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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 04 July 2014
After Athena announces his acquittal in the trial of the Eumenides, Orestes offers thanks to the three gods who have driven him from the house into the city to restore him once again to his house — Pallas, Loxias, and the Third Savior who accomplishes all things, Zeus Sōtēr (757-760). In the plot of the Oresteia, this triad has made Orestes the third savior for whom the Chorus of the Choephoroi pray (1073); he comes in the third generation, after Atreus and Agamemnon, to save his line from the extinction threatened by the atē working its way through the generational cycles of the House of Atreus. His trial, which establishes in the polis the precedent of Ixion (cf. 441, 717-718), brings it an unbeatable grip of salvation and victory against its opponents (776-777). The evolution he thus effects in the human ethical order is an unwitting imitation, with Orestes as a human counterpart to Zeus, of the evolution in the divine ethical order effected by the young Olympian gods in the Prometheia, for only in the third generation, after Ouranos and Kronos, does Zeus halt the lawless cycle of divine usurpation. Zeus proves triaktēr, victor in the third bout, in the struggle for control of the kosmos (cf. Ag. 168-172); likewise, Orestes overcomes the atē which Elektra describes as atriaktos (Cho. 339), and, having offered Aegisthus as a third libation (Cho. 577-578), he proves triaktēr in his agōn against the Erinyes, although they claim to have tripped him in the first of three bouts (Eum. 589). Human history is an imitation of divine history, accomplished under Zeus' command by the Olympian gods, who seek to bring man's ethical order into line with the new order of the kosmos; only by thus reconciling the Chthonic gods to the new order can the Olympians establish the harmonia necessary if Zeus' regime is to stop permanently the cycle of crime and counter-crime.
1. It was the custom after supper to pour a libation of unmixed wine first to the Olympian, then the Chthonic gods, and third to Zeus Sōtēr, in whom their opposition was harmonized; see the evidence collected in Cook, A. B., Zeus II (Cambridge, 1925), 1123–1125Google Scholar and Thomson ad Ag. 257. The normal associations of the third libation are evident in Suppl. 23-27 and fr. 67 M; but in accordance with the principle of trigerōn muthos (Cho. 314) which informs Aeschylus' plan in the Oresteia (cf. Clay, D., Hermes 97 [1969], 1–9Google Scholar; the Theban trilogy provides an elegant parallel – see Burnett, A. P., “Curse and Dream in Aeschylus' Septem,’ GRBS 14 [1973], 366–368Google Scholar), it is first put to ritual perversion: cf. Ag. 245-247, 284-285, 1385-1387; Cho. 244-245, 577-578. Only in the third act of the trilogy, after the workings of Apollo, Pallas, and Zeus Teleios (cf. Eum. 16-28) have brought the human ethical order into line with that of the Olympian order, can the third libation be poured in other than a celebration of bloodletting. For a general discussion of the perversion of ritual in the Oresteia, see Zeitlin, F. I.. ‘The Motif of the Corrupted Sacrifice in Aeschylus' Oresteia’, TAPA 96 (1965), 463–508Google Scholar.
Aeschylus is cited from the 1972 OCT of Page; the fragments from Mette, H. J., Die Fragmente der Tragödien des Aischylos (Berlin, 1959Google Scholar). The following commentaries are cited by author and line reference alone: Fraenkel, E., Agamemnon (Oxford, 1950Google Scholar); Johansen, H. Friis and Whittle, E. W., The Suppliants (Copenhagen, 1980Google Scholar); Thomson, G., Prometheus Bound (Cambridge, 1932Google Scholar) and Oresteia (Prague, 1966Google ScholarPubMed).
2. This point is discussed by Solmsen, F., Hesiod and Aeschylus (Ithaca, 1949), 163–166Google Scholar, and Kuhns, R., The House, the City and the Judge: The Growth of Moral A wareness in the Oresteia (New York, 1962), 14ff., 50–52Google Scholar.
3. A detailed study of this will appear elsewhere; here we can only outline the political problem raised by the Agamemnon. The legal action of the Parodos, in which public retribution is undertaken for the sake of private injury, is emblematic of the way in which the oikos subsumes the public interest into its own (cf. 532-533, 823-824); on the oikos in general see Jones, J., On Aristotle and Greek Tragedy (London, 1962), 82–111Google Scholar. The expedition against Troy, although it brought great hardship upon Argos, was undertaken characteristically without thought for the public interest. In Homer, the expedition against Troy, the heroic action par excellence, was undertaken to recover Helen, a single woman; but once at Troy, heroic ambition supplanted Helen as the war's motivation (cf. Iliad vii. 400–402Google Scholar; Benardete, S., ‘The Aristeia of Diomedes and the Plot of the Iliad’, AGON, Journal of Classical Studies 2 [1968], 21–22Google Scholar). The hero strives to overcome his mortality; his inability to attain immortality issues in desire for ever-lasting glory; and his success in battle colours his ambition (cf. Iliad viii. 535–541Google Scholar). Aeschylus' presentation of the Trojan war combines this understanding of ‘heroism’ with a demonstration of its incompatibility with the oikos-order which nourishes it. In the sacrifice of Iphigeneia, levied as the price of Troy's punishment, the conflict between the warrior male and weaving female, inherent in the oikos-order, breaks into the open: heroic aretē threatens to destroy the oikos (cf. Ag. 427-474). The distinct spheres of male and female are brought into conflict because the oikos, in subsuming the public interest into itself, fails to provide a public principle to govern relations between the two spheres. The oikos thus becomes a battleground in which the sub-political conflict between male and female results in violent political chaos. The tension between the male and female spheres is exacerbated by the inability of the warrior to divorce himself from the oikos: this appears most clearly in the Herald's speeches upon his return to Argos (503-582). The army and oikos are united by a common bond of erōs so great that, once together again, death would be a great charis (cf. 538-550). Caught between his aretē and his erōs for the oikos, the warrior succumbs to the incommensurability of his condition — he yields to the erōs to destroy the altars of the gods and the seed (sperma) of Troy (cf. 338-344, 525-528). The double erōs of the warrior, which causes him to transgress against the gods, results in a hubris which destroys the oikos-order. Only with the establishment of the polis, which provides public space to mediate the opposing claims of male and female, public and private, are the contradictions in ancestral morality reconciled; the erōs for strife is then turned against external enemies, and the warrior is motivated by public interest rather than heroic aretē. For a discussion of this problem in other contexts, see Saxonhouse, A. W., ‘Men, Women, War, and Politics: Family and Polis in Aristophanes and Euripides’, Political Theory 8 (1980), 65–81CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
4. This problem is too complex to be discussed here; the relevant passages are fully collected and discussed in Fontenrose, J., TAPA 102 (1971), 85–107Google Scholar; but his treatment of the workings of Olympian and Chthonic forces in the plot is overly simplistic.
5. For arguments that the various Olympian gods represent different stages in the evolution of Olympian morality, see Kuhns (above, n. 2), esp. 67.
6. Zeus' relation to Moira is treated with some good observations by Vian, F., ‘Le Conflit entre Zeus et la destinée dans Eschyle’, REG 55 (1942), 190–216CrossRefGoogle Scholar, who notes the essential point that ‘les deux drames, en apparence si divers, de la Prométhéide et de l'Orestie, se rejoignent sur le plan divin: ils illustrent deux moments de la lutte entre les Anciens et les Nouveaux Dieux’; but within this common framework we understand Zeus' establishment of law in the kosmos quite differently. Herington's, C. J. remarks, in his ‘Aeschylus: The Last Phase’ Arion 4 (1965), 387–403Google Scholar, about the common characteristics of late Aeschylean trilogy-technique, seem to me generally correct, so far as they go; but whereas Herington conjectures that ‘in these last three trilogies we see a series of experiments, not only with the idea of a cosmic split, but with the idea of Zeus’, the evidence presented herein suggests rather a single theodicy, the implications of which are developed in the three trilogies. While Herington is correct to distinguish between the theodicy of the late trilogies and of those which preceded them, his understanding of the former is in some important respects inadequate.
7. Cf Pindar, Isthmian VIII 27–35Google Scholar; Hes. Th. 886-900. Prometheus naturally does not name Thetis in the Desmōitēs, but that it is she is evident from many sources, e.g. Schol. ad PV 167; Hyg. fab. 54 with Philod. de piet. 41 G. On the problem of sexual generation in the Prometheia, see Benardete, S., ‘The Crimes and Arts of Prometheus’, Rh. Mus. 107 (1964), 126–139Google Scholar.
8. Note how various characters are caught in the web being spun by the Moirai: Hephaistos (16, 72), Prometheus (103-108, 292, 933), Okeanos (290, 330-331), Io (753, 815), and the Chorus (631). We shall explore in detail how Zeus reacts to Moira's dispensation; cf below, n. 45.
9. Fitton-Brown, A. D. (JHS 79 [1959], 52–60CrossRefGoogle Scholar) and West, M. L. (JHS 99 [1979], 130–148CrossRefGoogle Scholar) have shown that the hypothesis of Purphoros-Desmōtēs-Luomenos accords much better with the evidence we possess for reconstruction of the trilogy than the alternative possibility, Desmōtēs-Luomenos-Purphoros, although, without further evidence, certainty in this matter is impossible. The second hypothesis is argued most forcefully by Thomson, 18-38; see also Conacher, D. J., Aeschylus' Prometheus Bound: A Literary Commentary (Toronto, 1980), 98–119Google Scholar. On our present evidence, we have no choice other than to rely heavily upon analysis of the Desmbtes itself in reconstructing the plan of the trilogy.
10. Herakles too evidently ‘pitied’ Prometheus before releasing him: cf. Pherecydes ap. Schol. ad Apoll. Rhod. iv 1396.
11. On Aeschylus' technique of using language in this way to foreshadow later developments in the plot of the Prometheia, see, inter alia, Thomson's notes ad PV 27, 88, 117.
12. Cf the discussion of fr. 334 M with PV 218, below.
13. Cf. Benardete (above, n. 7), 134-135: Taming apparently is not an art that can be taught in speech; Prometheus has to show it in deed. And what holds for the tamer holds for the tamed: it must learn through suffering. Prometheus thus alludes to the need for force and compulsion in taming (hippodamos), which distinguishes it from all the rest of the arts; for even in his medicine there are only “gentle remedies” (482; cf. Her. III. 130.3)… Prometheus, who pities even the fate of the monstrous Typho (352), is inclined to discount and reject compulsion (cf 212 ss.) — he calls horses here “lovers of the reins” (philēnioi, 465) —, but his tacit admission that it is necessary raises the question whether the same relation which holds between men and beasts should not also obtain between gods and men. The gods, as beings of a different order, may have to rule by force… That the gods need to use force would be perhaps the major concession Prometheus will later make in being reconciled with Zeus, for the very condition of his release — the continuation of the reign of Zeus — means that he can no longer simply please Io or by implication the rest of mankind (cf. 758 ss.).’
14. The extensive imagery of ‘taming’ is traced out by Dumortier, J., Les Images dans la poésie d'Eschyle (Paris, 1935), 56–70Google Scholar.
15. It is hotly debated whether pathei mathos applies to Zeus; von Wilamowitz, U., Aischylos Interpretationen (Berlin, 1914), 123Google Scholar, Solmsen (above, n. 2), 164, 189, and Thomson, 11-12, among others, all claim that it does. Although Zeus' subordination to Moira tends to support their view, one must remember that the deficiency in Zeus' art (his inability to solve the problem of sexual generation without Prometheus) does not necessarily imply a lack of wisdom, for art and wisdom are not the same thing. How we answer the much-discussed ‘Zeus question’ depends upon how we interpret a number of hints of Prometheus. He tells Io that Zeus' tyranny will be despoiled by his own ‘empty-minded’ (kenophronōn) plans (762), thus implying that Zeus must attain phronein to stay in power; ‘having fallen to this evil [i.e. overthrow] he will learn (mathēsetai) how different are rule and slavery’ (926-927). Must Zeus, the tamer, himself be tamed (cf. 189)? An adequate treatment of this problem is beyond the scope of this paper; here I attempt to show how Zeus must act to bring his regime into line with the dictates of Moira — whether pathei mathos applies to him or not.
16. ‘Bia’: 15, 74, 208, 353, 357, 380, 592, 671-672, 735-737; cf. Suppl. 429-430, 798, 812, 943. ‘Kratos’: 49, 519, 527, 937, 939, 948, 955 — note the distribution; cf. Suppl. 207, 372, 526, 943. See further Italie.
17. Cf. above, n. 13 and Glotta 43 (1965), 295Google Scholar.
18. Consider Moschion fr. 6 (Snell) along with the commentary of G. Zanthakis-Kara-manos, Studies in Fourth Century Tragedy (Athens, 1980), 105–119Google Scholar, especially her comments on lines 15-16 at pp. 110-111. The possibility that this fragment throws light on the Prometheus Luomenos is strengthened by fr. 2 (Snell) of Moschion's Telephus (quoted by Stobaeus in a discussion of anankē, 1.4.1), in which Moira is represented as ruling over gods as well as men: ‘Moira, you who alone have power (kratousa) over gods and mortals, you, who are impervious to the prayers of wretched men, all-daring Anankē, you who weigh down our necks with this hated yoke of servitude.’ This understanding of Moira as superior to the gods is paralleled in the literature of this period by Herodotus 1.91.1 and fr. adesp. 503 N2, but this is the only passage outside Aeschylus known to me in which Moira is also at the same time conjoined with Anankē. Since Moschion may have been influenced by Aeschylus' Telephus (frs. 238-240 N2) here, it seems reasonable to consider whether fr. 9 may be modelled partly on the Prometheia (and also of course upon the anthropological progressivism of the fourth century). Lines 3-6 vividly recall the pre-Promethean state of man of PV 447-453; the art of ploughing mentioned next as lacking was a Promethean gift, as well as the discovery of iron; and lines 15-16 (‘Nomos was humble and Bia was enthroned beside Zeus’) suggest that for Moschion, as for Aeschylus, violence and law are the keys to distinguishing between the gods of pre- and post-Prometheanman. In the passage from Moschion, the change from savagery to culture occurs when time wrought a complete change in human life (we may cite PV 981, though not an exact parallel) — whether through Prometheus, anankē, or long experience, offering nature as a teacher —, and then the arts developed and nomos ordained burial for corpses. Clearly Moschion's borrowings from Aeschylus are much influenced by subsequent philosophical thought; but it seems reasonable to conclude that the shift from pre- to post-Promethean man through the change of positions between Bia and nomos is based upon Aeschylus' similar treatment in the Prometheia.
19. Servii Grammatici, ed. Thilo, G. (Leipzig, 1887) III, 2Google Scholar; this account must be used with caution, for although Probus seems to accord with our other evidence for reconstruction of the trilogy, he does not here mention Aeschylus by name; cf. Conacher (above, n. 9), 111-112. Prometheus' acceptance of a symbolic bond is supported by several versions of the myth which may be related to the Aeschylean account: see Pliny NH 33.4 and 37.1; Menodotus ap. Athenaeus XV 672-673; and Hyginus, Astron. I.15Google Scholar.
20. Lloyd-Jones', speculation in The Justice of Zeus (Berkeley, 1971), 95–103Google Scholar, that the Aitnaiai was the third play of the Prometheia and that in it Zeus gave Dikē to man (an argument that rests upon the unsupported attribution of P.Oxy. 2256 fr. 9, the ‘Dikē fragment’, to Aitnaiai), while motivated by a desire to account for man's post-Promethean status, is belied not only by the implausibility of his argumentation (cf Taplin, O., The Stagecraft of Aeschylus [Oxford, 1977], 464–465Google Scholar), but also by the fact that Lloyd-Jones ignores what evidence we have concerning the plan of the trilogy in favor of an arbitrary construction.
21. Cf Vian (above, n. 6), 203-206.
22. See his fundamental article (above, n. 7), 126-128, to which I owe much.
23. We may outline Zeus' obscure seduction of Io as follows. Zeus does not satisfy his desire until the end of Io's wanderings, when she arrives in Egypt, for before he could lie with her and sow a new race, Hera transformed her into a cow and set Argos upon her (cf. PV 673-679 and Tucker's note ad Suppl. 268); in this respect Aeschylus significantly modifies the traditional account, in which Zeus rather than Hera transformed Io (cf. Apollod. ii. 1.3, Friis Johansen and Whittle ad Suppl. 299 and Conacher [above, n. 9], 17 n. 25). Sometime later Prometheus is chained on a crag, where Io encounters him. Prometheus prophesies that after lengthy wanderings she will reach Canobos in Egypt; that there Zeus will make her sound of mind (emphrona — Elmsley's unfortunate conjecture enkumona, adopted by Page, misses entirely Aeschylus' subtle treatment of Io's ‘impregnation’ and implies that Zeus would bear a son in union with Io without first healing her nosos, her ‘maddened phrenes’ [cf. 596-597, 606-608, 878-879, etc.]), touching her with a hand that brings no fear; that she will bear Epaphos the ‘truly named’ for him (PV 846-851); and that a descendent of Epaphos (Herakles) will release Prometheus. In the Supplices this union is described more exactly: Zeus did not impregnate Io, but sowed (phituei, 313) a son by touch — cf. 16-18 (Friis Johansen and Whittle ad loc), 294-315, 576-581. Between the time he has Inachus expel Io from his house, and the time he begets a son with her in Egypt, Zeus abandons his plan to replace mortal man with a new race. ‘Instead of generating a new race of heroes, Zeus begets the ancestor of Herakles — who will release Prometheus in the Prometheus Luomenos.’
24. The concluding stanza of Goethe's ‘Prometheus’.
25. Cf Fränkel, H., ‘Man's “Ephemeros” Nature According to Pindar and Others’ TAPA 77 (1946), 131–145Google Scholar; contra, Dickie, M. W., ‘On the Meaning of Ephēmeros’, Illinois Classical Studies 1 (1976), 7–14Google Scholar.
26. See Thomson ad loc. for parallels. An interpretation of Io lies beyond the scope of this paper, but if Rosenmeyer, T. G. (The Masks of Tragedy [Austin, 1963], 65–66Google Scholar) is correct in thinking that she reflects man's pre-Promethean state, then we may be able to explicate this state from Io's account of her expulsion from Inachus' home (cf. PV 645-683): ‘Aeschylus took a wronged princess and made of her a mask for the soul of pre-Promethean man, for the terrors of human life prior to the advent of cultural progress and enlightenment. Her words, her gestures, her dance motions on the stage betoken man in his primeval wildness, rootless, uncontrolled, tossed by constant apprehensions of his weakness and dependence. Unlike Prometheus, she cannot plan or predict, she can only suffer; and even in her prayers to the gods she can only beg for more sufferings of the kind which befit wild beasts.’
27. Cf fr. 667 M; Ag. 1237-1330; Aristoph. Aves 685-687.
28. Cf Pindar fr. 175 (Turyn); Odyssey xxi. 85Google Scholar.
29. Sansone, D., Aeschylean Metaphors for Intellectual Activity (Hermes Einzelschriften 35, 1975), 21–39Google Scholar; see also Webster, T., ‘Some Psychological Terms in Greek Tragedy’ JHS 77 (1957), 149–154CrossRefGoogle Scholar. It should be noted that nous is not associated with a particular sense organ in Aeschylus and is little used: it occurs only five times in the extant plays and fragments.
30. ‘There might be a world’, Fraenkel aptly remarks on the following passage, ‘in which man had only to suffer, struck down by obscure powers without ever understanding why, without ever recognizing any connexion between doing and suffering. As things are, this is not so, and the god who is pre-eminent in eternity has opened up a way to phronein and an insight into the ever-valid principle drasanti pathein: that this is so is, so far as man can make out, a charis daimonōn.’ If Fraenkel had noted that man once did inhabit such a world, before Prometheus gave him the capacity for phronein, he would have described accurately man's capacity for insight into Zeus' plan.
31. The verb ‘set on the path’ (hodoō) first appears in Aeschylus; on the resonance of this metaphor in the Oresteia, see below, n. 37.
32. On the meaning of sōphronein in Aeschylus see North, H., Sophrosyne: Self-Knowledge and Self-Restraint in Greek Literature (Ithaca, 1966), 33–50Google Scholar.
33. Although he made mortals masters of their phrenes, Prometheus' own phrenes are described as deranged (472-473, 1054-1055; cf 977-978, 1000, 1036-1039) and for this reason, according to Hermes, he will never attain the sōphronein necessary for him to survive in Zeus' order (cf 964-968, 981-982, 1009-1013, 1033-1043). It is possible, of course, that Prometheus acquired this characteristic in the resolution of the Luomenos; but whether he does or not his failure to understand pathei mathos prevents him from showing man the full possibilities of phronein.
34. For the text translated here see Gerber, D. E., TAPA 100 (1969), 177–180Google Scholar.
35. Cf. Fränkel, H., Dichtung und Philosophie des frühen Griechentums (München, 1962), 148–151Google Scholar; see also Vivante, P., The Homeric Imagination (Bloomington, 1970), 120–209Google Scholar.
36. On the meaning of nous see the illuminating series of papers by von Fritz, K., CP 38 (1943), 79–93Google Scholar; 40 (1945), 223-242; 41 (1946), 12-34.
37. For an analysis of Prometheus' account of the prophetic arts, see Sansone (above, n. 29), 41-44. Prometheus enumerates all the types of mantikē technē instanced in Aeschylus save one — enthousiasmos, in which the god himself speaks through the phrenes of the prophet. Prometheus ‘showed the way’ (498) to the kinds of prophecy that can be learned; the kind which is god-given is reserved for the purposes of the Olympian gods in the Oresteia. It is possible to trace out the workings of Zeus' justice (cf. Ag. 367-368); but the depth of Zeus' phrenes is limitless (cf. Suppl. 1057-1058) and ‘not easy to trace’ (87): ‘the dark and thick-shaded pathways of his mind stretch out blind to our sight’ (93-95). The twisting patterns of Zeus' plan may be unraveled, but one must be, as Kassandra, ‘keen-scented’ (euris) and thus able to sniff out the scent of ancient evils ‘after the manner of a dog’ (Kunos dikēn, Ag. 1093-1094, 1184-1185; cf. Suppl. 1017; von Fritz, CP 38 [1943], 79–93Google Scholar endorses Schwyzer's derivation of noos from *snu, ‘to sniff’; cf. Plato Rep. 432B7-D3). The path of phronein, then, which underlies the evolution in man's ethical order towards the establishment of the polis, is traversed through prophecy, which engenders that disposition whence learning arises: ‘the much-speaking arts of prophets bring fear so that men learn’ (1134-1135; Fraenke's doubts concerning this passage are based upon misunderstanding of the role of prophecy in Aeschylus – the text is sound and mathein is epexegetic: it expresses the result of the fear instilled by prophecy). Kassandra establishes the boundary stones which mark off the prophetic path of the Oresteia (cf. Ag. 1154-1155, 1134, 1161; Bacchylides fr. 11 Snell). Prophecy is, however, ‘hard to understand’ (dusmathē, 1255) and hence a disparity arises between sign and thing signified. While they readily grant Kassandra's insight into the past, the Chorus ‘run off the track’ (1245, 1252) and cannot see its end (terma, 1177) whenever she speaks of the future. They recognize the divine voice in her prophecies, but are unable to bring together being (einai) and likeness (proseikasai; cf. Ag. 500, 1130-1131, 1348-1371) — they cannot unite their pathos with a mathos. (for a different, and in my opinion wrong, view of the relation between Kassandra and the Chorus, see Knox, B., ‘Aeschylus and the Third Actor’, AJP 93 [1972], 104–124Google Scholar; see now Benardete, S., ‘On Greek Tragedy’ Great Ideas Today [Chicago, 1980], 123–124Google Scholar). This disparity between sign and thing signified seems to be overcome in the Choephoroi, where Orestes is transformed into the symbol of his act by verbal identification with the snake of his mothers' dream (cf. 539-550, 928-929). Prophecy brings together image and action in Orestes' matricide, which, as Kassandra foresaw, puts a coping-stone on the destruction of his race (cf. Ag. 1288-1289). The surface imagery of the Oresteia thus exemplifies its deepest theme: by making sign and thing signified coalesce, prophecy establishes a connexion between doing and suffering, which is the pre-supposition for the trilogy's civic mathos. For an introduction to the proleptic character pathei mathos, see Rabel, R. J.RSC 27 (1979), 181–184Google Scholar.
38. Cf. Schol. ad Ag. 70; Fraenkel ad loc., Farnell, L. R., CR 11 (1897), 293–298Google Scholar. Klytaimestra often offered such ‘fireless sacrifices’ to the Erinyes: cf. Eum. 106-109.
39. This possibility seems to have been recognized by Strauss, Leo (‘The Liberalism of Classical Political Philosophy’, Liberalism Ancient and Modern [New York, 1968], 42Google Scholar), who did not, however, develop it: did Zeus ‘decide to use Prometheus’ kindhearted but not foreseeing deed in a foreseeing, in a royal manner? Did he decide, that is, to use Prometheus' increase of man's power as a means for teaching man true wisdom by the suffering coming from the very power of the arts?’
40. Benardete (above, n. 7), 133.
41. Cf Suppl. 1041-1042: Moira has given to Harmonia the love-whisperings of Aphrodite and the paths worn by lovers. In Hes. Th. 937, 975 Harmonia is the daughter of Aphrodite and Ares, and while it is not certain, it is likely that Aeschylus followed tradition on this point (cf Friis Johansen and Whittle ad loc; Suppl. 664-666). If so, Harmonia would embody perfectly the cosmic reconciliation undertaken by Moira, which is founded upon the replacement of blood ties by contractual relations, of oaths by marriage (cf. below, n. 54). Although Garvie, A. F. (Aeschylus' Supplices: Play and Trilogy [Cambridge, 1969], 204–233Google Scholar) has shown in detail that no reconstruction of the Danaid trilogy is without difficulty, my own view (stated with dogmatic brevity) is as follows: in the third play of the trilogy Hypermnestra stands trial for violating her oath to kill her husband, and Aphrodite defends her on the ground that love takes precedence over oaths; fr. 125 M reads (in Benardete's translation):
As the sacred heaven longs to pierce the earth,
So love takes hold of earth to join in marriage,
And showers, fallen from heaven brought to bed,
Make the earth pregnant; and she in turn gives birth
To flocks of sheep and Ceres' nourishment —
A marriage that drenches the springtime of the woods —
For all this I am in part responsible.
The Danaid trilogy thus seems to have unfolded the reconciliation of the opposing claims of law (established in the second play by the Danaids' oath to slay their husbands) against Hypermnestra's assertion of a natural freedom independent of law through the acknowledgement of love's precedence; although this accords with Moira's plan elsewhere (Eum. 213-218), we cannot be certain what role, if any, Harmonia played in this reconciliation.
42. Heimarmenē and morsimon both of course are derived from meiromai, ‘to be part of a whole’, ‘to obtain one's share’, which is also the root of moira. Harmonia is the interlocking and orderly structure of the kosmos, as apportioned by the Moirai. On the various meanings of ‘moira’ see Vian (above, n. 6), 203-204.
43. In his ‘Personal Freedom and its Limitations in the Oresteia’ (JHS 85 [1965], 42–55CrossRefGoogle Scholar), N. Hammond well observes that Zeus works within the limitations of the kosmos established by the Moirai.
44. We must take seriously the Erinyes' claim that the Olympian gods are transgressing against dikē (Eum. 154, 163, 778 ff., etc.); cf. below, n. 54.
45. In his discussion of Moira ad Ag. 1535, Fraenkel warns against working out a hierarchical relationship between the Moirai, Erinyes, and Zeus, ‘a matter with which Aeschylus was not concerned at all’, instead of considering their function in context; but his adoption of Wilamowitz's view that the Moirai and Erinyes enforce the ‘moral order of the world’ which prevents Zeus from ‘escaping the consequences of his actions’ makes their function unintelligible, for Zeus' marriage with Thetis is hardly presented as a ‘deed of guilt’, as Fraenkel claims. This kind of abstraction, which vitiates much scholarly interpretation of Aeschylus' theodicy, ignores Aeschylus’ own terms, since the Moirai and Erinyes personalize anankē (cf. PV 514-516), and thus require us to examine their roles as characters in the drama. Only by dwelling on the surface relations of characters as they are presented in the plot can we come to see their inner function. Furthermore, a comparison with Hesiod, Pindar and Sophocles shows Aeschylus' unique interest in hierarchical evaluation; cf. Vian (above, n. 6), 206-211. On the relation between Moira and Zeus in Homer see Chantraine, P., ‘Le divin et les dieux chez Homère’ in Entretiens sur l'antiquité classique 1 (Vandoeuvres-Geneve, 1952), 69–73Google Scholar.
46. The best discussion of this passage is that of Fraenkel ad loc., although, in my opinion, no-one has adequately interpreted the relation between 1025-1027 and 1028-1029. Scott, W. C., ‘The Confused Chorus’, Phoenix 23 (1969), 336–346CrossRefGoogle Scholar, recognizes the necessity of interpreting this passage, and especially the phrase ek theōn in the context of the entire trilogy, but his own answer to this difficult question is not entirely satisfactory.
47. The Oresteia and Prometheia alone of Aeschylus' extant work show extensive wrestling imagery; see Poliakoff's article cited in the following note and PV 87, 95, 257, 262, 389, 918-926, fr. 322 M. The metaphor of the agōn used in the Prometheia to describe Zeus' relation to the wrestler who (Prometheus says) will unseat him is continued in the Oresteia, which completes the convergence of cosmic forces into harmonia initiated in the Prometheia. On the possible resonance of the metaphor of the agōn, see Thomson II, 204-206.
48. See Poliakoff, M., ‘The Third Fall in the Oresteia’, AJP 101 (1980), 251–259Google Scholar.
49. Cf. Pausanias v. 7.10 and viii. 2.2, who reports the story that Zeus outwrestled Kronos for control of the kosmos.
50. Cf. Schol. ad Cho. 339; Fraenkel ad Ag. 171.
51. Cf. Moritz, H. E., ‘Refrain in Aeschylus: Literary Adaptation of Traditional Form’, CP 74 (1979), 195–213Google Scholar.
52. On the two kinds of Eris, formulated by Hesiod at OD 11-41, see Nietzsche's essay, ‘Homer's Contest’. The transformation of eris in the Oresteia is an example of the way in which Aeschylus takes traditional ideas and gives them new meaning by integrating them into his plot.
53. The externalization of Ares is well treated by Higgins, W. E., ‘Double-Dealing Ares in the Oresteia’, CP 73 (1978), 24–35Google Scholar. In Oxyrhynchus Papyri Part XX (1952), fr. 9(a) of No. 2256, lines 31-41, a fragment from a lost play almost certainly by Aeschylus (line 28 = fr. 377 N), Dikē seems to describe the trial of Ares before the court of the Areopagus for the murder of Halirrhothius (cf. Euripides, Elektra 1254–1263Google Scholar); see further Robinson, D. S., ‘Dike and Ares’, CR n.s. 3 (1953), 79–80Google Scholar. The most recent discussion of why Aeschylus departed from this common tradition in the Oresteia is Strutynski, U., Arethusa 13 (1980), 219–221Google Scholar; he gives a useful compendium of the ancient sources (229, n. 18) but is unaware of P.Oxy. 2256. See Higgins' discussion, 33-34.
54. The plan of Moira is even darker than the plan of Zeus, but we may discern it in part in a passage of the Eumenides. In their agōn, the Erinyes tell Apollo that their geras is to drive mother-murderers out of their houses, and that the murder of a man by his own wife would not be the shedding of one's own blood with one's own hand (209-212). They claim their office by the dispensation of Night (321-327). Apollo replies: ‘Surely you dishonour and set at nothing the pledges of Hera, the Fulfiller, and of Zeus. And Cypris, dishonoured, is cast aside by your logos, she from whom things of love come to mortals. For the marriage bed, granted to men and women by Moira (morsimos), is greater than an oath, when guarded by dikē’ (213-218). Contractual relations, which pre-suppose dikē, replaced blood ties (cf. Hegel, , Philosophy of Fine Art [London, 1920], II, 214–215Google Scholar); Apollo says that among mortals and gods it is a cause for dread wrath to give over a suppliant willingly (233-234). The daughters of Night have taken separate paths. Moira once sanctioned the office of the Erinyes, who prevented the proper boundaries — which were defined by blood rather than by contractual relations — from being transgressed (cf. Eum. 312-320); but something in the new Olympian order has caused her to alter her dispensation. The reason for her shift seems to be continued in the phrase, tei dikei phrouroumene, where the participle indicates the circumstance under which Moira grants the marriage bed to be greater than the oath. Dike, then, is the justification for the change in Moira's sanction from the old order to the new. In the political solution of the Eumenides, the Erinyes are retained to guard against transgression and to manage all the affairs of men (cf. 930-931); but they are first integrated into the new order of Zeus, which is based upon an understanding of ‘justice’ entirely different from that of the ouranian gods.
55. For sunkatabainō as a wrestling term, see Poliakoff (above, n. 48), 255, n.6.
56. The unusual syntax of this passage, with two singular subjects sharing a singular verb (paralleled at Luc. D. Mort. vi. 1), stresses the union between Zeus and Moira.
57. Cf Thomson ad Eum. 1045-1046 for parallels.
58. Herington (CR n.s. 14 [1964], 239-240) has pointed out that apallassō or apallagē with a separative genitive meaning ‘release from’ occurs nine times in the Desmōtēs and Oresteia, but nowhere else in all of extant Aeschylus. If Thomson, G., JHS 55 (1935), 20–34CrossRefGoogle Scholar, is correct in thinking that the phrase apallagē ponōn is taken from Eleusinian ritual, where it denoted purification from the evils of mortality, it is a fitting phrase to mark out the integration of mortal man into the Olympian kosmos. The movement of the Oresteia towards such a release is shown by the conjunction of apallagē ponōn (Ag. 1; Eum. 83) with ankathen (Ag. 3; Eum. 80); the latter term occurs only in these passages out of all of Greek literature (emending Eum. 373 for metrical reasons).
59. Cf. Ag. 55-59, 88-91, 355-356, 462-467, 748-749; Cho. 639-652. For a good discussion of the emergence of the distinction between Olympian and Chthonic forces in the plot of the trilogy, see Otis, B., Cosmos and Tragedy: An Essay on the Meaning of Aeschylus (Chapel Hill, 1981), 82–85Google Scholar.
60. Cf Solmsen (above, n.2), 187-189.
61. The Parodos, at once the most beautiful and terrible of tragic odes, moves from the portent which angers Artemis to its consequence, omitting the cause of Agamemnon's punishment. It thus does not make explicit that Artemis' anger at the portent, and hence the Atreidai, is brought about by Zeus to cause Agamemnon's dilemma. (This conclusion is reached by Lawrence, S. E., AJP 97 [1976], 97–110Google Scholar, who, however, argues the matter ‘dramaturgicalry’ and adduces none of the evidence from the text offered here.) The structure of the Parodos, however, strongly suggests such a link. When the seer interprets the portent, he couples the envy he fears may strike the expedition from the gods (theothen, 131) with Artemis' anger at the hounds of her father. The account of her anger is then interrupted by the Hymn to Zeus: placed, as it were, to explain it. Zeus stands as cause between the sign and its consequence (cf. Sept. 398). As Tantalus' daughter Niobe says, ‘God sows an aitia for mortals, when he wishes to ruin a house utterly’ (fr. 273 M), so Zeus, when he wishes to expose the ēthos of the ‘heroic’ order through its leader, readily brings upon the House of Atreus a second sacrifice which at once displays that ēthos and reveals the necessity for its reform. The phrase (kai tote) which resumes the narrative after the Hymn indicates that a special case is ranged under the general law (cf. Fraenkel ad Ag. 184): Agamemnon's suffering exemplifies pathei mathos, the doctrine by which Zeus put man on the road to wisdom. From the first then, Zeus' justice shimmers through the opaque surface of the narrative (cf. Ag. 1485-1487); but only dim rays of his plan break through the darkness which shrouds the vision of the actors who bring human history to its destined fulfillment. Here and there a signpost is left for the careful reader of Aeschylus' plot – the gods, the Chorus sing, direct the assault upon the House of Atreus (Cho. 941), as Dikē, Zeus' daughter, guides Orestes' hand; but where the issue of right is paramount, Zeus' justice is suppressed and a sign of itself seems sufficient to compel Agamemnon's punishment.
62. ‘Polis’ and ‘polisma’ each occur once in the Desmōtēs (421, 846).
63. D. J. Conacher's failure to understand this point, in his ‘Prometheus as Founder of the Arts’, GRBS 18 (1977), 189–206Google Scholar, leads him to try to explain away Prometheus' ‘odd and anomalous’ omission of the political arts by appealing to a ‘scientific, evolutionary’ account which Aeschylus is supposed to be adapting. Even if this hypothesis were provable — and no direct evidence supports it —, Conacher would still have to consider the Aeschylean account in its own context, which he does not even attempt to do. Some of his mistakes could have been avoided had he read Benardete's article (above, n. 7), where the inner relations of the Promethean arts — which Conacher finds so confusing — are clearly formulated; but the error of seeking a ‘scientific source’ for Prometheus' account of the arts was shown by Strauss (above, n. 39), 41-43 — another important article of which Conacher seems unaware.
64. Cf Sophocles, Antigone 332–375, frs. 399, 438 NGoogle Scholar; Euripides, Supplices 195–213 and fr. 578 NGoogle Scholar; fr. adesp. 470 N, probably from Aeschylus' Palamedes; Moschion fr. 6 (Snell); Lucretius V; Diodorus 1.8. 1 ff. For an extended discussion of ancient theories of cultural origins, see Cole, A. T., Democritus and the Sources of Greek Anthropology (APA Monograph 35, 1967Google Scholar).
65. Nichols, D. K., ‘Aeschylus' Oresteia and the Origins of Political Life’, Interpretation 9 (1980), 83–91Google Scholar, also thinks that the Oresteia discloses the limits of political life, but our interpretations differ.
66. An Aristotelean formulation helps, I think, to capture this point. When man is separated from nomos and dikē, he sinks into bestiality and becomes the ‘worst of all animals’, since he can pervert the arts he was born with for the sake of aretē and phronēsis. Dikaiosunē prevents man from employing art in the service of bestiality (cf. Politico 1253a30-40). The just political order accordingly emerges as that towards which post-Promethean man aims for the preservation of his condition (cf. Plato Rep. 443B). The plot of the Oresteia consists in the revelation of such an order.
67. This article is adapted from a chapter of the author's book in progress, The Justice of Zeus: Studies in Aeschylean Tragedy. In that work, many of the issues raised here receive fuller treatment. I am grateful to Professors Seth Benardete, Frank Romer, William Sale and Mr. Steven Esposito for their comments on a draft of this article; they have not seen the present version.
