{"id":2206,"date":"2026-07-31T19:03:12","date_gmt":"2026-07-31T19:03:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.hsc.edu\/drjclassics\/classics-courses-syllabi\/course-themes\/"},"modified":"2026-07-31T19:03:12","modified_gmt":"2026-07-31T19:03:12","slug":"course-themes","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/blogs.hsc.edu\/drjclassics\/classics-courses-syllabi\/course-themes\/","title":{"rendered":"The Oresteia: Bringing Structure and Unity to a Core Course"},"content":{"rendered":"\t\t
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The\n Oresteia<\/u>: Bringing Structure and Unity to a Core\n Course”<\/strong><\/b><\/p>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t

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by\n Janice Siegel, Temple University<\/p>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t

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originally\n presented at<\/p>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t

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The\n Association of Core Texts and Courses\n Third Annual Conference<\/h2>\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t
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Tradition\n and Innovation: The Full and Open Discussion<\/strong>
\n DoubleTree Hotel
\n Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
\n April 10-13, 1997<\/p>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t

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Today\n I will speak about using the Oresteia<\/i> to bring structure\n and unity to a core course. The comments presented here are\n connections and ideas generated in discussion among my students,\n my colleagues and myself in honest and open interaction with texts\n and ideas, in class and out, this past year at Temple University.\n The particular texts these discussions involved this past term\n are: Aeschylus’ Oresteia<\/i>, Sophocles’ Oedipus Rex and\n Antigone, Pericles’ Funeral Oration<\/i> (from Thucydides’ Peloponnesian\n War<\/i>), Plato’s Apology<\/i> and Crito<\/i>, selected poems\n by Sappho, Genesis <\/i>and Exodus <\/i>(Old Testament), Gospel\n of Matthew<\/i> (New Testament), selected surahs of the Koran<\/i>,\n Sundiata: An Epic of Old Mali<\/i>, Galileo’s “Starry\n Messenger,” Machiavelli’s Prince<\/i>, and Shakespeare’s Othello.<\/i>\n As with any investigation, since the original conception of these\n ideas, many themes and threads identified here have become\n apparent in other texts. In a course such as ours, which purports\n to be an intellectual history\/history of ideas\/survey course of\n various genres of literature from antiquity through the\n Renaissance – otherwise known as Intellectual Heritage 51 – I\n don’t believe that anyone would question the need for a Greek\n drama on the syllabus. But I hope to prove its particular\n usefulness as a foundation-builder for the rest of the course. I\n invite the perspicacious reader to use this study only as a point\n of departure.<\/p>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t

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The\n Oresteia <\/i>offers many great teaching opportunities, especially\n for those of us who have an extensive Greek slide collection and\n know how to use it! I like to take my students on the Orestes\n Trek, tracing his footsteps from the Lion Gate at Mycenae to the\n Temple of Apollo at Delphi, to the Aeropagus at Athens, site of\n the culminating scene of the trilogy. Included in such a slide\n show, of course, is a tour of ancient theaters so they can view\n the orchestra of the theater from the vantage point of an audience\n member, see a Greek chorus in action, and stare at the\n breath-taking sight of the sylvan vistas which surround all Greek\n theaters, a primary structural requirement since they are all\n carved into mountainsides. But before our students can absorb the Oresteia<\/i>\n as ancient theatergoers would have, they must become familiar with\n the story known to every person in the Theater of Dionysus that\n day in 458 BC when Aeschylus’ trilogy won first prize: the story\n of Clytemnestra’s murder of her husband Agamemnon,\n commander-in-chief of the victorious Greek attack on Troy, father\n of Orestes. He is also the next recipient of the Curse of the\n House of Atreus. Because the Oresteia<\/i> is based on a legend\n that would have been known to the Greek audience through Homer and\n others, we now have a reasonable excuse – and need – for\n introducing material from Homer’s Odyssey<\/i>, for which there\n is, alas, no room on our syllabus. Officially. Sophocles’ Theban\n Plays<\/i> offer no such opportunity. Providing information now\n about Homer’s poem and the tradition of epic poetry helps not only\n in terms of filling in plot details, but will come in handy later\n when we present the Sundiata<\/i>, another epic which springs\n from an oral tradition (in this case, the Mandingo tradition of\n Old Mali). The Oresteia<\/i> is knit from thematic threads which\n run throughout the fabric of courses such as we all teach: we\n shall see similar themes and plot developments in texts from other\n cultures, as well as direct reflections\/imitations of Aeschylus’\n art in diverse works in the Western tradition. Since the Oresteia<\/i>\n is, in fact, about the founding of a new order and a new system of\n justice, there is no better place for us to start than with the\n subject of crime and punishment.<\/p>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t

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In\n the Oresteia<\/i>, the Furies are presented as the goddesses of\n vengeance born of the intergenerational violence perpetrated by\n son upon father (we recall they are born from the drops of blood\n that hit the ground after the castration of Ouranos by Cronos):<\/p>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t

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And\n the blood that Mother Earth consumes clots hard, it won’t seep\n through, it breeds revenge and frenzy goes through the guilty,\n seething like infection, swarming through the brain. (LB<\/i>,\n <\/i>66-69)<\/p>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t

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The\n libation bearers of the second play attempt to convince Orestes\n that murdering his mother is the right course to take in order to\n avenge his own father’s death at her hands. They remind Orestes\n that in the world of Mycenean justice, a brutal world ruled by\n Zeus’ Law, the spilling of kindred blood demands a literally\n retributive response, the spilling of more blood:<\/p>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t

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It\n is the law: when the blood of slaughter
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\n Slaughter cries for the Fury of those long dead to bring\n destruction on destruction churning in its wake! (LB, <\/i>394-398)<\/p>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t

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The\n image of spilled blood crying out for vengeance is powerful…and\n familiar. We also recall that all the trouble for the House of\n Atreus began when Atreus punished his brother Thyestes for raping\n his wife by tricking his brother into eating his own children.\n Aegisthus, Thyestes’ son, will help Clytemnestra plot the murder\n of her husband Agamemnon, Atreus’ son. These two murderers will\n then be killed by Orestes, son of Agamemnon and Clytemnestra, who\n will then send the Furies after her son for the crime of spilling\n parental blood. But it all began the generation before with\n brother-on-brother violence… which also rings a bell. It is, of\n course, in Genesis<\/i> where we read of two other brothers, the\n one spilling the blood of the other. That victim’s blood, too,\n cries out for vengeance. After Cain murders Abel, God asks,\n “‘What have you done? Listen; your brother’s blood is crying\n out to me from the ground!'” (Gen. <\/i>4:10)<\/p>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t

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In\n both stories we have a divine power responding to the spilling of\n kindred human blood. Even the metaphor of a ground that drinks in\n spilled human blood appears in both texts:<\/p>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t

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the\n mother’s blood that wets the ground,
\n you can never bring it back, dear god,
\n the Earth drinks, and the running life is gone.
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(And\n the Lord said,) “And now you are cursed from the ground,\n which has opened its mouth to receive your brother’s blood\n from your hand.” (Gen.<\/i> 4:11)<\/p>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t

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This\n brings us to the question of punishment. Cain is exiled for his\n crime,<\/p>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t

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(And\n the Lord said,) “When you till the ground, it will no\n longer yield to you its strength; you will be a fugitive and a\n wanderer on the earth.
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and\n the Furies argue that Orestes should be too:<\/p>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t

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Can\n a son spill his mother’s blood on the ground, then settle into\n his father’s halls in Argos? Where are the public altars he\n can use? Can the kinsmen’s holy water touch his hand? (Furies,\n Eum.<\/i> 661-664)<\/p>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t

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When\n one of my students wrote in an essay, “killing is a form of\n banishment,” I almost slashed it through with a red pen,\n assuring myself that proofreading would have caught such an\n obvious blunder. But the line stayed with me, and it slowly dawned\n on me that, as misled as this student might have been in her\n articulation of the point, the basic idea was sound: both killing\n and banishment serve the same purpose, to remove the perpetrator\n of a crime from his community. Ostracism is an admittedly severe\n punishment for anyone with a sense of community identity, and we\n see the same suggestion of a choice between death and banishment\n as appropriately equivalent punishments in many of the texts on\n our syllabus, beginning with the Oresteia<\/i>. Toward the end\n of the first play, Clytemnestra is justifiably outraged when the\n chorus, composed of old men of Argos, sentence her to banishment\n for murdering Agamemnon who received not even a word of\n chastisement for sacrificing their daughter, the crime she is\n avenging:<\/p>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t

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“And\n now you sentence me? – you banish me<\/i> from the city,\n curses breathing down my neck? But he<\/i> – name one charge\n you brought against him then. He thought no more of it than\n killing a beast, and his flocks were rich, teeming in their\n fleece, but he sacrificed his own child, our daughter, the\n agony I labored into love to charm away the savage winds of\n Thrace. Didn’t the law demand you banish him? – hunt him from\n the land for all his guilt? But now you witness what I’ve done\n and you are ruthless judges.” (Ag.<\/i> 1437-1448)<\/p>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t

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She\n will, in fact, be murdered by her own son instead. But\n surprisingly, those punished thus generally consider banishment to\n be the more hurtful of the two options: when God banishes Cain\n instead of killing him, he cries out, “My punishment is\n greater than I can bear!” (4:13) Cain’s lament will be echoed\n by Shakespeare’s Romeo, also banished instead of sentenced to\n death, a reduction in sentence deemed clement by all but Romeo:\n “Ha, banishment! Be merciful, say ‘death’; for exile hath\n more terror in his look, Much more than death. Do not say\n ‘banishment’!” (Romeo and Juliet, <\/i>III.iii.13-15) This,\n of course, is the opposite ploy of the innocent Desdemona, who\n negotiates unsuccessfully with her husband Othello: “O,\n banish me, my lord, but kill me not!” (Othello,<\/i>\n V.ii.94). We note that only innocent victims plead for any chance\n at life over death (except, of course, Socrates!).<\/p>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t

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In\n the pseudo-mythological era of the Trojan War, Mycenean Greeks\n live violent yet poetically justified existences, as presented in\n the Oresteia<\/i>: each perpetrator claims to have\n “right” on his side; each perpetrator is reacting to a\n past wrong; even those who are committed to end the cycle with\n “one last death” only perpetuate it (the closing words\n of the Agamemnon, the first play of the trilogy, are\n Clytemnestra’s immediately following her murder of Agamemnon:\n “We will set the house in order once and for all.”). And\n each character believes his retributive act of justice is\n appropriate (we recall Clytemnestra’s cry of “act for act,\n wound for wound” as she slays Agamemnon for the murder of\n their daughter, and Orestes’ stony response to Clytemnestra’s cry\n for mercy: “You killed and it was outrage – suffer outrage\n now.”) Orestes’ situation is an unresolvable paradox: the law\n states that the murder of a parent must be avenged, and that\n children may under no circumstances murder their own parents.\n What, then, can Orestes do, since his mother murdered his father?\n As a system of justice, these Mycenean laws – created and executed\n by a divinity – accomplish nothing positive at all in terms of the\n society, community or even family: crimes breed retaliation,\n intergenerational curses visit the sins of the father upon the\n son, families are decimated. The cycle of violence inexorably\n turns, with no end to the carnage in sight. Orestes’ unresolvable\n conflict causes this system to collapse under its own weight, thus\n breaking its stranglehold on the people, allowing them to develop\n laws of their own, to learn and grow, to become the Greeks of the\n Golden Age, governed by the laws of the polis<\/i>. Before the\n law-givers and law-enforcers can use their judgment to administer\n the law, however, there must be an agreement concerning what the\n law is, so it must be written down. Only then can interpretation\n be allowed, as opposed to the Furies’ rigid and uncompromising\n attitude toward all rule-breakers, justified or not.<\/p>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t

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We\n see the same progression in the Old Testament: in the Five Books\n of Moses we can trace the progression from divine punishment to\n human-delivered punishment and in regard to human punishment, a\n movement away from violent reactionary justice toward compensatory\n retribution. God himself punishes the first murderer, Cain. But\n soon enough God delegates that responsibility to men: in Genesis<\/i>\n 9:6 (the covenant with Noah), God says, “Whoever sheds the\n blood of a human, by a human shall that person’s blood be\n shed” (which presumably is why Moses does not get into\n trouble for killing that Egyptian in Exodus<\/i> 2:12). Then we\n get the “thou shalt not murder” commandment (which still\n appears to be different from “kill” as God himself\n commands the community to kill a man who breaks the Sabbath (Numbers<\/i>\n 15:35). It is in Exodus that the laws are written down and\n codified and it is in Exodus that we are presented with the\n “eye for an eye” proposal:<\/p>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t

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If\n any harm follows, then you shall give life for life, eye for\n eye, tooth for tooth, hand for hand, foot for foot, burn for\n burn, wound for wound, stripe for stripe. (Ex<\/i>.\n 21:23-24)<\/p>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t

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The\n very next verse makes it clear that this code of behavior is\n presented as compensatory retribution, not literal retaliation:<\/p>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t

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When\n a slaveowner strikes the eye of a male or female slave,\n destroying it, the owner shall let the slave go, a free\n person, to compensate for the tooth. (Ex.<\/i> 21:26)<\/p>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t

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This\n is a big step in the development of a justice system, for what\n good is your attacker’s tooth or eye to you, even if you have lost\n your own? The perpetrator is now responsible for paying\n appropriate compensation (the idea “eye for an eye” can\n also be read to mean “only<\/i> an eye for an eye”),\n and the community and its citizens reap the rewards.<\/p>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t

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On\n to the New Testament. We note Jesus’ rejection of any kind of\n violent response to violence: “You have heard it said , ‘An\n eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth.’ But I say to you, Do not\n resist an evildoer. But if anyone strikes you on the right cheek,\n turn the other also…” (Matthew<\/i> 5:38-39) Is this\n meant to be understood literally? No, for Jesus communicates in\n metaphor (“Jesus told the crowds all these things in\n parables; without a parable he told them nothing.” (Matthew<\/i>\n 13:34) So too are we to understand this advice in a figurative\n sense: “If your right eye causes you to sin, tear it out and\n throw it away.” (Matthew<\/i> 5:27)<\/p>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t

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In\n these parallel traditions, we see a similar development of law and\n justice, complete with a paralleled system of authority\n increasingly delegated to the people: Mycenean Law yields to a\n written law code and a human-staffed jury-system to enforce it. In\n Genesis<\/i>, God’s will is Law – he has just to utter his\n desire and it is so: “Let there be Light!” This power of\n God, by the way, explains Islam’s rejection of Jesus as the son of\n God: “When He decrees a thing, he need only say: ‘Be,’ and it\n is. (Surah 19:36). God’s law becomes the law of the polity in\n Exodus, and Moses writes down the rules so he and other just men\n can serve as judges of the people. Jesus comes “not to\n abolish the law, but to fulfill it” (Matthew <\/i>5:17),\n and he too delegates responsibility, charging his apostles with\n the mission of spreading the words and acts of God (Matthew <\/i>10:7-8).\n In the Book of John, we see the Biblical progression concerning\n the development of law most clearly articulated: “In the\n beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word\n was God…and the Word became flesh.” (John<\/i> 1:1-14)<\/p>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t

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Then\n there is the Koran<\/i>. Born of a different time and place, the\n ideas we so easily relegated to the realm of metaphor take on\n startlingly new significance: “We decreed for them a life for\n a life, an eye for an eye, a nose for a nose, an ear for an ear, a\n tooth for a tooth, and a wound for a wound. But if a man\n charitably forbears from retaliation, his remission shall atone\n for him.” (5:46) Are we to understand that retributive\n vengeance is acceptable, although not encouraged? The Koran\n outlines very specific, real punishments for particular crimes:\n “Those that make war against God and His apostle and spread\n disorder in the land shall be put to death or crucified or have\n their hands and feet cut off on alternate sides, or be banished\n from the land.” (5:34) And, “As for the man or woman who\n is guilty of theft, cut off their hands to punish them for their\n crimes.” (5:38) In the West African Mandingo tradition, which\n celebrates the thirteenth century AD Islamic foundations of the\n Empire of Old Mali, the epic hero Sundiata, who wears “the\n robes of a great Muslim king” (73) rules over a land in which\n “a thief would have his right hand chopped off and if he\n stole again he would be put to the sword.” (82) Although\n appearing harsh, the asperity of these punishments is a good match\n for Old Testament punishments levied against certain sinners,\n among them death for adulterers (Lev. 20:10) and homosexuals (Lev.\n 20:13).<\/p>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t

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In\n the Oresteia<\/i>, we realize that a system of justice which\n offers no viable options to an otherwise innocent man is a system\n that will eventually destroy its society. Orestes’ attempt to\n satisfy Mycenean Law is a lose-lose proposition. Sophocles’\n Antigone courts death to break an unjust law, Pericles calls for\n unthinking loyalty to the state in his Funeral Oration<\/i>,\n Socrates claims a tacit covenant with the Laws of the State as\n explanation why he can’t break them now that they are inconvenient\n for him. Socrates also says that there are no unjust laws, just\n unjust men. Plato excludes written law from his Just City because\n just people don’t need it and wicked people won’t read it. In\n terms of the history of Greek law in the literature on our\n syllabus, we see the Mycenean Age of the Oresteia<\/i> give way\n to the Archaic Age Law Codes of Draco and Solon and Cleisthenes,\n to be replaced by fifth century law courts, the abuse of which is\n documented in Plato’s Apology<\/i>. In Genesis<\/i>, the\n people are told to live by God’s Law, in Exodus<\/i> the Law of\n God is imposed on the polity, and in the New Testament, the stress\n is on Jesus fulfilling and teaching the law. Galileo will learn\n the hard way that the Law of Nature and the Law of the Land are\n not necessarily compatible (at this point we look back at the Apology<\/i>,\n in which Socrates recalls Anaxagoras’ similar predicament – like\n many others he was expelled from Periclean Athens for suggesting\n natural explanations for the celestial bodies), and Machiavelli\n will suggest that laws are only as good as they allow princes to\n achieve their goals. By the way, many of my students have written\n very good papers on whether Machiavelli would have considered\n Clytemnestra a successful leader or not.<\/p>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t

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But\n who is the law, and how is it manifested in these texts? In the Oresteia<\/i>,\n Orestes seeks retribution for his father’s murder at the hands of\n his mother, his true parents, but he must turn to Father Apollo\n for guidance and protection. The argument in the Eumenides<\/i>\n allows Orestes to deny parenthood status to his mother,\n Clytemnestra, thus freeing him from the vindictiveness of the\n Furies, goddesses devoted to the avenging of the spilling of\n parental blood. Then the power of the Furies is transferred to the\n law courts of men. Thus the power of the law becomes parental\n itself, acting as the guide\/protector Orestes originally sought in\n Apollo. This is the exact relationship identified by Socrates in\n the Crito<\/i> when he argues that laws are guiding principles,\n and that we owe to the Laws an even more solid allegiance than we\n do to our own parents, based on the same respect and necessity. To\n Socrates, the sanctity of Law is inviolable, for Laws are the\n truest manifestations of Forms in our world.<\/p>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t

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In\n the Bible, too, God is presented as Father of All. But God must\n learn to be a parent, just as we need to learn to be good\n children. In his parental role, God begins by giving the gift of\n life. Then the teaching process begins. God sets down rules and\n demands unconditional adherence. God strikes out with anger when\n his children break their word, or fail to treat him according to\n his station. In the Old Testament, God is often portrayed as\n vindictive, temper-driven, only occasionally remorseful. His\n responses often call to mind a harried parent faced with\n crayon-covered walls and a recalcitrant three-year old.\n “Where are you?,” God asked Adam (Gen. <\/i>3:9),\n knowing full well that Adam was hiding in the Garden. “What\n have you done?,” God asked Cain (Gen.<\/i> 4:10), knowing\n full well that he had killed his brother. The crayon-besmudged\n child has an opportunity to admit guilt, the parent metes out a\n punishment, and the learning process continues.<\/p>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t

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There\n is the idea, too, that law stands for more than order – it stands\n for humanity, a sense of community, a moral rightness. Pericles\n makes this point when he discusses laws which “although\n unwritten, yet cannot be broken without disgrace.” (58) When\n certain inviolable laws are broken, there can be no going back. It\n is the law of xenia<\/i> – guest\/host relations – that is broken\n most frequently and most dramatically in the Oresteia<\/i>. The\n violation of this law fills Greeks with such panic because the law\n stands for order, civilization, humanity, while violations and\n perversions of if threaten all things Greek. In Greek literature,\n cannibalism and child-feasting have always represented this threat\n most dramatically. The Curse of the House of Atreus actually\n begins with the Feast of Tantalus, four generations back, when he\n attempted to feed his own child to the gods. But closer to home is\n Agamemnon’s father Atreus who invited his brother to dinner and\n served him his own children at banquet, the grossest perversion of\n guest\/host relations, and related in all its gory detail by\n Aegisthus in the first play of the trilogy. It is no coincidence\n that there are breaches of this same hospitality rule in every one\n of the plays composing the Oresteia<\/i>: Agamemnon is killed at\n his ritual welcome-home bath in the first play, Orestes can kill\n Clytemnestra and Aegisthus in The Libation Bearers<\/i> only by\n abusing his privilege as a guest to gain access, and the Furies –\n charged with enforcing these very rules – are themselves turned\n away from Apollo’s Temple in the Eumenides<\/i>. Order can be\n re-established only because Orestes is absolved of his crime.<\/p>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t

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Understanding\n the metaphor of broken xenia<\/i> as a threat to order and law,\n especially as reflected in such practices as cannibalism and guest\n treachery, comes in handy for students when we tackle the Sundiata<\/i>\n later in the semester. Not far removed from the horrors of the\n cannibalism of Homer’s Cyclops and Laestrygonians or the\n treacheries of the House of Atreus (Cassandra: “the babies\n wailing, skewered on the sword, their flesh charred, the father\n gorging oin their parts…” Ag. 1094-1097) lies Suamoro, the\n evil ruler in the Sundiata<\/i>: he wears a robe and footwear\n made from human skin, reigns from a throne whose seat is human\n skin, and surrounds himself with the decapitated heads of his dead\n enemies. In each of these stories we see the same metaphor for\n threat to society, civilization, order and law. It is either\n escaped but not eradicated (Odyssey<\/i>), breeds further\n injustices until the system breaks down and is replaced (Oresteia<\/i>),\n or is triumphed over by the forces of Good (Sundiata<\/i>).<\/p>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t

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Students\n who have read Homer’s Odyssey <\/i>may notice that Aeschylus’\n description of Agamemnon being killed at bath is not the story of\n murder at banquet Agamemnon himself tells Odysseus as a warning\n when they meet in the Underworld. Essentially Aeschylus and Homer\n make the same point: in both instances, the king is cut down while\n receiving the traditional displays of xenia – the laws of\n hospitality – in a time and place of supposed safety. So why the\n discrepancy? Because Aeschylus the dramatist, by painting a\n picture of Agamemnon having his arms pinned helplessly to his side\n by his entangling robe, seizes this opportunity to introduce the\n metaphor of the entangling web of deceit, pervasive throughout the\n trilogy. Fagles’ translation perfectly captures its figurative\n meaning, rendering Clytemnestra’s reference to it during her\n victory speech as “black-widow’s web,” with all\n appropriate ramifications. Instead of the weaving a proper Greek\n wife must attend to as head of the oikos<\/i> – and we cannot\n help but think of Penelope here – Clytemnestra spins a web\n designed to catch her own husband. Thankfully, we also read\n Shakespeare’s Othello<\/i>, where we see another great dramatist\n play with the same imagery, but this time in the untranslated\n original. Although Othello <\/i>is not the only place\n Shakespeare dabbles with web imagery to capture the complexities\n of human involvement (“Oh what a tangled web we weave when at\n first we practice to deceive”), it is in Othello<\/i> that\n he pursues the web metaphor with a vengeance. In Othello<\/i>\n Iago weaves an intricate plot, and then lies in wait for his\n victims to become his prey, hopelessly entangled, completely at\n his mercy. After arranging for Roderigo to provoke Cassio into a\n fight, he announces “With as little a web as this I will\n ensnare as great a fly as Cassio” (II.i.190). Web imagery\n becomes net imagery as Iago sets the snare by planting seeds of\n suspicion in Othello that cause him to see Desdemona’s innocent\n comments as proof of an illicit love:<\/p>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t

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“So\n will I turn her virtue into pitch,
\n And out of her goodness make the net
\n That shall enmesh them all.” (Iago, Othello<\/i>,\n II.iii.364)<\/p>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t

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The\n fact that the two tragedies that bracket this syllabus (Agamemnon<\/i>\n and Othello<\/i>) are both vengeance plays allows a basis for\n comparing classical and Renaissance theater, too, with a nod to\n Aristotle’s Poetics<\/i>. A closer look also reveals that both\n Iago and Clytemnestra have multi-layered motives: each claims as\n his primary motivation the desire to right a wrong (Iago wants his\n promotion; Clytemnestra, vengeance for Iphigenia’s death), but\n each also has significant jealousy issues: Clytemnestra kills\n Cassandra, too, and Iago suspects that the “lusty Moor hath\n leap’d into my seat” (II.i.295) and “twixt my sheets has\n done my office” (I.i.387-388). Clytemnestra’s speech in the Agamemnon\n <\/i>concerning men’s behavior regarding their wives makes a\n wonderful introduction to Emilia’s famous speech in Othello<\/i>\n Act IV. Although my last point is not directly concerned with Othello<\/i>,\n I cannot resist the opportunity to prove an Oresteian model for\n one of Shakespeare’s other great metaphors. Both Macbeth’s and\n Lady Macbeth’s tortured admissions of bloodguilt draw on the image\n originally used to illustrate Orestes’ innocence::<\/p>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t

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“Will\n all great Neptune’s oceans wash this blood clean from my hand?\n No this my hand will rather the multitudinous seas\n incarnadine, making the green one red.”
\n (Macbeth, Macbeth<\/i> II.ii.60-62)<\/p>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t

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“Out,\n damn’d spot! out, I say!”
\n (Lady Macbeth, Macbeth<\/i> V.i.35)<\/p>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t

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“What,\n will these hands ne’er be clean?”
\n (Lady Macbeth, Macbeth<\/i> V.i.43)<\/p>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t

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“The\n blood sleeps, it is fading on my hands,
\n the stain of a mother’s murder washing clean.” (Orestes, Eumenides<\/i>\n 278-279)<\/p>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t

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In\n conclusion, tracing the threads of the Oresteia <\/i>through the\n fabric of Intellectual Heritage 051 helps bring structure and\n unity to a course whose syllabus includes authors as far-ranging\n as Sappho and Shakespeare. As the sole surviving trilogy of\n antiquity, the Oresteia <\/i>supremely represents the genre of\n classical tragedy, and its plot provides us with an opportunity to\n introduce our generally uninitiated students to Homer (one benefit\n not offered by Sophocles’ Theban plays). This brief introduction\n to the epic genre both offers a foil to the lyric (in Sappho here,\n and in the next course in the sequence – IH52 – in Blake,\n Wordsworth, Whitman and Dickinson) and will facilitate students’\n later understanding of the Sundiata<\/i>. In the Eumenides <\/i>students\n see the shift from Mycenean justice to the Athenian democracy\n known to us through two other texts, Thucydides’ Funeral\n Oration <\/i>and Plato’s Apology<\/i>. Religion (gods or God,\n concept of afterlife, code of morality), politics (laws written\n and unwritten, codes of justice, social system) and sex (gender\n issues concerning culturally determined roles and interaction of\n men and women) are fundamental themes of the Bible and Koran as\n well. The gender of Clytemnestra, the main and aggressive\n character of the first play of this trilogy, interests our\n students and provokes discussion of women’s roles in antiquity and\n modern society. In terms of the Humanist portion of our syllabus,\n the thematic similarity between the Oresteia<\/i> and Othello<\/i>\n makes it easy to contrast production techniques, literary\n conventions and rhetorical nuances in the two dramatic traditions\n (classical and Renaissance). The Oresteia<\/i>, then, addresses\n the need for both tradition and innovation in a core curriculum\n course, and a study of the trilogy itself as well as its\n resonances in later literature serves both practical and creative\n purposes.<\/p>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t

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comments\n to: jfsiege@ilstu.edu<\/a><\/p>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t

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Editions\n Cited:<\/p>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t

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Student\n Guide to IH<\/strong>,\n Marra and Zelnick, edd. (new edition)
\n Aeschylus, Oresteia<\/i>, tr. Fagles (Penguin)
\n Plato, Last Days of Socrates<\/i>, tr. Treddenick (Penguin)
\n Holy Bible (New Revised Standard Version)
\n Koran, tr. Dawood (Penguin)
\n Sundiata<\/i>: An Epic of Old Mali, tr. Niane (Longman)
\n Galileo, Discoveries and Opinions<\/i>, tr. Drake (Doubleday)
\n Machiavelli, The Prince<\/i>, tr. Wootton (Hackett)
\n Shakespeare, Othello (Folger Library)<\/p>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/section>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"parent":2167,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-2206","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.hsc.edu\/drjclassics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/2206","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.hsc.edu\/drjclassics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.hsc.edu\/drjclassics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.hsc.edu\/drjclassics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.hsc.edu\/drjclassics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2206"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.hsc.edu\/drjclassics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/2206\/revisions"}],"up":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.hsc.edu\/drjclassics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/2167"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.hsc.edu\/drjclassics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2206"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}