as fact), the Erinyes characterize the whole age since the ascent of Zeus as one of brutality and retribution.Footnote 57 The Erinyes’ objection to Olympian interference is predicated on Zeus’s own actions: He has implicitly violated the very code that Hades enforces for mortals. Apollo, however, dismisses these claims (644–51), and both he and Athena still appeal to Zeus as final authority (e.g. 620 and 797). Both the selectiveness of the old law’s divine punishers and the Olympian statements during the trial thus problematize the categorical condemnation of “transgressions against a god.”

The obligations of humans to divinities, children to parents, and guests to hosts are thus up for redefinition. The gods themselves violate them without consequence, whereas human violators are not consistently punished. The upholders of the old justice fail to truly enforce it; they cannot even keep a grip on its terms. The Erinyes’ ever-narrowing concern with kindred blood also undermines the ostensibly absolute ethical system, since they punish one type of familial violation but leave others unrequited. Such a convergence of fractures eventually enables Athena’s law to demolish the Erinyes’ claims in the trial, building a new foundation on the rubble. The trilogy, however, never indicates that Hades’ justice or modus operandi ever change. Athena clearly states that chthonic forces continue to present a danger for the city (Eum. 1007–8). We will return to the dynamic at the end of the trilogy that accounts for both the continuation of Hades’ justice and the destabilization of its terms.

The Polluted Judge

First is the matter of the punishing divinity himself. The depictions of Hades contain troubling parallels to the issues with his laws. The legal terms in the Hades passage give the impression that he is a juridical, dispassionate balancer of the universe. As already discussed, the passage only offers the vaguest hints concerning his punishments, a reticence that seems to distinguish both his method and characteristics from those of the Erinyes. Yet from another passage, Hades can be understood to be contaminated similarly to the trilogy’s other avengers.

When the Erinyes refer to Hades as miastōr (μιάστορ’, Eum. 177), they draw attention to the more general problem with punishing figures in the Oresteia and beyond. The term miastōr literally means “polluter,” or “polluted one,” depending on whether the emphasis is on actively polluting (as its form implies) or on pollution inherent in the agent. It derives from μίασμα (miasma, “pollution”), which is used seven times in the Oresteia, including once immediately prior, in Eum. 169.Footnote 58 When used to refer to Hades in verse 177, the term miastōr causes consternation and twisting among translators. Reference SommersteinSommerstein (2008b), who notes that the reference is to Hades, translates it as “avenger,” apparently to avoid calling the god polluted. Others even go so far as to emend the text in order to shift the implied referent.Footnote 59 For comparison, the only other occurrence of miastōr in Aeschylus is in Cho. 944, where the Chorus apply it to both Aegisthus and Clytemnestra.Footnote 60 There, scholars and translators unproblematically render δυοῖν μιαστόροιν as “two who were unclean” (Smyth); “two stained with murder” (Lattimore); “two polluted wretches” (Garvie); and “two defilers” (both Meineck and Sommerstein). This crux in translation when Hades is the referent alerts us to a need for an extensive reconceptualization. Once one accounts for the etymology of miastōr, there is no escaping the fact that the Erinyes are referring to Hades – the seemingly objective “assessor” of mankind – as part of the cycle of polluting and polluted vengeance.

What precisely causes this staining of Hades? In the first two plays, miasma accrues to human killers due to their violation of a person’s sanctity, spilling sacred blood.Footnote 61 In the third play, the Erinyes locate Orestes’ actions firmly within this framework: “Oh, polluted with murder (μιαιφόνε, miaiphone) … do you disown the most kindred blood (αἷμα, haima) of your mother?” (Eum. 607–8; cf. 169–70). They continually dispute the possibility of cleansing defilement by any method – even those prescribed by the gods – short of sucking the killer’s own blood and sending him to Hades. Their unremitting attacks on Apollo rely on this very tenacity of pollution, through which they undermine his purity and thus his authority (e.g. Eum. 163–72). The Erinyes’ own lot is a dishonored one (ἀτίετα … λάχη, atieta … lakhē, 385), despite their insistence on their honor, precisely because of their connection with violent punishment.Footnote 62 The Erinyes understand that their function is defiled and makes them unfit for association with the Olympians.Footnote 63 The same violence inherent in punishment pollutes Hades – despite his interaction only with the bloodless – and earns him the epithet miastōr.

There is a further reason implied for why Hades is polluted. The miastōr passage differentiates between Hades and the Olympians concerning a sacred Greek relationship not mentioned in his code: the rights of suppliants. Greek culture is filled with stories of the fierce pollution attending the violation of these rights.Footnote 64 Apollo himself declares that he will not desert Orestes because it is terrible for either gods or men to abandon a suppliant (Eum. 232–4). Yet Hades in the miastōr passage ignores supplication (176). Therefore, although the Erinyes describe Hades with technocratic vocabulary, they also associate him with their own unremitting excesses in pursuit of justice.

Two related problems concerning the justice of Hades follow from this pollution: Both the unmediated character of Hades’ judgment and his nature as sole arbiter become suspect. Each of these is evident in the metaphor of tablets (δελτογράφῳ … φρενί, deltographōphreni, Eum. 275), which now can be located more specifically in the Athenian legal system. In Athens, tablets that move cases from court to court are necessary due to multiple authorities and jurisdictions.Footnote 65 Even within one human court, judgments account for mitigating circumstances, supplication for mercy, and even appeals to self-interest.Footnote 66 Instead of such a system, the image of the tablets within the mind of Hades is one of a single recording, meant to stop an event from changing its significance. The emphasis on the sole, removed, unbribable judge contravenes any splitting of authority, leniency due to circumstances, appeal to the interest of the court, and, most importantly, possibility of release.

The legal terminology surrounding Hades’ solitary judgments thus offers Athenian audience members a chance to reflect on whether justice is to be entrusted to one entity, even a divinity. In the Eumenides, Athena demonstrates her wisdom by explicitly denying that it can. She declares that neither humans alone nor a divinity alone can preside over cases of great magnitude.Footnote 67 We have covered the characteristics of Hades and his laws, with their evident problems, as well as the connection of afterlife judgment with themes throughout the trilogy. Now the full significance of this ethical code remains to be analyzed in the context of the new Olympian law that presumes to transform humankind.

Contrasting Athena’s and Hades’ Justice

The Iliad offers a subtle precedent to the relation of Hades to Athena – in an unsubtle setting. The goddess dons the helmet of Hades to be invisible in battle even to Ares, whom she trounces.Footnote 68 Not furious bloodlust, but expertise in warfare – wise violence – is the ethos of Athena from the start. Beyond using craft to win, Athena demonstrates wisdom by reintegrating the power of the defeated. After she vanquishes Poseidon to become the tutelary deity of Athens, she preserves his cult for the benefit of the city.Footnote 69 Athena’s manipulation of Hades’ power in the Iliad and the absorption of the elder Poseidon are acts mirrored in the Oresteia when the goddess resolves the ongoing chthonic vengeance that haunts the trilogy. By ending the cyclical curse of the Atreidae with which she seemingly has little to do, Athena simultaneously gains Orestes as an ally and integrates the defeated Erinyes, both for the benefit of Athens.

Athena describes her new justice in positive, divine language, minimizing any mention of violence. The goddess insists that she has won through divine persuasion, implicitly contrasting her pacific rhetoric to the threatening language of Apollo.Footnote 70 Athena’s entire focus is on the flourishing of the city. She institutes the trial with its voting, marking it as a “new law,” which leads scholars to see the whole ending as an aetiology for and modeling of democratic practice.Footnote 71 Finally, the mechanism of Olympian intervention, the process of the trial, the verbal agon in which Athena finally placates the Erinyes, and the religious procession at the end all reinforce the motif of closure.Footnote 72 They indicate that the new law supersedes the old law, forever.

Within the divine world of the Oresteia, however, the process and ethical aspects of Hades remain as a challenge to the seemingly purified and eternal new world order. A two-part comparison therefore closes this chapter. The first section differentiates the processes of Hades from those of the new law as represented on stage and as connected with Athenian practices. The second section focuses on Athena’s transformation of underworld themes. Contrasting the supposedly superseded justice of Hades exposes the pernicious implications of Athena’s collective, political, and thoroughly bellicose solutions.

Hades’ Singular Justice versus the New Law

The structural qualities of the court that Athena institutes can be summarized thus: It is (1) an independent (2) administrator that (3) hears both sides and (4) is able to inflict drastic penalties (5) narrowly on the guilty.Footnote 73 Most of these five characteristics controvert some feature of the Erinyes and of the general cycle of retribution surrounding the house of Atreus and the Trojan War. Each is easily understood as a defining feature of both Athena’s dramatic court within the play and the courts in historical Athens. Unaccounted for in previous analyses of this new justice, however, is that the enumerated features are nearly all present in the judgment of Hades. Moreover, judicial process, as represented in the Oresteia, is far from optimal or unified. The split Athenian jury, the gendered and political arguments, and the one-sided outcome are hardly an advertisement for the operation of a human court, despite Athena’s direct superintendence.

Such issues contrast sharply with the earlier depiction of Hades’ divine judgment, many features of which outstrip any possible human procedure. Hades, to address point (1), is far more “independent” from both specific conflicts and political entanglements than are human jurors. The pressures of humanity’s temporally embedded position manifest in the proceedings of the “first trial.” The contending parties make profuse promises to and existential threats against Athens: Apollo repeatedly attempts to bribe the jurors with a military alliance, whereas the Erinyes warn that they will unleash global violence if denied and follow through when they lose by threatening to poison the city.Footnote 74 These persuasions and threats are unproblematic for Hades, who sits apart from humanity. Whereas the Oresteia dramatizes the placation of the Erinyes with promises of cult, no such promises are made for Hades, who neither suffers pain nor requires honor. After the enlistment of the Erinyes for Athens (and that of Zeus), Hades is the only punishing divinity who maintains an apolitical posture.

On procedural (2) and evidentiary (3) grounds, there are no reasons given to prefer a human jury to a sole divine judge. Neither Athenian law in general nor the trial of Orestes in particular demonstrates more rigor than a divinity would. Concerning the administrative quality of justice (2), the technical terms applied to Hades (especially euthunos) strongly evoke the Athenian civic process. As opposed to (3) “hearing both sides,” Hades sees all things. His penetrating vision cleaves through the obscurity that shrouds human observation. Moreover, in the trial itself, Orestes’ refusal to take an oath is sometimes related to Athenian procedures, where defendants and witnesses had to swear concerning the guilt or innocence of the accused.Footnote 75 Yet oaths need play no part for Hades, since his unrelenting panopticism dispenses with testimony. Thus, the disparity between the judgment of Hades and the human judicial system draws attention to the fact that the latter is always based on imperfect knowledge. The contrast between divine and human processes subverts the trilogy’s support for an inherently flawed system.

The main rebuttal to such a challenge within the ending is the only major attribute of the new law absent in Hades’ process: reciprocity. This is the other aspect of (3) “hearing both sides.” Hades does not listen to testimony. His invisibility betokens the impossibility of confronting him. One could claim, with Athena herself, that this is the superiority of the new law. Through persuasion, the human court system betters the complex of human vendetta, demonic action above, and divine punishment below. Mutuality is the key to Athena’s new justice. Yet the contrast with Hades’ law draws attention to several aspects of Athena’s civic system not based on persuasion, peaceful integration, and mutuality.

Unpacking the characteristic of (4) “drastic penalties” begins to uncover these nefarious issues with Athena’s justice. Violent punishment, as we saw, involves pollution for Hades, earning him the designation miastōr. This connection cannot be entirely stifled when Athena and the Erinyes promote fear within the city (Eum. 517–28, 696–9) and sharp anger (705) as a fundamental carry-over from the old law. Yet the punishing of wrongdoers is entirely glossed over in both the trial and Athena’s descriptions of the Athenian future. Neither she nor the Erinyes enumerate any consequences for the punishers, whether they keep the city in line or kill outsiders in war.

Such a one-sided view of justice extends to the last ostensible characteristic of the new law, that punishments must be inflicted (5) “narrowly on the guilty.” The Erinyes explicitly limit Hades’ castigations to an individual, for his or her actions. Thus, Hades’ justice has no innocent casualties, such as the victims of vendetta, war, human malevolence, or divine caprice so prevalent in the trilogy. Moreover, even in a restricted, legal context, human determination of guilt is subject to the problems of persuasion and interest. Having compared the processes of Athena’s civic law to Hades’ singular judgment, we turn to the questions that have arisen: On what thematic grounds does the new law claim superiority to chthonic justice? Can punishment within the city and warfare outside of it be free from the pollution of blood, if only they are divinely blessed?

Against Chthonic Forces: Athens United in Phrēn

To understand these issues of violence, pollution, and the city, we turn to the new plan for Athens, which builds on chthonic foundations. Athena leverages the Erinyes’ power among those beneath the earth for the benefit of her city.Footnote 76 She reverses specific characteristics of the Erinyes in order to remove Athens from the old cycle of vendetta. For example, Athena recontextualizes their outsider timē as honor within the political sphere when she describes what will accrue to Athens and to the Erinyes if they join it. The Athenians can give such honors because they have the most festivals, are her chosen people, and are the most pious.Footnote 77 Yet, as we will see, this positive aspect is clearly not enough to cure the ills of civic infighting. In order to maintain internal harmony, Athena and the Erinyes require an extreme remodeling of the city, which entails tremendous violence. The justice of Hades, as described, preserves the possibility of scrutinizing this transformation on terms other than those of Athena.

In the service of remedying the self-destructive vendetta practiced by humans under the old law, the ending of the Eumenides emphasizes a theme that also occurs in the politics of historical Athens: Collectivity is Athena’s dominant conception of the city. As opposed to the individualistic, honor-loving, and cursed royalty of Argos, the Athenians are pointedly nameless. There are no heroes in this Athens, nor even a single named human character.Footnote 78 Instead, Athena and the Erinyes stress total political agreement (Eum. 984–7):

χάρματα δ᾽ ἀντιδιδοῖεν
κοινοφιλεῖ διανοίᾳ,
καὶ στυγεῖν μιᾷ φρενί·
πολλῶν γὰρ τόδ᾽ ἐν βροτοῖς ἄκος.
And may they return joy for joy
with intent to love with common purpose,
and to hate with one mind:
For this is a cure for many things among mortals.

This is as strong a move toward collective thought as one can have, for the Athenians must not only love in common (κοινοφιλεῖ διανοίᾳ, koinophilei dianoia, 985) but also hate with one mind (στυγεῖν μιᾷ φρενί, stugein mia phreni, 986). Individual decision-making in one’s phrēn must be subordinated to the corporate phrēn of the state in order to receive blessings. According to the Erinyes, love and hatred, as long as they are in unison, are a “cure” (ἄκος) for the problems of all humanity (ἐν βροτοῖς, 987). Thus, in contrast to the chthonic punishment of an individual for bloodshed, the new justice of Athena is fully political.

Such concord is not for the sake of peace but relies heavily on warfare. The goddess foreshadows Athenian militarism with a linguistic move that has not received sufficient critical attention. She repeatedly refers to the Athenians with a term that previously in the Oresteia only referred to the army: The polis becomes synonymous with the stratos.Footnote 79 All the uses of stratos in the Agamemnon are in unambiguously military contexts and mean “army/expedition/war.”Footnote 80 There are no mentions of the term in the Choephoroi. In the Eumenides, outsiders such as Apollo and Orestes still use stratos in a military context.Footnote 81 Athena, however, uses stratos in reference to the Athenians in ways that can only be rendered in English by “people” and related terms.Footnote 82 Unanimity and a militaristic mentality are thus subtly entwined. This hints at the violence just below the surface of the ending’s blessings.

The militaristic themes are a reaction to the dark forces pulling at humanity, threatening civic upheaval. Vengeful acts in general and the Erinyes in particular are associated with stasis throughout the trilogy.Footnote 83 Cassandra’s mention of a stasis over the palace is immediately interpreted by the Chorus of Elders as her invoking an Erinys (Ag. 1118–19). In the Choephoroi, Electra names the group of herself, the Chorus, and Orestes a stasis, as they plot to overthrow the tyrants (Cho. 114, cf. 458).Footnote 84 The Erinyes describe themselves as a stasis (στάσις ἁμή, Eum. 311). Lastly, Athena reverses each of these uses when she wards away civil war: “I pray that Stasis (Στάσιν) never roar in this city” (Eum. 977–8).Footnote 85 The solution she crafts to stasis, however, is that of the stratos.

Whereas Athena claims that she uses erōs together with peithō, “persuasion,” to placate and incorporate the Erinyes, this does not actually lead in the expected direction.Footnote 86 Chthonic forces are behind Athena’s use of erōs, as is clear from her declaration that the “terrible erōs for glory” (δεινὸς εὐκλείας ἔρως, 865) within men cannot be dampened. Via a further move (which resonates linguistically with ἔρως, erōs), she transforms the Erinys (Ἐρινύς) through her own struggle (eris) for good (ἀγαθῶν ἔρις ἡμετέρα, 974–5).Footnote 87 This good is neither conditional nor pacific, for she announces that it will be permanently victorious (νικᾷ … διὰ παντός, nika … dia pantos, 974–5).

Through the language of light and persuasion, Athena shifts victory and struggle away from associations with bloody pollution.Footnote 88 Yet this maneuver is not so easily accomplished within the tight linguistic web of the Oresteia. Not only is peithō compromised by Clytemnestra’s destructive uses of it, but both eris and erōs are catastrophic terms already in the trilogy.Footnote 89 The erotics of warfare echo an earlier, fraught example of the excessive erōs for violence, the one that Clytemnestra warned could settle on the profit-seeking Greek stratos (ἔρως δὲ μή τις πρότερον ἐμπίπτῃ στρατῷ, Ag. 341).Footnote 90 This is precisely what happens to the victorious army, and it is seen to be the cause of the impiety that leads to divine punishments.

Athena attempts to overcome all such negative repercussions by granting war total theological benediction. Her cure for the internal “terrible erōs for glory” in men is “plenty of foreign war” (Eum. 864). She urges the Erinyes to give blessings of “victory without evil” (νίκης μὴ κακῆς, nikēs mē kakēs, 903). That is, the Athenians are meant to wage unending war and yet avoid the requital for bloodshed prevalent throughout the Oresteia.Footnote 91 Athena unequivocally applies to Athens the heroic connection between killing in war and glory (913–15): “I would find it unendurable not to honor (τιμᾶν, timan) this city among mortals as a victory-city (ἀστύνικον, astunikon) in glorious contests.” The civic harmony Athena urges is thus not actually pacific, persuasion-based, and mutually honoring.Footnote 92 Athena’s new law and the Erinyes’ incorporation into the city does not eliminate fighting, only changes its direction. Civic unification obliges outward violence.

Despite being applied to a state instead of an individual, the structure of killing for glory necessarily entails the problems of the heroic mentality that tragedy so often dramatizes, including the critiques of the Trojan War earlier in the trilogy. Athena herself recognizes the “evils” that can come from victory in battle. These evils Athena would drive away forever, on the one hand through the restructuring of civic violence to face outward, and on the other through a strategy of accruing protection against chthonic forces. She has already gained Orestes as a heroic guardian, linked with the afterlife. She also seeks a bulwark in the Erinyes against the underworld forces that wreak havoc on a state (Eum. 1007–9):

κατὰ γῆς σύμεναι τὸ μὲν ἀτηρὸν
χωρὰς κατέχειν,Footnote 93 τὸ δὲ κερδαλέον
πέμπειν πόλεως ἐπὶ νίκῃ.
Driving it away, restrain under the earth what is destructive
to the country, and send to the city
what will bring gain upon victory.

Instead of sending individuals to ethical punishment, the Erinyes are now to curb the underworld. They are to convey “gain” (κερδαλέον, kerdaleon, 1008) for the state, understood as “victory” (νίκῃ, nikē, 1009). Athena thus reuses concepts already problematic in human descriptions of the Trojan War, which included afterlife punishment for the “killing of many,” desire for gain (kerdos), and the need to suppress the claims of the war dead.Footnote 94 In Athena’s schema, the Erinyes themselves should not proscribe bloodshed in war but should support it – since total victory is politically advantageous.

Athena recognizes that the negative powers that affect humanity lie beyond her immediate control. Consequently, she attempts to extenuate the forces of the underworld as part of her efforts to overturn human contingency itself. Primarily, Athena emphasizes ending. This is in line with the human need for closure that crisscrosses the trilogy, often marked by the use of terma. The Chorus of the Agamemnon, for example, sing that the goddess Justice “guides all things to their end” (τέρμα, terma, Ag. 781, cf. 1177). Athena instantiates Justice in the Eumenides, and this notion of ending inflects even her entrance into the controversy: She immediately interrogates the Erinyes as to the “endpoint” of their chase (τὸ τέρμα, to terma, Eum. 422, cf. 633–5). This, they answer, will only be in the place with no happiness, understood as the underworld (423, cf. 950–1). The implication of this exchange and the transformation of the Erinyes is that Athena will offer a different terma; she bifurcates her justice specifically from the afterlife as the endpoint of ethical punishment.

The reformed Erinyes have both a blessing and a punishing aspect in the city, the latter of which instills fear in the citizens. Yet the theme of ending through the vocabulary of terma uncovers an aspect of the city that is masked by both the deemphasizing of their punishments and the acquittal of Orestes: the internal violence of Athena’s justice. Orestes himself refers to it when describing the possible outcomes of the trial: “now is the end (τέρματ’, termat’ ) of a noose for me, or to see the light” (Eum. 746, cf. Chapter 5). This language undercuts any radical break with previous notions of justice as violence, for it makes clear that upon conviction Orestes faces a coerced death, whether the court, the Erinyes, or he himself will be the agent of his terma. There is no indication that his life’s ending, moreover, will release him from facing punishment in the underworld. Athena’s court, then, promises deliverance neither from the violence of the law above nor from the possibility of afterlife judgment.

Athena’s own mentions of terma, paradoxically, evoke eternity. Her radical solution to recurrent violence, the individual’s finitude, and afterlife punishment is to emphasize the ever-enduring city. Through facing forward, Athena releases humanity from the recurring past that dominated the temporal structure of the trilogy. Cajoling the Erinyes, Athena repeatedly asserts the permanence of her promises (Eum. 898–9, cf. 891–2):

Χο. καί μοι πρόπαντος ἐγγύην θήσῃ χρόνου;
Αθ. ἔξεστι γάρ μοι μὴ λέγειν ἃ μὴ τελῶ.
Chor. And will you make a pledge to me for all time?
Ath. It is possible for me not to say what I will not fulfill.

Telos (in the verb τελῶ, telō, 899) here, as often, concatenates the notions of “fulfillment,” “ritual initiation” (in the promises of cultic rituals for the Erinyes), and “ending.”Footnote 95 There is a completeness and finality to Athena’s words. The Erinyes embody the closed circle of vengeance and threaten that, if they retreat, humanity will spiral downward into permanent crime. Athena, however, straightens these curves, promising an eternally climbing path.Footnote 96

The goddess insulates her declarations from human vicissitudes through constant recurrence to Zeus. She attributes the eternal mooring of the Erinyes to both Persuasion (Πειθοῦς, Eum. 970) and Zeus of the Assemblies (Ζεὺς ἀγοραῖος, 973). At the end, this highest Olympian power is said to revere (ἅζεται, 1002) the Athenians, a statement that differentiates them from the rest of humanity.Footnote 97 The Eumenides does not stop there, for the Erinyes are related to the Moirai; binding one, therefore, influences the other.Footnote 98 The last lines of the play conjoin to Athens the highest powers of permanence in the Greek universe: “Zeus, the all-seeing, and Moira (Ζεὺς πανόπτας … Μοῖρά τε) have thus come to the aid of Pallas’ citizens” (1045–6).Footnote 99 All the previous conflicting values of humans and divinities are put aside for the martial, eternal, sanctioned victory of Athens.

The dangers of warfare within the trilogy cannot be purified away by Athena’s insistence on total divine justification. Previously Agamemnon had claimed precisely such consensus among divinities in support of his own victory (Ag. 813–17):Footnote 100

                δίκας γὰρ οὐκ ἀπὸ γλώσσης θεοὶ
κλύοντες ἀνδροθνῆτας Ἰλιοφθόρους
ἐς αἱματηρὸν τεῦχος οὐ διχορρόπως
ψήφους ἔθεντο, τῷ δ᾽ ἐναντίῳ κύτει
ἐλπὶς προσῄει χειρὸς οὐ πληρουμένῳ.
For the gods, hearing no pleas uttered by the tongue,
without split opinion cast their votes
into the urn of blood for the massacring destruction of Troy;
toward the opposite vessel only
hope approached – it was filled by no hand.

Agamemnon dismisses both division of opinion and persuasion. That is, he annuls the ideas behind Athena’s rhetoric of peaceful integration and Athenian democratic practices. Instead, Agamemnon’s imagery deliberately transmutes voting (note especially ψήφους, psēphous, 816) into divine unanimity. The passage illustrates the direct route from such consensus to total destruction. Agamemnon himself uses the terms “urn of blood” and “massacring” (ἀνδροθνῆτας, 814). He boasts of the destruction of Troy as a whole, not merely its army.Footnote 101 In the autocrat’s view, there ought not be any checking forces against extermination.

Does the trilogy sanction such a vision of divine unanimity and lack of restraint in warfare? The Chorus of Elders show there is no consensus even in Agamemnon’s own city. They emphasize citizen critique and their own disagreement (Chapter 2). They claim that the gods and Erinyes punish blood on men’s hands, especially the killers of many. The Erinyes, too, warn against a loss of checks against violence, total unity, and acting outside of the mean. Yet the tyrant boasts of unconditional destruction, on account of divine unanimity.

How different, then, is Athena’s vision for Athens from Agamemnon’s justification of total war? On whatever grounds one might separate the two, the language is analogous. Surprisingly, although it is so often cited as a key democratic work, the Oresteia never mentions political decision-making through voting. The Areopagus, moreover, despite Athena instituting it as a guide and a checking force, is not a decision-making body either within the play or in contemporary Athens.Footnote 102 Within the play, the criteria for civic welfare are only unity and warfare. Athena’s blessings are framed in terms of a beneficial outlet for inherent human violence, praising “victory without evil,” “gain upon victory,” and “foreign war and plenty of it.” Her language evades the earlier dramatizations of war sweeping up innocents and the blood pollution that violence brings. Athena’s insistence on divine unanimity, when contrasted to the subsisting justice of Hades, draws attention to the problems of her militarism.Footnote 103 Under Athena’s law, despite the vocabulary of release, eternity, and light, individuals are sacrificed on a grand scale – in the name of civic harmony.

Hades’ independence as judge contrasts with the solutions of Athena and with the claims of divine unity. He is never assimilated into the polis. His law seems to offer no consideration whatsoever of position, mitigating circumstances, or political gain. The implication of his universality is that humans who participate in warfare’s violations (especially transgressions against the gods) would come under his purview, even if they are Athenians. Within the Oresteia’s divine world and vocabulary of justice, only the possibility of judgment in the afterlife enables continuing the critique of the individual qua individual. Even after the promise of eternal victory without evil, the contrast of Athena and Hades evokes an undecided struggle between politics and ethics.

Footnotes

1 Previous instances include Odyssey 11, in which punishment is reserved for specific transgressors against the gods, and Olympian 2, in which all mortals who misbehave are subject to punishments. See further the Introduction.

2 This passage is almost entirely absent from discussions of justice in the Oresteia, e.g. Reference SommersteinSommerstein (2010a), 193–203, following Reference KittoKitto (1961). It is even excluded from studies of tragedy that focus extensively on justice, morality, and the Erinyes, such as Reference Sewell-RutterSewell-Rutter (2007), 18: “with the notion of post mortem punishment, which does not figure prominently in tragedy, we shall not be concerned.” Cf. Reference VellacottVellacott (1984b), 116–27. However, see Reference SchlatterSchlatter (2018), 144–59, for a recent commentary and useful comparanda.

3 For their previous functions in literature, art, and religion, see the Introduction.

4 They make it clear no absolution is possible, not even through the purification rituals declared to be sufficient by Apollo and Orestes: To the Erinyes (as to the Pythia), Orestes still has blood on his hands (Eum. 41–3, 237, 280–7, 445–52; cf. Cho. 66–74, 520–1). As the Erinyes describe it, Apollo’s sanctuary is dripping with blood (164–70). This cannot literally be the case but raises the issue of whether even pollution is a matter of perspective, on which see Reference MeinelMeinel (2015), 136–9; contra Reference SidwellSidwell (1996), 52–7.

5 Instead of the OCT addition of ἵν’ for the final clause (rare in Aeschylus), Reference SommersteinSommerstein (1989), ad 267–8, corrects to ἀντίποιν᾿ ὡς (following Schütz); but cf. Reference VerrallVerrall (1908), ad 268.

6 For previous, generally more restrictive, notions of punishment in the afterlife see the Introduction.

7 Their authority rests on their status as chthonic divinities, who Athena herself says have great power beneath the earth (Eum. 950–1), and on whom she calls when she wants to restrain the underworld (1007–9). However, on the questionable authoritativeness of revelation from even divine characters in Aeschylus, see Reference Parker, Jouanna and MontanariParker (2009).

8 By sniffing out illicit bloodshed, they supernaturally transect human dissembling, Eum. 244–53, 316–20; cf. Ag. 368, 694–5, 1185–6.

9 ἐποπτεύω is often used by Aeschylus “to describe divine, or semi-divine, superintendence of human affairs,” Reference GarvieGarvie (1986), ad 1; and Reference SommersteinSommerstein (1989), ad 220. Cf. Eum. 224. The larger passage begins with “look! look!” (ὅρα, ὅρα, Eum. 254). The following line is corrupt but in the manuscripts also includes another command to see or look, λεύσσε, and πάντα, “all things.” For the textual issues, see Reference WestWest (1990), 276–7.

10 For memory as writing in the phrēn, see Cho. 450 (τοιαῦτ’ ἀκούων < > ἐν φρεσὶν γράφου) and Pr. 789 (ἣν ἐγγράφου σὺ μνήμοσιν δέλτοις φρενῶν). Cf. Reference NooterNooter (2017), 216–18. In Aesch. fr. 281a 19–23 TrGF, it is Dikē “who writes men’s sins ‘on the tablet of Zeus’ which is opened and read on a man’s day of destiny.” See Reference SommersteinSommerstein (2008c), 277–85, for translation and commentary. On tablets in tragedy as metapoetic prop, see Reference MuellerMueller (2016), 155–78.

11 See the Introduction for the etymology of Hades and the katabatic Odyssey 11, in which visions of those suffering below are a key theme. In the rare references to punishment below in previous Greek literature, there is no mention of the divine vision of the judge.

12 The other six uses of “Hades” in the Oresteia, all in the Agamemnon (667, 1115, 1235, 1291, 1387, 1528), are primarily synonyms for “deadly,” as discussed in Chapters 1, 3, and 6.

13 Homer: Ζεύς τε καταχθόνιος καὶ ἐπαινὴ Περσεφόνεια, Il. 9.457; Hesiod: Διὶ χθονίῳ Δημήτερί θ᾽ ἁγνῇ, Op. 465; Soph. OC 1606; and cf. Reference RohdeRohde (1925), 158–60.

14 The other tragic examples are Eum. 273–4 (our Hades passage); PV 152–4; Eur. Alc. 237; and Phoen. 810.

15 See Reference ZeitlinZeitlin (1965), 473; Aesch. fr. 55.4 TrGF; and OC 1556–8. Zeus the Savior is invoked by Orestes at Eum. 759–60; cf. Reference BurianBurian (1986); and Reference GoldhillGoldhill (2000), 53–4.

16 Following the manuscript and Sommerstein’s Loeb over the OCT’s ἀμπέμπειν.

17 As noted in Chapter 6, the Erinyes describe Clytemnestra as “free by virtue of being murdered” (603), which excludes her from the underworld lack of freedom that they promise transgressors (340–1).

18 For a discussion of the reversal of fortune and wearing down of life, see Reference Bollack and Judet de La CombeBollack and Judet de La Combe (1981), ii.463–6.

19 I translate the OCT text, but verses 63–4, especially, have a variety of emendations and alternate readings, which do not affect my argument.

20 This is reinforced when the Chorus designate Orestes as their favored interpreter of the dream of Clytemnestra (Cho. 551–2), on which see Chapter 5. For their references to superhuman forces in the kommos, see Chapter 4.

21 Reference SommersteinSommerstein (2008b), 219 Footnote n. 17, does consider the most apparent, although still uncertain, set of referents as: punishment during life, late in life, and in the afterlife, contra Reference GarvieGarvie (1986) ad 61–5. Cf. Eum. 175–8, 339–40; Sept. 742–5; Supp. 413–16.

22 In Homer, the “powerless (ἀμενηνά) heads of the dead” reside in Hades (e.g. Od. 10.536); cf. Reference TsagarakisTsagarakis (2000), 105–23; and Pind. Ol. 2.57–8.

23 For the theme that justice comes late, see Reference GarvieGarvie (1986), ad 61–5.

24 On the authority of the human choruses in divine matters as buttressed by later revelation, see Reference Parker, Jouanna and MontanariParker (2009), 133–7.

25 The OCT corrects the codd. ἐκείνου to εἶσιν οὗ. Both this correction and the original text support the arguments presented below.

26 Note the close parallel to Supp. 228–31, where flight under the earth after death is no escape from punishment by “another Zeus among the dead.” Cf. Supp. 414–16; Reference SommersteinSommerstein (1989), ad 175–8; Reference GeisserGeisser (2002), 141–2; and Reference MartinMartin (2020), 58.

27 E.g. Eum. 389–94, 517–25, 696–9. Cf. Reference SommersteinSommerstein (1989), ad 34 and 389–90; and Reference BaconBacon (2001), 58.

28 E.g. Apollo’s characterization of their barbarian-style dikē, punishments, and animality as not fit for the gods (186–97); their demonic binding dance (328–33 = 341–6); and their overflow of poisonous violence against Athens after the acquittal (782–5 = 812–15).

29 See Cho. 278–95 for the shriveling of the transgressor in life by chthonic powers, and cf. 302.

30 Fragments 229 and 230 of Aeschylus’ Sisyphus the Stone Roller mention the dryness of the dead, on which see Reference SommersteinSommerstein (2008c), 232–9. For the religious-cultural notion of the dead as drained of blood, connected with burial rituals, blood sacrifices to chthonic beings, and reanimating the dead through blood, see Reference BurkertBurkert (1985), 60; and Reference HeathHeath (2005).

31 The Erinyes in this scene use forms of the verb ζάω “to live” grouped more closely together than anywhere else in Aeschylus: ζῶντος, 264; ζῶντα, 267; ζῶν, 305. The Oresteia plays with the connections between life and the afterlife almost wherever the verb ζάω appears: “For when you lived (ἔζης) you were king” (concerning Agamemnon in the underworld), Cho. 360; and “the dead (τεθνηκότας) are slaying the living (τὸν ζῶντα),” Cho. 886. Cf. Cho. 926; Eum. 603–4.

32 In Pind. Ol. 2.57–8, it is “the helpless phrenes of the dead” (θανόντων … ἀπάλαμνοι φρένες) that pay the penalties (ποινὰς ἔτισαν) in Hades. This is either a synecdoche for the human being as a whole, or the portion left after death, analogous with Pindar’s use of psukhē (70). Cf. Reference CurrieCurrie (2005) 31, 36.

33 E.g. Eum. 158–9. See Reference SullivanSullivan (1997), 16; and Reference SommersteinSommerstein (1989), ad 155–8.

34 As it does sometimes in Homer, see Reference GazisGazis (2018), 74, with bibliography.

35 The Chorus relate Orestes’ madness to blood (Cho. 1056), which Reference SullivanSullivan (1997), 38–9, compares to the Chorus of the Agamemnon attributing madness to blood in Clytemnestra’s phrēn (Ag. 1426–8). Hence, we have a continuing connection between the Erinyes’ bloody nature and their effects on the phrēn of humans. Cf. Reference GoldhillGoldhill (1984a), 229–30.

36 See the Introduction for the “balancing” aspect of the Erinyes in previous literature.

37 A key parallel lies just above this passage (Eum. 264–5): “No, you must give in exchange (ἀντιδοῦναι) red gore.” Cf. Ag. 1420; Pers. 808; Pind. Ol. 2.58.

38 Cf. e.g. Cho. 400–4. On the old justice in part as defined by blood for blood, see Reference MeinelMeinel (2015), 119–27.

39 Reference MacLeodMacLeod (1982), 134, points out that in the Agamemnon the terms πράσσεσθαι and πράκτωρ, normally used for legal fines and exaction of debt, refer to the total destruction of Troy (Ag. 111, 705, 812, 823). On legal language in the Agamemnon, see Reference DaubeDaube (1939).

40 Contra Reference GagarinGagarin (1976), 73–5, who claims that the Erinyes are supporters of judicial process based on their insistence on oaths and correspondences between their language and Athena’s.

41 Ath. Pol. 48.4. See Reference BakewellBakewell (1997), 298, with further citations.

42 See Reference SommersteinSommerstein (1989), ad 267–8, 273–5. The assessing or auditing may have been done in front of a subsection of the Areopagus council, with which the Erinyes became associated as the Semnai Theai. There is some speculation that Ephialtes removed precisely this power from the Areopagus, to which this theme in the Oresteia would be a strong contemporary allusion.

43 Including, not long before, the related term ὑπόδικος (“defendant,” Eum. 259), which the Erinyes deny Orestes can be. On the movement of dikē and related terms toward a legal sense in the trilogy, see Reference SommersteinSommerstein (2010a), 193–200.

44 Both analogies are suggested by Reference BakewellBakewell (1997), 298–9. For the idea of totality in πάντα, “all things,” cf. Zeus bringing all things (πάντα) to fulfillment (759) and seeing all (πανόπτας, 1045); and the Erinyes managing all human affairs (πάντα … τὰ κατ’ ἀνθρώπους, 930–1).

45 See Reference GoldhillGoldhill (1988), 191, and Footnote n. 24, with bibliography.

46 Cf. Pind. Ol. 2.58–59, in which Hades is unnamed (τις) but his judgment beneath the earth (κατὰ γᾶς δικάζει) is of the things done under the rule of Zeus (τὰ δ᾽ ἐν τᾷδε Διὸς ἀρχᾷ).

47 Cf. Supp. 701–9, in which the Suppliants wish for the state to protect xenoi (ξένοισι), honor the gods (θεούς), and revere parents (τεκόντων σέβας), as the three “written” statutes of Justice (ἐν θεσμίοις Δίκας γέγραπται). Like the metaphorical tablets of Hades’ mind, the reference to divine writing draws attention precisely to the lack of physical writing. These laws are thus often classed under “unwritten laws.” For these in the Suppliants, see Reference SommersteinSommerstein (2008a), ad loc. On the Eumenides passage, see Reference SchlatterSchlatter (2018) 127 Footnote n. 7. For the “unwritten laws” in the Antigone (ἄγραπτα … νόμιμα, Ant. 454–5), connected with Hades, see Reference GriffithGriffith (1999), ad loc.; and Reference FletcherFletcher (2008), esp. 88–90.

48 Reference BurkertBurkert (1985), 200–2, notes that in literature the Olympian gods demonstrate repugnance for anything to do with death, whereas in cult the chthonic and Olympian often stood side by side.

50 Contra Reference SchlatterSchlatter (2018), 158–9, 169–71.

51 τοκέας φίλους indicates a restriction to parents, but the issue of the exact sense of philos remains open: Is it simply part of a set phrase here, adding nothing to the meaning? Alternately, could it expand this moral framework to include the constructed aspects of philos just as the Erinyes expand their own mandate from avenging blood crime to all human relationships? Reference GoldhillGoldhill (1984a), esp. 226, makes this point, based on the redefinitions of philia that excluded Clytemnestra in the Choephoroi. For discussions of philia in Classical Greece and specifically on its use as “kinship” or “friendship,” see Reference KonstanKonstan (1996); (Reference Konstan1997), esp. 53–92; and (Reference Konstan2006), 169–82. Reference BelfioreBelfiore (2000), 1–20, is more focused on tragedy and argues for the expansion of the term philos (not just philia) in tragedy to include both family and friends, contra Konstan’s more restrictive notion; but cf. the response in Reference KonstanKonstan (2001).

53 Reference BaconBacon (2001), 52–7, notes that xenos and its compounds occur thirteen times in the sixty-six lines of the scene between Clytemnestra and Orestes and links these to Apollo’s later argument against her.

54 Ag. 1577–1611, and note the use of xenia in verse 1590. Cf. Reference RothRoth (1993), 14–17.

55 For the political aspects of xenia, see Reference GriffithGriffith (1995); against which Reference GoldhillGoldhill (2000), 50.

57 On Zeus as a vengeful god, see Reference Denniston and PageDenniston and Page (1957), xxviii–xxix. This mention of Cronus fits with the choral passage in the Agamemnon about the overthrow by their respective sons of Cronus and Uranus, who, although he was μέγας (as Hades is) is no longer said to exist (Ag. 168–73). Cf. Reference ClayClay (1969), 9.

58 μιάστωρ and μίασμα are both derivatives of μιαίνω “to stain, soil, defile” (LSJ). Cf. Chantraine, s.v.; Beekes, s.v.; Reference ParkerParker (1983), 104–43, with 312 on the Oresteia; and Reference BurkertBurkert (1985), 75–82.

59 E.g. Reference SmythSmyth (1926) changes the referent to a future murderer who will come against Orestes from “his family” or “the same seed,” by correcting the codd. ἐκείνου (177) to ἐκ γένους, despite the fact that such a possibility is mentioned neither in myth nor in the rest of the Oresteia. Reference GeorgantzoglouGeorgantzoglou (2002) justifies this textual correction by an assertion that Hades exists outside of the conceptual pattern of pollution because of his role as assessor, a preconception whose falsehood the analysis herein demonstrates.

60 Miasma is used twice to describe Clytemnestra: Ag. 1645; Cho. 1028.

61 See Reference GeisserGeisser (2002), 139–46, on vengeance and blood pollution for the miastōr.

63 The Erinyes speak of “standing apart from the gods in the sunless scum,” 386. Cf. Reference VellacottVellacott (1984b), 121; and Reference BurkertBurkert (1985), 200–2.

64 Reference ParkerParker (1983), 146, 181–6. On supplication (ἱκετεία) in Greek literature, see Reference GouldGould (1973); and for the focus on it in the Suppliants, see Reference TurnerTurner (2001).

65 Reference BakewellBakewell (1997), 298–9. A further allusion involves Athena’s acting analogously to the Athenian basileus. This was previously a political office that, by the time of the Oresteia, mainly involved religious duties, but whose holder also conducted the preliminary investigation that determined to which court a case belonged, Reference GriffithGriffith (1995), 97 and nn. 117–18.

66 On Orestes’ trial in the context of Athenian legal practice, see Reference Sommerstein, Harris, Leão and RhodesSommerstein (2010b).

67 Eum. 470–2. There does exist a version of the mythical trial of Orestes in front of a jury of gods, which might have been current before the Oresteia, see Reference SommersteinSommerstein (1989), 4.

68 αὐτὰρ Ἀθήνη δῦν’ Ἄϊδος κυνέην, μή μιν ἴδοι ὄβριμος Ἄρης, Il. 5.844–5. Again here Homer playfully etymologizes Hades’ name, negating the verb of seeing from which it originates, Reference GazisGazis (2018), 36–40.

71 Reference EubenEuben (1982), esp. 27–9, following Hannah Arendt’s theories, attributes extensive positive features to the new justice based on its political form and Athena’s blessings, including reconciliation of diversities into a restored yet new unity, an active complementarity of reciprocity (which precludes domination), acknowledging the legitimacy of the other, and looking backward and forward in time, especially into the other’s point of view; cf. Reference ChiassonChiasson (1999) and further examples in the Introduction.

73 These points (which I have numbered for clarity) are distilled from Reference SommersteinSommerstein (2010a), 199–202, although they draw together arguments made by numerous scholars.

74 Reference Sommerstein, Harris, Leão and RhodesSommerstein (2010b), 30–1, sketches out the problems of “off-topic” or bribing language for the various contemporary Athenian courts and relates it to the tendentious language of the parties in the Oresteia’s trial; cf. Reference VellacottVellacott (1977), esp. 121–2.

75 Reference Sommerstein, Harris, Leão and RhodesSommerstein (2010b), 27–30, suggests that in many practical situations this would disqualify witnesses who did not know the whole story but might have seen an important part.

76 Eum. 951; cf. 1007–9.

77 For the Athenians as honorable and pious, see 804–7, 854–7, 867–9, 892–7, 1026–31, 1033–47.

78 Collective activity is the perpetual and binding thread in the description of Athens: from the start of the play (where Athenians are referred to by the kenning “children of Theseus,” Θησέως τόκοις, Eum. 402), through the trial (where they are only addressed as a multitude), in Orestes’ promises, in the persuasion scene, and in the final benedictions. In the Persians, Athenian anonymity contrasts with the named lists of Persian grandees, offering a subtle accentuation of Athenian collectivity and democratic ideology. See Reference GoldhillGoldhill (1988), 192–3; and Reference GarvieGarvie (2009), xvi–xxii. Yet whereas the Persians is concerned with an ongoing war, the Eumenides is referring to Athens more generally.

79 Reference SommersteinSommerstein (1989), ad 566, notes that the term στρατός in 566, 668, 683, 762, 889, as nowhere else in Aeschylus, “denotes the citizen-body of a state as civilians.” He stresses that the formerly militaristic term is now used for the “Athenian στρατός enforcing Dikē by judgement.” This reading, however, elides the nefarious effects of Athena’s repurposing of the term in the context of the militaristic emphasis of the ending.

80 Ag. 341, 345, 517, 538, 545, 573, 624, 627, 634, 639, 652, 670, 955, 987. At 547, the OCT daggers στρατῷ because the reference should be to the people (Heimsoeth suggests λεῷ). Cf. στρατιά, 799, and numerous related words.

81 Apollo links the city and the στρατός closely when promising military aid (τὸ σὸν πόλισμα καὶ στρατόν, Eum. 668), and Orestes repeats the usage in his promises of victory (χώρᾳ τῇδε καὶ τῷ σῷ στρατῷ, 762).

82 When Athena first orders an assembly of Athenians, she commands (566–9): “Herald, call the people (στρατόν) to order … to the people (στρατῷ).” When she declares the council of the Areopagus will be a bulwark for the people, Athena unambiguously uses leōs (“people”) and stratos as synonyms, both referring to the collected Athenians, not soldiers on an expedition (681–3): “Now hear my ordinance, people (λεώς) of Attica … the people (στρατῷ) of Aegeus.” The military idea behind stratos has not faded, for only a few lines later, she uses the root in a compound to refer to the Amazons invading with an army (στρατηλατοῦσαι, 687). Finally, Athena warns the Erinyes not to let “harm come to [this city’s] people (στρατῷ)” (889); pace Reference TaplinTaplin (1977), 392–5, 410–21.

83 Stasis (literally “standing”) in its unmarked meaning often refers to a “band” or “group,” that is, people who stand together (LSJ ii). In political contexts, stasis refers to “standing apart,” and is thus translated “faction,” “revolt,” or even “civil war,” the ultimate internal threat to the stability of a city (LSJ iii). Thucydides uses stasis as a keyword to describe degeneration into intracity violence during the Peloponnesian war, see Reference EdmundsEdmunds (1975); and Reference OrwinOrwin (1988).

85 In this last passage, the OCT capitalizes stasis as a divinity.

86 The Erinyes will feel erōs for the honors they left behind if they fail to choose Athens (Eum. 851–7, esp. ἐρασθήσεσθε, 852). Cf. Reference RynearsonRynearson (2013), 3–5.

87 Reference GagarinGagarin (1976), 117, claims that the bloody eris of the two earlier plays transforms in the Eumenides to creative eris as a Hesiodic competitive striving (Op. 11–26). On the distinction between eris as “conflict” and as “competition,” see Reference ThalmannThalmann (2004).

88 For the arc of “victory” in the Oresteia, see Reference SommersteinSommerstein (1989), 239.

89 For the issues of peithō in the Oresteia, see Reference ZeitlinZeitlin (1965), 507; Reference BuxtonBuxton (1982), 105–14; Reference GoldhillGoldhill (1984a), 263–5; and Reference NooterNooter (2017), 281.

90 See Chapter 1 for a discussion of victory, erōs, and profit in the context of the Trojan War.

91 Athena herself models such a victory through her own rhetorical trickery, using the verb νικάω (nikaō): she declares that “Orestes wins (νικᾷ, nika) even if the vote is equal (ἰσόψηφος),” Eum. 741, but interprets those results to the Erinyes in exactly the opposite way, soothing them with, “you have not been defeated (οὐ … νενίκησθ᾽, ou … nenikēsth’ ), but the case truly resulted in an equal vote (ἰσόψηφος),” 795–6.

92 Reference CohenCohen (1986), 136–40, presents the most vociferous challenge to the internal political justification of the new law of Athena. He points to the flawed arguments of the trial, especially, as markers that the new law is defective and based on threats of violence. He also suggests that the linguistic ties between the ending and the Trojan War intimate the brutality of Athenian policy in the coming generations.

93 Accepting the codices and Reference SommersteinSommerstein (1989) over the OCT’s correction (following Burges) to ἀπέχειν.

94 On profit (kerdos) and its problems in earlier parts of the Oresteia and the rest of Aeschylus, see Chapters 1 and 3. Athena herself recognizes the negative connotations of profit in calling her council “untouched by (desire for) profits” (κερδῶν ἄθικτον τοῦτο βουλευτήριον, Eum. 704, cf. 990–1).

96 The Eumenides prepares for Athena’s uses of eternity from the start. Apollo’s promise to Orestes insinuates that there will be an everlasting aspect to the acquittal, beyond the specific case (ἐς τὸ πᾶν, 83). Athena consistently emphasizes the perpetuity of her newly founded laws in similar language: “An ordinance, which I will establish for all time” (εἰς ἅπαντ’ … χρόνον, 484); “learn my laws for all time to come” (εἰς τὸν αἰανῆ χρόνον, 571–2); “this council of judges also into the future, always” (καὶ τὸ λοιπόν … αἰεί, 681–4); “for the benefit of my citizens into the future” (ἐς τὸ λοιπόν, 707–8). Cf. Reference ChiassonChiasson (1999), esp. 156–9; but see Reference Porter, Griffith and MastronardePorter (1990), 44–5, who questions this use of “forever”; and Reference GoldhillGoldhill (1984b), e.g. 169–76, on the problems of teleology.

97 This is part of what Reference SommersteinSommerstein (2010a), 202–3, means by stating that gods are in some way responsible to mortals and have obligations toward them, implying that the divinities would suffer if they break such obligations; contra Reference GriffithGriffith (1995), 106–7; and Reference ChiassonChiasson (1999), 154–5.

98 Eum. 956–67. The Erinyes ask blessings of the goddesses of marriage and the Moirai, their sisters on their mother’s side (ὦ Μοῖραι ματροκασιγνῆται), goddesses of righteous apportionment (δαίμονες ὀρθονόμοι). See Reference HammondHammond (1965), 42–55, and Chapter 4 for a discussion of fate and apportionment terms in the Oresteia.

99 The previous line is corrupt, and I follow Reference SommersteinSommerstein (2008b) in punctuation and translation over the OCT; cf. Reference WestWest (1990), 294–5.

101 The Herald relates that Troy and its seed have been destroyed, uprooted by Agamemnon with the “mattock of Zeus the Bearer of Justice” (Ag. 525–6). This depiction of annihilation stands as the ultimate violence, regardless of whether one accepts the following disputed line concerning the desecration of the temples as well (527), on which see Chapter 1.

102 On the history of the Areopagus and questions surrounding its political role and reform, see the Introduction. Reference SommersteinSommerstein (1989), 13–17, notes that its members are only ever called δικασταί, “jurors,” in the play, not addressed as the βουλή, “assembly,” which they always are in surviving speeches. For the construction of the Areopagus’ authority and its difference from the Erinyes, see Reference AllenAllen (2000), 21–3.

103 The theme of unanimity as a solution contradicts the thesis of Reference GriffithGriffith (1995), esp. 107–24, that tragedies in general and the Oresteia in particular attempt to produce “solidarity without consensus.”

Save book to Kindle

To save this book to your Kindle, first ensure coreplatform@cambridge.org is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about saving to your Kindle.

Note you can select to save to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be saved to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.

Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.

  • The Tablet-Writing Mind of Hades
  • Amit Shilo, University of California, Santa Barbara
  • Book: Beyond Death in the <i>Oresteia</i>
  • Online publication: 01 September 2022
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108963862.009
Available formats
×

Save book to Dropbox

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Dropbox.

  • The Tablet-Writing Mind of Hades
  • Amit Shilo, University of California, Santa Barbara
  • Book: Beyond Death in the <i>Oresteia</i>
  • Online publication: 01 September 2022
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108963862.009
Available formats
×

Save book to Google Drive

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.

  • The Tablet-Writing Mind of Hades
  • Amit Shilo, University of California, Santa Barbara
  • Book: Beyond Death in the <i>Oresteia</i>
  • Online publication: 01 September 2022
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108963862.009
Available formats
×