“So much for human fortune. When all is well/ a mere shadow can turn it upside down/ in the face of calamity, the slightest blow destroys/ like a wet sponge blotting out a drawing./ I do not pity myself, I pity mankind.” (Cassandra, in Agamemnon)
In what is likely to be a common complaint here, writing this entry was terribly difficult, not so much as was the case for Beowulf for all the uncertainties associated (though they are, if anything, more numerous), but because of the fascination I have with all myths, legends, interpretations and characters peripheral to the story. I have spent hours reading through Wikipedia and other sources, have started re-reading modern adaptations (including from Giraudoux), and I just cannot get enough.
The Oresteia is a trilogy relating the final episodes of the malediction on the House of Atreus (which, strangely enough, starts with Tantalus, Atreus’s grand-father). The early episodes of the House’s history are not part of the Oresteia. Child cannibalism and murder run through it (I checked out infantivore, but it doesn’t seem to be a word… yet): Tantalus fed his own son, Pelops, to the Gods, in a sort of deranged test to see if they would notice. They did, and that landed him in Hell, where he was made to endure the aptly-named Torment of Tantalus. The Gods also put Pelops back together, including a piece of ivory to replace the shoulder eaten by a distracted Demeter – and in good ancient Greece logic, proceeded to curse him and his descendants for the sin of his father. Pelops made matters worse by assassinating his future wife’s father: to gain the hand of Hippodamia, he needed to beat her father King Myrtilus in a chariot race. He ensured his victory by having his opponent’s chariot sabotaged, killing Myrtilus in the process.
Pelops’s two sons, in turn, had a troubled relation, which much treason, adultery and stealing the throne from one another repeatedly (with the help of meddling Gods). Suffice to say that, as a result, illegitimate children were fed to their father Thyeste by their uncle Atreus. Aegisthus was then procreated by Thyesthe (through incest, of course), expressly to avenge his father. Atreus meanwhile had two sons, Agamemnon and Menelaus, who lived in good intelligence, each reigning over a different city. The brothers married half-sisters Clytemnestra and Helen, daughters of Leda. When the Trojan War started, Agamemnon went to support his brother, sacrificing his daughter Iphigenia to get favorable winds.
The first play of the Oresteia – Agamemnon – starts with the return of the victorious king to his city of Argos. He is triumphant, bearing treasure and a new concubine (Cassandra) as the reward of his toils, but the celebration will be short: Clytemnestra leads him into his house with disproportionate honors, and immediately murders him with all the ritual pomp of a sacrifice to the Gods. Cassandra, who predicted the murder as well as her own death, faces her fate soon after. The play ends with the triumph of Clytemnestra and her lover. He appears decidedly weak and arrogant in the play – letting her commit the act (which makes it more dishonorable to Agamemnon), bragging about his new position when she calls for peace now that her daughter has been avenged. The play ends with the threat of Orestes’s revenge.
The next play, The Libation Bearers, is the story of that revenge. Orestes, back from exile, tricks his mother into granting him an audition with Aegisthus and herself, and kills them both. I read (from a source I can no longer locate) that the tragedy marks a symbolic transition from a world where males and females where equally valued to a dominance of the masculine. This could be confirmed by the fact that Electra, Orestes’s sister, takes up the cause of her brother and father: she is deaf to the appeal of her mother in the name of her sister Iphigenia. The Furies, a remnant of the old order (they equally pursue patricides and matricides) then appear to persecute Orestes.
The third play tells of the resolution of the curse: Orestes flees first to Apollo, who ordered the murder of his mother, but the God cannot convince the Furies to leave his protege alone. He is then sent on to Athena’s temple: she arranges for him to be tried by 12 (male) judges, who are split equally between forgiveness and revenge. She settles the matter by casting her vote in favor of acquittal, making it a principle that pardon should be preferred to revenge when in doubt. She also renames the Furies to the Eumenides (the Kindly Ones), given them the new, much more feminine role of making the fortune of worthy humans. This settlement ushers more changes: the switch to a mortal justice and the abandon of vendetta as the preferred mode of conflict resolution.
The theme of the place of women is always one I am very sensitive to, so it certainly struck me strongly during my reading – especially as I was not expecting it there. Another dimension I was not expecting in tragedy was the surprising humor that permeates the play. Witticisms (“your speech was like my absence, too long“) and sarcasms (Cassandra, on being praised for her courage: “the fortunate never hear praise like that”) are certainly far from laugh-out-loud jokes, but they help a text otherwise impressive by its directness and darkness keep a very theatrical elegance.