The Ironic Politics Behind Aeschylus’ Oresteia

MAYA ABUALI

The question of whether or not Aeschylus, or the ‘Father of Tragedy,’ as he is often referred to in scholarship, infuses his works with political propaganda has been widely debated among academics over the centuries. Given the nature of the Oresteia’s plot in that it is replete with references to 5th -century Athenian modes of governance, particularly in Eumenides, the third play of the trilogy, and given the background of the playwright, it is reasonable that to assume to a certain degree, regardless of his intentions, Aeschylus will have included his own aristocratic political values within the play. There is a vast array of literature regarding the content of the play’s text itself, being a primary source providing direct insights into the beliefs of the author, and many have detected discrete advances of aristocratic notions within the plot. What scholars have rarely acknowledged is that, irrespective of the content of the play, the Oresteia is inherently political in that it belongs to a festival that symbolically encompassed the novel democratic values of its temporal context. The procession of the festival itself, in unison with the elements of participatory action that constituted the ancient Greek theatre, stand in contrast to the idealization of the elite that Aeschylus wished to advance in his play, creating a conflation of values on one stage. Rather than merely analyzing the language of the text itself, this essay seeks to address the political implications of the play’s staging, spacing, topography, as well as the inclusion of the chorus, and its place in a newly founded democratic body of citizens, and within the festival itself. Before outlining the external elements of the play that make it innately political, it is first necessary to address certain reservations within the text that may limit its characterization as such. Having lived from 523456 BCE, Aeschylus bore witness to a wave of significant changes in Athens, including the introduction of democracy to the polis, the Spartan intervention, the institutional reforms of Cleisthenes, and lived just long enough to witness the reforms of Ephialtes and Pericles. The latter marked a major shift in Athenian politics away from the exclusive and considerable influence of the elite and toward the fuller expression of demokratia characteristic of the late 5th -century, in lessening the prerogatives of the Areopagus council. Furthermore, the playwright himself fought against the Persians at the Battle of Marathon in 490 BCE and is said to have taken part in the famously decisive battle of Salamis in 480 BCE and Plateia in 479 BCE. With such a degree of involvement in political life in Athens, there is no uncertainty in the fact that the tragedian possessed political views. Ancient sources have also claimed that the playwright’s family belonged to the aristocracy.1 Therefore, we can infer based on his background that Aeschylus had aristocratically oriented motivations in his writings. However, one thing we cannot deny is the perceptible ambiguity within his text. R. Seaford argues that ambiguity is rooted deep within the very language of tragedy.2 It exists as the space between the human way of proceeding in the drama and the fate dictated by the gods, between what the tragic characters say and what the audience comprehends, and even between the values of all the spatiotemporal boundaries of Athens (i.e., the values of the polis vs. those of the oikos). We must also consider the persistence of the Sophistic methodologies of thinking during the Classical period, which, in contrast to Platonic logic, wholly facilitates ambiguity and subjectivity within a given discourse. Sophists do not seek to illustrate the concrete validity of a single thesis but rather to form Dissoi logoi. Taking all of this into account, Aeschylus could simply have been postulating on paper the conventions of the Athenian judicial system and the values of the polis in general, without a central message in mind to convey. Due to the ambiguities that are present in his play, it is reasonable to assume that he could have constructed more than one implicit argument in the Oresteia. Did Aeschylus genuinely wish to inculcate a duty of questioning values, or consciously set out to examine or question his own ideology?3 The severe ambiguity between intention, be it explicit or implicit, and function, is also crippling.

1 Anthony J. Podlecki, “The Political Background to Aeschylean Tragedy,” (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1966), 157. 2 Richard Seaford, “Historicizing Tragic Ambivalence: The Vote of Athena,” in History, Tragedy, Theory: Dialogues on Athenian Drama, ed. B. Goff (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1995), 202. 3 Simon Goldhill, “Civic Ideology and the Problem of Difference: The Politics of Aeschylean Tragedy, Once Again,” The Journal of Hellenic Studies120 (2000): 38.

Despite this, Seaford highlights the risk of permitting the pervasiveness of ambiguity in literature to trap it in a disabling cliché, in which “irreducible ambivalence becomes the final destination of analysis.” 4There is certainly a danger of fetishizing ambivalence at the heart of tragedian works; scholars will often fail to state where this ambivalence can be found, whether in the mind of the author, in the text, in the mind of the ancient audience, or the modern reader. While one may choose to acknowledge that ambivalence (or its opposite) is not innate in the text, or the performance of the play, or in the reception of its audience, the text may also be shaped by ambivalence within the mind of the author himself. It is also vital to note, before analyzing the reception of the Oresteia, that we cannot simply rid ourselves of our own preconceptions; we should thus attempt to understand what tragic ambivalence might mean in 5th -century Athens. Now that this ambiguity has been acknowledged as a distinctly present limitation, we may turn to evaluate concrete aspects of Athenian society that will afford us the understanding of why the Oresteia is, despite this, an intrinsically political work. Much of the scholarship on the Oresteia has been directed towards pulling at the threads of Aeschylus’ narrative fabric in order to reveal clues of a hidden, underlying aristocratic propaganda. Even as “democratic” and “civic” pride were bolstered in 5th -century Athens, fissures within the system allowed leading aristocratic families to exercise a degree of political control. In the case of the Oresteia, this motivation is literally masked within characters like Orestes; royal figures of the mythical heroic past. Aeschylus subtly conveys the elite familial dynamics throughout his play, glorifying them in their ‘rightful’ positions. Mark Griffith explores the way in which choregically financed tragic performances were a method that aristocrats utilized to dramatize and solidify their own persisting positions as leaders in the polis. The theatre is a prime example of the process by which ‘old families’ work to preserve their prestige through older, traditional channels within the new structure of democratic government.5 In the Oresteia, this is made clear in the representation of the relationship between Orestes and Athena, which tied Aeschylus’ fictional elite family to the gods in mutual support. The Goddess of Wisdom herself acted as the designated proxenos (representative) of Orestes in his legal and religious entanglement in the Eumenides; this is based on the assumption of a previously existing bond of mutual loyalty and duty between the royal Argive and divine families.6 In calling upon Athena for aid, Orestes laments:

I call reverently upon Athena, this land’s queen, to come to me with her help; and without warfare she will gain myself, and my land, and the Argive people as her true and everfaithful allies.7

Upon her arrival, Athena implores Orestes to explain who he is and why he has summoned her:

What do you wish to say to this, stranger, in your turn? Name your country and descent and fortunes; then defend yourself against their censure.8

To which Orestes replies:

I tell you; and you shall quickly hear the facts of my descent. I am an Argive, and you do well to enquire about my father — Agamemnon, the men’s commander in their fleet, with whom you yourself made Troy’s city of Ilion a city no more.9

4 Goldhill, “Civic Ideology,”, 38. 5 Mark Griffith, “Brilliant Dynasts: Power and Politics in the ‘Oresteia’” Classical Antiquity 14, no. 1 (1995): 97. 6 Griffith, “Brilliant Dynasts, ” 96. 7 Aeschylus, Eumenides in Aeschylus: Oresteia, trans. and ed. C. Collard, Oxford World’s Classics (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002), 286-291. 8 Aes. Eum., 436-439. 9 Aes. Eum., 454-458.

In Orestes, by virtue of Apollo (a means which must be considered as a privilege alone), inviting the “wisest arbiter” of gods and men to protect himself in the case made against him, the royal character is taking advantage of his elite status.10 This is evident when, in speaking with the goddess he refers to Agamemnon, his father, and recalls their former allyship in the legendary Trojan War. In exhibiting these dynamics to an audience of Athenian citizens of varying social classes, there is a discrete but distinct effort made by Aeschylus to preserve the façade of superiority that elite families possessed in Athenian society. The aristocratic principles underscored in the works of Aeschylus fit haphazardly into the realm of 5th century Athenian theatre; there is an ironic embracement of the citizen body accompanied by an utter lack of exclusivity in the medium through which they are promoted. David Wiles explores how 5th -century Athens operated collectively as opposed to individualistically; the pertinence of the chorus in the Oresteia reflects this. The chorus entails a group of performers who are acted as a collective, contributing to the action of the play with their lines sang or spoken in a unified voice. The chorus typically represented the general population of a particular narrative, and often symbolized the people of greater Athens and their reception to the issues advanced by the heroes, gods, and goddesses in the play. In the Oresteia, the chorus shifts from adopting the identities of old men in the Agamemnon, the elders of the polis, to a group of slave women in the Libation Bearers, to their final and arguably most significant shift as the Furies in the Eumenides. Though the main crisis of each play in the trilogy is not caused by their collective group, the issues of justice and retribution prevalent in the plays, particularly in the Eumenides, is not necessarily settled by the protagonist.11 Instead, Aeschylus presents the conflict as one impacting the entire human community, with the chorus adopting the roles that make up the jury in the Eumenides. 12 Thus the community shares in on the administration of justice through the jurors who represent them. The exit of the chorus at the end of the play is a festive procession of the Furies and jurors/citizens, with the latter singing an exhortative hymn of joy and praise from all the city’s people:

Enter with eagerness your house all of torches! Thus have Zeus the all-seeing and Fate come down together to support the people of Pallas! —Cry out your joy now, in song!

There is a ceremonious exit, as the procession circles the orchestra and then leaves by the side. ATHENA leads the way, followed by the FURIES in retinue with her servants carrying torches; the jurors are at the rear.13

The mere fact that such a significant case was deliberated amongst the masses allows one to question the extent to which Aeschylus wished to promulgate exclusively elite values. The common people of Athens are not only sharing in on the issues of the ‘noble,’ but deliberating and dictating their fate through the voice of the chorus. This reflects the power of Athenian citizens in the democratic process during the 5th-century, when they gathered in assemblies to vote and take decisions on law, foreign and domestic policy. Therefore, the theatre was not only a place of theaomai (seeing), but also reflection, a vital element for communal selfawareness through which they were able to question their grasp of the reigns on the political, cultural, and moral dimensions of Athens. Through an investigation on the function of the chorus and crowd behavior in Athens (whether in the auditorium or in the theatre), Wile reveals how theatrical performances operated as social and political events. Wiles proposes that humans compose a social and cultural fabric through the language we deploy, the religion we practice, and the arts we engage in, and consequently our moral choices are rooted in cultural norms; theatre must therefore engage us not as individuals but as members of a cultural community.14 Regarding the functions of the chorus as the theatrical representative of a political body, Wiles observed that

10 Griffith, “Brilliant Dynasts,” 97. 11 Timothy Gantz, “The Chorus of Aischylos’ Agamemnon,” Harvard Studies in Classical Philology 87 (1983): 68. 12 E. R. Dodds, “Morals and politics in the Oresteia,” Proceedings of the Cambridge Philological Society 6 (1960): 19-31. doi:10.1017/S006867350000287X. 13 Aes. Eum., 1044-1057. 14 David Wiles, Tragedy in Athens: performance space and theatrical meaning, (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1997): 18.

5th -century tragedy was a performance practice that built community with “shared pleasure in discussion comprising but one aspect of communal life.”15 Upon weighing extant evidence and analyzing the space of the Athenian theatre, Wilesasserts that the audience, in a sense, was part of the performance; this is instrumental in our understanding of theatre as a democratic practice. A layer of complexity is created in the interaction between actors and audience where the inferred aristocratic and exclusive values are conveyed; Aeschylus wished to advance this connection to promote the inherent egalitarian nature of the Athenian theatre. Tragedy is directly related to the Greek polis in that it belongs to the festival Dionysia, which reflected the dominant ideological structures of democracy in terms of its ritual and dramatic performances.16 This is not to say that the Oresteia (or any other tragedy) promotes a naively conceived plot riddled with explicit democratic propaganda; rather the festival itself, in organization and structure during the 5th -century, is an institution of the democratic polis, and its performances inevitably reflect their political environments. This is evident in the final setting of the Oresteia, with the Areopagus court having been newly reformed, its references to contemporary politics in general, its “obsessive thematic focus on the logic of justice,” along with its procession with the praise of the polis. 17 Furthermore, the rituals that precede the play, the funding of the performances and administration of the festival, and even the seating of the audiences were wholly representative of the ideals and practices of democracy. These components constitute the theatre as an analogous institution to the law-court assembly —the “three great institutions for the display of logoi in the city of words,” as Goldhill puts it.18 The careful selection of judges, chorus, and actors were done through democratic procedure. Furthermore, the choregia is a specifically democratic system; the arrangement of seating referenced political positions in democracy (e.g., seats for the boule), the very procedure for acquiring tickets was through inscriptions on the deme roll, and the assembly in the theatre to allow for discourse on the theatre itself —these are all axiomatic indications and symptoms of democracy in action.19 It is not merely the coherent democratic symbolism pervasive in the operation of 5th -century tragic Athenian theatre that politicizes the Oresteia; the competing aristocratic ideologies that lie within the text, along with a reception by Athenian audiences, defines the play as a political work. An under-explored dimension on the scholarship of the portrayal of Aeschylus’ work, and in any 5th century tragic Athenian works for that matter, is how the physical environment where it was originally staged impacted the reception of the play by the audience. The importance of visual dramaturgy, or Opsis (visuality), is crucial to understanding this. Visuality in ancient Greek theatre was not limited to costumes, masks, props, or even the actors within the performance space, but the surrounding multi-faceted panorama that merged tragedy with the landscape of its historical presence. The performance space of the Theatre of Dionysus itself was located in the historic and religious heart of the city.20 In order to understand the way that the Oresteia was received by the audience, we must note how the spectators at the theatre of Dionysus, whether they were of the Athenian demos or foreign visitors, were consistently engaged in an interactive form of spectatorship; their vision constantly oscillated between a focused view of the action of the play before them and the peripheral view of the surrounding environment. With the field of vision that the theatre of Dionysus permits, the audience could have looked out at the temple and sanctuary of Dionysus, the city walls, significant nearby cult sites and sanctuaries, the old city of Athens, Attic hills, all the way down to the Aegean Sea. Both most importantly and imminently, the Areopagus court, where the scene is set, is located just on the other side of the hill upon which the Festival is held. In the Eumenides, Athena addresses the people of Athens in speaking to the importance of the court:

In this place the city-people’s reverence and the fear which is its kin will keep them from wrong-doing, by day and night alike, if

15 Wiles, Tragedy in Athens, 47. 16 Goldhill, “Civic Ideology,” 34. 17Goldhill, 34. 18 Goldhill, 35. 19 Goldhill, 35. 20 Peter Meineck, “Under Athena’s Gaze: Aeschylus’ Eumenides and the Topography of Opsis,” in Performance in Greek and Roman Theatre, eds. George W.M. Harrison and Vayos Liapis (Boston: Brill, 2013), 161.

the citizens themselves make no innovation in the laws through evil infusions. 21

Aeschylus inflated the influence of the court of Areopagus, whose authority had been recently curtailed by the reforms of Ephialtes in late 460 BCE. As suggested in the play, the Areopagus court at the time of the Oresteia remained a high court in control of homicides. The Areopagus was also considered to be a fortress for conservatism, and had its influence diminished when Ephialtes reduced the property qualifications for holding a public office, which caused it to lose its prestige. Aeschylus infused the text, and particularly Athena’s dialogue, with an aggrandizing of the court in its position, perhaps implying that it should maintain its status as a powerful force, although no longer composed of the conservative force of former archons. The audience could also gaze upon the monumental edifices that surrounded the actual theatre, such as the Parthenon. The Oresteia was staged at a time when any visiting audience members could view the destruction wrought by the Persians in 480 and 479 BCE on the sacred monuments of the Acropolis, and on other visible areas of Athens. Therefore, any particular political references translated through the texts of Aeschylus are immediately felt through the view of Persian destruction. Thus, audience members of the Oresteia could gaze upon the massive edifice of the Acropolis, the very temple that worships the goddess being portrayed in the play, bringing a potent sensation of reality to their viewership. Another facet of visual importance concerning the topography of the Oresteia is the presence of Bronze Athena, which stood across from the entrance to the Acropolis. Aeschylus fuses the symbolism of the old Athenian past with the new democratic present by placing one of the most sacred icons, the smaller ancient wooden bretas of Athena, in a dynamic visual relationship to the monumental and novel statue atop of the Acropolis.22 In Eumenides, Apollo tells Orestes to “come to the city of Pallas and sit clasping [Athena’s] ancient image in your arms.”23 The text refers to the ancient bretas of Athena Polias, reported by Pausanias to have fallen from the sky.24 In iterating this through Apollo, it was obvious that Aeschylus wished for the audience to imagine Athena Polias’ statue in conjunction with the novel Bronze Athena situated across the way. From this stems the notion of a statue of the deity actively watching over the theatre and the audience, gazing upon the performances being staged in her honour. It was almost as though the audience was engaged in a reciprocal act of watching and being watched. In fact, in Eumenides, the city of Athena is described as a watch-post for the gods by the Chorus:

I shall accept a home with Pallas, and I shall not dishonour this city which Zeus the almighty and Ares hold as a gods’ outpost; they delight in its guarding the altars of Greek deities.25

As a result, in viewing the play at the Theatre of Dionysus, its historical, mythological, and political context entirely encompass it and rendered Aeschylus’ message more tangible, blurring the dissonance between the narrative and reality. The “visual dramaturgy” emphasized by scholar Peter Meineck affords us an entirely new dimension to envision the reception of Aeschylus’ works, and both the literal and metaphorical close proximity of religion and politics to the theatre space. It is clear that Aeschylus wished to advance aristocratic values through the Oresteia, as is evident in the political imagery within the play: the elite Argive family and their close connections with the gods, along with his emphasis of the conservative Areopagus council as the rightful court to dictate significant matters through the character of Athena. Nonetheless, as part of the Festival of Dionysia, which is reflective in its operation of the newly founded democratic system of the polis, and as presenting the Chorus as such a crucial role in the progression of the play, there becomes a confusion between whether the play vouched for the aristocrats or the people. Regardless of what Aeschylus wished to promote, one may easily recognize inherent political elements

21 Aes. Eum., 690-694. 22 Meineck, “Under Athena’s Gaze,”. 163. 23 Eum. 80 24 Meineck, “Under Athena’s Gaze,” 174. 25 Aes. Eum., 916-920.

in the Oresteia and other plays of its time from the democratic systems of the polis at the time being reflected in the rituals and performance of the theatre, as well as the value of the Athenian ‘collective,’ and the visual and physical surroundings of the theatre.

BIBLIOGRAPHY Aeschylus. Aeschylus: Oresteia. Translated and edited by C. Collard, Oxford World’s Classics. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002. Dodds, E. R. “Morals and politics in the Oresteia.” Proceedings of the Cambridge Philological Society 6 (1960): 19-31. Gantz, Timothy. “The Chorus of Aischylos’ Agamemnon.” Harvard Studies in Classical Philology 87 (1983): 65-86. Griffith, Mark. “Brilliant Dynasts: Power and Politics in the “Oresteia.”’ Classical Antiquity 14, no.1 (1995): 62-129. Goldhill, Simon. “Civic Ideology and the Problem of Difference: The Politics of Aeschylean Tragedy, Once Again.” Journal of Hellenic Studies 120(2000): 34-56. Harrison, George W.M. and Vayos Liapis (eds). Performance in Greek and Roman Theatre. Leiden: Brill, 2013. Meineck, Peter. “Under Athena’s Gaze: Aeschylus’ Eumenides and the Topography of Opsis.” In Performance in Greek and Roman Theatre. Edited by George W. M. Harrison and Vayos Liapis, 161-179. Leiden: Brill, 2013. Podlecki, Anthony J. The Political Background to Aeschylean Tragedy. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1966. Revermann, M., and P. Wilson. Performance, Iconography, Reception: studies in honour of Oliver Taplin. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008. Seaford, Richard. “Historicizing Tragic Ambivalence: The Vote of Athena.” In History, Tragedy, Theory: Dialogues on Athenian Drama. Edited by B. Goff, 202-222.Austin: University of Texas Press, 1995. Wiles, David. Tragedy in Athens: performance space and theatrical meaning. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1997.