Apollo – there, with judges of thy cause and speech of persuasive charm, we shall discover means to release thee utterly from thy distress; for it was at my behest that thou didst take thy mother’s life. (81-4)
Ghost of Clytaemnestra – ’Tis due to you that I am thus dishonoured among the dead; because of my deeds of blood the dead never cease reviling me, and I wander in disgrace. I declare to you that they bring against me charge most grievous. And yet, howbeit I have suffered thus cruelly from my nearest kin, no power divine is wroth in my behalf, slaughtered as I have been by the hands of mine own son. Mark ye these gashes in my heart, whence they come! (95-103)
Chorus – Such are the doings of the younger gods, who rule, altogether beyond the right [dikas], a throne dripping blood, about its foot, about its head.
’Tis mine to see the centre-stone of the earth defiled with a terrible pollution of blood.
Seer though he is, at his own bidding, at his own urgence, he hath stained his sanctuary with pollution at its hearth; transgressing the ordinance of the gods, he hath held mortal things in honour and set at naught the apportionments of eld.
To me too he bringeth distress, but him he shall not deliver; though he fly beneath the earth, never is he set free. Stained with the guilt of murder, he shall get upon his head another avenger of his kin [race]. (162-177)
Apollo – This is, in sooth, no house meet for your approach; no, your place is where there are sentences to beheading, gouging out of eyes, and cutting of throats; where, by destruction of the seed, the manhood of youth is ruined; where men are mutilated, stoned to death, and where, impaled beneath their spine, they make moaning long and piteous. D’ye hear what sort of feast ye love that makes you detestible to the gods? (185-192)
Orestes – Queen Athena, at Loxias’ bidding I am come; and do thou of thy grace receive an accursed wretch, no suppliant for purification, or uncleansed of hand, but with my guilt’s edge already blunted worn away at other habitations and in the travelled paths of men. Holding my course over land and sea alike, obedient to the behests of Loxias’ oracle, I now approach thy house and thine image, O goddess. Here will I keep my post and abide the issue of my trail. (235-243)
Chorus – thou art bound in requital to suffer that I suck the ruddy clouts of gore from thy living limbs. May I feed myself on thee – a gruesome draught! (264-6)
Chorus – O’er our victim consecrate, this is our song – fraught with madness, fraught with frenzy, crazing the brain, the Furies’ hymn, spell to bind the soul, untuned to the lyre, withering the life of mortal man. (328-333, repeated at 341-345)
Chorus – For it abideth. Skilled to contrive, powerful to execute are we, mindful of evil wrought, awful and inexorable to mankind, pursuing our appointed office dishonoured, despised, separated from the gods by a light not of the sun – an office that maketh rough the path of the living and the dead alike.
…Mine ancient prerogative still abideth, nor do I meet with dishonour, albeit my appointed place is beneath the earth and in sunless gloom. (381-8 & 393-6)
Athena – Who in the world be ye? I address you all in common – both yon stranger kneeling at mine image, and you, who are like to no race of creatures born, neither beheld of gods among goddesses, nor yet having resemblance to shapes of human kind. But to speak ill of one’s neighbour who is innocent of offence, is far from just, and Right standeth aloof. (408-414)
Apollo – …seer that I am, I cannot utter untruth. Never yet, on my oracular throne, have I spoken aught touching man or woman or commonwealth, but what hath been commanded by Zeus, the father of the Olympians.
Mark how potent is this plea of justice; and I charge you to yield obedience to the Father’s will; for an oath hath not greater authority than Zeus. (615-621)
Athena – Neither anarchy nor tyranny – this I counsel my burghers to maintain and hold in reverence, nor quite to banish fear from out the city. For who among mortal men is righteous that hath no fear of aught? (696-8)
Chorus – Since thou, a youth, woulds’t override mine age, I wait to hear the verdict in the case, for that I am still in doubt whether or not to be wroth against the town.
Athena – My office it is now to give final judgement; and this, my vote, I shall add to Orestes’ side. For mother have I none that gave me birth, and in all things, save wedlock, I am for the male with all my soul, and am entirely on the father’s side. Wherefore I shall not hold of greater account the death of a wife, who slew her lord, the lawful master of the house. Orestes, even with equal ballots, wins. (731-741)
Orestes – For I myself, then in my grave, will bring it to pass by baffling ill-success, even by visiting their marches with discouragement and their ways with evil omens, that they who violate my present oath shall repent them of their enterprise. (767-771)
Athena – Let me prevail with you not to bear it with sore lament. For ye have not been vanquished. Nay, the trial resulted fairly in ballots equally divided without disgrace to thee; but from Zeus was offered testimony clear, and he that himself uttered the oracle himself bare witness that Orestes should not suffer harm for his deed. (794-799)
Athena – Bereft of honour ye are not; wherefore, goddesses though ye be, do not in excess of wrath blight past all cure a land of mortal men. I, too, rely on Zeus – what need to speak of that? – and know, I alone of the gods, the keys of the armoury wherein his thunderbolt is sealed. (824-829)
Recommended Reading for Eumenides & Oresteia more generally:
Bacon, Helene. ‘The Furies’ homecoming,’ Classical Philology 96 (2001) 48-59.
Bowie, A.M. ‘Religion and politics in Aeschylus’ Oresteia,’ Classical Quarterly 43 (1993) 10-31 .
Brown, A.L. ‘The Erinyes in the Oresteia: real life, the supernatural, and the stage,’ Journal of Hellenic Studies103 (1983) 13-34.
Brown, A.L. ‘Eumenides in Greek Tragedy,’ Classical Quarterly 34 (1984) 260-81.
Cohen, D. ‘The theodicy of Aeschylus: justice and tyranny in the Oresteia,’ Greece and Rome 33 (1986) 129-141.
Conagher, D. J. Aeschylus’ Oresteia: A Literary Commentary. Toronto: U of T P, 1987.
Dignan, F. The Idle Actor in Aeschylus (Chicago: Chicago UP, 1905).
Dodds, E.R. ‘Morals and politics in the Oresteia,’ Proceedings of the Cambridge Philological Society 6 (1960) 19-31.
Dover, K.J. ‘The political aspect of the Eumenides,’ Journal of Hellenic Studies 77 (1957) 230-7.
Euben, J. Peter, The Tragedy of Political Theory: The Road not Taken (Princeton: PUP, 1990).
Goldhill, S. Language, Sexuality, Narrative: The Oresteia (Cambridge: CUP, 1984).
Griffith, M. ‘Brilliant Dynasts: Power and Politics in the Oresteia.’ Classical Antiquity 14: (1995) 62-129.
Heath, J. ‘Disentangling the beast: humans and other animals in Aeschylus’ Oresteia,’ Journal of Hellenic Studies 119 (1999) 17-47.
*Helm, James J. 'Aeschylus' Genealogy of Morals,' Transactions of the American Philological Association, vol. 134. no. 1 (Spring, 2004), pp. 23-54.*
*Kennedy, Rebecca Futo. Justice, Geography and Empire in Aeschylus' Eumenides,' Classical Antiquity, vol. 25, no. 1 (Apr., 2006), pp. 35-72.*
Lebeck, A. The Oresteia: A Study in Language and Structure (London: OUP, 1971).
Lloyd-Jones, Hugh ‘Erinyes, Semnai Theai, Eumenides,’ in E. M. Craik, ed. Owl to Athens. Essays on Classical Subject. Oxford: OUP, 1990. 203-211.
McCall, M., ed. Aeschylus: A Collection of Critical Essays (Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice-Hall, 1972).
Macleod, C.W. ‘Politics and the Oresteia,’ Journal of Hellenic Studies 102 (1982) 124-44.
*Mace, Sarah. 'Why the Oresteia's Sleeping Dead Won't Lie. Part I: Agamemnon,' The Classical Journal, vol. 98, no. 1 (Oct. - Nov., 2002), pp. 35-56.*
Lloyd-Jones, Hugh ‘Erinyes, Semnai Theai, Eumenides,’ in E. M. Craik, ed. Owl to Athens. Essays on Classical Subject. Oxford: OUP, 1990. 203-211.
McCall, M., ed. Aeschylus: A Collection of Critical Essays (Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice-Hall, 1972).
Macleod, C.W. ‘Politics and the Oresteia,’ Journal of Hellenic Studies 102 (1982) 124-44.
*Mace, Sarah. 'Why the Oresteia's Sleeping Dead Won't Lie. Part I: Agamemnon,' The Classical Journal, vol. 98, no. 1 (Oct. - Nov., 2002), pp. 35-56.*
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*Mace, Sarah. 'Why the Oresteia's Sleeping Dead Won't Lie. Part II: Choephoroe & Eumenides,'The Classical Journal, vol. 100, no. 1 (Oct. - Nov., 2004), pp. 39-60.*
Otis, B. Cosmos and Tragedy: An Essay on the Meaning of Aeschylus (Chapel Hill, North Carolina: U of NC Press, 1981).
Owen, E.T. The Harmony of Aeschylus (Toronto: Clarke, Irwin & co., 1952).
Owen, E.T. The Harmony of Aeschylus (Toronto: Clarke, Irwin & co., 1952).
Podlecki, Anthony J. The Political Background of Aeschylean Tragedy. Michigan: U of M P, 1966, esp. 63-100.
Thomson, G. Aeschylus and Athens (London: Lawrence and Wishart, 1941).
Vellacott, Philip. The Logic of Tragedy: Morals and Integrity in Aeschylus’ Oresteia. Durham N.C.: Duke UP, 1984.
Winningham-Ingram, R. P. Studies in Aeschylus. Cambridge: CUP, 1983.
Winnington-Ingram, R.P. ‘Clytaemnestra and the vote of Athena’ Journal of Hellenic Stiudies 68 (1948) 130-47.
Zeitlin, Froma I. ‘The Dynamics of Misogyny: Myth and Myth-making in the Oresteia.’Arethusa 11 (1978)
