The Eumenides by Aeschylus Plot Summary and Themes

The Eumenides by Aeschylus Plot Summary and Themes The play opens with Pythia, the priestess of Apollo, preparing to perform her morning prayer. Her ritual is interrupted, however, by a bloodstained refugee who has come to her temple to be cleansed. It is Orestes, the son of Agamemnon and Clytemnestra, who killed his mother in order to avenge her murder of his father. Following him is a relentless band of Furies, demonic goddesses whose only aim in life is to punish human wrongdoers. Though Pythia is terrified by this sight, and flees immediately, the god Apollo himself takes her place. He reveals that Orestes only killed Clytemnestra at his divine command, and explains to the audience that he has lulled the Furies to sleep, before expressing his hatred of the merciless goddesses. Apollo tells Orestes that he must continue to Athens, where Athena, the goddess of wisdom, will try his case. In the meantime, however, he offers his half-brother, the god Hermes, to guide Orestes to Athens. After Orestes has exited, the ghost of Clytemnestra appears, scornfully cursing the Furies for their laziness. They wake up and are horrified to find their prey has escaped, cursing the Olympian gods for helping a guilty man defy their power. At this moment, Apollo emerges from the temple, and a verbal fight begins. Apollo finds the Furies contemptible and horrific, relics of a time when vengeance was more important than justice. The Furies, meanwhile, believe that Apollo is trying to steal their power. The dialogue ends with the Furies vowing to pursue Orestes, even as Apollo promises to protect him. The scene shifts to Athens, where Orestes prays to Athena just as the Furies find him once again, threatening and tormenting him when they do. Soon after, Athena herself enters, and commands both the Furies and Orestes to tell her who they are and why they’ve come to Athens—she explains that she must protect her city at all costs. Both sides explain their presence to her, and agree to abide by her ruling. Athena wishes to serve justice, but fears the wrath of the Furies. She decides, however, to create the first ever murder trial in order to determine Orestes’ guilt, recruiting ten honorable citizens to form a jury. The trial begins, with the Furies arguing that Clytemnestra’s life was worth as much as Agamemnon’s. Apollo, however, argues that men’s lives are worth more than women’s, and Athena agrees, casting the deciding vote that allows Orestes to go free, an innocent man. This chain of events horrifies the Furies, who believe that Athena has stolen their power from them. Athena, however, wisely offers the Furies a new role: patron goddesses of Athens. She explains that if they provide the city with peace and prosperity, they will receive offerings and prayer in return. After some convincing, the Furies agree, and take on the mantle of the Eumenides—“the kindly ones.” Themes Revenge vs. Justice The Eumenides has two prequels—Agamemnon and The Libation Bearers—and these three plays together form Aeschylus’s trilogy called the Oresteia. In both of those first two plays, revenge and justice are essentially equated—that is, paying back someone who has wronged you is considered the right and moral thing to do. In The Eumenides, however, revenge and justice are not only defined as two separate concepts, but in fact often stand opposed to each other. And, in the end, justice prevails. Characters within the play are strongly associated with these two ideas. The Chorus of Furies symbolizes vengeance, while the goddess Athena stands for justice. The Furies seek only to punish a wrongdoer—Orestes—by whatever means necessary. They do not even attempt to explore the nuances of Orestes’ crime of matricide (killing his mother), despite the fact that his murder of his mother Clytemnestra was sanctioned, and indeed commanded, by the god Apollo. The Furies’ black-and-white understanding of the facts stands in contrast with Athena’s methodical and logical ability to comprehend the situation before her. Impartial and evenhanded, she seeks to hear all sides of an issue before making her decision, clearly displaying the power of justice. The trial of Orestes constitutes a pivotal moment not simply within the structure of the play, but also within the mythological history of Ancient Greece. Athenians, who prided themselves on their fair and democratic justice system, considered the trial represented in The Eumenides to be the first of its kind. Thus the progression from vengeance to justice that takes place within the play—and, more broadly, over the course of the three works that make up the Oresteia—not only creates a satisfying dramatic arc, but actually represents a crucial moment within the creation of Classical Greek civilization. By leaving behind vengeance in favor of justice, the characters within the play are taking a huge step forward for their entire civilization. Their decision does not simply affect Orestes’ fate, but also that of Athens itself, where the play is set. No dramatic moment better symbolizes the significance of this shift than the transformation of the Furies into the Eumenides at the end of the play. Wrathful, bereft, and robbed of purpose, the Furies seem poised to take revenge on the entire city. Yet instead of doing so, they finally hear reason, and decide to become beneficial goddesses who will watch over and bless the city of Athens. The literal symbols of vengeance have abandoned that force entirely, a metamorphosis that dramatically embodies the move towards a more civilized, rational, and just society. Gender Roles Gender roles play an active part in The Eumenides, and the divide between the sexes is vividly depicted in a series of conflicts. The first of these clashes comes between the female Chorus of Furies and the male Apollo. The lord of light and prophecy, Apollo is outraged that the irrational, vengeful, female Furies dare to defy him. The Furies, in contrast, react with scorn and wrath at the idea of Apollo infringing on their realm of vengeance and punishment. This tension continues when the Furies and Apollo both take the stand at Orestes’ trial, each side trying to convince Athena to turn against the other. At the trial, a second opposition emerges: one between Clytemnestra and Agamemnon, who now represent the roles of mother and father. Orestes is being tried, after all, for matricide, which the Furies consider a terrible sin. Apollo, who ordered Orestes to commit the murder in the first place, feels quite differently, however. He asserts that since Clytemnestra (Orestes’ mother) killed Agamemnon (Orestes’ father)—thus violating the bonds between husband and wife—she thereby released her son of any allegiance to her. Essentially, Apollo is arguing that the life of the woman is worth less than the life of a man. Apollo then goes even further, asserting that men alone are responsible for the creation of children. As an example, he uses Athena herself, who (so the myth goes) sprang fully-grown from her father Zeus’s head. Her very existence, Apollo states, proves that men alone can conceive children, which means that men deserve their children’s fealty to a greater degree than women do. Within this complicated web, Athena is a strange and even contradictory figure. On one hand, she is a strong and independent woman—a rare thing within a Greek drama. On the other hand, she sides with the masculine Apollo and Orestes and helps to defeat the female Furies. She states that she is “my Father’s child” and that she will “honour the male, in all things but marriage” (Athena was famously a virgin goddess). Although she is a symbol of feminine power, even the fierce Athena ultimately bows before the patriarchy. Because of this strict divide between characters and ideas, The Eumenides as a tale of justice and civilization prevailing over vengeance and savagery can also be seen as a story of men prevailing over women. This equation of men with positive aspects and women with negative aspects was a common part of Classical Greek culture, and is found throughout most Greek tragedies. Familial Bonds At the core of The Eumenides sits a conflict of familial bonds. Orestes, after all, has killed his mother Clytemnestra in order to avenge her murder of his father Agamemnon. The question of the play, then, is not whether or not Orestes committed this crime (he never denies his guilt), but whether he deserves to be punished for it. The Furies unequivocally believe that the bond between a mother and child is sacred, and that no excuse Orestes offers can purge his guilt. Apollo and Orestes, meanwhile, believe that Clytemnestra sacrificed any allegiance her son owed her when she killed his father. The trial of Orestes thus basically becomes about which parent—mother or father—should matter more to a child. In the end, in a display of typical Ancient Greek sexism, Athena and a jury of Athenians decide that the father takes a privileged role, and that Orestes is therefore blameless. His father’s death, in essence, wipes out his mother’s. The question of family ties, however, goes deeper than simply a question of mother versus father. Ancient Greek mythology often takes on the topic of cursed families, and one of the most famous is the “House of Atreus.” Orestes is the last survivor of this royal family (along with his sister Electra, who is absent from this play), has been cursed for generations, with relatives seeking revenge on each other in a variety of horrific ways. The events of The Eumenides, however, finally put a stop to this curse. In fact, at the end of the play, the exiled Orestes is even able to return to his familial kingdom of Argos, his guilt erased and his birthright restored. Thus The Eumenides is not simply about the salvation of one man, but of an entire family. With the end of Orestes’ trials and tribulations comes the end of the curse on the house of Atreus—an event that signals the restoration of order and prosperity to a previously tangled and tragic situation. The Power of the Gods As in Agamemnon and The Libation Bearers before it, The Eumenides contains numerous mentions of and prayers to the gods by its mortal characters, all of whom clearly fear and revere divine power. The Eumenides, however, contains a crucial difference: in this play the gods themselves become physically-present characters. Their conflicts and decisions are of titanic proportions, and have huge consequences on the humans and civilizations around them, creating a sense of scale that fully emphasizes just how powerful they really are. Both Apollo and Athena generate displays of godly power within the play. Apollo acts as Orestes’ champion, shielding and defending him at every turn. Athena, meanwhile, is the protector of an entire city, Athens. She understands that every decision she makes will drastically affect the city that she cares for, and acts carefully and cautiously as a result. These gods symbolize beneficial divine power, creating a sense of order and righteousness within the often tangled and terrible world of Greek drama. In contrast, the Chorus of Furies represents the more malignant and destructive aspects of divine power. Obsessed with punishing Orestes, the Furies will stop at nothing to make his life a living hell, even threatening all of Athens if it tries to stop them. Their ability to potentially curse Athens, and to pursue and torment the longsuffering Orestes—despite the fact that he committed his crime, matricide, only on Apollo’s orders—just how senseless and cruel divine power can sometimes be. When opposed against each other, however, the Olympians—Athena and Apollo— prevail over the older yet weaker Furies. In other words, one divine power defeats the other. It is this act that allows the Furies to change into the Eumenides, quite literally transforming destructive divine power into protective divine power. The order and care symbolized by Apollo and Athena spreads to the once-fearsome Furies, creating a feeling of greater divine order in the universe. Of course, there is one god who is absent from the proceedings, though he is often invoked: Zeus, god of thunder, and king of the Olympians. This absence, however, only serves to augment our sense of Zeus’s power. So omnipotent and omnipresent is he that even other gods invoke his name and pray to him (he is also Apollo and Athena’s father, again emphasizing the importance the Greeks placed on a father’s sovereignty). The ultimate emblem of divine might, Zeus exists more as a symbol than a character in The Eumenides, demonstrating the constant presence of divine power—even when it cannot be tangibly sensed. The Power of the Polis While characters both mortal and divine drive the events of The Eumenides, there is another figure that is equally important: the city-state of Athens. During the Classical Age of Greece, when playwright Aeschylus wrote, the city-state, or polis, was considered the pinnacle of civilization—and Athens was considered the pinnacle of polises. In fact, the worst punishment for a citizen of Athens was not death, but banishment. It was believed that a man could not exist without his city, and that the greatest privilege in life was to serve one’s homeland. In the face of this massive emphasis on community and home, Orestes’ punishment by the Chorus of Furies becomes even more horrific. Driven from place to place and never able to return to his own kingdom, Orestes would have been a cautionary tale for Ancient Greek viewers. His suffering would have been frightening to them, while his desperate desire to end his wanderings would have been moving and relatable. The idea of the city-state becomes even more prominent once the character of Athena is introduced. As the protector of Athens, Athena must weigh her desire to harbor the fugitive Orestes against the dangers that he may bring to her favorite citystate. Her decision to take Orestes in speaks to the importance of hospitality in Greek culture, but also to the strength and self-sacrifice of Athens as a whole, as they risk the wrath of the Furies in order to protect a refugee. These positive Athenian qualities are demonstrated once again by the jury of Athenians who vote not to convict Orestes. The Furies have threatened to destroy Athens and curse its soil if they lose the trial, but the citizens of Athens believe in justice, and have faith in it as a moral imperative. They are admirable representatives of Athens, doing the right thing even when it means endangering themselves. Perhaps the most moving and vivid emphasis of the power of the polis, however, comes from the Furies themselves. At the end of the play, the vengeful goddesses have been stripped of power and purpose. They have no tasks left in life, and nowhere to turn. At this moment, however, Athena and the citizens of Athens welcome the Furies with open arms, inviting them not only to bless their community, but to become a part of it. At the idea of being accepted by the Athenian citizens, the Furies transform from vengeful nightmares into kind and beneficent goddesses. The act of inclusion within a polis allows the Furies to change their very natures, proof of how important and essential the Greeks considered the idea of community and its ability to transform the vengeful, primal, and violent into the civilized and just.