I. How are justice and gender brought into relation? - the imagery of Athena's speech, Eum. 681-710 (pp. 159-160, Lattimore translation). 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. Can we see the Oresteia as addressing larger issues by interpreting it in relation to a specific historical issue (the interactions between aristocratic and democratic factions in Athens), as well as to the "timeless," "universal" value of justice (as a rational, legal proceeding, rather than 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 - aristocrats, husband - wife, son - mother, chthonic deities - Olympian deities

D. Why can Athena persuade the Furies? motherless daughter vs. fatherless daughters

Timeline

c. 1200 B.C. E.	Fall of Troy, Agamemnon's return home	mythic time
594-3	Solon's archonship in Athens
508	Cleisthenes reforms the Athenian constitution	historic time
490-479	Persian Wars
460-	beginnings of Pelopponesian War
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.

Aeschylus does not believe cosmic justice works in the mechanistic way described by some of his naturalist predecessors. Nor does he agree that prosperity by itself provokes divine jealousy; only unjust prosperity leads to downfall. Aeschylus sees the same pattern in contemporary history; in the persians he describes the defeat of the Persian empire, setting the pattern for Herodotus.

In this, as in other cases, the effects of divine justice are destructive. . . .In the Eumenides, however, Aeschylus urges that such destructive sequences of crime and punishment cannot be genuine justice. . . .A conception of justice as simply the breaking of law, requiring inflexible punishment, leads to disaster. The arguments of Apollo, the Furies, and Athena, in the trial of Orestes, are implausible and inconclusive. Athena's argument only provokes the Furies to threaten retribution on Athens, until she introduces an altogether new type of argument. She appeals to the bad consequences of the threatened retribution, and to the good consequences of a reconciliation that allows them to use their powers for the good of the whole city. The solution that is reached does not abandon the principle of retribution - the Furies retain this function; but it regulates and tests the operations of this principle by appeal to the common interest of those affected.

Aeschylus presents the Areopagus as a homicide court, with only those powers left to it by Ephialtes. The appeal to the Furies to forgo the exercise of their traditional prerogatives in the interest of the whole community is equally an appeal to Athenians who might resent the democratic reforms. While Solon had left the Areopagus intact, Aeschylus argues for acceptance of the democratic reforms that seriously weakened its political role.

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.