In Our Time - The Oresteia

Episode Date: December 29, 2005

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the ‘Oresteia’, the seminal trilogy of tragedies by Aeschylus. The composer Richard Wagner recalled the visceral sensations of reading Aeschylus' great trilogy for the first time. "I could see the Oresteia with my mind's eye ... Nothing could equal the sublime emotion with which the Agamemnon inspired me; and to the last word of the Eumenides, I remained in an atmosphere so far removed from the present day that I have never since been really able to reconcile myself with modern literature." Aeschylus' audience were all familiar with the tale of one man's return home from the Trojan War. Homer's Odyssey recounted Odysseus' perilous journey home, the forceful ejection of the suitors from his household and his reunion with wife Penelope and son Telemachus. Aeschylus had a very different tale of homecoming to tell in his Oresteia. Agamemnon arrives home from Troy to a murderous welcome from a vengeful wife and a cycle of atrocities unfolds in his household. The Oresteia has inspired some of the greatest artists and thinkers of the modern world. From Richard Wagner and Friedrich Nietzsche to T.S. Eliot and Simone de Beauvoir – the ‘Oresteia’ has fired the modern imagination.Why did Aeschylus make the family the subject of his bloody revenge tragedy? How did his trilogy make a contribution to the development of Athenian legal institutions? And why has the Oresteia had such a powerful hold over the modern imagination? With Edith Hall, Professor of Greek Cultural History at Durham University; Simon Goldhill, Professor of Greek at the University of Cambridge; Tom Healy, Professor of Renaissance Studies at Birkbeck College, University of London.

This BBC podcast is supported by ads outside the UK. Thanks for downloading the In Our Time podcast. For more details about In Our Time and for our terms of use, please go to BBC.co.com.uk forward slash radio four. I hope you enjoy the programme. Hello, Richard Wagner recalled the visceral sensations of reading Eastclos Great Trilogy for the first time. I could see the Oristei in my mind's eye, he wrote.

Nothing could equal the sublime emotion with which the Agamemnon inspired me. And to the last word of the last word of, the Humanides, I remained in an atmosphere so far removed from the present day that I've never since been really able to reconcile myself with modern literature. Ischler's audience were all familiar with the tale of one man's return home from the Trojan War. Homer's Odyssey recounted Odysseus perilous journey home, the forceful ejection of the suitors from his household, and his reunion with his wife Penelope and his son, Telemarcos. Iskolas had a very different tale of homecoming to tell in his orrestaya. Agamemnon arrives home from

Troy to a murderous welcome from a vengeful wife and a cycle of atrocities unfolds in his household. Why did Eastclos make the family the subject of his bloody revenge tragedy? And how did his trilogy make a contribution to the development of Athenian legal institutions? And why has the Oristaya had such a powerful hold over the modern imagination? With me to discuss Eastclos Orostia, a Redith Hall, Levyhune Professor of Greek Cultural History at Durham University, Simon Goldhild, Professor of Greek at the University of Cambridge, and Tom Healy, Professor of Renaissance Studies

at Berkbeck College University of London. Edith Hall, can we start with Eastclos himself? What do we know about him? We don't know very much about him. We do know that he was born in about 525 BC in Ilyus, which is on the outskirts of Athenian territory, into an upper-class citizen family, lives through the most extraordinary period in Athenian history

when the democracy was actually founded when he was a young man. He must have had a huge effect on him and fought in the Persian wars and died at some point a few years after the Oristair, which was reduced in 458 BC. So as usual at that time in that city, he was a soldier as well as everything else. I mean, he had to be a soldier as well as everything else.

Absolutely. If you wanted the rights of a democratic citizen, you had the responsibility to fight as a hot plight on the front line and risk your life. He was writing in the 5th century BC when the players performed, at festivals. Can you give us some sort of cultural context which enables to have an idea of what sort of place the oroste would be performed in who would turn up, what it portended and so and so forth?

All the dramas that we've got were first performed at festivals of the wine god Dionysus. There's a very big festival every year in what we would call April, which is actually when the sailing season starts, and it's a huge international Greek festival. Greeks come from all over the Mediterranean. That's the most important thing. It's Athens on display. Athens showing itself off to her allies and to the world. It's on the cusp between a religious event, a worship of the god, and a civic event, a political event, like something a bit more like the Commonwealth Games or something,

a sort of international display. And the plays are performed competitively. Eeschylus is putting in a group of three tragedies against other tragedians, and he's trying to win. And the way you won was by clapometer. The only way that you could win was if the judges were influenced by the crowd into figuring out which was actually the play that had gone down best. You say it was on the cusp of religious and secular. Does the orosteia, how does it fit in that particular time point? Well, I think it is the pivotal text from that point of view because what the oristair portrays is the point at which the responsibility for avenging murder goes from being part of religious sensibility

into being part of a civic, collective, political sensibility. It's exactly that difficulty which the trilogy is exploring is at what point is it a matter of the gods and at what point is it a matter of you as a collective citizen body? Simon Goldhill, these plays, as I understand it, were very, very popular. And Athenians, we are told, but you're going to tell us, were gripped by the theatre in the... in these plays and others.

Can you just tell us about the attendance and what party played in the lives of people? Absolutely. It was the largest collection of citizens in the earth. I mean, except for perhaps a major battle. You would never get so many people gathered together as a political unit. And consequently, it was seen to be a major part in the education of citizens. You were actually, in the later period, you were actually paid to go to the theatre.

And it was perceived to be something that it was a citizen's duty to attend. and it immediately became part of the education. People learnt these plays off by heart, scenes from them, plays from them, and it became a major sign of Greek culture very quickly. We've just been told that he put his playing to a competition. Do we have any idea of what the other players were that he beat because he came first in this competition with the Oristair? Not that year.

Not that year. We don't know the plays, but he did win. And the play became an extraordinary success to the extent that both Sophocles and Euripides clearly read it and studied it. How did you arrive at this story of the House of Agamemnon, Simon? Well, it's a story that occurs already in the Odyssey that you mentioned in your introduction.

Homer already tells us about the House of Atreus, who's Agamemnon's father, and he tells us of the return of how Arrestes came back to kill the usurper of the family, Egusthus, and he tells us that in the Odyssey as an example for Telemachus to live. up to. So he had that great literary parallel. It was also a story in myth, in general, that people knew that was around at the time. Can you just briefly, this is possible briefly to

outline the three players of the Oristai, it's almost like three acts of one play, the Agamemnon, the libation bearers and humanities. Could you just summarize them so we can proceed with a platform on a platform? In terms of Hollywood, there's very little action in the Oristair overall. The first play, the Agamemnon, centres around. the return of Agamemnon and his murder by his wife, Clytemnestra. And the first part of the play is the build-up to that,

the second part of the play is the response to that murder. The second play, the libation-bearers, is simply the return of Arrestes, the son of Agamemnon and Clytemnestra, to kill his mother. And Igisthus her lover. The third play takes Arrestes

pursued by the furies to Athens, where there is a trial, where he escapes any penalty from a tied vote in the trial, which lets him off. Right, let's look at this in more detail now. Tom Healy, can we look at the first play, the Agamemnon? Can you just unfold that in more detail for us? The start of the Agamemnon, the first two-thirds of it really contains some of the most unsettling scenes in literature. It begins with a watchman on a tower, waiting.

to see the signal announcing the fall of Troy. And this should, in theory once it comes, be a joyous event. But it also is an unleashing of a huge sense of unease by the watchman, by the chorus, by the herald who comes from Troy to tell of this victory. Because with it is a disturbing sense that there has been previous, pollutions of blood, Agamemnon has to allow the Greek fleet to sail to Troy initially, has had to ritually kill his daughter, Iphigenia. This has never been properly atoned for in any way.

There's that as a background. There's also a strong sense that the Greeks have overstepped their mark in Troy, that they have gone beyond what would be permitted destruction and have destroyed temples and destroy the city entirely. And this too will have a price to pay. The Herald talks about huge storms which have wrecked the fleet in its homecoming. Agamemnon arrives bringing with him Cassandra, one of the daughters of Priam,

who Apollo has given the gift of prophecy to, but with the uncomfortable caveat that no one will believe her at all. She then, as Agamemnon, goes in to the hall with Clytemnestra supposedly to a glorious welcome, gives a detailed sense of precisely this degrees of pollution, of horror that is both forthcoming and that has already taken place. Agamemnon then is heard in his death throes within side. We don't see, as Simon has said, there's not much action. We don't see actually any of the killings taking place on the stage itself. He's been killed in a bath by Clytemnester.

She's thrown a net over him and then stabbed him repeatedly, as we're told. Clytemnester then comes out triumphantly and tells us that all the words of welcome that she had offered to Agamemnon were necessary duplicities that really she had planned this from the beginning. Can you, I mean, that's a brilliant summary by Tom, but can you just hone in even a bit more on Clyde Minestra? What do you think she stands for here? Her husband comes back, she murders him. What do you think she's representing?

Well, she's got at least five reasons to kill him, actually. He has brought home another woman to her front door, which is something nobody you can't do in Greece. tragedy, all the people who do that die. It's one of the rules of greed tragedy is that you don't bring home the girlfriend. But her main reason, she says it four times, is that he killed their daughter and he hasn't paid for it. And I find it very strange myself, how many male critics fail to listen to this, that this is actually what she says over and over again. But that is related to her desire for public power. I think she knows that she's far more intelligent

than anyone else in Argos. She has the best speeches, by far the best argumentation. She takes on 12 chorus members physically, single-handedly, when they say they banish her from Argos. She says, okay, let's come and fight with me. She is a superior individual to anybody else in Argos, and he killed her child. And in all subsequent versions of the Agamemnon, this is completely downplayed, right? Escalis leaves this in. And the reason why is that over the course of the trilogy, what's actually going to become apparent is that it's the parent, it is the rival right of the father

and the mother to the child that is what is at stake in this ancient civilization. And what happens is that the mother's connection with the child is completely denied any sort of legitimacy at all or any kind of validation. She stands for not only mother child, but mother daughter, which is something the Greek myth hardly ever did.

Simon Goldhill, he makes use of a very powerful symbolism in this first play. Can you explain this to me of some Clytemestra, asking her husband to enter his house, their house, by walking up a purple tapestry, sometimes purple, sometimes the colour of blood, the first red carpet. I mean, there it is. So what's she saying there?

What's Iskoulos saying there? Absolutely extraordinary moment. The front door is controlled by the woman. This is not normal. She comes out of the house. She stops the people coming in at the house. She spreads out purple tapestries and says to her husband, step on it.

And he's quite clear you shouldn't. He's absolutely clear. He says, I will not step on it. This is a wrong thing to do. It's an insults. I'm not going to do this. But then she persuades him. And the first thing she stands for is the power of female language,

which is something East Kis puts on stage as terrifying, alongside female sexuality. So the first thing we actually see is Clytemnestra persuading her husband to do something he knows is wrong. But then what is it? Is it wrong or is it dangerous, Simon? Does he know it's wrong? He says quite clearly, this is a destruction of a house.

household property. It shouldn't be done. It looks arrogant. It's not a nice thing. It's what Persian royalty does. It's what the opposite of Athenian Democrats do. That is actually made. She does a salam on the carpet and she says Priam would have done it. Exactly. The Eastern King. But at the same time, of course, being Eastclos, everything is overladen with more. It is the colour of blood. He has to step into, as it were, a river of blood that is going to draw him up into the bath where he's going to be killed naked and helpless as opposed to the warrior who should die on the battlefield in his armour. So all of these elements are brought together.

It becomes almost a sign of the net in which she's going to wrap him. So they're all the ways in which every step you take in Iskoulos puts you into a web of words, a web of problems. You never have one simple reason for doing things. And that's what makes that image so powerful that it is multivalent. And Tom, in the second play, the libation bearers, Oristees, comes back and to revenge his father's death

to revenge Agamemnon's death. Does he do that on the instruction of the god Apollo or is something, what else, what's going on there? Well he claims that he is doing it on the prompting of the god Apollo that he's been ordered to do this. He is in a dilemma because

he's between the classic rock and a hard place. If he avenges his father, he has to kill his mother and he knows that this will incur the wrath of the furies. I mean, that it is a shameful thing to do is one of the things that he says when he pauses just before he comes to kill her. But Apollo is absolutely adamant. The priority must be the avenging of the father's death. So he tries to make himself into this

indifferent principle of justice that he is following the God's will. But, again, Again, we see constantly this revelation of these types of private aspects that come out. He meets with his sister, Elektra, and they build... They haven't seen each other but ten years. They haven't seen one another for ten years. Initially, she doesn't recognize him. She recognizes him by the lock of hair that is the same color as her own, that he's cut and ritualistically placed on his father's grave.

And they talk about the need, the absolute requirement to avenge their father. But at the same time, they also reveal their own dissatisfactions that they have been displaced by Clytemnestra, that they are angry, that they're not being given the recognition that they feel that they should have. And this goes back almost to this Agamemnon's prideful walk on this cloth. This family is obsessed with its status and its sense of power and prestige, which it wants to maintain. So it becomes a contest between Arrestes and Clytemnestra. Presumably in the background, we are to assume that Clytemnestra is ruling with her lover, Elysses, and they are ruling and not Arrestes and Electorate.

Do you want to develop the place of Electra here, Simon? Certainly. I mean, Electra is a fascinating character because she only appears in the first half of the play. And she comes on stage first to purport the libations that gives the play its name, which are offerings at the Tomb of Agamemnon. and then they sing a great mourning song, she and her brother after the recognition, where the rest is.

So you only allow a lecturer to speak the sorts of things that proper girls do. That's religious language or mourning language. After that, we get her off stage to go inside, to sit, you know, like a good girl waiting for marriage. And that leaves the central scene open for son, mother, male, female, face to face. And one of the things that Iskus does again and again,

is to turn the narrative so that we get male versus female as the central conflict. And I think Elektra plays a part in that very strongly that she has to be sidelined once she's done her role to leave the son and the mother to face each other. Can we talk about this central confrontation in the second play Edith Hall? Orestes has killed his mother's lover, and now he turns on his mother, and she bears her breast and her pity the breast that fed you. Now, just going to that, will you? Well, this is something that happens in Greek literature

when mothers are pleading with their sons. Generally, Hecuba famously does it from the Wall of Troy when she's trying to stop Hector from going out to fight. We hear of real mothers doing it in the shrine of Aleath where the childbirth goddess are reigning their sons. This is something you did, you showed the breast. The trouble with Clytemnessa's breast is that it probably was never in Oresti's mouth. The scene before, we've actually had the old nurse come on

and say that she nursed him as a baby and changed his nappies. Right. Now, the word for nurse there, it could be breastfeed, could not be, but the fact is e-scholist yet again has deliberately shown us that we cannot believe a word Clytemnestra says that she is spinning a line as good mother. So we can't believe that. But when he does see this, he goes into a complete meltdown,

complete crisis, and he can't do it. The fact is the rest is quite a nice young man and doesn't particularly want to do this. and he doesn't feel, I don't think, enough angry, sufficiently angry with his mother. And it takes his mate, Pilides, who comes from somewhere very near where Apollo, the God, has his own shrine in Delphi.

He says, you must. And that's the only thing he says in the entire trilogy. Do it, and he does. Simon Goddough. Editha said that Arrestes had this moment of doubt. And that moment of doubt is very important in the players, I understand it. Can you just tell us how East Gull has presented that

and what it means for you? It is one of the foundational moments of tragedy. He has got the sword, he's got the sword up against Cloutine Nestor, as she bears the breast and says, pity me, son, pity the breast. And at that point he says, should I show Pylides, what should I do?

Palladis is a friend. And that question, what should I do, echoes down tragedy across the generations. It's the archetypal caught in the double bind question. You mean, if he kills her, he's wrong, and if he doesn't kill her, he's wrong. And at that point, as Edith said, Palladis says, count all men your enemies rather than the gods. So he said there is a higher level of justice that has to come in here that is divine law.

And Arrestes agrees to that, but it still takes him another 20-odd lines to get her out of the, into the house, where she's still arguing. She says things like, it's really hard for a woman to be kept from a man, my son, using her sexual history as a weapon. And he's clearly finding it very difficult. His last line, as he pushes her out off stages,

you did what you ought not, now suffer what you ought not. He knows he's doing wrong as he does it, and that's what makes the tragic double bind what it is. You can only do wrong, even though you know you're doing wrong, you have to do it. Simon said this tragic moment, as it were, resonates, runs through great literature from Menon. Would you take it up to, would you develop that at all?

Well, it becomes a, particularly within dramas that involved households, becomes a classic crux. I mean, we can see it interestingly replayed in a play like Hamlet. I mean, it is likely that Shakespeare had some acquaintance with Iskoulos, whether he's directly going back to the Orridae or not. But when Hamlet deals with his mother, and he's been told distinctly there not to kill her, and he doesn't intend, I think, to kill her,

but he is very disturbed, and she feels he is going to kill him. And she then, too, argues in a variety of ways. But on a very obvious level, Edith Hawley, the son kills the mother, the woman is killed, and Plaintimestra, who, is such a powerful force. What does that signify for you

in terms of the way things developed in dramas from then and about the times itself? We can't justify what she does. But very interestingly, the Oristair has been taken by feminists ever since Simond de Beauvoir as the charter myth of male domination of women that from the moment basically

that she is killed and Athena justifies that and says that that was a deserved thing to happen. It slams the door on women in Western culture, literature and art as well as society until Nora storms out of the Dole's House. And this has become something that all feminist writers and indeed psychoanalytical critics like Melanie Klein

have turned to the Oristair as this etiological text for patriarchy for the rule by men. And not only feminists, of course, it's crucial to the history of Marxism. I mean, Engels in the history of the world, family, takes the Oris Dyrus' proof text of why patriarchy is as it is. And that's one of the the reasons why this text has been so influential is that it's had this huge political impact on the imagination of the 19th and 20th century in particular. Yes, and I think later on too that it

becomes caught up in Nietzsche's idea that underneath a type of Apollonian enlightenment, there exists this Dionysian intoxicated undercurrent that is where real life exists, and that Clytemnestra and this bloodlust that the furies exemplify, this type of matriarchal or matrilineal side of existence, is seen again as important within the culture that has been previously displaced by a rather more enlightened patriarchal perspective on keeping women in their place as unruly. We've had the first part, or the first play with Agamemnon. We've had the second play with Horstey's killing his mother and her lover.

And then he's driven mad in a third. Could you take us through the third and final play? Just outline it. You don't want to be able to talk about it. It's very interesting play. He's the end of the second play. he's one of the loneliest people in literature because he can see these furies.

Orrestes. Yes, sorry. Arrestes. It flees from the stage. He can see these furies. Nobody else can. He's mad. It's a tragic delusion that he's in.

The next play actually opens at Delphi. He's gone to Delphi to seek Apollo's help. It was Apollo who told him to do it. He becomes purified. But the ghost of Clytemnester, one of the most sinister scenes in world theatre turns up to rouse on and wake up her furies who are these agents who are going to go

and suck his blood until she is glutted with it and feels avenged, right? They're going to go and get Arrestes. Everybody scarpers off to Athens and you have the big trial scene where Arrestes is on trial pretty much for the murder of his mother. That is the technical reason why he's on trial.

But actually what it becomes is a showdown between the furies of Clytemnestra on one hand saying it is absolutely terrible, this young man killed his mother, and Apollo and Orestes on the other hand saying, no, this is terrible, that dead woman killed her husband. And really what comes down to what the question is, which is worse? Athena turns up because it's quite clear that... The goddess of Athens and of wisdom.

And of wisdom, born asexually from her father's head, doesn't do girl things like her baby. and she says, oh dear, what are we going to do? I can see that there is actually something to be said on both sides here. She actually does say that. I know I've found a homicide court. I will find a court where people can come if there is murder in the family for all time, and it will be in Athens.

And Arrestes is the first person to be tried in this court. So the Orristi becomes not only the charter myth of patriarchy, but the charter myth of the state and trial by jury. Tom? And I think one of the things within the play that is so interesting is that the court ultimately is divided in their view between Arrestes and the furies. That the votes are cast equally and Arrestes simply win it on Athena's casting vote. And she has announced previously she will always side with the father. So the whole question of justice remains in place. in this highly charged moment, as Simon was saying,

but also in a way that resonates down further through the ages. Again, I think one of the things that keeps this play so vibrant in its action is that it really doesn't actually resolve what it apparently resolves at all. In what way? Well, it supposedly presents a means by which the furies, this side of Clytemnestra, are subdued. They're bought off effectively. And they're absorbed into the... They're absorbed in it. But importantly, even Athena's acknowledges

that they're not going to be rendered powerless. They're in fact, their power is going to remain, and if anything, be enhanced. So the state is in some ways recognizing that their rights, these undercurrents of, of, blood rights and of actions are important that they can't be just displaced. I think it goes beyond that. What actually happens to the furies is that their fear, they represent fear,

and the fear is going to be hijacked by the state, fear of the law. That's what Athena says, I want terror in this city. The terror is going to be people terrified in front of the courts of this land, right? So that is where the terror is going to be. It's not going to be in the hands of individual family members. What I think is really going on is that Eastclis is actually feeling his way, to the fact there has to be in place in any system of justice for the power of the emotion of victims.

You know, that that sort of emotion has to be accommodated. We can't tell people just to go away when they've had people murdered in their family. We have somehow to acknowledge, right? And I think that, if you read it like that, he's feeling his way towards all the difficult emotions that are involved. He's quite clear that emotions are absolutely necessary,

but one can't forget that the answer in Iskis is still civic authority. It's still the case that we've moved on from Homer. In a sense, tragedy is a machine for turning old myth into democratic myth, into new civic myth. And what he's giving us is a new version of a very old story that we're familiar with in Homer, and he's saying something very important that without the city, without the city's organization, we have no chance. Well, thank you very much, Edith Hall, Simon Goldhill and Tom Hilly. Thank you for listening.

We hope you've enjoyed this Radio 4 podcast. You can find hundreds of other programs about history, science and philosophy at BBC.com.com.uk forward slash radio four.