Book Review: The Oresteia

In the name of God, the Most Merciful, the Most Compassionate

(This review will contain loads of spoilers.) 

I was initially dismayed by the plays in The Oresteia, as I expected them to be better plays than they were. But after I thought about them more (and accounted for the fact that I had just read Homer and couldn't judge a piece of writing for not being as great as Homer's!), I realised that the trilogies brought up some really puzzling and perennial concerns about justice and vengeance. 

As background, the first play Agamemnon is about the king Agamemnon's glorious return home from the Trojan War. Rather than being greeted with a faithful and doting wife, however, his wife Clytemnestra murders him and his concubine Cassandra. The first play is written extremely well, ending with her justifying her actions to the Argives, for Agamemnon had sacrificed Clytemnestra's young daughter Ipaghenia in order to protect his army. Clytemnestra (rightly, in my opinion) is appalled that nobody thought to avenge Iphagenia's death, and had been plotting Agamemnon's death ever since. She gets together with his cousin, who also hates him because Agamemnon's father Atreus did something rotten to his father (and his father subsequently cursed the Atreus' entire family), and that is how the first play ends.

I liked the first play because Clytemnestra is such a powerful, relatable character. She has been seething for years, waiting for someone to avenge her daughter's death. But since Agamemnon had a horse bit placed in his daughter's mouth so that she can't curse him (!), not even divine beings have sought revenge! It's understandable why Clytemnestra feels the need to take things into her own hands. As we see, however, this is at the expense of her other children, and clearly her inflexibility has hardened her personality and hollowed her out. If the gods and the Furies won't avenge her daughter, then she must play god and take matters into her own hands. But it's not for humans to play god, and though there is something cathartic and even admirable about her triumphant crowing over her husband's corpse, it's also inhuman and awful.

In the second play, The Libation Bearers, we find out that Clytemnestra's new husband is a bully and a tyrant. Disorder and oppression rules the land. She also neglects her remaining children, although it is unclear to me why. This includes Electra, who is at her father's grave crying over his death and her misfortune, and Orestes, who was banished for fear that he would avenge his father's death. 

This began the initial puzzle for me. Orestes' banishment I could understand beause he was a threat to her and the step-dad, but why did Clytemnestra--who was by all accounts a decent mother before--neglect and even mistreat Electra? Was it because Clytemnestra's new husband forced her to? This didn't seem likely, for what threat could Electra pose? Was Aeschylus instead suggesting something deeper about human personality? Could it be that Clytemnestra's years-long grief at Iphagenia's sacrifice and single-minded need for vengeance had fundamentally changed her as a person, not just towards Agamemnon, but even towards her other children? It seemed to be a discontinuity, but perhaps murder creates such discontinuities and inconsistencies in people. It seemed likely that Clytemnestra was not fully satisfied by killing Agamemnon, for this did not return her daughter, and perhaps she became neglectful and even cruel to her other children as a result. It's bizarre, certainly, but we are bizarre and inconsistent creatures. Perhaps Aeschylus was trying to show that Clytemnestra's need for vengeance, even if justified, had hardened her heart in an inhuman way?

As helpfully suggested to me by Ms Zena Hitz, however, the solution might be much simpler: Clytemnestra has robbed her children of their father's protection and inheritance, thus leaving Electra helpless, unmarried, and ill-treated. Even in that case, however, it is interesting that Clytemnestra does not consider her other children's well-being when she kills her husband, focussing only on Iphagenia. Vengeance really is unwavering!

To return to the play, Orestes comes back home and meets Electra. He explains that Apollo has told him to kill his mother and her tyrant boyfriend, otherwise Apollo will kill him. So Orestes goes and kills the boyfriend, and then (somewhat unwillingly), his mother too. Before she dies, Clytemnestra curses him. Thus ends The Libation Bearers. 

In the last play, The Eumenides ("The Gracious Ones")--my favourite one--we encounter Orestes asking Apollo for help because he was temporarily driven mad by his matricide. Not only that, but his mother's curse is chasing him the form of the three Furies, who have been hunting him down for vengeance. Apollo directs Orestes to the temple of Athena in Athens, where Orestes goes with the Furies closely following.

 
At the temple of Athena, Orestes pleads his case to Athena. The Furies, for their part, explain that they are daughters of the Night, older than the gods, and have an ancient right to vengeance, anger, and answering the curses of parents. Orestes' matricide cannot go unpunished! They are relentless and very horrifying, but oddly satisfying in their single-minded devotion to the cause of vengeance. (The reason they didn't pursue Clytemnestra, if you're wondering, is because Agamemnon was just her husband, not her blood-relative.)

Athena isn't sure what to do. Both Orestes and the Furies have a point. So she gathers together twelve Athenians in what I take to be the first trial ever conducted. Apollo hops along and says some sexist stuff in Orestes' defence (really, Apollo?? The mother isn't the REAL parent??), while the Furies rage at the thought that Orestes will get away. "The house of justice will collapse!" they declare, not without reason. Nobody will be able to curse and avenge injustice done towards them, and disorder will spread throughout the land.

In the end, the jury is hung. Athena decides in favour of Orestes for a sexist reason (I prefer to think of her deciding in favour of mercy over vengeance), and Orestes is chuffed. The Furies, meanwhile, are furious. They lament, rage, and threaten to destroy mankind, for their ancient right has been denied. These were my favourite lines in all the plays. They were so full of fury, hatred, and deep loss. I think that Aeschylus embodied the primitive need for vengeance well.

Athena, however, placates them. She explains that she respects them and offers them a deal: if they don't curse mankind, then they will be honoured by mankind, given loads of sacrifices, and help further the cause of good. If evil-doers are found guilty in trials, the Furies can punish them. If not, then they can help further the cause of goodness by continuing to be a source of fear for men. Thus, order will reign once more.

The Furies are happy with this arrangement. Sure, they can't pursue people relentlessly on the basis of curses and blood-crimes, but they have a greater scope. They change their robes from black to crimson and are taken to their new thrones. Thus ends the last play.

I am quite torn about the ending of this play. I think that the play did well to explain the conflict between vengeance and justice. Orestes, in his own way, was not vengeful. He only killed his mother because Apollo gave him no choice, and he killed her tyrant boyfriend for being a tyrant and killing his dad. Fair's fair. 

But Clytemnestra is vengeful, and she has a point too! How can Orestes kill his own mother? Doesn't she have any rights over him? The Furies' ruthless pursuit of Orestes shows something important about the need for vengeance, and how it "breathes fury and utter hate." It is insatiable until it drinks of blood. The curse on Agamemnon's family also reflects this, for it has resulted in all sorts of disorder: the death of his young daughter, the whole Helen-Paris fiasco, his own murder, and tyranny over his old subjects, not to mention Clytemnestra's neglect of her children.

But Athena's compromise seems unsatisfying, in a way, and maybe that reflect something about the justice system itself. It does not fulfill this endless craving for vengeance, a craving that demands to glut blood, not sit in a court-room and have twelve strangers judge your case. But the Furies give it up because they see their scope as broadening, I think. Justice allows for reason, persuasion, convincing, and ultimately letting go of the need for vengeance. Vengeance can released--anger can be abated--if we are convinced that we are honoured in some way, that our rights are returned.

I think that this links to the rights of victims. Victims need to be recognised as victims. Indeed, a lawyer once told me that many sexual assault cases are settled not because the victim gives up the case, but because once the perpetrator admits to the crime--once the crime is recognised--the victim often gets what she needed. She needed her story to be acknowledged and identified as a wrong. So the Furies give up their "ancient right" to vengeance because Athena promises them honour and respect. Aeschylus seems to think that the basic impetus of vengeance is towards recognition and respect for harms that were committed, especially irrevocable ones. 

But is this true? I still think that Clytemnestra was not avenged. Sure, her right is recognised, but who has avenged her? So the primitive need for vengeance cannot be fully satisfied within a justice system. A justice system does not seek to avenge crime, but to deal with it justly. One cannot be cruel to perpetrators, even if they showed inhuman cruelty towards their victims.

These plays showed me another issue that I have when conceptualizing the (criminal) justice system: I mainly think of it in terms of proving whether a crime has occurred, and not in terms of determining appropriate punishment for a crime. By having Orestes unreservedly confess to all his actions, Aeschylus highlights that the main puzzle of a trial is that it takes the process of determining punishment and justified action and moves it from the victim’s hands into that of the lawmakers, judge, lawyers, and so on. I think that, since I don’t think of the justice system as determining appropriate punishment itself, but rather as focussing on determining guilt and as acting as a vessel to soothe victims, I don’t know what to do with the idea that the justice system might just not satisfy victims. It seems very unfair to me, but the benefit of Aeschylus’ audacious plays is in admitting that the justice system simply is not designed to console victims. It often does not do so, since victims do not determine punishment.

I think another problem that I have is that I think of "settled" punishments supposedly set by God in Shariah, and it's hard for me to think that God's laws are compromising between different human motivations. At the same time, I think I have an idealized and likely incorrect understanding of Islamic legal theory. I am not sure how to think about God's justice system and what it makes of vengeance. Or indeed, of the afterlife, God's punishment, and whether His justice is vengeful or not. 

Overall, reading this set of plays highlighted what I find dismaying about the contemporary justice system. For it seems to treat awful, irrevocable crimes quite lightly at times. (Just peruse any Canadian newspaper and see how quickly terrible murderers and abusers are let off!) I think I often want things to be avenged, not just recognised and let go on some 10-year sentence. Maybe some crimes are so terrible that they are worthy of vengeance? 

But I do think that vengeance and fury cannot be appeased by the justice system, and maybe it's somewhat inhuman to seek to satiate the insatiable. This might mean that Clytemnestra is ignored, her curse is disregarded, and perhaps many other people in their graves will never be avenged nor satisfied. Of course, the benefits of the justice system is that it allows for mercy and for anger to be curtailed through harms being honoured, respected, and recognised. Through this process, Aeschylus seems to say, fear of retribution becomes a means for cities to prosper. The Furies become The Gracious Ones.