PREVIEW： Chronicles #22 ｜ The Eumenides With Stelios Panagiotou
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Summary
Brother Stelios joins me to wrap up the trilogy of Aeschylus' The Eumenides. In this episode, we discuss the third play in the trilogy, Ayn Rand's A Good Omens.
Transcript
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Hello and welcome back to Chronicles, where today we're going to be discussing the Eumenides by
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Aeschylus, not Eeschylus, as I was saying it previously, and joining me for wrapping up
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this grand trilogy of Agamemnon, the Libation Bearers, and now the Eumenides, is Brother
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Stelios. Thank you, Brother Luca, and thank you, everyone. We're going to have a great discussion
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today. Thank you for inviting me back. And I will say that this is, hands down, my favorite part of
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the trilogy. Same. And it's probably my favorite play by Aeschylus. Maybe this and Prometheus Bound.
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I oscillate between the two of them. But this is really good. This is where we sort of see the
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climax of the Orestia, because you can say that relative to the Eumenides, the previous two plays
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aren't that impressive. Yeah, I can certainly understand that. And one of the things that I
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found was when we were discussing the Libation Bearers, although it is a very good middle,
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it's a very good second act, it does retread a lot of the themes and a lot of the moral conflicts
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that Agamemnon, the first play, was going through. Whereas this one, you see the actual
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where Aeschylus is driving the entire narrative, the payoff. You're getting all of the payoff
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as to what it was all for, what all the suffering meant in the end. And what's more as well,
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it's a fantastic play, because it's finally, in the third act, we bring in some of the actual gods
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as characters. And, you know, they get speeches, and they get, and, well, they're the most important
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characters within the entire play. And so it's wonderful to see Athena and Apollo laying down the
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law. Yeah, in their element. Yeah, absolutely. So it's great fun. Before we start talking about the
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third play, shall we just begin by talking about recapping what briefly happened in parts one and
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parts two? Sounds like a great idea. Okay, so in part one, which I'm sure you've watched by now,
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Agamemnon returns home from the Trojan War, 10 years at war, and is confronted by his wife,
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Clytemnestra. And she basically, the entire play is just him arriving home, and her murdering him
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in his own house, in Argos, in his own bath, for sacrificing their daughter, Iphigenia,
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for favorable winds to carry his fleet over to Troy, and begin the war.
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And this was divine command. I think it was Artemis who commanded him to do so. So it isn't just that
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he woke up one day and said, right, let me slaughter my daughter in order to have favorable winds. He was
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ordered by the goddess Artemis to do so. And you just don't disobey the gods in the Greek mythology
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setting. And what's more as well, of course, so our second play, The Libation Bearers, begins exactly
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with that, the son of Agamemnon, Orestes, returning home after long exile. And he too has been given
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a command by the gods, because he has been told by the Oracle of Delphi, that, you know, this conduit
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through which the will of Apollo speaks, that he has to avenge his father, right? And it's very
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important that that is the phrasing of it. You must avenge your father. It doesn't expressly say,
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go and kill your mother. But of course, in order to avenge your father, that is implicitly what you
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have to do. Here is where you see a theme that is really important in philosophy. You have the very
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general statement or injunction in this case, avenge your father. And you have the application of it
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because it varies across settings. You could avenge your father by killing a stranger who killed your
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father, or you could do so in terms of killing your mother like Orestes did. So what is really
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interesting is to see that we have a sort of massive conflict between the injunction, the moral
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commandment by the gods to human beings, and its application into the particular concrete
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circumstances each person finds himself in. And this is what generates one of the main tensions,
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the moral dilemma of the play. It's just, on the one hand, he has to avenge his father,
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on the other hand, it's his mother we're talking about. And this is what is the sort of foundation
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for the massive moral rivalry between two distinct worldviews that Aeschylus is going to talk about
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Right. And even though after the death of Agamemnon and the rise of Caiotin, Nestor, and Egyathus,
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Argos comes into this kind of arbitrary tyranny, particularly from Egyathus, who is just not a
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philosophical man and just believes in raw power and domination, right? There's no actual nurturing
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kingship within him. He's a man without really any qualities. And even though Argos falls into this
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tyranny, though it is just and right, of course, that Orestes, as the son of the true king,
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returns to Argos and reasserts the proper order, the play really drives at the fact that first and
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foremost, before anything to do with the wider polity of Argos, really, this is a matter of an
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honor killing, right? It really is just about blood and revenge. And the fact that in this old world,
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where the old ancient primal laws of the earth govern humanity, justice and revenge are one in the
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same. And what we see here in this third play is the divergence of those things into something where
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justice becomes something actually imbued with wisdom as well. Yes, absolutely. Yeah. All right,
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then. So let's begin talking about the third play. So can you, for someone who is obviously not a
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native Greek speaker, just perhaps explain what the Eumenides means at the title of the play?
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Right. So, right. So humanides means essentially good spirits or something of the sort. We are talking
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about the Furies, who are the spirits of vengeance, who are named at the end of the play, humanides.
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So what is really interesting here is that we have a sort of trajectory that will take us from
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viewing the spirits of vengeance to viewing them as good spirits without that meaning that justice at
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the end is going to be equated with vengeance. So essentially, we are talking about the Furies
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or the Erineas, as we're called in Greek. Most probably the audience knows them by the name Furies.
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Right. And they were essentially the spirits of vengeance that were haunting people who committed
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a particular crime that had to be avenged. Yeah. I believe the term that's often described to them
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is something along the lines of like Chthonic, right? They're creatures of an underworld. They're from
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the darkness. Yes. And Chthonic means spirits of the earth. And when we are talking about
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spirits of spirits of the earth in this context, we're not necessarily speaking of spirits of Gaia,
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who is considered to be relatively speaking a good goddess. It's the grandmother of Zeus and the Olympians.
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Sure. It's more like spirits that are titanic. So the Furies in Greek mythology were born when
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Cronos chopped his father's balls off. Uranus. Yes. Sorry. It's funny every time. We all know it.
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Right. So let me be very, very brief about it. The first order of the gods was governed by
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by the first deities who were Uranus and Gaia. These were the two supreme deities. There were more,
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but these were the entities that governed the universe. There were more like, you know,
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knight, nix, you know, you have all sorts of, I think Oceanus. Right. Pontus. You have all sorts of
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interesting deities. People who want to find out more about the names, they should read the Hesiod's
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Theogony, who did try to bring them together somehow and systematize them. Or I think by Apollodorus,
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the ancient Greek mythology, he was a mythographer. Right. So what happened was that at some point,
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they gave birth, Uranus and Gaia gave birth to the Hecatonchorus means 100 handed beasts.
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And they had 50 heads and 100 hands and they were complete chads. And Uranus was a bit emasculated
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by them and was afraid of them and tried to banish them in earth, within the earth. And Gaia didn't take
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that well. She thought that Uranus was the first who committed shameful acts and devised a plot with
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the Titans. And she took an adamant sickle and told the Titans who were their children,
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you need to avenge your brothers because your father's the first one who committed shameful acts
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and take this adamant sickle. No one was after the task except for Kronos. So he took it. He did the job.
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And as he threw the... Yes. The thing. Yes. The testicles. Yes. The testicles at the sea.
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There were two things that happened. The blood of the testicles gave birth to the Furies.
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Hmm. It's one of the most outrageous backstories I've ever heard. Yes.
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Yes. Character origin story. Yes. And then when the other, the other part was,
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fell down near the island of Kythira and it, uh, the winds and the waves took it to Cyprus.
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And there was foam close to it, forming around it. And essentially they, it gave birth to the,
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the goddess of love that was Aphrodite. Right. And, uh, there is also this interplay that
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love and hatred and revenge are frequently linked together. Right. So then we had
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Kronos who was just another, uh, tyrannical figure in the gods. He was just representing brute force.
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He overthrew his father because he could not because he had some actual better order. Yes.
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To replace his father. Yes. And then he was, uh, you could say tyrannical to his sons, the Olympians
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and Zeus teamed up with Rhea and Gaia. Uh, and, uh, basically they had the Titanomachy and completely
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overturned the Titans. They banished Kronos into Tartarus as well as the Titans, I think there. And, um,
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then Zeus swallowed Metis, who was the goddess of wisdom, was also one of her, one of the, his many
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wives. And then two things happened. His order then was just because he combined force, supreme force
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with wisdom. And he gave birth to Athena and Athena is going to talk about it. Yes. Because
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towards the very end of the humanities. So Athena is essentially one of the, one of the goddesses that
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oversee that order with Zeus. She's very, she has an easy way to convince him with things. Yes. She's
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very persuasive. She was very, she can be very persuasive. And, um, when it comes to the Furies,
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the Furies essentially are spirits of vengeance and they're ectonic in the sense that they are not
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Olympian. They are representing the old Titanic way. So when they're called chthonic spirits of the
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earth, it doesn't mean spirits that relate to the grandmother of Zeus. Yes. Who he loved and,
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and she loved him. We're talking about the Titans. It's the old order that was won by Zeus and the
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Olympians. But because this is the message of mythology, I think it's cross-cultural when we're
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talking about mythology, there is such a thing as a just and providential order in the world that can
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be momentarily disrupted by the forces of chaos that can win the day, but eventually they're going
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to lose the war. They may lose battle. They may win battles, but essentially the heroes and the gods
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are going to redress, readdress the imbalance from them. So when we're talking about the spirits of
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spirits of vengeance, the as chthonic, we're talking about spirits of vengeance that are representing the
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old Titanic way. Right. And what's more as well, they have a particular, uh, vendetta against Orestes
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because he killed his own mother. They represent kind of feminine chaos, right? The chaotic feminine
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of, of nature. Yeah. Um, you know, all those things, vengeance, fertility. Um, and what you have is when
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you, Orestes obviously murders Clytemnestra at the end of the second play, he immediately flees
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for the sanctuary of, um, um, Delphi and the temple of Apollo. Which is about 200 miles from Argos.
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Right. Okay. He really ran. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Orestes is going to run a lot in this play.
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Let's put it that way. Yeah. Um, he puts marathon runners to shame. Uh, and so Orestes is fleeing to
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the temple of Apollo and the play begins with the priestess basically actually talking exactly about
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this order, about continuity. First, there's a, there's a prayer for Gaia and then for, uh,
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is it Thetis? I, I can't remember. Yes. Yeah. Themis. Themis. That was the goddess of justice. Yes.
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And then to Phoebe and then to Apollo. And so you see this continuity of, uh, the people,
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the gods who have basically been empowered and had this temple in their trust, uh, down the,
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down the ages, of course. And then you get this remarkable moment where, because obviously the
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oracle is there to speak on behalf of Apollo. Um, so it's just getting ready for the daily goings on
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and then goes immediately inside the temple in that classic ancient Greek, uh, tragedy goes in,
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i.e. off stage. And then immediately runs out, runs back out onto the stage to tell the audience
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the horrors that, um, she has seen in there. And I wanted to start with this part because it's our,
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we get a very, very vivid depiction of the Furies themselves. Also on top of the shrine in the middle
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is Orestes himself. So the entire scene that this priestess sees is Orestes sat dripping with blood
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on top of the shrine and asleep at the side of the shrine are the Furies who have been pursuing him
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ever since he murdered Kyta Nestra. And so our priestess says,
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But worse, I cannot describe it. Around him, on the stone benches, strange sleeping creatures.
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I would call them women, but they are not women. Gorgon-faced, yet not Gorgons. Black,
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like the rags of soot that hang in the chimney, like bats yet wingless. Each of their faces a mess of
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weeping ulcers, the eyes, the mouth ulcers. Their bodies exhale a stench like maggoty corpses.
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Their cloaks are saturated and stained with their own putrescence that oozes from them into the stones.
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Who are they? What are they? Some other kind. Inhuman. Monsters from a different world. To be cursed
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by God and men. Apollo is powerful. And this is his temple. All human pollutions await his cleansing
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touch. Priest, prophet, healer. I leave the stranger to him. And so enter Apollo after that. But so it's a
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really monstrous depiction of the Furies. They don't seem particularly nice or likable. No.
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Yeah. No, they are. And what's more as well, the fact that they are already, the fact that Orestes is
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sat on the shrine and they are just waiting for him to step off of it. Yeah. Right. So they can get
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him. That's really what's going on here. As long as Orestes stays on this sacred spot that has Apollo's
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protection, they can't touch him, but he can't stay there forever. Yeah. And so they're just waiting for
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this moment. One thing I want to say about this for people who are going to read this is that you hear
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the priestess referring to Apollo as Loxius. And there were many names that were given to the gods
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that were essentially functioning as epithets, as adjectives. They were trying to refer to the
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gods in their capacity as something. And they had many capacities. And Loxius essentially refers to the
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ambiguous nature of Apollo. And what he mentioned here has nothing to do with gender. It means that
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he frequently communicated his, let's say, the oracles, communicated the commandments of Apollo
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or the prophecies in highly ambiguous language. You could almost say it was in language where they
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couldn't be disconfirmed somehow. Yeah. Plausible deniability. Yes, exactly. It's what Apollo has.
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Yes. Yes. All right. So Apollo comes out with his bow and arrow, doesn't he? Well, he immediately comes in
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to basically bolster Orestes because Orestes is under his protection. And one thing that I find
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interesting and the play doesn't really give any dialogue to address this fact. And I understand
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that Aeschylus is telling his own version of an origin story really for civic law in Athens. However,
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I do find it interesting that of all of the gods to champion Orestes, it's Apollo that does it,
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given that Apollo was, of course, on the opposite side to arrest his father, Agamemnon.
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In the Trojan War. And now you see him just going gun for leather to protect his son out of the sense
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of justice for him. And so, like I said, the play doesn't really address that, though it does later
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address the fact that Athena fought on the same side as Agamemnon at Troy. So that obviously, I know
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Athena's obviously your favourite, given that she is the protector of your city still to this day.
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So you get this moment where Apollo says to Orestes, flee whilst they're still asleep, and basically just
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run as fast as you can to Athens, to the temple, to the statue of Athena, and pray for her assistance.
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Yeah. Because the thing is, as well, that whilst he's been in this temple, Apollo has tried to cleanse
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Orestes of the actual sin itself. He's tried, but it's interesting to note that even he as a god,
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as an Olympian, cannot entirely cleanse Orestes of what he has done, right? He is still,
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that the blood works as almost like a homing beacon. Because he has done something. Yes, he has.
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That is, you know, it's not the easiest thing to explain or to justify. Well, no, absolutely not,
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of course. No, what he did was a terrible thing. And the point that the Libation Bearers makes
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so well, of course, is that Orestes is given an impossible choice. Yeah. Right. He's given an
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impossible choice where there is no good outcome. Exactly. But he must choose. Exactly. And that is
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why Apollo tells him, when you go to Athena in Athens, tell her that I made you do it. I told you to do it.
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Yeah. It's like getting a written note from your doctor to say, no, no, it's fine. I authorize this.
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Yeah. And so Orestes pelts it as fast as he possibly can. And then we get to my favorite part
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of the entire play, which is ridiculous, given that it's got gods. But I just love the fact that
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you get this one brief little cameo in the play from Clytemnestra's ghost. The fact that we're
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making her, I believe, the only character to be in all three plays of this trilogy.
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