I. How are justice and gender brought into relation? - the imagery of Athena's speech, Eum. 681-710. Theseus and the Amazons; the Scythians (cf. Herodotus, book 4: 1, 3, and 4); Pelops' descendants.

II. The immediate historical context of the Oresteia : the democratic reform of the Areopagus, Ephialtes' murder, the attempted overthrow of democracy with aid of Sparta

A. Can Aeschylus be simply celebrating an institution whose powers have recently been curtailed, with the result of factional strife in Athens?

B. Aristocrats as figurative "women", democrats as "men": gender and politics

III. How does an awareness of gender shape our reading of the Oresteia as addressing both a specific historical issue (interactions between aristocratic and democratic factions in Athens), and the construction of justice (as a rational, legal proceeding, or as crime and punishment, or vengeance)?

A. Why is Clytemnestra the murderer? (cf. World of Athens, 7.11, 7.12, p. 306)

B. Why does Athena replace Zeus in the Aeschylean reworking of the Hesiodic account of the divine establishment of order?

C. Gender as a signifying system; analogous hierarchies: male - female; democrats &emdash; aristocrats; husband &emdash; wife; son &emdash; mother; Olympian deities- chthonic deities

D. Why can Athena persuade the Furies to support polis institutions?

The motherless daughter and the "fatherless daughters of Night"

Timeline

c. 1200 B.C. E. Fall of Troy, Agamemnon's return home mythic time

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594-3 Solon's archonship in Athens

508 Cleisthenes reforms the Athenian constitution historic time

490-479 Persian Wars

484-430 approximate dates of Herodotus’ birth and death

462 /1 Ephialtes, Pericles reform Areopagus; Ephialtes murdered contemporary

458 Some Athenians ask Sparta to overthrow Athenian democracy Oresteia produced

454 Delian League Treasury moved from Delphi to Athens

450 - Pericles' building program: Acropolis

c. 450-420 Herodotus composes Histories

443- Pericles dominant leader in Athens

431- Pelopponesian War

413-411 Oligarchic coup at Athens

A. In 462 Ephialtes and Pericles introduced reforms that reduced the power of the traditionally aristocratic. . .Council of the Areopagus. They wanted to confine it to its 'original' function as a court to try cases of homicide, curbing its allegedly 'usurped' political functions. The reforms were passed; but Ephialtes was mysteriously murdered. About the same time, war broke out between Athens and some allies of Sparta, and in 458 some disaffected Athenians invited the Spartans to invade Attica to overthrow the Athenian democracy The Oresteia was produced in this tense situation, in 458. The first two plays . . .make no overt political comments; but they prepare for the political themes of the third play.

Clytemnestra and Orestes are avengers vindicating divine justice, but they are also human agents, moved by intelligible human motives. . . .In the Agamemnon the Chorus reject a[n]. . .attempt by Clytemnestra to shift responsibility from herself to some supernatural spirit avenging the crimes of Agamemnon's ancestors; but they do not deny supernatural influence, and they regard it all as the work of Zeus. Just as Herodotus does not intend 'the divine' to replace human decisions and responsibility, Aeschylus insists both on human responsibility and on divine causation.

Terence Irwin, Classical Thought, 44-47; cf. World of Athens, p.23.

B. There is no first Athenian woman: there is not, and never has been, a real female Athenian. The political process does not recognize a "citizeness," the language has no word for a woman from Athens. . . .Athena is the goddess without a mother, who refuses marriage and maternity for herself but presides over the vitality of those institutions in the city. Athena, at her miraculous birth, is summoned to watch over two other unusual nativities: the birth of Pandora, a trap in the form of a young girl, and the birth of Erichthonios, a child of civic soil. Athena is the Parthenos [virgin] who remains parthenos, a figure impossible for the human world, but among the gods, her role represents security itself for the andres [men]: the security of the hero, whose exploits Athena attends, the security of the citizen, whose polis she protects, the security of the male, comforted in his fantasy of a world without women by the idea that his goddess was not born from a woman's body - she who "was not nourished in the darkness of the womb" (Eum. 665). She represents the security of the male for all time; he knows he can continue to dream on without anxiety, since, in the active reality of civic cult, the Warrior Goddess keeps watch over the security of Athens.

Nicole Loraux, Children of Athena: Athenian Ideas about Citizenship and the Division between the Sexes, 10-11.

See also:

Berggren, Ann. "Language and the Female in Early Greek Thought." Arethusa 16 (l983): 69-99.

duBois, Page. Centaurs and Amazons. U of Michigan P, 1990.

Foley, Helene P. "The Conception of Women in Athenian Drama." Reflections of Women in Antiquity. N.Y., l981.

Just, Roger. Women in Athenian Law and Life. Routledge, 1989.

Lefkowitz, Mary R. and Maureen B. Fant. Women's Life in Greece and Rome. . . . Baltimore, l982.

Pomeroy, Sarah. Goddesses, Whores, Wives, and Slaves. N.Y., l975.

Slater, Philip E. "The Greek Family in History and Myth." Arethusa 7 (l974).

Vickers, Brian. Toward Greek Tragedy. London, l973.

Zeitlin, Froma. "The Dynamics of Misogyny: Myth and Mythmaking in the Oresteia." Arethusa 11 (l978): 149-184.