Suzanne’s Comments (group member since Sep 16, 2020)

Suzanne’s comments from the Reading Ancient Classics group.

I have only seen your post now (7 months later 😅), but that sounds like a very interesting adaptation of an ancient myth!

Oresteia

Aeschylus’ Oresteia is the only trilogy to survive from Ancient Greece. It tells the story of Clytemnestra’s murder of her husband Agamemnon in vengeance for the killing of their daughter, Iphigenia, whom Agamemnon sacrificed to the goddess Artemis in exchange for favourable winds to sail to Troy. It focuses on themes of gender, justice, and duty (to family, country, gods), and serves as a foundation myth for the Areopagus homicide court in Athens. It is an extremely important piece of literature, and influenced many later writers, including Sophocles, Euripides, and Seneca.

What do you think of the Oresteia, and in particular, how do you feel about the ‘justness’ of each of the killings? How do the killers (Agamemnon, Clytemnestra, Orestes) justify their actions, and how plausible are those justifications? In particular, why is Clytemnestra villainized to a greater extent than either Agamemnon or Orestes? Is this villainization fair? How did you feel about the outcome of the trial, and the votes of the jurors and Athena? Did you feel that justice had been done?

Orestes and Other Plays

Unlike Euripides’ & Sophocles’ Electra plays, which dealt with the build up to & execution of the act of vengeance, Euripides’ Orestes deals with the aftermath of the act - focusing particularly on the psychological & social ramifications of matricide. Orestes is driven to madness by a guilt he still struggles to take responsibility for, and the Argive citizens have turned on him in the wake of his crime. I’m interested particularly in how Euripides interacts with & subverts Aeschylus’ Oresteia: Aeschylus ended his trilogy with the inauguration of the Athenian homicide court, an institutional form of justice which brings the cycle of vengeance to an end & restores equilibrium; in Euripides’ Orestes, the characters eschew established legal proceedings & take justice into their own hands, resulting in a disintegration into extremes of violence, and a resolution reached only by the last minute intervention of a god. Aeschylus’ monumental trilogy is weighty with gravitas; Euripides’ play borders on the absurd, becoming almost a mockery of Aeschylus. The play is often considered a tragicomedy because of its slightly ridiculous ending. What did you think?