The Orestia: Agamemnon, The Libation Bearers, The Eumenides

  Introduction to the lesson:

This site presents one approach to understanding this trio of Greek plays as a unit.  These plays would have been performed on one day, in order, to a Greek audience who understood historical references to famous characters and stories (that of Agamemnon and his family).  The various geographical and physical settings were also very familiar to this kind of audience.  They would have recognized the rituals performed on stage, understood conventions of behavior, and found fulfillment in the recounting of the establishment of Athenian justice.

As a contemporary audience, we lack this entire context.

This lesson discusses the plays in terms of contextual topics: history, geography, ritual, the gods, and social change.  The final assignment asks students to place scenes from the plays in contemporary settings in ways that reflecting on topics such as ritual, community practice, and social change.

*The image is of a statue of Athena at the Aegina Temple.  She is armed, with helmet, shield, and spear

CONTENTS:

Historic Background

Justice

Ritual         

Temples and the Gods 

Assignment

HISTORICAL BACKGROUND: Agamemnon, The Trojan War, and The House of Atreus.



                  Greek battle ship (reconstruction), housed near Athens.

Trojan War:  A succinct (one-page) description of the history of the Trojan War can be found at Stanford  University.
 
The war is only loosely dated as ending perhaps in 1180 b.c.e.  The Illiad was written in 700 b.c.e.

From the Perseus website (Harry Thurston Peck, Harpers Dictionary of Classical Antiquities (1898):

”The main portion of the story[of the Trojan War] is contained in the two epic poems ascribed to Homer, the Iliad and the Odyssey. The incidents...were elaborated or developed by the post-Homeric poets....  While in Homer it is simply the rape of Helen which is the occasion of the war, a later legend traced its origin to the marriage of Peleus and Thetis, when Eris threw down among the assembled gods the golden apple inscribed “For the fairest” (têi kalêi). The quarrel that ensued between Heré, Athené, and Aphrodité for the prize of beauty was decided by Paris in favour of Aphrodité, who in return secured him the possession of Helen, while Heré and Athené became, from that time onward, the implacable enemies of the whole Trojan race.”  [See also The Golden Apple (Apple of Discord) or see Paris in the Encyclopedia Mythica.]

“According to Homer, after Helen had been carried off by Paris, Menelaüs and Agamemnon visited all the Greek chieftains in turn, and prevailed on them to take part in the expedition which they were preparing to avenge the wrong. According to the later account, the majority of the chieftains were already bound to follow the expedition by an oath, which they had sworn to Tyndareos. Agamemnon was the chosen commander-in-chief; next to him the most prominent Greek heroes are his brother Menelaüs, Achilles, and Patroclus, the two Aiaxes, Teucer, Nestor and his son Antilochus, Odysseus, Diomedes, Idomeneus, and Philoctetes, who, however, at the very outset of the expedition, had to be left behind, and does not appear on the scene of action until just before the fall of Troy. Later epics add the name of Palamedes.

The entire host of 100,000 men and 1186 ships assembled in the harbour of Aulis.”

[end quote]

See also a recent article on the archeological evidence for Troy and a Trojan War (from the journal Archaeology).

HOUSE OF ATREUS

Agamemnon is the head of the House of Atreus during the play cycle.  He was in the Trojan War (see The Iliad) because he pledges to help Menalaus, his brother, bring Helen back from Troy.

Students: compare this description from The Iliad with descriptions of Agamemnon at his homecoming, in the first play.  Is the heroic language similar?  Is he portrayed as a warrior and a king?  How does the chorus react to him—with awe or fear?

The House of Atreus is marked by canabalism (Tantalus serves Pelops to the Gods as a "test" and Atreus serves all of Thyestes' children but one to him, as 'revenge') and child-death (Iphigenia sacrificed to Artemis by Agamemnon, with the hopes that the fleet can sail safely to Troy).  It is marked also by infidelity and betrayal (Clytemnestra with Aegisthus, Helen with Paris, Agamemnon with Cassandra) and matricide (Orestes kills Clytemnestra, with Electra's help). 

The Orestia and Justice

Consider the history of what it means to be Greek.  In the Bronze age were peoples such as the Mycenaean, and the Minoan on Crete; the Hellenes developed this idea of being “Greek” through religious festivals, Pan-Hellenic (“Olympic”) games, and other communications between cities / kingdoms. 

Agamemnon was the King at Mycenae (at least for the Hellenes in the 5^th c. BCE).  The Lion’s Gate, the entrance to the fortress at Mycenae, is pictured below:

Agamemnon was reported (by story) to be a late Bronze Age king; see where he is placed on this timeline:

Late Bronze Age:  1600-1100 BCE

The Greek Dark Ages:  1200-800 BCE.   
            (Collapse caused by invasion, earthquakes, or some series of man-made and            
             natural disasters.)

Archaic Period:   700-500  BCE  Homer, Hesiod, and then creation of city-states

Classical Period:  500-323  BCE  Classical Athens as center of Greece; 

Hellenistic Period:  323-31 BCE

Death of Alexander the Great:   323 BCE

For a reliable online historical overview, go to the Perseus website and look at Thomas Martin’s An Overview of Classical Greek History from Mycenae to Alexander

http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/cgi-bin/ptext?doc=Perseus%3Atext%3A1999.04.0009&query=toc&layout=&loc=2.1

The Orestia: RITUAL

Greek religion is ritual and ritual is ...what?  How do we define ritual?

·         Before reading the definition below, write your own definition. 

·         Brainstorm a list of the types of rituals and ritualistic elements that you can locate in the three plays.  Write these down and compare with the list below.

Rituals are those actions that we do because they have meaning, and rituals have historical meaning, through repetition of ritual acts or representation of the ritual.  Rituals have context, including spatial and temporal placement, because they are enacted in certain ways, in certain times and places.  They tend to be stylized and specialized, but that only sets them apart from other actions and an "outsider' may not see the ritual if they are not familiar with the context of the community.

Academic Susan Cole (Landscapes, Ritual and Gender 2004) states that rituals for the Greeks define activities in:

…three categories of existence: the dead, the living, and the immortal. Basic rules governing contact between these categories were recognized by all. Only gods could move at will between the natural world and the imagined landscape. In order to be available for human ritual, therefore, they required a sacred space in the human realm (hieron), kept pure because only those who were pure (hagnos) or were made pure (katharos, “purified,” “clean”) could entertain divinity. For humans, communication with the gods required observance of routine rules for purity, and a worshipper who was not purified (ou katharos, “not clean”) could compromise sacred space and spoil any ritual act in progress (22-23).

Rituals are created for community and for self--they give cohesion to community life (we all enact these rituals together) and they provide us with a stronger sense of self, through our recollections of the meanings behind the rituals.

Cole further defines:

…three occasions for creating ritual space: 1) when establishing a new community, 2) when introducing a new ritual, and 3) when a normally secular space was to be used for a temporary ritual event. When a new city was founded or an old city moved, space had to be formally allocated for sacred precincts, altars, and temples of the gods, both within local settlements and out in the countryside. Sacred objects, portable representations of divinity, equipment for special rituals, and fire for sacrifice had to be replicated and transported from the home city to a new site. Conversely, when a new god was imported from elsewhere, convention required that space for sacrifice and divine residence be found. Fifth-century examples at Athens include the cult of Pan, introduced on the north slope of the akropolis after Marathon [and] the healing ritual of Asklepios, brought from Epidauros in the 420s... (36-37).

Rituals include "first fruits" (offerings of harvests) and libations (of wine, water, or oil, poured from a shallow cup or bowl).  Sacrifices were on altar fires or were "bloodless" ; thuein or thusia is the verb for "consecrating an offering....the primary sense...as attested in Homer, was 'to make to burn for the sake of the gods' (Zaidman and Pantel Religion in the Ancient Greek City).

Early 20th c. scholar Jane Harrison quotes from a Companion to the Iliad:

'The sacrificers after roasting the vitals taste them as a symbolical sign that they are actually eating with the gods.  When this religious act has been done, the rest of the victim [bull or other domestic animal] is consumed as a merely human meal. '  Nothing could be simpler, clearer.  There is no mystic communion, no eating of the body of the god incarnate in the victim... [it is] a burnt-sacrifice and the joyous banquet afterwards.  (Prolegomena, Mythos, 1991: 12).

Oracles are another form of outreach to the gods; an oracle was situation in ritualized space and approached in a ritualized fashion, by a person who was purified and who asked a question of one or more intermediaries.  At Delphi, the priest took questions from a supplicant to the priestess, or pythia, in the temple (below the temple, in actuality).  In The Road to Delphi, Michael Wood identifies the character of the oracular saying:

The gods talk all the time, to each other and to humans.  They provide omens and portents; they send dreams; they speak through sibyls and oracles.  What distinguishes oracles from the other modes of conversation is the direction of the traffic.  The gods don't instigate this form of talk, they respond.... An oracle, I am suggesting, allows a dialogue with a god, or with the unknown, as distinct from a god's invasion of our lives or the more general practice of divination. (20)

All rituals, in essence, provide for communication between gods and humans.

RITUALS and ELEMENTS OF RITUALS in The Orestia:

Find three examples of where we can find these rituals and ritualistic elements in the plays. 

·         Record the page numbers and lines

·         Offer interpretations as to how they fit in the play, why the playwright uses this ritual in particular, and what purpose it serves (in terms of meaning or theme, or action in the play).

For instance, as Clytemnestra is responding to the signal fires at the start of Agamemmnon by lighting the altar fires, the chorus is anxiously waiting for the news and filling up the space by commenting on revenge--on Paris and the furies and the Trojan war.  The war resulted from Paris's actions; neither "singeing flesh / nor tipping cups of wine / nor shedding burning tears can you / enchant away the rigid Fury." 

Clytemnestra is performing these rituals while they make this comment...she is not only lighting fires but also "burning victims" (so she would have gone through rituals to cleanse and offer animals for sacrifice). She is so focused on ritual that she will not "soothe our fears."  This may be our first indication that she cannot "enchant away the rigid Fury" from the house of Atreus by ritual without a pure life.   (Quotations from lines 75-78, 96.)

TEMPLES: EXPERIENCING THE PRESENCE OF GODS in The Eumenides.

(see powerpoint: Eumenides and Athenian Justice)

The Orestia: ASSIGNMENT

In the previous pages on history, geography, ritual, and social change, you were introduced to some ways of approaching the three plays.  For this assignment, you will create web pages in a similar approach--just update it!  Instead of using the play itself and ancient Greece, find modern parallels, images and language from today and "set the stage" of this play in modern times, with a modern topic and with modern rituals.

For instance, should The Libation Bearers start in a cemetery, in a funeral home, in a hospital--or in a Mardi Gras funeral march??  Find images to represent the places, themes, and images for your pages.  Who are your characters?  People you know or create?  Famous people?  What "quotations" will you use?  (Note:  choose quotations from the play before translating them into modern language and use the same line and page numbers for your translation!)

Objectives:  in this assignment, you will demonstrate close reading of the plays, selection of significant themes and supporting evidence, and interpretation in relation to modern experience. 

Your focus could be on:

1.      Ritual: what it is and how we ritualize our lives today. 

2.      Ritualized political structures and how change occurs in a community.

3.      Communication—ritualized or innovative.

You can also think about which rituals in our culture are infused with the depth of meaning that rituals had for Greeks (as their religion) and which rituals we follow with, perhaps, a trivialized manner.  The same issues are meaningful for us today--family loyalty, dedication to honorable behavior, disdain for those who are dishonest or deceitful or even just arrogant in taking justice and fate into their own hands.   Yet, do we have rituals and ways of expressing thoughts and feelings on these matters that rise to the level of impact and expression that we see in Aeschylus’s plays?

Assignment criteria:
 

Content:

___ Focus on one topic (ritual or other theme)

___ Significant scenes are chosen

___ Inclusion of analysis of scenes, relation to modern issues, and interpretation of
       significance

___ Explanation of intentions of your approach (explain what you are trying to do with
       your creative approach)

___ Helpful, well-presented graphics

___ Clear organization

___ Neatness

Oral Presentation

___ Clarity

___ Lively voice tone and eye contact with peers

___ Formal dress

___ Explanations are thorough, in depth, and relevant

Student Examples: