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- [00:00]
Deacon Harrison
Today on Ascend the Great Books podcast we are discussing Aeschylus, Eumenides, the last of the three plays that make up his Oresteia. So we'll talk a little bit about the primordial justice and how that moves into a more procedural justice. We'll talk about how it moves from a family oriented affair to more of an affair of the polis. We'll get into a little bit of mythology on the Furies and bring in a good dose of Hesiod and a good dose of also looking forward to Plato. So join us today on Ascend the Great Books podcast as we discuss the humidities. Today on Ascend the Great Books podcast I am joined by Dr. Frank Grabowski and Mr. Thomas Lackey to discuss the end of the Oresteia, the Eumenides. So you check us out on X and also on YouTube. We also have our website in which you can find lots of different guides to various great books. But today you're going to have three men from rural Oklahoma explain to you. Aeschylus, Eumenides. Gentlemen, how are you doing?
- [01:23]
Mr. Thomas Lackey
Very good.
- [01:24]
Deacon Harrison
I realized that this morning I was like thinking about the podcast and I was like, this really is. It's three, three guys from rural Oklahoma explaining ancient Greeks to people. I like it. I like it a lot.
- [01:34]
Mr. Thomas Lackey
These are the days of miracles and wonders.
- [01:36]
Deacon Harrison
Yeah. And Thomas, I mean you're, I mean you're pretty rural man. You just bought a horse.
- [01:40]
Mr. Thomas Lackey
Yes, yes, from my, my wife's birthday. She, she's loved horses always and her current horses are getting rather old and figured best to, to swoop in before anything happens. And so she, she. Although I will say there's a bit of a, bit of a tragedy there. So we had to move the horse out to her parents property because even though he's a gelding, he let's say that he was just a little too affectionate with our mare and it was getting pretty awkward, so hopefully he got excited. Yeah, yeah. Dream lives on. But good times.
- [02:24]
Deacon Harrison
All right, Frank, you're in rural Oklahoma, but you don't have any, you don't have any wild animals running around your place.
- [02:28]
Dr. Frank Grabowski
No, I'm. I'm more of a city boy. This, this past week I discovered a dismembered rabbit on my back porch and I called the city animal control to clean it up because I didn't have the constitution to do it myself, so. So I'm in a different league.
- [02:50]
Deacon Harrison
That's.
- [02:52]
Mr. Thomas Lackey
Did they come?
- [02:54]
Dr. Frank Grabowski
Yes. With a garbage bag.
- [02:56]
Deacon Harrison
Oh my gosh. I should do that. I should call It's a bloody mess.
- [03:00]
Dr. Frank Grabowski
Back there right now. It was murdered. I don't know what got into it, but it was. It was a mess.
- [03:05]
Deacon Harrison
That's good. All right, so today we are wrapping up the Oresteia. So we've kind of had a long haul through Escalus's Oresteia, which again, as a reminder to everyone, Right. Tells of the death of Agamemnon in the aptly named first play, Agamemnon. And then secondly in the Libation Bearers, we get the revenge of Orestes upon his own mother and his mother's lover, Aegistus. And then the third one, the Eumenides. What do we have? Right? I mean, this is really. I should say that this is the play that sold the Oresteia for me. I found the first two to be intriguing, but I don't know, maybe it's too much of a pejorative, but I found them somewhat flat. They're just straightforward narratives, in my opinion. Right. We know what's going to happen. We mainly draw the narrative from Homer. I don't think there's a whole lot of surprises. I mean, obviously Aeschylus has a lot of lines and a lot of depth to his plays, but they were pretty straightforward. But the first time I read this, I tried to read it without looking at any commentaries or introductions. I really was like, wait, what is the third play about? Like, he's already. Because in Homer there is nothing about the third play, right? There's nothing. I mean, content wise, right? The third play is really, it seems to be an invention of Aeschylus in a lot of ways. Because in the first two, that's very much what we had in Homer, right? Orestes comes in, he avenges his father, he's a hero, and he becomes the mold or the template for Telemachus moving through the Odyssey. And so the first time I read it, I was just like, what is the Eumenides about? And to be quite frank, it's the Eumenides that sold me on the entire trilogy.
- [04:39]
Dr. Frank Grabowski
No, I think that's, you know, it's. I think it's important to bear in mind too, that this is the only complete trilogy that we have from the Greek world. And so the Oresteia really does constitute a kind of argument of sorts. We can see Aeschylus develop his thoughts through his characters on justice. And that's really not something that we. We can draw from many of the Thebian plays, from Sophocles or any of the other plays, because they're individuals they don't. They don't necessarily talk to each other the way these three do.
- [05:15]
Deacon Harrison
Yeah, there's definitely an arc, and I think we have to kind of point that through. I mean, obviously, if you've been following the podcast, the overall theme, the arc, right, is justice, right? What. What is justice? Removing from this primordial justice of lex talionis, of the revenge of the blood, av to something new. And that's what we have to kind of figure out in the humanities. That's what made me really enjoy this, is it moves really, I think, into a much more philosophically rich conversation. And I think it has a lot of depth insofar as you recall that these plays, these competitions that they had for these tragic plays have deeper implications for the civil and the religious aspects of Athens. So when he's talking about this arc or this maturation of justice and he's communicating this to Athens, it's not just, like his cool ideas about justice or some kind of flat entertainment. Like he's really trying to show them. Like, listen, we are moving out from this older age, right, this more primal age, into something that's more civilized. And you have to kind of contextualize and think about this, that Aeschylus is writing this after having seen Athens emerge from a tyranny and go into a fledgling democracy. And also, he fought at Marathon, right. He pushed the Persians back. So there really is something of, like, what is different about Athens? Do we have beliefs that are different than what we see around us? And he takes up justice and I think, presents it in a very beautiful.
- [06:37]
Dr. Frank Grabowski
Way, a very philosophical way.
- [06:40]
Deacon Harrison
Yeah.
- [06:40]
Dr. Frank Grabowski
I think that the trilogy really does, I think, belong squarely within the philosophical literature as well as within literature itself. And political theorists, I think, can really appreciate the points that Aeschylus makes, the.
- [06:54]
Mr. Thomas Lackey
Strong sense, too, where he wrestles with topics. Right. I. I think there's a. There has to be an idea that he's presenting certain. Certain aspects, certain ways of understanding that will, within the context of the story, will resonate and seem right for the moment. And then things start to fall apart, and then he'll, you know, then you get another attempt. Well, okay, let's. Let's try it this way, then. And there's. So you. Instead of just sort of trying to lay out here, there in a descriptive way, he illustrates. And I think it. I mean, there's things you can only do in the context of a play or a story or a parable or a dialogue. Yeah, or a dialogue.
- [07:37]
Deacon Harrison
Yeah. No, I agree. I think, too, you know, Dr. Grabowski, to your point about this being like the only actual intact trilogy we have, that's interesting, because one of the things that we're going to read after this is the Theban plays, right? Which is the story of Oedipus. We have. What is it? Oedipus, the king, Oedipus at Colonus, and Antigone. Right. And so I started kind of doing some research into that as we move into Sophocles. And I think what's really interesting is, is that here with Aeschylus, we see these three plays that are meant to be not only read together, but they were meant to be watched together. I mean, it really was a back to back play. But when Sophocles is writing about Oedipus, I didn't realize that he's writing about Oedipus over his whole life. And so he actually writes Antigone first. The last one, he writes about that portion of the story first. So when we do it on a podcast, we're going to track and read Antigone first. And then many years later in his life, he wrote the second one and then he wrote the third one. And so they're really like three singles that less are meant to be read together and more actually track the maturation of his own thought throughout his life, that he actually changes some of his beliefs and how he approaches maybe like the tragic hero. And so it's really interesting, I think, to say, here's Aeschylus giving us a snapshot and three narratives to have, I think, a really succinct lesson on justice. And it'll be interesting to compare that later on to then what Sophocles gives us, which is like, well, here's kind of three plays that serve as guideposts in Sophocles own intellectual maturation throughout his lifetime. All right, very good. Let's look at the plays. Let's jump into the text. So one of the things that we've been tracking is, you know, how do they open? And Thomas, I think you've been very good about pointing out, like, okay, every time they have this opening of the play, they're always going to set the scene right, which is actually a word that we get from the Greek plays, right? The skaenae. And so here I imagine the Skaenae that, you know, the box, like house, shed in the back that the actor's coming out of. This is very much contextualized as Apollo's temple. And, and so, you know, we get the Furies have pursued Orestes to the temple of Apollo at Delphi. It is morning. The priestess of the God appears at the great doors and offers up her prayers. So one of the things right off the bat is that we get an invocation to the gods right at the beginning of the play. So that's three for three. At each one of the plays inside of the Oresteia, we're always starting off with an invocation to the divine. And I think this narrative here that kind of opens it is really fascinating. I'm interested for your opinions because basically you have the priestess, she's doing the rituals, and then she sees, right, this terror. This terror to tell. Terror, all I can see. And she sees, basically, Orestes, right, standing with a sword, blood, et cetera. And then around him are the Furies. But they're sleeping. They're asleep. And what's interesting to me is. And what really caught my attention is, is that the priestess doesn't recognize them. She doesn't know who they are. And that really struck me as odd. Like, how does this ancient Greek not know who the Furies are? Any thoughts on this?
- [10:57]
Dr. Frank Grabowski
What do you think, Thomas?
- [10:58]
Mr. Thomas Lackey
Well, I think there's a couple interesting things about it. One is that they are manifest right at the end of the last play. Orestes sees them and no one else does. And we're left with the impression that Orestes is going mad. But here we. These have been, you know, personified. And, I mean, we actually don't all see them just yet. We're about to, but they are real characters now. There's a kind of externalization of this, though, where I want. I want. The reason I want to, like, focus on this for a second is that there's a notion, I think here of the guilt or the blame that's fallen on Orestes being realized internally first and now having an external manifestation, right? There's. That. That's a part of the notion of justice that's going on here, right? Is that there's a. There's an internal. An internal forum, if you will, of guilt as well as an external form.
- [11:53]
Deacon Harrison
No, I think that that's fascinating, I think, to. I mean, that kind of gets in that. That's reminiscent of Homer, right, of who can see the gods and who can't. Who. Who actually can see them working. So that's an interesting kind of callback, I think, to the Homeric texts. One of the things that. I think. I think it came up in our Sunday Great Books, actually, and we were kind of discussing this with our with our men's group, someone pointed out that, you know, traditionally the Furies a lot of times aren't pursuing you directly, right? They're always indirect in which they're, you know, if you're not doing what you are supposed to do, they cause you to go insane or you have plague or you get exiled or, you know, there's. They're also. Then, you know, the people that are. Have committed the murder or whatever, right, Are being driven and hunted down by other people. So, like, for instance, it wasn't the Furies that hunted down and killed Clytemnestra or, you know, Aegistis, which I understand there's a caveat where they say that it count, but typically there's always a Blood Avenger, right? There's a human that's motivated by the Furies to do this. It's indirect. And so I thought it was an interesting theory that one of the things here, that. Why the priestess doesn't recognize them is because these are primordial gods, right? I mean, these are old gods. These are ancient gods that predate the Olympians. They're known. Clytemnestra knows them, right? She had a cult of worship to them. But they're typically not out. They're typically not being seen. I thought that was really interesting, that they typically act indirect. But Orestes, excuse me, Aeschylus, has kind of drawn them out into a more direct role in the narrative.
- [13:25]
Mr. Thomas Lackey
Well, Athena shortly won't recognize them at first either. And then they'll say, oh, now I do. There's again this sense of which that there's some sort of latent memory, but they're not common enough. And there might be some notion, there seems to be at least an impression that they somehow they descend down into Hades and are only called up by the blood falling on the ground. There's a notion that they're sort of summoned, if you will, by the crime, so that. But otherwise remain out of sight. But I think there's another aspect to something that you just said, that if they. Clytemnestra, having a cult to them is. It's just interesting, right? They're not common gods that people normally invoke. So saying that Clytemnestra was. Was invoking them and it was a devotee, it. It at least gives the impression that she's offering sacrifice, trying to get them to intercede on her behalf against Agamemnon. And they. Right. So I. And then she takes the matters into her own hands. I mean, at least that's. That's a subtext anyway. I'm not saying it's, like, right on the surface, but it hints at that.
- [14:35]
Deacon Harrison
No, I agree. I think that's going to come out in the narrative here pretty quick about the relationship between Clytemnestra and the Furies. The other thing, though, Thomas, I want to go back to what you said about the fact they're called up because we have had a lot of, like, Cain and Abel imagery, right? This blood that clots in the ground, it cries out, et cetera. One of the things that I don't think I had a good grasp of when I read through this, and again, I think this was a topic that came up in our small group, was that the Furies mainly spend their time torturing those who they have basically, you know, that have violated these rules. So not only, like, in life, you know, if you kill your father, you kill your mother, and the Furies, you know, motivate. You know, they haunt you, and they motivate a Blood Avenger to come after you. Even when you die, you're still subject to their terrors. And so, you know, you're down in the abyss and they're basically, you know, torturing you and haunting you. And then they only kind of come up on these, you know, rare occasions.
- [15:36]
Mr. Thomas Lackey
One question that to bring up now and then we'll kind of wrestle with it as he does through the rest of the text, is, do the Furies represent justice or something else? And I think it's a rough one because it seems like their action is something lower level than even justice. Justice. It's more like a physical reaction. They simply are summoned and they simply hunt out the. I mean, there's no. Oh, and now justice has been satisfied. It's just a reactive process, like something falling downhill, you know, that kind of.
- [16:17]
Deacon Harrison
Yeah, that's interesting. Now, we need to hold on to that because I might find myself giving a defense of the Furies as I kind of think about it. But so we kind of move. One of the questions I have here is why they're asleep, right? What. What has happened? And as we kind of move deeper into the text, like past line 70 or so, we see that this is Apollo's doing, right? Apollo has caused them to go to sleep. Apollo. And so let's see what's happened here in his temple. So two things I think, that are. That are kind of notable is that one, Orestes has undergone some type of purging ritual, right? So this is. This is what he's done. He's undergone a purging ritual. But Apollo tells him that there's more, right. The Furies are simply asleep. They're not actually placated. Right. There's. They're still seeking after him. And so it's Apollo that then says, you have to go and you have to fall at the knees, right, Of Pallas, of Athena. You fall and grip the knees of her statue and you cry out to her. This is like line I'm reading from Fagle's. This is line 82 or so, right? You have to cry out and embrace her ancient idol, that she will be the judge in your case. And so this then sets up the whole kind of infrastructure of the Eumenides that what we're going to get here is a trial. Right? That's, that's the main gist, I think, of the Eumenides is we're going to have this trial that then decides, well, is Orestes actually correct in what he did? Which is again, if you remember the primordial justice of Lex Talionis, this Blood Avenger. It doesn't really have this principle to appeal to. It's just very black and white. Like, did you murder the person? Yes or no? If yes, then you're guilty and we'll move on. Again, recall the end of the Odyssey. Like this was the problem and why I found the end of the Odyssey to be a little stunted is there's not really a decision or an explanation of why Odysseus is correct under justice to slaughter the suitors and therefore the kinsmen should not come after him. There's no real reflection there. It's just simply a power move by Athena and Zeus to stop. Right? No, now you have peace. Right.
- [18:32]
Mr. Thomas Lackey
I think there's a teensy bit of a hint at that. Right, Right. One of the older men on the island of it, one of the older Ithacans, tries to explain, look, you brought this on themselves, you should have stopped your sons, etc, and half the people stay behind. But there doesn't. It's weak, but there's like a hint at least.
- [18:49]
Deacon Harrison
Yeah. The herald is the herald, Right. I think it's the herald that talks to them. And I think he. One of his other arguments is that, you know, Odysseus could not have done this without the favor of the divine right, that he could not have done this. Like you're pushing out against the gods. And you're right. I mean, that's a. That is a. That is a third party principle.
- [19:08]
Mr. Thomas Lackey
I think he's making some sort of like Universal appeal when he does that, like they had it coming. I mean, it's more or less his argument, they had it coming and you should have known better. But that's actually an appeal to some sort of cosmic justice as opposed to just, hey, Odysseus did it, so now it's your turn to. He hurt you, so now you hurt him. I think going back to this text, I think there is a sense in which, okay, he's going to perform this ritual that you were talking about. I think there's a, there's, in the ancient world especially there's a notion of ritual purity and there's to a certain extent this carries on, I mean, into modern day things as well. I mean, often when we're, you know, preparing to go to some special event, we'll make sure to take a shower and get all, you know, dressed up and all that. That still has some resonance, some hint of. But I guess what I'm getting at for getting over that notion, I think in the idea of justice, there's a notion where ritual purity isn't enough. Ritual purity is good. Ritual purity is necessary. He goes and he offers sacrifices, but that doesn't. That too falls short of answering this question as to can this vengeance be stopped? Was it just or was it not just? I think if just doing this right at the beginning is setting up a. It's another one of wrestling these questions. Well, as a ritual sacrifice, can I just go make a sacrifice? And that's good. And I think we're already being set up. That's not sufficient. It's not, it's not, it's not unnecessary, but it's not sufficient.
- [20:28]
Deacon Harrison
I mean, it seems like the analog in the narrative to that concept is the fact that Apollo can only put the Furies to sleep. He can't actually get rid of them. He can't actually placate them in a, in a substantial way. Right. He can only actually put them to sleep and send Orestes to Athena to be a judge. Right. That there actually has to be some notion under justice of what was actually right or wrong. About this aspect, I do think I appreciate your comment about like there's an appeal to the gods and the end of the Odyssey. I still find it to be slightly lackluster and mainly an appeal to Zeus's power than like any kind of like notion of like justice, if that makes sense. Because I feel like when I read the Eumenides, I feel like I got or I received the ending to the Odyssey that I wanted. Like I wanted this robust conversation from Athena of like between the parties about what did Odysseus do and was it actually right. And so I think that for me, I guess we could debate how much the Odyssey has this or doesn't, but I certainly think the Eumenides presents a more fleshed out understanding of what is justice and is there. How do we procedurally come to an understanding of what it is?
- [21:42]
Mr. Thomas Lackey
I'm going to set out now that I think. I think he's also presents a somewhat unsatisfactory ending. But I think in a weird way Aeschylus is setting out the. That unsatisfactory endings are part of human just or justice as implemented by human beings. Right. That we have to accept the fact that you're not going to achieve perfect justice as a human being. Because I think the Furies represent in one sense, Clytemnestor represents in another, Orestris represents in yet another form, this kind of idea of an absolute justice. I know absolutely what is just and I will implement it myself. And I think what you're getting as we, as we progress through this is the question that they're shown in all ways, all three of them are shown to have some deficient aspect. Even if they acted right, in some way they acted right. It may. May be at least insufficiently aware in another, even the Furies themselves and that that is shown to have to. To have this kind of imperfect quality that then gets wrapped up into a new system that itself is not perfect, but is perhaps the best that can be done, which is a. And it's. And then there's an idea of learning to accept that maybe the best isn't perfect. What do you think, Frank?
- [23:04]
Dr. Frank Grabowski
Well, I don't want to get too far ahead. I don't know if I would disagree with anything that you've said, Thomas or Deacon Harrison. I think the idea that I've been toying around with is that, well, it seems as though the Furies for Aeschylus in the Oresteia represent an incomplete understanding of justice, that right, the Fury. What the Furies represent is a kind of corrective justice where they lay down, they throw down the gauntlet, boom. If the scale is imbalanced, they come in and they set things right. And that is what I think historically, at least in the ancient Greek world was what justice or DK was taken to be is a kind of correction, bringing balance to imbalance. And I think that maybe what we're beginning to see here is a more robust understanding of justice in terms of procedure, where justice isn't just the outcome of a decision, but rather is what leads up to the decision. And so, you know, Deacon Harrison, during. During our deacon formation, I asked, well, you know, if you walk into a courtroom and you were to identify where justice is, where would you point? And you could point to the jury, you could point to the. The judge, you could point to the attorneys, but you could point to the. The moment that the judge bangs his gavel at the beginning until the verdict is reached. And so, I mean, at least that's sort of what I'm toying around with is this idea that for Aeschylus, justice now is being thought of as an event or a process rather than just an outcome. I don't know what you guys think of that.
- [24:46]
Mr. Thomas Lackey
No, no, that's. That's a much better way of kind of getting at where I was going with it, too, that these. These particular. These previous claimants become partisans within this procedure. Right. So the Furies are set on one side, Orestes on another. The Furies, in some sense are representing Clytemnestra. So this idea now is that justice. You know, I guess what I'm saying is that those partisans are going to, left to themselves, sort of inevitably lead to a partial sense of justice, and that they're being brought into a whole under this procedure. And that people may not always like the outcome, but it might be that this procedure is our best mechanism to achieve at least an outcome that is at some level, acceptable to everyone.
- [25:40]
Dr. Frank Grabowski
I'm sorry, Deacon, go ahead.
- [25:42]
Deacon Harrison
I was just going to say that I think that the perfect can't be the enemy of the good. And so I think we have to kind of keep in mind, Dr. Warowski, one thing that you've mentioned is, you know, do these people have the grammar? Right? We're sitting here, you know, thousands of years later, sitting here, being like, downstream of people like Aquinas or St. Augustine or all of these thinkers that have really contemplated justice, and we're the inheritors of that. But now we really have to put Aeschylus in his age, right? He's receiving this kind of Homeric age, and he's really trying to push Athens into the next age. And so is it going to be a perfect justice? No. But if you recall, like, why are we even reading the playwrights? Well, because they're an intellectual bridge between Homer and Plato, And Plato is certainly going to give us a more fleshed out, robust understanding of justice. And so I think right here, and I think the question is not, does Aeschylus hit The question what is justice? I mean, both Plato and Aristotle are going to spend a lot of ink on what is the answer to that question. I think right here the question is, did Aeschylus efficiently or substantially push the question of justice forward? Is this leap between lex talionis and the more procedural type of justice in the courtroom, do we think that is actually a significant and true step forward for justice? If the answer is yes, then I think he's pushed the ball forward.
- [27:05]
Dr. Frank Grabowski
And I would just add just one more brief, brief point before we jump back into the text, and that is that I've heard it sometimes suggested that what Aeschylus is doing here is moving away from a more religion based understanding of justice to a more secular understanding of justice, divorce from the gods. And I tend to resist that suggestion. And I'll explain that maybe a bit later and we'll see what you guys have to say. But Athena is never divorced from the proceedings. She sets up the court, she casts the deciding vote. And so there is a divine hand throughout the case. And so to suggest that somehow this is Aeschylus's way of trying to, you know, the separation between church and state, for the lack of a better way of putting it, I just think that's a misreading of the text.
- [27:58]
Deacon Harrison
Well, let's push, let's push forward a little bit in the text itself and look at what I think is a fascinating area, which is the fact that Clytemnestra's shade appears and rouses the Furies. Right? I mean, it's a pretty substantial section here. It starts in fagals. Oh, a little bit before line 100. And so again, the Furies are asleep in Apollo's temple and here comes the shade of Clytemnestra and she really has to. I mean, this is a pretty substantial section here of her really having to rouse them, to wake them from their sleep to continue their pursuit and hunt of Orestes. Just a few things that occurred to me when I read this text. One, this is kind of what I thought was going to happen with Agamemnon. If you remember in Libation Bearers, this is very much this intercessory prayer. They're asking for Agamemnon to come and help them. He never appears. He never. The shade of Agamemnon never actually comes here. Clytemnestra does. And I was trying to thinking like, why? Why is that the case? And the best I could come up with is the fact that Clytemnestra actually has no blood avenger. Right. She has to rely on the Furies directly. And this kind of goes back to that theory earlier of Aeschylus, kind of using the Furies in a direct manner as opposed to an indirect manor. But Clytemnestra has no blood avenger. She has no one to go after her own son for murdering her, or at least no one who's willing. And so she has to rouse the Furies, the. These primal female deities to go and hunt him down.
- [29:32]
Dr. Frank Grabowski
I have a rather maybe silly question. Do either of you know of any other ancient source? So we're talking Homer, we're talking about the tragedians in which a ghost or a shade appears outside of Hades. And. And. And not only that, but that the ghost appears with his or her senses. Because if we go back to Homer and the Odyssey, there's the whole ritual that needs to be performed in order to bring these shades back to their senses. So do either of you know of any other source?
- [30:09]
Mr. Thomas Lackey
Patropos. Right. Appears to Achilles very briefly in the Iliad, but I will say that is. That's already set distinctly that he hasn't had his funeral rites yet. There's a sense in which his shade hasn't descended. Right. That part of the funeral rite seems to be properly, somehow or other, conducting the soul into Hades. And so that's a borderline case.
- [30:37]
Dr. Frank Grabowski
Okay. No, thank you. Yeah, I was trying to think of whether this is some sort of invention or some novelty that Aeschylus is introducing.
- [30:48]
Mr. Thomas Lackey
Oh, that actually brings up a very interesting question. Has Clytemnestra ever had her burial rice?
- [30:54]
Dr. Frank Grabowski
Right, that's. And as you were. As you were saying that, I. Yes, that. That came to mind. I. I don't think that Any indications given of that.
- [31:04]
Mr. Thomas Lackey
Well, it's interesting as well that Clytemnestra is so set on vengeance. Right. I mean, I think it's worth bringing this up that many mothers have raised.
- [31:15]
Dr. Frank Grabowski
The Memnon hammered you.
- [31:18]
Mr. Thomas Lackey
Well, I'm just saying that many mothers, no matter how wronged and even wronged by their own children, would accept the wrong rather than see harm come to their children. And yet she's out here, like, basically shaking the fury, saying, wake up and go kill my son for me, please.
- [31:37]
Dr. Frank Grabowski
Yeah, no, I think Agamemnon establishes that she is a rather vengeful individual. So. Not. Yeah, again, not.
- [31:46]
Deacon Harrison
Not.
- [31:46]
Dr. Frank Grabowski
Not to contradict what you're saying, Thomas, but.
- [31:48]
Deacon Harrison
But.
- [31:48]
Dr. Frank Grabowski
But I guess that this didn't surprise me perhaps as much.
- [31:52]
Deacon Harrison
I was gonna say there's many things in this text, I think, that we already alluded to, for instance, the fact that she has a cult, she has a worship to the Furies. There's an intimacy here. I think very clearly Aeschylus is causing that juxtaposition between Apollo's priestess, who does not recognize them. I think one of the theories here that I've enjoyed is that it was an Olympian God who caused Ephigenia to die, it was Artemis. And so like, is it by happenstance that Clytemnestra, who was wronged by this Olympian God, and also, I mean also Zeus taking out, you know, Agamemnon and Menelaus over the Troy, that Clytemnestra, the wife and the mother involved in all this, all of a sudden pops up with a cult and a devotion to these somewhat unknown pre Olympian primordial gods. Like, is there something there that you can actually parse out?
- [32:47]
Mr. Thomas Lackey
Well, I think one thing that comes up that's just interesting is in so many fairy tales as well, there's a theme in which when something is felt, someone turns to dark arts that somehow call on older, forgotten, you know, that, oh, these are the forgotten deities, the old gods that everyone has neglected. And I'm going to call them up and have some sort special relationship with these gotten rights. So I think this is funny that that already has a, you know, already by Aeschylus's day, that's a. That's something that you can draw on as a.
- [33:20]
Deacon Harrison
That's funny. I'm reading, I'm currently reading a translation of King Arthur and Camelot to my daughter. And it just occurs to me how similar that is to Merlin, right? He's the last of these kind of druid magicians and he calls from. And he actually does it very cognizantly, right? He's like, no, the new God Jesus Christ is taking over. Our powers are waning. But I have these few old gods and old favors to call in, right? So it's interesting that does become like a pattern. Now, Merlin is taken in a lot of ways to be a positive character, but you're correct, there's a lot, particularly female characters who take on a negative aspect by doing this exact same thing. Very good. Let's push forward into the narrative. So we have the chorus. We've done a good job of parsing out the chorus in the previous episodes. And here the chorus are the Furies themselves. So every play we figure out, wait, who is the chorus? Right. It's been the old men, then it was the libation bearers. Here it's actually the Furies themselves are the chorus, and that their chorus kicks in at line around 1:45 or so. It is interesting, I think, just as far as, like, the juxtaposition as we gave that Aeschylus really lays this on thick because he keeps having the Furies call the Olympian gods the young gods.
- [34:38]
Mr. Thomas Lackey
Right.
- [34:38]
Deacon Harrison
That's actually a pejorative against them. Right. You guys are the newcomers on the scene. Right. We have our old ways that you don't know about.
- [34:46]
Mr. Thomas Lackey
Yeah. And we. I think we have to, again, remember the context that there's been a changing of the guard, if you will, in Athens right around this time. And so the resonance of the old powers versus the new powers also has a political dimension within Athens at this time that I can't imagine. Didn't at least have some. I mean, it's not. I'm not saying it maps one to one, but it has as a sort of echo.
- [35:16]
Deacon Harrison
No, I think. I think that's really good. I think we have to keep that in mind. I think in the next section here we have Apollo, who then comes in to cleanse his temple. It's interesting because Apollo comes in in full armor, which is not a picture I get of Apollo. And typically of the mythologies that I read, he comes in in full armor to cast out the Furies. I'd like to bring your attention to. Oh, line 185 or so in Fagles. He says go. So he's kind of chastising the Furies here, telling them to leave. Go. Where the heads are severed, eyes gouged out, where justice and bloody slaughter are the same, castrations wasted seed, young men's glories butchered, extremities maimed in huge stones at the chest, and the victims wail for pity, spikes inching up the spine, torsos stuck on spikes. So a few things here. One, I think this is the picture of what we talked about earlier, that they're in Tartarus during the abyss, that the Furies come up from this place in which they torture people that they have hunted down in life, which I think gives a little bit more context to why Orestes and the libation bearers. Right. Like, we really have to understand what is Orestes actually risking to follow Apollo's command? I mean, he really is risking a certain type of eternal damnation, is he not?
- [36:43]
Mr. Thomas Lackey
Well, I think it's also interesting, so my translation is a little bit different. I'll just do one other part of that line where it says go, where justice is decapitation and gouged out eyes, which. So there's again, obviously this eye for an eye notion. But we also have to think about what Apollo just urged Orestes to do, which was to stab his mother. Right. I mean, I don't think she was decapitated necessarily. But I mean, justice. Justice, according to Apollo, was precisely that the murderer die for the crime. But there's something that. About the manner or the way in which the Furies go about it that causes Apollo to recoil. So it's not just the death, but there's something else.
- [37:30]
Deacon Harrison
I took this very much to be a critique, right, of the justice that they represent. So one of the questions that was thrown out earlier is, do they even represent a justice? And here I took this to be a critique that Apollo was equating. You know, basically you have this chaotic torturing, this very dehumanization, where that's contextualized as justice. And it's harder, I think I. I think it's easier for me to give a defense of the Furies representing just a lex talionis and eye for an eye, because eye for an eye is a limiting principle. Right. Like you. This is not how justice works like this. We don't. When people want to seek revenge on others, they don't do it proportionally. Right. You kill my friend, I kill your whole family. Right. This is not how this works.
- [38:15]
Mr. Thomas Lackey
Well, Clytemnestra, as we pointed out, killed Cassandra. Right. Who had nothing to do with anything.
- [38:20]
Deacon Harrison
Correct. Cassandra, I think, is. Is where you kind of. I think we are allowed to peel back a lot of the intentions of Clytemnestra with the death of Cassandra. But here I think that Tartarus is interesting because we get this kind of picture, this kind of pulling back of the veil of. Then what happens to these individuals that have been hunted down by the Furies in life? They're just tortured in this very, like, you know, dehumanizing way. It's interesting that Apollo equates this to the primal justice that they represent.
- [38:52]
Mr. Thomas Lackey
I think there's an idea in which they do represent. By the way, my question wasn't really if the Furies don't represent justice at all. I think what. What he's going to bring out is that justice can't have this partial. And by here, I mean partial as in aside. Right. There's a sense in which, when you're the judge and the avenger in your own cause, that you get blinded. And we'll see that. I think. And not to appreciate too much, but I see that when Apollo I think rightly asks the Furies about their relationship to the death of Agamemnon, and they're like, ah, well, you know, that's just a husband. He's like, you're forgetting the whole. The whole connection and the whole of the law of marriage and how it binds society together. And the idea is that they had a blind spot. And, you know, in reverse, there's a kind of a blind spot about perhaps the Orestes. I mean, Apollo might have one of the Orestes relationship to his mother. Right. Do you explore that idea? But I think that's part of what's being brought out here, is that here you have. You have a justice, but that justice is tainted by being so partisan.
- [39:59]
Deacon Harrison
Well, I think that goes into Dr. Kabowski's point earlier, that the new justice that we're moving towards tends to be procedural, which hopefully, in its best aspect. Right. This procedural justice, then, is one that can remove a lot of the prejudices. So, yeah, you're not your single blood avenger, because, yeah, I mean, if you murder my family member, like, if I am the father of a suitor and Odysseus murdered my boy, how much am I going to sit there and be like, you know, what? He might have deserved it? Like, what are the things of justice? No, I'm going to go and seek revenge upon King Odysseus. And so I think that if we move into, you know, the back half of the play where it's like, oh, no, there's a trial and there's like a jury, what we're doing is can we extract justice and the seeking of justice from the interests involved and provide a more neutral procedural justice that will.
- [40:46]
Mr. Thomas Lackey
Get us, you know.
- [40:49]
Deacon Harrison
Yeah, yeah, it's a d. Can we de. Passionize this, you know, to a certain degree, which I think is. I think is really key. And again, I don't think this is the end of the conversation of justice. I think in a lot of ways, this is the beginning, but it's a true maturation, I think, in a lot of ways. Right. So there's a true step forward in what justice is here. And I think that Apollo, this whole scene with Apollo and the Furies is. Is supposed to show the tension, right? It's supposed to show the tension in the old justice. Because look at the. Look at how this plays out. If you look at line 200, they're going back and forth. The leader, right? So the leader of the chorus, the chorus of the Furies, they're going back and forth with Apollo and the leader says, you commanded the guest to kill his mother. Okay, well, that. That's a twofold strike against the old ways. Why? Because one, the guest, that's zinnia, that's guest friendship. And we mentioned this, we did libation bearers, that after being so sensitive throughout the entire Odyssey about guest friendship, and that this was really animating everything, Orestes is going to use, basically guest friendship and violate it to be able to murder Aegistus. Like, the first time I read that, I was like, there's no way he's not calling down a curse on his head. You can't do that. I mean, think of Odysseus and the Cyclops. You just can't. You simply cannot do that. And so the Furies are pointing out, look, he did this. He violated. Right, Zinnia. And so that's one strike against him. And then he also murdered his mother. And so there's the blood, right? He murdered his own kin. And Apollo's response is, well, commanded him to avenge his father. What of it? And so immediately, I think you're seeing the tension between the old ways and not necessarily the new way, but just a tension within the old way itself, of we don't have a way to actually determine this in the old system, like the Blood Avenger model, at least as Aeschylus presents it, does not have the procedures to parse this out.
- [42:47]
Dr. Frank Grabowski
There's no. There's no termination to it. I think that that's also something to bear in mind, right, because this argument would just continue ad infinitum.
- [42:56]
Deacon Harrison
Right?
- [42:56]
Dr. Frank Grabowski
The Furies make their point about how Apollo commanded Orestes to kill. To kill his mom. But then Apollo says, yes, but he was avenging his dad. And so it's a tit for tat. There's no way of actually resolving. And I think that this is. This is, I think, brought out very nicely in Agamemnon. How, what is it? Violence begets violence. We talked about that in the previous.
- [43:20]
Deacon Harrison
It's a cycle, right? It's a cycle.
- [43:22]
Dr. Frank Grabowski
It's a cycle. And so there has to be a way of resolving the dispute definitively. And the old system of justice simply can't do that. It's not equipped.
- [43:33]
Mr. Thomas Lackey
Well, there's a sense, too. So they respond. And he says, because Apollo asked them, well, what about a wife who kills her husband? And they're saying such a killing would not be a murder of one's own blood. And he responds that that dishonors the pledges given between Hera and Zeus. So I think there's another aspect. We brought this up in other topics, that the marriage between Hera and Zeus becomes the very foundation for nomos, for law and custom with. Upon which all other human law and civilization. And as it points out, really, Olympian law and civilization. Civilization are built. So what you have is kind of this appeal to this older thing, but in a sense, again, more naturalistic and less civilized. Right? Okay. Yeah, but that's not blood. And they're saying, no, that there's something that binds at least as tightly as blood, and that's marriage. And marriage is the. Is the basis of everything else. So I. That tension is played out at an old to new level and at a sort of a naturalistic to civilized level.
- [44:41]
Deacon Harrison
I'm very happy that you brought this up because I found that to be a really weird shift. Right. The Furies do not recognize the intimacy between husband and wife. I mean, that's really. Their answer is like, well, it's not blood. It's not the same level of intimacy. And Apollo pushes back on that for all the reasons that you said. But there's a few things that occur to me about this one. Is it really. It's weird because then in the Greek mind, marriage is not primordial. Marriage seems to be something new of convention. Right. You mentioned that. It's really, if I understand the. I think we've talked about this before in the podcast, but if I understand the myth, and I think, Thomas, you've done a good job of helping us parse this out, that Hera basically, you know, she's the, what, sixth, seventh wife of Zeus. She's basically the last one because she invents marriage, because she's like, listen, yes, I will give myself to you, but here are the ground rules. And so they, they, you know, she basically invents marriage, and then Zeus somewhat finds a loophole with mortals, but it works for them to a certain degree. Right. Because the mortals won't provide a usurper. And so Zeus is kind of free to, you know, break his marriage vows in that regard. But what I don't like about the narrative is, is that that makes marriage something of convention in a certain way, doesn't it? It's not something that's primordial. It's not something that the primal gods recognize.
- [46:06]
Mr. Thomas Lackey
Yeah, I mean, I think this is obviously a distinction between the Christian tradition and the Greek. However, I will say the Greek, at least in this case, is hitting on something. Now, it's not necessarily basing it in natural law, and I think if you look at the way that we talked about this with Hesiod as well. I mean, there's a sense in which it's within a Hesiod type approach that men and women are the same species within sort of this Greek conception. But here you're getting something that, that Apollo is pointing out. Marriage is at least the basis of everything good and civilized in society. It's the basis of law itself. All our other laws will fall without this one. And I think that's, that's at least. So it may not be moving it to the level of natural law, but it's at least moving it to some sort of level of primordial or fundamental. Let me just say fundamental because primordial has this, has this other connotation, but it has this fundamental quality that makes it unassailable. Now I think what makes this sort of funny is that Apollo later, when he makes his argument in court, is actually going to return to what is essentially the Furies argument and turn it against them by saying, well, you know, sons aren't really related to their mothers. That's not really a blood relationship. Which is exactly why they're saying they're not going to avenge a husband and wife. It's not really a blood relationship. But I think Apollo's argument is kind of weak. So we're going to, we'll touch that when we hit it, I mean, when we get there. But yeah, it's the same argument.
- [47:34]
Deacon Harrison
Though I'm not entirely sure Apollo is the best of advocate when it comes around to the trial. I'm not really sure he hits a home run in that aspect.
- [47:42]
Mr. Thomas Lackey
You know, I kind of think he's not supposed to. I mean, I mean it doesn't there. I don't think there are supposed to be any home runs in this trial at least. My theory is that the way that the trial comes out in this kind of head scratching way and you know, and split down the middle is part of the point that Aeschylus is trying to get across. That you're going to see some of these cases come out and you know, maybe you're in the, in the jury or maybe you're just watching the trial and you and your friend are going to come out and you're going to think he's guilty and I'm going to think he's innocent. And that's part of what it means to live in a society and go through these procedures is that we're not necessarily always going to arrive at unanimity. We still have to somehow or other be able to accept the outcome of the trial.
- [48:29]
Deacon Harrison
No, I think that's a. I think that's a great theory to throw out. And I agree with you. Going back to marriage. Yeah, it doesn't have the same kind of anchoring that I'd like it to have, like with Adam and Eve, where basically marriage is this kind of like co determined, right. With or concomitant with humanity, like with these beings. Like there's never a time in which there's not marriage because it's just natural to us. I don't think we get that thick of an understanding of marriage with the Greeks. But at the same time, to your point, we definitely get the fact that marriage is a civilizing act. Right. It's an act upon which civilization is built. And I like your commentary that you've given here and previously, that the marriage of Zeus and Hera becomes then kind of the bedrock of civilization. Right. That there actually is this agreement amongst them in marriage becomes that foundational aspect upon which civilization can actually rise. Because even Hesiod, Right, that's really Hesiod's point in a lot of ways, in his praise of Zeus, is that Zeus brings order. Zeus brings order and clarity in civilization. To us, this is the gift of the Olympian gods in a certain way, even though they wanted to kind of hide fire from us. But overall Zeus has brought us out of the tyranny of the old gods and allows civilization to take root. You know, the other, the only other thing that occurs to me about the Furies as I tried to contemplate this, because this passage really caught my imagination, is that they're also virgin goddesses. And I wonder if there's a juxtaposition there that they just don't really see the need or the aspects of marriage because we don't really think about them like that because they're hideous creatures, unlike Artemis. Like, we think about her as the eternal virgin because men actually desire her. But here, like these, these heinous creatures are actually female, which is. I think there's a whole question about why they're female. I think that's. That's kind of interesting. But they're female and they're also these eternal virgin, kind of primordial gods. And so I did kind of wonder if there's a juxtaposition there that they just don't see marriage as, you know, something primordial as themselves because they're called that eternal virginity. Oh, there's a great line here. If you talk about the kind of juxtaposition between the old ways and we're kind of then bridging ourselves into the new ways. I mean this is almost like too much like Aeschylus did you really have to put this in here where they're arguing? And this is at like 225 where Apollo's like giving his arguments in the Leader, which is one of the Furies, says, never try to cut my power with your logic. I mean it's almost like, it's like if you were like grading like a sixth grade creative writing, you're like, okay, I see what you're doing. Like I see what you're doing there, bud. But like it's a little too obvious. Like just, it's like don't, don't, you know, don't tell us, show us a bit. But here, I mean, Aeschylus just lays this on, right? I mean the Furies are arguing from power, right? Their primordial right for the blood of those who strike against these bonds. And Apollo is starting to try and give arguments, trying to parse out justice.
- [51:44]
Dr. Frank Grabowski
Yeah, no, I mean, I agree with you, Deacon, that it is a rather maybe ham fisted line. But, but I, yeah, I mean I think it's, I think it's important. It definitely sticks out. You know, the word that's translated as power could also be transl. Honor because it's timay. So, so another way of reading this would be to say don't, don't cut our status or our honor.
- [52:06]
Mr. Thomas Lackey
Yeah, mine has prerogative as the translation, which kind of fits.
- [52:10]
Dr. Frank Grabowski
And logic of course is, is logos. So I mean it's right. I mean it does set a really, really nice contrast between the old and the new.
- [52:19]
Mr. Thomas Lackey
I was listening to a commentary by Elizabeth Van Diver and she kind of set out that if you, you could really kind of draw a dividing line where you have a kind of a night and a day and a male and a female and a, and sort of intuition and, and, and vengeance on one side and logic and order, chaos and, and, and civilization. These things could divided between how he's setting this up. Now of course there's some stereotypical aspects of that that, that may not, you know, work out exactly as modern sensibilities would want. But I, I think nonetheless that, I mean Aeschylus is drawing up this contrast on purpose and he does things like make the Furies the Daughters of Night precisely so that he can set up these kind of countries. That's not what it is in Hesiod, right? He, he moves, he changes the order of the gods. So that he can put them on the side of night and put, you know, others on the side of day. I mean, it's a different.
- [53:17]
Deacon Harrison
Don't they come from the genitals of Uranus?
- [53:20]
Mr. Thomas Lackey
Uranus, yeah.
- [53:21]
Deacon Harrison
No, Cronus. Which one do they come from? One of them got his.
- [53:27]
Mr. Thomas Lackey
No, I think they're. Yeah.
- [53:30]
Dr. Frank Grabowski
Who vomits up?
- [53:32]
Deacon Harrison
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
- [53:34]
Mr. Thomas Lackey
And so say. So they ought to, if anything, funny enough, they ought to fulfill this role. Right. That comes up later. They ought to be the daughters born without a mother. Right.
- [53:46]
Deacon Harrison
Yeah. They're somewhat analogous to Athena. Right. Being born directly from.
- [53:52]
Mr. Thomas Lackey
Now, you could argue they were born of Earth, but it makes a really weird. I mean, it would. That would kind of fall into Apollo's line of argumentation, which would be, again, be funny that they would be the. Again the examples of Apollo in a different way. But none of that makes sense here, because they're here. He actually sets them up as the daughter is a knight.
- [54:13]
Deacon Harrison
Right. But I do. I do really appreciate what you said about that. He's painting these contrasts because that's one of the things I wrote in my notes was when I saw this kind of like power. Prerogative versus logic. You also have male and female being argued there. Right. Is there an intuition versus a logic there? And you said, yeah. Does that sit with modern sensibilities, et cetera? But I don't, obviously, in Aeschylus, I think part of what he's trying to point out here is that he's actually moving these parts towards a harmony. Right. That these parts actually have to be in harmony with one another day and night. Apollo, the Furies, the intuition, the logic he's trying to push. Right now they're in tension with one another. And I think that it's right to call them out, that I think Aeschylus is meaning to have these juxtapositions because he's going to try and move them to be an ordered whole in a certain way.
- [55:03]
Mr. Thomas Lackey
Well, also, by the way, I'll just be blunt and say that just because it offends modern sensibilities wouldn't necessarily mean that it's wrong. I think we just have to wrestle with the texts in which they, you know, in, in, in. And let them speak to us on their own terms and then decide, you know. But, you know, I guess. But I think you're right. I think they're all being harmonized in the procedure as part of.
- [55:23]
Deacon Harrison
What were you going to. What were you going to say?
- [55:25]
Dr. Frank Grabowski
I was just going to really commend both of you for, for, for drawing attention to this. Because, you know, we've seen this already in Agamemnon in the way that Aeschylus depicts Clytemnestra as both a man and a woman. That there is, you know, if I may say, a sort of Heraclitean influence. Heraclitus was this pre Socratic philosopher who had lived probably a generation or two prior to Aeschylus, who drew attention to the unity of opposites that nature, in order for it to hold together, needs to have these opposites working in conjunction. And so, you know, he likens the world to a bow or to a liar where there has to be a certain kind of tension if things are going to be. Things are going to remain whole. And I think that, you know, I don't really know what scholars have said on the matter, but it really does seem to me that Aeschylus is heavily influenced by Heraclitus in this respect.
- [56:26]
Mr. Thomas Lackey
Well, it's interesting as well to think about in the sense that there's a. There's an idea in which the balance when distinct, works well and the balance when united into single person is disturbing. Right? Like Clytemnestra ends up being a disturbing figure because she seems to sort of span the night day in male, female distinctions too much within a single person. However, within the context of say, a, the. A marriage or family like Hera to Zeus, that works towards harmony. So it's an interesting question as well. It's like, can you actually unite all of these properties into a single person? And the, the, the implication seems to be no, not without something going awry, but they can be united into a kind of society, if that makes sense.
- [57:15]
Deacon Harrison
So we see if we kind of push in the, the narrative we get Orestes following what Apollo told him to do. And so he's actually pursuing Athena. And so we see him. This is down around. Orestes is going to hug the knees, right? The sign of mercy on Athena's idol. And the Furies are kind of giving a running commentary as he's doing this basically, really kind of speaking pejoratively against a trial. He'll never get this, this isn't going to work, et cetera. And I think that there's a somewhat famous line here with Orestes. He opens up in 274 in Fagles in which he says, I have suffered into truth. I have suffered into truth. Thomas, can you find that line real fast, what your translation says?
- [58:05]
Mr. Thomas Lackey
Yeah, let me. What line did you have exactly?
- [58:08]
Deacon Harrison
275. It's when Orestes speaks, right after the Furies.
- [58:13]
Mr. Thomas Lackey
I have been taught amid my ordeal to know the moments of many things.
- [58:18]
Deacon Harrison
Because I think that's a theme in Aeschylus, and I'm not really sure if we've given it the attention that it deserves, but it's a theme in Aeschylus that man comes to understanding. He comes to a certain wisdom through suffering, which I think in a lot of ways is also a Homeric principle. Think of Odysseus, right? So Aeschylus definitely has a theme of suffering throughout his text. That man has to suffer certain things if he's going to have glory, if he's going to have wisdom.
- [58:47]
Mr. Thomas Lackey
Well, that's an explicit line in Agamemnon that Zeus has ordained that man by suffering shall learn. And then if you look at Hesiod, Hesiod essentially makes something of that argument by Zeus that Zeus himself has learned by suffering.
- [59:00]
Deacon Harrison
Yeah, I think that's. I really like that in Hesiod because it gives. It shows kind of where that template is, Right? Where's that template come from that Zeus himself, the high God, has to suffer to do that? I wonder how much you can part that out to other cultures. It occurs to me how much that tracks Odin, if you're familiar with the Norse mythology, which, when we get there in 20 years, it'd be great, but you know, Odin, like, if you're familiar with the Norse mythology, which is a beautiful mythology, it really captures my imagination. Odin wants wisdom and he has to suffer for it. And so there's several things that he does. Like one is he tears out his own eye, right, As a sacrifice. Another one is that he hangs himself upon a tree, which we could go on for a long time about that, right? The God sacrifices himself upon the tree, and as he's dead, he's also contemplating the world as he sees it. Right. And so my point there is that there's very much this concept in other cultures too, that if you're going to have glory, if you're going to have wisdom, right. You have to suffer. Because I think why that captures our imagination is because that is incredibly antithetical to modern man, isn't.
- [60:13]
Dr. Frank Grabowski
But isn't that the message of the story of the Fall?
- [60:18]
Deacon Harrison
Right.
- [60:18]
Dr. Frank Grabowski
I mean, they partake in the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, and what is the consequence of it?
- [60:25]
Deacon Harrison
Right. I mean, even of the. Even of the cross, too. Right? Of the cross. I mean, that, that. That even God himself, the God, man, to accomplish this, has to suffer to a certain Degree has to is probably a strong language there, given Aquinas's understanding of it. But he chooses to. Right? He chooses to suffer in an incredible and probably more than anyone else has ever suffered, if you understand who Christ is and what he takes on. And so, yeah, I think here we're seeing these foreshadows into anthropology that I think are well worth paying attention to. So Athena comes, she responds. Obviously, she responds positively.
- [61:07]
Mr. Thomas Lackey
And I will say, by the way, she responds positively in part because he makes mention that he's ritually cleansed. Right. So I don't really know what to make of this, but there does seem to be some value in the ritual cleansing. It just isn't the whole picture. So I, I. You can think also of various Old Testament aspects of ritual purity that are not necessarily related to guilt in any way. Like, for example, if I am, if I have to bury a dead body, right, then I would need to go through some ritual cleansing before I could approach the sacrifices again, things like that. It's also worth mentioning they're necessary, but they're not tied to guilt. Always.
- [61:45]
Dr. Frank Grabowski
Right. I was just going to mention too, it's, it's it. He. He invites her to come without her sphere. And so, right. This is an indication that this is not going to be set. This dispute isn't going to be settled by force, but it's going to be settled by logic, discourse.
- [62:01]
Deacon Harrison
One of the things that I still really struggle to imagine when I read this is the fact that the choruses are typically actually singing and dancing during their parts because it seems so counterintuitive to like a tragedy. But this one that kicks in, the Furies, the chorus kicks in at like, I don't know, what is that? 307 or so really makes it obvious, right? Come, Furies dance Link arms for the dancing Hand to hand now we long to reveal Our art, our terror. Right. So you actually will see these kind of, you know, heinous creatures that are representing, actually linking arms and doing some type of dance on the stage and singing this part. It's still hard for me to imagine that because it just. Given the context of the play, but it was more clear in the section that that is how it's presented. Or at least that's my understanding from some of the commentary that we've received that these choruses are sung and dance and there's a dancing.
- [63:00]
Mr. Thomas Lackey
Yeah, I mean, I would think as well. It's just interesting to notice how often the Furies mention the fact that Orestes is a matricide over and over again. A mother's blood, you know, not possible that a mother's blood on the ground is not recovered. Skip down a little bit now about pay penalty for the matricide and its horror. They repeat this over and over and over again. And the pollution of my mother's killing washed off. Orestes mentions it. Obviously, we know this is a story, but when you come to the trial later and Apollo tries to make an argument, there's no real connection between son and mother. It doesn't seem to jive with the fact that there's something uniquely tied to the entire mission of the Furies about avenging crimes of blood. I mean, they can sniff out this connection more or less literally.
- [63:55]
Deacon Harrison
Right, Yeah, I agree. I appreciate you providing that context, because I think as Apollo gives some of his arguments during the trial, they have to be contextualized in what's already been said to the Furies. And there's almost a certain irony there, or at least there's a certain stepping back and saying, wait, what is Apollo trying to do here? Is he trying to articulate a new justice, or is he trying to win the argument based on their own premises? Right. Because those are two different things. And I think that on a second and third read of this, I think it becomes more clear of what Apollo's trying to do. Some of his arguments are almost comical. So the first time you read it, it's hard to get past just like the literal reading. But I think trying to understand, like, what is he trying to step into to make his arguments, to kind of anchor a few things that we've talked about. Thomas, you talked about that Aeschylus is creating intentional juxtapositions between the Furies and Apollo. And so he's playing with mythology a little bit. And so around 322or so is when the Furies talk about night as their mother, which is a departure from what we see in Hesiod. So if you're just trying to anchor that text, that is where that can be located. One of the things that caught my attention was at 400 or so, at the end of this kind of very long chorus of the Furies, in which it brings up fate. Fate ordains the gods, concede the Furies absolute to the end of time. And here in fables, it's presented as a question mark. And I think that's fascinating because, you know, does fate actually ordain that the new Olympian gods actually have to concede to the Furies, to the older primordial Primal gods. Because that strikes me as very analogous or adjacent to a lot of the questions that we had in Homer of what is the role of fate? Because remember, fate, if you personify fate as a God, fate is also one of the older gods. And so, you know, is there is fate then acting upon the new gods, the Olympian gods, to move them towards the Furies? That doesn't seem to be what happens, but it's interesting that it's almost a question that they have, and it's a very Homeric question. And so it seems to me to be very fitting that the Furies would think that, or at least call that into question.
- [66:12]
Mr. Thomas Lackey
Well, I think they do a little bit above that too, because here's 365 in mind. Zeus deemed our tribe rightfully hateful for its dripping blood, unworthy of his converse. So there's a sense in which it looks like Zeus has sort of shunned the Furies, but there's within the context of this trial and everything else we can see, they can't actually be thrust aside. And Athena seems to recognize that reintegrates them in some way. Right. So there's a sense in which this old thing can't really be ignored and has to be integrated and not shunned.
- [66:49]
Deacon Harrison
Yeah, I mean, for us, it's around line three in Fagles. It's like 360 or so. It also says, we broke no trial, no God can be our judge. His breed worthy of loathing, streaked with blood, Zeus slights unworthy his contempt. So, no, I do agree with you that I think that there's some layers that are being stacked on here about the tensions and antagonisms between the old gods and the new gods. And it's part of the brilliance of Athena in the second half of the play to try and reconcile these two, which really, in a lot of ways, in at least in Hesiod, was the brilliance of Zeus. Right. Zeus was more of a consensus builder than, say, Uranus or Kronos was. I'm not saying he was great at it, but he was more than they were. At least where he can present himself as a monarch chosen by the gods as opposed to a tyrant out of sheer power. And so it's interesting here that Athena, which embodies his wisdom, seems to also have the capacity to bring these parts to a whole. Does that make sense? Which I think is the overar, overarching aspect of Hesiod as well, which Dr. Grabowski helped us understand on that podcast of, you know, the one moves to A multiplicity. And then the multiplicity is trying to move back to the one in an Aeschylus, where you seem to have several warring or antagonistic parts that then can be harmonized through Athena, who represents divine wisdom.
- [68:20]
Mr. Thomas Lackey
It is interesting when Athena finally recognizes them, or around four, 18 or so, she says, I know your descent and your names in their meaning. There's the idea of the significance of their names, I just think is interesting.
- [68:36]
Deacon Harrison
What line is that for you?
- [68:39]
Mr. Thomas Lackey
Or 18ish.
- [68:41]
Deacon Harrison
Oh, I see it now. Yeah. So she says, who are you? I address you all as one. For us, it's like 419. So there she's analogous to Apollo's priestess. And then they respond, the leader does, you will learn it all, young daughter of Zeus. There's the young again, as a pejorative. Cut to a few words. We are the everlasting children of the night. Deep in the halls of Earth, they call us curses. And then Athena responds, now I know your birth, your rightful names. So it is interesting that we get a return to that theme, that people don't seem to know who these gods are, even though they animate a lot of things. And I guess again, the best theory I've seen set forward is that they typically are doing things indirectly, not directly. Everyone thinks they're a Gorgon, right? Everyone thinks they're like Medusa, but they don't have wings. So it's like, well, you're a hideous creature and you look somewhat familiar to the other things, but what are you? And it's interesting that they. Yeah, go ahead.
- [69:40]
Mr. Thomas Lackey
I say, even Athena, you know, she knows this story, but it's like in all her experience, it doesn't seem she's ever actually seen them.
- [69:49]
Deacon Harrison
But she really. I mean, it's interesting, Athena here, how cool her reason is, right? I mean, there's. She's very dispassionate. She's like, okay, what are your names? Oh, now I know your names and birth. But the leader's like, well, you don't know our power. Okay, well, I can accept the facts. Just tell them clearly. Like, Athena seems to be taking on almost immediately this dispassionate judicial voice, right? Like, she's not being moved by this, it seems. And so Aeschylus seems to be, because Athena isn't always like this in the Homeric, right? She also, just like all the other gods, can be very passionate and move. And so, you know, I think here, her taking on the dispassionate voice is very much kind of foreshadowing this more Procedural justice that she's going to lead all the groups into.
- [70:39]
Mr. Thomas Lackey
Well, I think, you know, maybe it's funny to accuse Aeschylus again of being a little too on the nose with dialogue, but he's very much raises the points explicitly in this back and forth. What's that? Styomathia or something like that. The line for line. I probably butchered that by the way, in the pronunciation. But where you have the back and forth dialogue, one line to one line between Athena and the chorus. And she says, well, with two parties here, that is only half the story. Right? Again, we're getting up the idea that we're got to go with justice. But justice can't be in the account of one individual. It can't just be Clytemnestor telling how she's been wronged, or even Orestes telling how he needs to avenge, right? It's we need, we need both sides to be laid out before us.
- [71:30]
Deacon Harrison
No, I very much agree that because it gets into the heart. It's very reminiscent of the same conversation that Apollo has with the leader of the Furies, because they're basically like, listen, he murdered his mob, point blank, period. He murdered his mob. Like, that's it. There's no need for a trial. And then it leads into the comments you've said, right? What's, well, what could. And she's like, well, okay, well what caused that? And the leader's like, what could spur a force for a man to kill his mother? Like a leader's like, we've already thought about this. Like, what, what, what do you, what could you possibly say that he could kill his mother?
- [72:04]
Mr. Thomas Lackey
Or like, reply for each other, you want a name for justice rather than to do it. I mean, I think this is the, this is the accusation for someone who, because justice always seems to arrive. Or, or our, our call for justice usually comes out of when we feel that we've been wronged, right? And, and, and that's when we are most interested in justice, or at least in claiming justice. And I think Athena is right here in saying, well, you say you want justice, but you won't listen to the other side. So is what you really want justice or is it something else?
- [72:37]
Deacon Harrison
And Thomas, do you find that to be the segue? Because one of the things that I struggled in this text is I found the Furies to be very antagonistic. They're like, listen, we'll never submit to a trial. He doesn't deserve this. X, Y and Z. And then they just seem to placate and Become somewhat docile. Because at the end of that, that back and forth, right? The leader's like, well, fine. You examine him yourself and judge him fairly. And then they say, certainly we respect. You show us respect. And so they. They defer then to Athena to run the trial. And I wasn't quite sure. It caught me as a very fast movement of character development, if that makes sense, that they. They seem to have moved to a docility towards Athena very quickly. And so I was trying to parse out, like, why would they do this? Like, do they not think it's going to work? And so they're like, fine, we'll play this out. Is it because it's another female goddess? And so they have. There's a. There's a feminine aspect here, you know, you. Also, another thing I thought about is that she's holding Zeus's shield. It says that in the. In the notes. She's holding his shield. Athena is. And remember from all the Homer and everything else, being holding the shield as ambassador. So they're really sitting here dealing with Zeus. And so is there a certain docility here that kicks in? But they've had so many pejorative statements about the younger gods and the usurpers. Well, that's probably Hesiod. They haven't said usurpers, but they've said the younger gods. So I found. I found their shift towards docility very quick, and I was trying to scrambling a little bit to see why.
- [74:13]
Mr. Thomas Lackey
Well, I think one thing is she doesn't recoil from them the way everyone else has or treat them with the kind of antagonism that Apollo did. Right. She. So I think that alone may have set them more at ease, but I think there might be. Another part of this is that I think that they're very convinced that they're right and that anyone who listens to their case will be convinced by it.
- [74:37]
Deacon Harrison
Right.
- [74:37]
Mr. Thomas Lackey
This. It's like we're going up to some sort of Judge Judy court. And like. Like all you. Like, like, once you hear me, like, like when you hear what he did to me, I mean, you're totally going to be on my side. Yeah, I think there's an aspect to that here.
- [74:51]
Deacon Harrison
Do we think the Furies actually have the capacity at the moment to contemplate a justice outside?
- [74:58]
Dr. Frank Grabowski
No, that's what I was going to say. I think that this is utterly foreign to them. And conceptually they can't wrap their heads around what is about to happen. They. They can't even anticipate what this is about because they have such a monolithic, one dimensional, however you want to put it, understanding of justice. So I think that. Go ahead, Thomas.
- [75:24]
Mr. Thomas Lackey
Oh, no, they can't imagine that the case could possibly not be decided in their favor. Like it's not even conceivable.
- [75:32]
Dr. Frank Grabowski
No, I mean, it's like Edwin Abbott's Flatland, where the sphere tries to convince the. The circle on the two dimensional plane that there's a three dimensional world.
- [75:43]
Deacon Harrison
Right.
- [75:43]
Dr. Frank Grabowski
It's. The idea is that if just conceptually what Athena is about to spring on the Furies is so beyond their comprehension that I think that they're going to be completely taken by surprise. And I mean, this carries on all the way to the end where the Furies just simply accept. They just simply accept the decision, the judgment, and then they become a kind of tool or an instrument of this new brand, if you will, this new conception of justice. So, yes, I agree with you guys. I think that's precisely what's happening.
- [76:18]
Mr. Thomas Lackey
Well, how about this next part? Where to judge this matter is greater than any mortal thinks. And I certainly have no right to decide between. Please. About shed blood, where angers are sharp.
- [76:30]
Deacon Harrison
Yeah. So, I mean, I guess. Let me read that a little bit just to put some context on it. So Athena's response. So Athena is kind of setting this up that we need a trial, but then she somewhat pivots. Too large a matter, some may think, for mortal men to judge, but by all rights, not even I should decide a case of murder. Murder whets the passions above all the rites have tamed your wildness. A suppliant cleansed you. Bring my house no harm. If you are innocent, I'll adopt you. I'd adopt you for my city. She's speaking to Orestes here. And so, yeah, I think that. How do we play this out? That there's two big movements there, right? One is that she presents this as a matter for mortal men. Right. Too large a matter, some may think, for mortal men to judge, but clearly she thinks they can. Right. She creates, presumably, the first jury of mortal men. So what is it, Thomas, that we're looking at here, that she thinks the mortal men as a jury have the capacity to decide that she doesn't have the capacity to decide when it comes to murder.
- [77:47]
Mr. Thomas Lackey
I think there's an. I mean, the main distinction we see within the Greek religion is mortality and immortality. Right. The gods are heavily anthropomorphized, except that they're immortal. I think there is here a sense in which death remains a mystery to Them. And I think Athena is hesitating slightly and saying it's not for an immortal to judge the greatest of mortal crimes, which is a crime against life itself. I think that's at least one aspect of what's going on, that it's only right that mortal men should judge a crime related to death. The only problem is that they lack the capacity to do it. She also seems to be hinting, or at least individually they do. Now, it's not obvious why, if you just get more of them, like if one man can't do it, but if we got 12, you know, although exactly how large the jury is is its own debate we can have in the next part. But that seems like a little bit of a logical leap, right?
- [78:50]
Deacon Harrison
Yeah, I think that. No, I think you're completely right. I think that the best way to read that scene is that the fact that this deals with death and the mortals are more familiar with death than the immortals are, and therefore man makes a judge. But I think to Dr. Grabowski's point earlier, this. I would. I would also be very hesitant to read this as some type of justice moving towards the secular, because as we see, it's Athena and the mortals, it's the immortals and the mortals that come together, that can render a judgment. They have to come together to form the whole. And again, this is kind of parsing out this theory we see of Aeschylus bringing the parts together in harmony.
- [79:33]
Mr. Thomas Lackey
Well, this is consonant with New Testament understandings as well, right, that, that the magistrate is God's minister. Right. For justice. Because, I mean, what you don't want to do within the sort of the Christian tradition, although you see trends this way crop up at various points, is to entirely religious size or the earth, theocratize the justice system as if the, you know, the courts simply were a religious expression. On the other hand, you don't want to entirely. You don't want to move them out of the realm of, of the, of the divine entirely, or they really no longer have their connection to justice because justice is ultimately God's justice. Man's justice isn't really justice unless it points back towards justice with a capital J, which has to do with the divine. And I think what you're having here is this same kind of tension being played out. It can't just be purely human justice or it's not really justice. However, this has to deal with men in the way they live together and how they decide, you know, how they punish the crime, which is ultimately a reference back to the divine.
- [80:46]
Deacon Harrison
I Like that. I like seeing that as a precursor to natural and supernatural. Right. Those two is kind of a coupling between those. I like seeing that she kind of parses this out a bit a little after like four, she talks about, I will appoint the judges of manslaughter. Swear them in. I found a tribunal here for all time to come. So, again, this kind of gets into the forming of the tribunal, the firing of the jury. This is getting into what Dr. Grabowski talked earlier about. About. We're getting procedures, we're getting dispassionate procedures to try and actually parse out then what is just in this act. I think this is part of that maturation arc, moving from the Blood Avenger to this more procedural justice. And she's very much scenting or setting it up here, right? She talks about our spirits bent on justice. The finest men in Athens. That's around between 500 and 505. The other thing, too, that we haven't talked about here, I think we talked about the. Maybe in the last podcast. But there's also a shift from. In the strata of. Of civilization here inside society, where justice is moving from a familial aspect on the familial plane, to the polis to the. To the political. That's its etymology, right? The. The political. The polis, insofar as, like, you know, typically, like, if your family member was murdered, it wasn't the city that stepped in, right? There's no police speaking of words that are etymologically collected or connected to polis, right? There's no police to do this. It's the family, right? The Blood Avenger, you know, in the Hebrew, that kinsman, redeemer, who has to go, you know, marry the widow. I mean, there's someone in the family who has to restore justice and keep things correct. And it's. This is handled on a familial level, the polis. Then I think for Aeschylus, we have to see that this is also a shift. Justice is being elevated to something that actually the family doesn't handle on its level. It's actually kicked up to the political level. And I think this is a, you know, I think one critique here of Aeschylus is that he has flattened the Blood Avenger system or he simplified it so he can highlight its change. But if you remember on Achilles Shield, in the City of Peace, when they are, there's a dispute, right? The City of Peace isn't because they don't have disputes. The City of Peace is because they have conflict resolution. They can actually work things out. The theme on the city, if I remember correctly, on Achilles Shield, is a Blood Avenger scenario. But the Blood Avenger has presented himself to the city for clarity on his role on what is right. So even the Homeric age, the Blood Avenger and the role of the polis, the polis has started to provide certain structures. And we really see this in the Hebrew tradition, right. There's all kinds of scriptures in the Old Testament in which the Blood Avenger, when he thinks he has a right, then he actually has to be confirmed in that right by society as a whole. You saw something analogous to it in the story of Ruth and Boaz, where when Boaz thinks he has a right to be that kinsman, redeemer, to bring her back into the family and make the family whole, he has to have the clarity and the approval of the polis, of the larger community. So I do think that, as I've come to understand this, while I still really appreciate Aeschylus overall arc of maturation of justice, it does seem that Aeschylus has flattened the Blood Avenger system to being really kind of John Wayne by yourself, singular event to really highlight its move to the more civilized procedural justice. But the old systems of the Blood Avenger did have some societal structure to them.
- [84:36]
Dr. Frank Grabowski
No, I was just going to say, just to add like one or two comments to what you just said, Deacon, is that what this new system, I think affords is transparency. Right. It allows. So through the process, we see why this conclusion was reached or how this conclusion was reached, and that should provide us with some sort of intellectual or moral satisfaction. So it isn't just that it happened. We actually see how we got there. And so justice now, I think what, what he's. What Aeschylus is trying to inject, you might say, is a kind of teleological understanding of justice, where it reaches an end. But it's not just that we got there, but it's how we got there, and everyone sees how we got there and that we should at least take some satisfaction that. Well, in this particular case, Orestes was given due process.
- [85:30]
Deacon Harrison
Yeah, I like that. I like that there's a clarity that comes in on the procedural side.
- [85:34]
Mr. Thomas Lackey
Yeah, I mean, I think there's a. There's a key that comes up and we'll get to this in the next part. But. But I think, drawing on what you just said, that it's important that the clarity has to do with as much to communicating to the. The loser, if you want to put it that way, that They've lost as it is to the winner that they've won.
- [85:55]
Dr. Frank Grabowski
Exactly, exactly.
- [85:56]
Deacon Harrison
Well, we're coming up here. We're kind of bumping up against the halfway point. Right. Actually does then shift into the trial, which we'll take up in a very kind of substantive way, you know, next week on the podcast. So as we kind of look at the. The end of the first half before we move into that trial, any other aspects or anything that we need to revisit?
- [86:17]
Dr. Frank Grabowski
I don't think so. Well, I mean, not on my part, at least.
- [86:20]
Mr. Thomas Lackey
All good?
- [86:20]
Deacon Harrison
Well, good. Very much. Well, Dr. Grouski and Mr. Thomas Blackie, I greatly appreciate you joining us today to work through the first half of Aeschylus's Eumenides. Next week, we will work on the second half, which is mainly the trial, and we'll kind of see how Aeschylus brings the entire Oresteia to its zenith. And then we'll have to kind of judge whether or not we think it's actually pushed the concept of justice forward and how that's maybe setting us up to understand Plato better. So, gentlemen, I really appreciate it. Thank you.
- [86:56]
Dr. Frank Grabowski
Thank you, Deacon.
- [86:56]
Mr. Thomas Lackey
Thank you.
- [86:58]
Deacon Harrison
All right, well, everyone, we will see you next week. Be sure to check us out on x and on YouTube and our website, where we have guides and various other sources, and we will see you next week.