Corporeality and Incorporeality

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

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

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

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

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

Chthonic Process and Athenian Terminology

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The Code of Hades: Defining Ethics

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Precarious Relations

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

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

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

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

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

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

The Polluted Judge

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

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

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

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

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

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

Hades’ Singular Justice versus the New Law

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

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

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

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

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

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

Against Chthonic Forces: Athens United in Phrēn

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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