TFBT: Oedipus at Colonus by Sophocles

At Hour 25, the book club that just finished reading The Orestia continued on with the “Oedipus at Colonus” by Sophocles.  As with The Orestia, I concentrated on the appearances of the Erinyes, the goddesses of revenge, rather than the human plot. 

If you don’t know the story, elderly, blind Oedipus accompanied by his daughter arrive at a beautiful garden on the outskirts of Athens seeking sanctuary and a place to be laid to rest.  The locales are aghast to discover who he is, because everyone in Greece knows he killed his father and married his mother.  Anyone who shelters this outcast is asking to have their land cursed by the Erinyes.  (As they threatened to do near the end of the Oresteia.)  The catch is that apparently Oedipus accidently sought sanctuary, that is, became  a suppliant at the very altar of the Erinyes themselves.  Oedipus relatives show up to claim his body. (He’s still not dead yet, by the way.)  Apollo told them that if Oedipus is laid to rest in Athens that Thebes will someday be defeated in battle by the Athenians. Not that they want to bury him at home, because then the fated curse falls on them, again.  They just don’t want him buried in Athens.  He double curses them and strolls off with King Theseus to the mysterious secret  spot where he will pass to the other world.  The last anyone sees, Oedipus disappeared into "the sacred tomb where tis my portion to be buried" and Theseus is left mumbling silent praise to the gods below and the gods above. The end. 

In The Orestia, the Eumenides are called everything, but “goddesses” until three quarters of the way through the third play.  Here they are addressed as the goddesses “The all-seeing Eumenides the people here would call them…”  around line 40

At line 85, Oedipus lets it slip out that the seeming accident of his arrival  at this “inviolable” spot, was contrived by Apollo.  Line 665 suggests that Apollo“ has been your escort here.”  In retrospect, just like in “The Oresteia” Apollo was the god that started this whole disaster by his enigmatic response to the Corinthian prince’s question about his paternity.  Just as in the Oresteia the “sweet daughters of primeval Darkness” don’t drink wine (don’t require wine libations) because Apollo tricked the sisters the Fates once by getting them drunk on wine.   We might wonder here was Loriax is up to.

The locales initiate Oedipus into the rituals to placate the dread goddesses at Lines 125 & 480; “a wanderer, not a dweller in the land; otherwise he never would have advanced into this untrodden grove of the maidens with whom none may strive. Their name we tremble to speak, we pass them by with eyes turned away, mouthing the words, without sound or word,”

Another daughter arrives and the audience and chorus are told the situation in Thebes.  “At first it was their decision that the throne should be left to Creon, and the city spared pollution, when they thought calmly about the ancient blight on our family, 370“  Creon is the once and forever regent of Thebes generation after generation cleaning up the messes made by the royal family.  The “ancient blight on our family” was caused by the crime of their ancestor Laius.  As Oedipus admits at Line 530, he has two blessing; his daughters and two curses; Laius’ and his own.  However, when things calmed down the royal family designed to retain the throne  “And the younger son has stripped the elder, Polyneikes, of the throne, (375)"   Per primordial law as mentioned in Homer, the erinyes will support the elder brother in the fratricidal war to come.

Creon arrives around line 760 and say, “Oedipus, in the name of your ancestral gods, listen to me!”  Sort of ironic and ineffectual calling upon the very gods that laid this curse on his family and chased him to Athens.  “… consent to return to the city and the house of your ancestors, … since it was she that nurtured you long ago.”  In point of fact it was the city of Corinth that nurtured and raised Oedipus.  Creon  is driven by his need to save his people from the grief to come. His heartless stern actions reek of desperation. He is wrong. But at the same time Oedipus is just as heartless and stern. For all his whining and begging, Oedipus is not giving in to Creon’s demands. Oedipus, as "implacable, inexorable" as the Erinyes. He is willing to curse his sons and sacrifice his daughters to get his revenge. This is a battle of titans on a cosmic scale for the sanctity of human life

Next up is his Oedipus’ son who did nothing to save his father from exile, who comes for his father’s blessing in the approving war for the throne called “The Seven Against Thebes”.  Oedipus’ response is to re-double the family curse with all the power latent in his polluted self.  He is as unforgiving and unmovable as the Erinyes themselves.  His doomed son saying  “This path now will be my destiny, ill-fated and evil, because of my father here and his Furies.”  Oedipus can summon the Erinyes just like Clytemnestra did in the “Libation Bearers” of the Oresteia

The son’s parting words are “forgo your fierce mēnis against me, as I go forth to punish my brother, (1330)”  “Menis” is a Greek word for wrath and generally reserved for the gods.  It is anger of cosmic consequence.  In the Oresteia the god Apollo admits to fearing the menis of Orestes “And I will aid the suppliant and rescue him! For the mēnis of the suppliant would be awesome to mortals and gods, if I intentionally abandoned him” The menis of Orestes would have unravelled the divine plot to establish the rule of law amongst mankind.  Of what concern to the gods was the wrath of Oedipus at his sons?  The answer is what happens next in Greek mythology.  The banishment  of Oedipus ultimately ignited the Theban wars.  The Theban Wars, like the Trojan war were arranged by Zeus and Themis to lighten the load of the tribes of demi-gods upon Mother earth.  (Cypria and Works&Days ll. 156-169b)

Oedipus and Theseus go apart from the others.  Oedipus disappears and Theseus performs the required prayers “mouthing the words, without sound or word,”

 

 PS

 

A little something off topic hear I read in “Oedipus at Colonus”

 

“I say this because you, son of Kronos, lord Poseidon, have set the city on the throne of these words of praise by inventing, first of all on our own roadways, the bit that cures the rage of horses. Meanwhile the oar, well-shaped for rowing on the sea, is gliding past the land as it leaps to keep time with the singing and dancing of the hundred-footed Nereids.” 714

 

This is the clearest explantion I’ve seen as to how Poseidon could be the god of the horse and of the sea.  With horse and bit  he rules the roadway.  With boat and oar he rules the sea-ways.  He is master of horses;  the steeds of earth and ships; the steeds of the sea.  

TFBT: Orestes Kills His Mother

“Ah, ah! You slave women, look at them there: like Gorgons, wrapped in sable garments, entwined with swarming snakes! I can stay no longer” Orestes, speaking of the Erinyes at the finale of The Libations Bearers 

At Hour 25 we continue to study The Oresteia; a trilogy of plays by Aeschylus.  Currently under review is The Libation Bearers.  As usual my emphasis is not so much the main character; Agamemnon of the first play of the same name, nor his son or daughter who are the main characters in the present play, but rather on the Erinyes; the ancient goddesses of vengeance.

1. Still No Erinyes

Just like the first play for all the talk of “malignant powers from underneath”,  blood crying out for the Furies, the personified Curses of the slain, deep-brooding Erinyes, and “the hounds of wrath that avenge a mother: Tisiphone, Megaira and Alecto don’t appear on stage.  Okay, maybe they appear at the final moment of the play, but they are clearly off-stage.    Regardless of Loxias’ prophecy that the Erinyes will hound Orestes if he does not avenge his father’s killing, they don’t.  The god of Delphi threatens the fallen Agamemnon’s son with “the wrath of malignant powers from underneath the earth, and telling of plagues & leprous ulcers” and who are stirred by kindred victims calling for vengeance, and madness, and groundless terrors out of the night, torment and harass a man” But the powers that Loxias threatens Orestes with, don’t seem interested in him, until the final moments of the play when our young hero slays his mother, Clytemnestra.  “Have you no regard for a parent’s curse, my son?....Take care: beware the hounds of wrath that avenge a mother.”  

2.  Locks and Rivers

“Look, I bring a lock of hair to Inakhos [The river-god of Argos.] in compensation for his care, “Achilles discusses this ritual in honor of his own home-town river Spercheüs.   (Iliad 23:138)  Why the river?  Why not the local nymph? 

3.  Heroic Honors and the Proto-Event

Recently at Hour 25 we meet with Lenny Muellner.  One of the topics discussed was his proto-event theory in “The Anger of Achilles”.  Proto-events are things that happen and at the time there is not context then just in retrospect.  So, Uranus was not the first King of the Gods, because, no one knew what a king was or who “gods” were. For example Julius Caesar was never crowned Caesar, Augustus was the first Caesar.  Likewise Electra was presenting her father Agamemnon heroic honors for the first time as it would be forever after.  The experiences the foreign slaves had of heroic honors is the proto-event to the Greek mind.  The House of Atreus sending a princess to perform them is the first time and hence forth Agamemnon (and Cassandra) received honors (conceptually) forever.  Ain’t that cool?

4.  The Answers to Electra’s Rhetorical Questions.

 “O mother Earth, she sends me forth, godless woman that she is. But I am afraid to utter the words she charged me to speak. For what atonement is there for blood fallen to earth?” (45)    Now there is irony or wisdom.  One mariticide, Clytemnestra asking the proto- mariticide Gaea for help.  Yes mariticide means; husband-killer.)  And the answer to Electra’s question as to what atonement there is for blood fallen to earth is; Erinyes (Hesiod, Theogony 176)

5.  More Comparisons of Agamemnon to an Eagle

At line 110 of the Agamemnon there is a reference to him as an eagle and here in the Libation Bearers the poet says, “Behold the orphaned brood of a father eagle that perishes”.  Aeschylus refers to their “nest” and calls Orestes and Electra “nestlings”.  And how did Agamemnon die?  “…a father eagle that perishes in the meshes, in the coils of a fierce viper.”   The viper in question is of course Clytemnestra and consequently it only makes sense that she should birth a viper (Orestes) in a dream later on in The Libations Bears.  “What food did it crave, the newborn viper? In her dream she offered it her own breast. “(530) It only makes sense that a viper births a viper and that the poison in her veins should be passed to him.  I am reminded of Hera’s poisoned left breast nursing the hydra and an argument that Hera’s “bile” passed through her milk to Thetis and Thetis’ to Achilles.  Both pointing out the long life and re-cycling ability of that slow poison which when clutched to the chest eventually kills its possessor.

6.  Orestes Should Have Listened to Homer

“The gifts are too paltry for her offense [hamartia]. 520 For though a man may pour out all he has in atonement for one deed of blood, it is wasted effort. So the saying goes”.  That is pretty opposite the argument presented in the Embassy Scene of the Iliad

7.  Confounding of the Fates and Furies

There seems to be a lot of confusing other goddesses with the Erinyes.  Around 310 & 950 the Fates unleash a very fury-like Dike.   At 650 the Fates are the smithies producing weapons on the Dikes anvil for the Furies.  (I looked up “anvil” at Perseus.org  one of the resulting entries included “thunderbolt”)  And finally the Erinyes are described as Gorgon-like; which is odd because Medusa was originally a looker, so her immortal sisters should have been good looking.  Medusa was the only one to become scary … and dead.  What was Aeschylus trying to say?

In summary, no Erinyes until Orestes killed a blood relative, Aeschylus tossed in some ancient ritual, there is some logic for Clytemnestra asking the Earth for help, the analogy of Agamemnon to an eagle continues with his children and his inter-species marriage to that viper Clytemnestra gets tossed into the metaphoric mix, Orestes totally blew off the argument of accepting blood-money and Aeschylus seems to wax a little too poetic at times mixing up is goddesses.   

 

TFBT:17.CB22.1x and the “Oresteia”

  “You handmaidens who set our house in order”

              Electra in The Libation Bearers

This session in our beautiful online class; the Ancient Greek Hero in 24 Hours, we studied the last two plays in a trilogy of plays called the “Oresteia” by Aeschylus.  They are “The Libation Bearers” and “The Eumenides” 

Professor Nagy said in class; “And I hope that those people out there who are listening to us, who are members of that kind of society, will share with us how their emotional world is shaped by the frequent practice of libations for many

situations.” I didn’t reply, but I was from a “culture” at one time that practiced libations.  For those unaware, libations are when you tip your glass, nominally to the “gods and ghosts of this place” and spill a little on the ground.  The Happy Jack Hotshots poured libations before drinking out of their canteens, before the first sip out of their red cup at keggers, their morning cups of coffee on the kitchen steps.  When they began pouring libations on the cook house floor, that’s when the crew boss tried to stop the tradition.  I don’t know how it started.  Admittedly spilling a little water out of your canteen before taking a drink might wash off the ash, dust and grime, but the habit went way beyond that.  One slow shift on the fire line we spread the crew out along a back-fired hand line to watch for sparks and embers floating over into the “green”.  The smoke from the burnt out valley below rose slowly and low up slope.  Patrolling the light smoke proved tolerable.  Come lunch time when I meet up with my buddy Bob. We discovered clear air in the first few feet above the pine-needle covered earth.  We lay on our sides, dining Roman style.  I gabbed away, pulled the small can of once frozen orange juice from my lunch sack, poured a libation habitually and raised it to my lips.  Bob grasped my wrist.  “Pour another libation.”  I did.  My orange juice was black.  Clearly something went wrong with it somewhere along the line.  And after that the tradition of pouring libations grew more entrenched than ever.  

The two plays in addition to libations are concerned with the effort of Orestes and his sister Electra to avenge the death of their father. To do so requires them to kill their mother. Ugh! Matricide is the ultimate sin in Greek mythology. Their mother killed their father.  The poets claim that Agamemnon (his name is the title of the first of the three plays.) sacrificed their sister Iphigenia.  Rumor reports (Antoninus Liberalis, Metamorphoses 27) that the girl wasn't their sister but a bastard cousin raised in their household.  

The second of the three plays opens with Electra trying to perform the libations; the rituals required in honor of dead ancestors. Being poorly raised in a dysfunctional household she is unsure of her ceremonial responsibility.  She asks the advice of the attendants who came from the palace with her, the “handmaidens who set our house in order,”  

 I find the phraseology ironic because the ceremony turns from a little ritual honoring the dead into a summoning of an Erinye; a spirit of bloody revenge.  The Erinyes are the three divine handmaidens with torches and whips who protect the cosmic order from violation by men and gods.  If you want a description; they are generally winged maidens with snakes for hair, they themselves dripping poisonous venom often covered in gore and blood.

The mortal “handmaidens” suggest at line 400 that rather than the customary water (or even orange juice) “it is the customary law that drops of blood   spilled on the ground demand yet more blood. The devastation   cries out for the Erinyes, which from those who died before brings one disaster after another disaster. “

Eventually Orestes and Electra revenge their father by slaying their mother, but some of her final words are (Line 924] “Take care: beware the hounds of wrath that avenge a mother.”

In response to his doomed mother’s warning Orestes hopes at line 269 “Surely he will not abandon me, the mighty oracle of Loxias, who urged me to brave this peril to the end and loudly proclaims calamities   that chill the warmth of my heart, if I do not take vengeance on those who are guilty of my father’s murder.”   

In previous reading of this trilogy a feeling about the futility of revenge never crept over me.  Agamemnon’s family for generations performed unbelievable acts evil on one another in the name of revenge.  My realization that Agamemnon   resorted to sorcery in slaying the virgin Iphigenia, probably made me aware, that all these people made choices along the way.  Apparently, they didn’t hear Fannie Flagg’s advice, “Love and forgiveness is always right.  Meanness and pettiness is always wrong.”  

The final play; “The Eumenides” opens with Orestes trapped in the temple at Delphi by the hideous Erinyes and his mother’s ghost.  (So much for Loxias’ help!)  The god slips him out the side door and sends him off to Athens and the protection of the goddess Athena.  Then more to himself than anyone less Loxias says, “ And I will aid the suppliant and rescue him! For the mēnis of the suppliant would be awesome to mortals and gods, if I intentionally abandoned him.”  Interestingly Loxias is not concerned about his reputation or the reputation of his Oracle, but rather the wrath, the anger, the menis of Orestes.  “Menis” is a Greek word for anger generally reserved for gods, but in this case, Orestes anger with the gods would have consequences of cosmic proportions.   

When the Erinyes catch up with Orestes, his hostess Athena has a proposal.  Something, “no other human could have anywhere else, either among the Scythians or in the territories of Pelops.”  Rather than the ancient law of the blood feud, Athena introduces the idea of the rule of law, specifically trial by jury.  The Erinyes object at line 779 that the “Younger gods, you have ridden down the ancient laws and snatched them from my hands!”  They object to being deprived of the honors and prerogatives guaranteed them  by Zeus himself at Mecone. At 879 they pray to the mightiest force of the Underworld , “Hear my heart, Mother Night, for the deceptions of the gods are hard to fight and they have nearly deprived me of my ancient honors. “ 

Eventually, they agree to try out this new-fangled jury idea.  Athena rigs the ballot and Orestes is declared innocent. The Erinyes froth with menis, dripping venom and about to hurl rage upon the ground.  But, Athena promises them the world;  Olympian honors, a place in her own temple with the local cult hero, a sanctuary of their own, rites and festivals in their honor , etc., etc.  Somewhere in there she mentions (Line 827) “I alone of the gods know where the keys are to the house (of Zeus) where his thunderbolt is kept safe” 

The Erinyes accept the new situation and new name “The Eumenides”; the Kindly Ones, while continuing to be the " handmaidens who set our house in order"