(89) Erinyes, Semnai Theai, Eumenides

Extract This essay is offered to Sir Kenneth Dover as a token of gratitude for more than forty years of friendship and of my admiration for his work. It is of a more appropriate length than the originally intended article on 'Honour and Shame in Ancient Greek Culture' [Academic Papers II, 253–80], which is indebted to his splendid Greek Popular Morality in the Time of Plato and Aristotle; the present piece too touches on problems to whose solution he has made important contributions. For a French version, see RÉG 102 (1989), 1–9. Homer's chief concern is with the gods of heaven, the ouranioi; only rarely does he mention the gods of the underworld, the chthonioi, so that if he says little about Demeter or about Dionysus, that does not prove that they were not important in his time.1 But in tragedy the gods of the underworld take on great importance. Aeschylus exploits the polarity between ouranioi and chthonioi, as he exploits that between the gods of the older generation and the gods who rule Olympus; both in the Oresteia and in the Prometheia (which has not been proved not to be the work of Aeschylus) there is a clash between the two. In the Oresteia the theme of the vendetta brings into special prominence the ministers of divine justice, the Erinyes.2 At the end of the Choephori they appear to Orestes, demanding vengeance for the murder of his mother; in the last play of the trilogy they form the chorus, appearing visibly in all the horror of their terrifying aspect. Furious at the acquittal of Orestes by the Court of Areopagus, they threaten to vent their fury upon Athens. But Athena is able to avert the danger. By offering them a home within her city where they will receive special honours, she not only saves Athens from their wrath, but obtains for her city the great advantage of their good will. From henceforth murderers in Athens will be tried by the Court of Areopagus.

Geography · Ancient Near East History · Classical Antiquity Studies · Historical, Religious, and Philosophical Studies

• The Talking Greeks

  Open Access•Dimitri Nakassis•Journal of Linguistic Anthropology•2007

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