Return of the Furies

That is the Furies raging at the end of Aeschylus’ The Oresteia, the trilogy tracing the fall of the house of Agamemnon and the rise of Athens. (Robert Fagles’ masterful translation.)

In a recent post, I ruminated that one of the problems with contemporary political discussion is that people do not spend enough time reading Aristotle. Now, truth be told, Aristotle requires some patience to read; his works do not have the charm of watching Socrates go to work in a Platonic Dialogue. So, I understand why people are not flocking to read Politics, even though it would be quite beneficial to do so.

But Aeschylus also provides a remarkable reflection on contemporary society. And he wrote plays! Plays with murders and intrigue and Furies hounding the guy who murdered his mother and Greek gods and Goddesses showing up and the first ever jury trial! Coming soon to Netflix! Or HBO! Well, actually, I have not heard of an Oresteia series being made, but it really does have all the elements of compelling TV.

The story can be told as a list of deaths:

1. Tantalus’s son Pelops had two sons, Thyestes and Atreus. Thyestes seduced Atreus’ wife in order to get the throne. Atreus, not pleased about this, killed Thyestes’ two sons and then made a meal of the sons and served it to Thyestes. (This, by the way, was an imitation of a bit of family history: Atreus’ grandfather killed Atreus’ father and served the father as a meal to the gods.)

2. Atreus retakes the throne, and has two sons, Agamemnon (who inherits the throne) and Menelaus (who marries the most beautiful woman in the word, Helen of Troy). After Paris runs off with Helen, Agamemnon raises an army to go fight the Trojans. But alas, the wind is unfavorable and the ships can’t get out of port. So, Agamemnon sacrifices his daughter, Iphigenia, to the gods. The winds become favorable. But, for some reason, Agamemnon’s wife, Clytemnestra, is not happy that her husband sacrificed their daughter. Go figure. All of this is the background to The Oresteia.

3. Agamemnon returns victorious from the Trojan War. His wife meets him at the dock, rolls out the red carpet (literally) and Agamemnon comes home. Unbeknownst to Agamemnon, during his absence, Clytemnestra has taken up with Aegisthus, Thyestes’ son (not one of the sons who was served as dinner, obviously). Agamemnon walks into the palace and is immediately murdered by his wife. Aegisthus gets revenge for his father and, not incidentally, the throne.

4. Agamemnon’s son, Orestes, hears of the murder of his father and is not happy about it. With the help of his sister Electra, he gets into the palace under an assumed identity where he takes advantage of the hospitality of the royal couple by murdering his mother and her new husband.

5. Matricide is not looked upon with favor in ancient times. Enter the Furies, whose role in life is to pursue vile matricides to their deaths. Orestes races to Apollo, who sends him on to Athena. Orestes pleads with Athena for his life. The Furies rage that Orestes must die. Interesting moral problem: is it OK to murder the person who murders your father? Is it OK to murder your mother? And what do you do when your mother murdered your father? (As you might recall, Shakespeare also got some mileage out of this question.) Athena, ever the wise one, decides to settle the matter by a jury trial. Clever, but alas, the jury splits evenly, so Athena has to cast the deciding vote. And after all this death, Orestes is spared.

(Seriously…you would watch a Game of Thrones level production of that story, wouldn’t you? It is just sitting there, in the Public Domain no less, waiting to be done.)

Are you happy Orestes was spared? The Furies are not. Indeed, they are furious.

You, you younger gods!—You have ridden down
the ancient laws, wrenched them from my grasp—
and I, robbed of my birthright, suffering, great with wrath,
I lose my poison over the soil, aieee!—
poison to match my grief comes pouring out my heart,
cursing the land to burn it sterile and now
rising up from its roots a cancer blasting leaf and child,
now for Justice, Justice!—cross the face of the earth
the bloody tide comes hurling, all mankind destroyed.
… Moaning, only moaning? What will I do?

Note the content of the Furies complaint. They want Justice. Remember the crime for which they want Justice is matricide, which I think we all still agree is indeed a vile crime. But, Justice is thwarted by the apparatus of this new-fangled court system thing. A man who murdered his mother is set free. Where is the Justice in that? And so, the Furies pledge to loose their poison onto the soil, cursing the land and burning it sterile. The Furies are taking it to the streets.

Poll Time: Who is right? The Furies or Athena? Second Poll: Once Orestes is set free, are the Furies doing the right thing, even though it means “the bloody tide comes hurling, all mankind is destroyed”?

This is why we read Aeschylus, by the way. Or at least it is why we should read Aeschylus. You don’t actually care what happens to Orestes, but you do care about Justice. Strip the matter of Justice from the passions of the day, and wrestle with it in the passions of another day. It doesn’t take long in thinking about The Oresteia to realize that Justice is an enormously complicated matter. Solving the quandary here is not something that can be done on a bumper sticker or in a 1000 word op-ed or on a Facebook post or with a bullhorn. Figuring out Justice, really thinking it through, takes some time and hard thought.

If you can’t figure out what should happen to Orestes, why are you so confident you know all the answers about the issues of the day? Maybe the violent emotional response of the Furies is the right course of action.  Maybe the cool calculation of Athena is the better route. But, before burning down the city or condemning those who do, is it too much to ask that we all first pause and think about this?