The ruthless hand of callous Fortune has robbed the world and civilisation of all save seven of the dramatic works of Aeschylus, the first and perhaps the greatest of European tragedians. Of these seven extant plays, there are only three which directly and formally present any problems of blood-vengeance. These three plays are concerned with a single theme, the murder of Agamemnon, King of Argos, by his wife Clytaemnestra and by her paramour Aegisthus, and the subsequent vengeance of Orestes. In the remaining plays (if one excludes the Persians) one finds occasional and incidental references to bloodshed, which require and will receive from us only a brief discussion. It is the Oresteian ‘trilogy’ which is our first and chief concern.
Horace[1] mentions the following maxim as one of the canons of ancient dramatic art:
(‘Either follow tradition or create new themes which are congruous and consistent’). Now these alternatives are not necessarily mutually exclusive unless the tradition is rigidly stereotyped. A considerable scope for inventive genius and dramatic skill was provided by such legends as those which centred around Orestes. We are convinced that there existed quite a number of variants in the story of Orestes.
First of all, there was the original Homeric story, to which we have already referred.[2] In this account, Orestes slew his mother and Aegisthus in strict accordance with the Achaean system of vendetta. His act was not murder but just revenge. There is no suggestion of an ancestral curse, of an indefinite series of murders continuing from generation to generation. Blood has been shed; blood is avenged by blood. It was the Achaean principle, whether for strangers or for kinsmen. There is no trace of divine interference or of social justice. Apollo has no place or part in the story: there is no trial or official execution. We cannot discover even the element of psychological conflict. The Achaeans were soldiers, trained in the stern school of war. Neither emotion nor family religion stood between passion and its satisfaction.
But the legend or legends which are found in Aeschylus present very obvious and important points of difference. Are we to suppose that Aeschylus was not aware of any other tradition save that which Homer gives, that all the non-Homeric elements in the Aeschylean account are Aeschylus’ own invention, and that in this invention he was guided by the laws and the atmosphere of his own time? This is not our view of the matter. The Homeric legend, in our opinion, had a long and varied career before Aeschylus was born. It came down through many centuries, reflecting, as it came, many different atmospheres, and assimilating many different points of view, as it took shape in various localities.
Thus there was, we maintain, an Arcadian legend which told how Orestes came as an exile—a murder-exile—to Azania and to the town called Oresteum,[3] and how he died there as the result of snake-bite.[4] It is impossible to reconcile this version of the story with another which represented him as having married Hermione[5] and as having reigned as King of Sparta; and with another story of his reign as King of Argos.[6]
Again, we shall see that there probably was an Argive legend, which mentioned a trial of Orestes at Argos at which he was condemned to death. From a legal point of view, this is the most important variant of the Homeric saga. Euripides gives it due prominence in the Orestes, but Aeschylus and Sophocles ignore it altogether.
Again, in what we conceive to have been the Attic forms of the legend, there must have been at least two variations. In our analysis of the Attic law concerning justifiable homicide,[7] we pointed out that at one point the conception of homicide as justifiable may be very closely related to the conception of homicide as extenuated. The short duration of the exile penalty in cases of manslaughter or of slaying in a ‘passion’ when the act is ‘forgiven’ indicates a very slight legal difference between these two standpoints. Yet they cannot of course be regarded as identical, and they cannot even be fused or blended without a considerable indifference to consistency. In the transition from the Homeric age to historical times it was inevitable that Apollo, the champion and founder of the ‘pollution’ doctrine and of homicide-purgation rites in Greek lands, should have been drawn into the story. He is ignored, as we shall see later, in the Argive legend of Orestes. But he is found in all the other variants. Yet his rôle is not simple and definite. He purges Orestes certainly: but what was the nature of the guilt which he has purged? Was the act of Orestes justifiable or extenuated? In Homer the act was justifiable from the Achaean standpoint; but the legend-makers of the ‘pollution’ era could not accept that solution. For them, the immunity of Orestes could only be explained by the direct intervention of Apollo in advance. But this intervention was at one stage conceived as a complete justification, at another as a mere extenuation of the vengeance of Orestes. We shall find traces of both these conceptions in Aeschylus. In Sophocles the conception of Orestes’ act as justifiable matricide is predominant: in Euripides it does not appear at all. The interpretation of Orestes’ act as extenuated matricide does indeed appear in Euripides, but it is subordinated to another viewpoint which is quite incompatible with this—namely, the viewpoint of the Argive legend which ignores Apollo and regards Orestes as a common matricide who is worthy only of death.
One or two other minor variations may be traced in the Oresteian legends. Thus we read of a sentence which is very suggestive of perpetual exile in the Electra of Euripides,[8] while in other plays there is a reference to the penalty of exile for the duration of a single year, a penalty which is elsewhere extended by a decree of Apollo so as to permit Orestes to embark upon a second expedition—this time to the Tauric Chersonese![9] Again, the story which was invented to explain the Athenian Pitcher-Feast, and which is mentioned in the Iphigenia Taurica of Euripides,[10] is quite inconsistent with the Aeschylean legends, for in the former case Orestes was represented as ‘polluted’ when he came to Attica, while in the latter he is said to have been already ‘purged.’
The legal aspect of the Oresteia is further complicated by what we may term archaic assumptions. We hope to show presently that the Attic legends of Orestes would have been legally unintelligible if the Athenian legend-makers had not assumed that Orestes came to Athens as an exile after he had slain his mother, and not, as Homer said, before. Again, if they had not assumed that the Areopagus court, which in historical times did not normally judge cases of homicide between strangers, did judge such cases in early times, and that its verdict of acquittal, which was ordinarily a proof of the innocence of the accused, could at one time have been applied to a person who admitted the fact but pleaded justification, the legal analysis of this legend would have been impossible. We have seen[11] that before Solon the Areopagus court adjudicated in all kinds of homicide cases. The attribution of such functions to the Areopagus by Attic legend is therefore an archaism, even though it is an ‘historical’ archaism. We cannot be certain whether the archaism was transmitted from the sixth century onwards or whether it was ‘invented’ by later minds by a process which is described as ‘conscious archaising.’ Again, according to the legend which conceived Orestes’ act as extenuated matricide, he had already served a period of exile before he reached Athens. In this account, therefore, the Areopagus merely decreed him immune from further penalties. But such a decree was never associated with the historical Areopagus! Thus it is clear that the Oresteian legends sometimes contain ‘unhistorical’ archaisms. We must now consider in detail the Aeschylean presentation of the story.
The ‘Agamemnon.’
The outstanding event of the Agamemnon drama, the pivot upon which the plot revolves, and the catastrophe which gives it meaning, is the brutal murder by Clytaemnestra of her husband, Agamemnon, King of Argos, after his triumphant return from Troy. In this play Aeschylus follows in the main the Homeric story, but there are one or two non-Homeric features which must be indicated.
In the gloomy chants of the Chorus, in their veiled fears of coming danger, one finds something more than the echoes of a political conspiracy, one finds the unmistakable influence of the creed of the ancestral curse. Are we to suppose that Aeschylus invented this non-Homeric doctrine which, in his own day, was a ‘creed outworn’? Such a supposition is improbable, for we know from Stesichorus[12] that this doctrine had already in the sixth century been incorporated in the legend. We have already[13] attributed the floruit of this doctrine to the post-Homeric age of chaos. Such beliefs survive in dogma and in ritual long after men have ceased to adhere to them. In Aeschylus the ancestral curse began with the famous ‘feast of Thyestes,’ but Euripides attributes its origin to the murder of Myrtilus.[14] The Erinnyes of the children who were brutally slain by their kinsman Atreus continued to pursue the children of the slayer. Hence, in this play Cassandra, the prophetess, cries out on her arrival at Argos[15]:
Again[16]:
In these lines we can hear the rumblings of the coming storm. When the storm has passed, when the curse has found its mark, Clytaemnestra echoes the same sentiment, thus representing herself as the divine instrument of an avenging Justice. She says to the Chorus[17]:
A second important point of difference between the Homeric story and that of the Agamemnon is the reference in the latter story to the ‘sacrifice of Iphigeneia,’ the daughter of Agamemnon, at the hands of her father, at Aulis, and the interpretation of this act, by Clytaemnestra, as a justification for the death which she inflicted on Agamemnon. It would take us too far afield if we attempted to explain, at this stage, the origin of the story of the sacrifice of Iphigeneia. England gives an excellent account of this difficult problem in his edition of the Iphigenia Taurica of Euripides,[18] and we shall recur to this topic when we come to deal with that play. The following points, however, may here be briefly indicated:
(1) The ‘sacrifice’ of the daughter of Agamemnon to Artemis at Aulis would certainly have been referred to by Homer if it had been an historical fact, or even if the poet had heard a rumour of such a strange event.
(2) This sacrifice, which is used as a ‘plea’ by Clytaemnestra, and which is a well-established element in the Oresteian legends of Attic tragedy, could hardly have been the invention of Aeschylus, for it tends to diminish the guilt of the villains of the drama, Clytaemnestra and Aegisthus, and it is far too complex a story to be attributed to the invention of a single mind. The confusion of the Homeric word Iphianassa with Iphigeneia, which was merely a cultus-epithet of the goddess Artemis, the invention of a mock human sacrifice at Aulis which was suggested by a sham rite of human sacrifice at a temple of Artemis in the Attic coast town of Halae, and the translation of Iphigeneia to a Tauric temple of Artemis, where Orestes was said to have interviewed his sister—all these facts suggest, we think, the ‘ecclesiastical’ origin of the story.
(3) The doctrine of the ancestral curse would not have mediated the identification of Iphigeneia with Iphianassa. According to this doctrine the death of Agamemnon was a natural result of the curse of Thyestes. But the sacrificial death of Iphigeneia cannot naturally be connected with such a curse.
(4) The Attic legend which regarded Orestes as justified by Apollo cannot be supposed to have contributed to the genesis of the Iphigeneia story. It is not probable that such a legend, which conceived Clytaemnestra as a murderess and an adulteress, would have also presented her as the heroic avenger of an act of sacrificial bloodshed which was performed in obedience to a divine command.
(5) It is probable therefore that, although this legend of the ‘sacrifice’ may have originated independently of the Oresteia, it was in conjunction with a second Attic legend which decreed for Orestes a temporary period of exile, and which depicted a less implacable but persistent pursuit by the as yet unappeased Erinnyes, that the story of the sacrifice of Iphigeneia developed and took final shape. For when once a legend has admitted in the hero a degree of guilt, it is so much easier to admit also a degree of excellence in the villain. Hence it is that in Aeschylus, who follows mainly the first of these legends, this ‘plea’ of Clytaemnestra is not presented in a natural or forcible manner.
It is only at the end of the play, when the spectators are so fully convinced of the amorous infidelity, the designing malice, the flagrant hypocrisy and the murderous brutality of this queen of Argos, that they cannot attach much value to the boastful words which proclaim her love of her children, that she says to the railing critics in the Chorus[19]:
In regard to the penalty which Clytaemnestra expects to suffer, the language of Aeschylus is deliberately vague. The Chorus say[20]:
Clytaemnestra interprets these words as a threat of exile:
We have seen[21] that an option of exile would have been permitted in such cases in historical Attic law, for husband and wife were not usually akin in blood. But the Achaeans did not recognise the exile penalty in any circumstances. We have said[22] that the penalty of death and private vendetta were the characteristics of Achaean vengeance. They also characterised at various periods the blood-feuds of noble or royal families whose conduct was uncontrolled by law. Thus, in fourth-century Macedonia blood-vengeance was still of an Achaean or quasi-Achaean type. Pausanias[23] tells how Antipater, the brother of Alexander, ordered the Macedonians to stone to death the queen-regent Olympias, and himself poisoned the sons of Alexander: how in turn Alexander called in Demetrius, the son of Antigonus, and succeeded by his help in deposing his brother Antipater and in punishing him for his matricide. Thus Aeschylus, without knowing anything of the different modes of vengeance of the Achaeans and the Pelasgians, was enabled, by the predominance of Achaean vengeance in Homer, and the occurrence of quasi-Achaean vengeance in outlying regions, to visualise[24] correctly the Achaean vengeance of Orestes, and the Achaean punishment of Clytaemnestra. Hence he makes the Chorus say[25]:
Hence the exile to which Clytaemnestra[26] refers is an Achaean ‘flight from death.’ But the penalty of death was the ultimate aim of Achaean vengeance; and therefore the Chorus say[27]:
The ‘Choephoroe’
In the Choephoroe Orestes slays his mother and her paramour. Two important deviations from the Homeric saga are manifest throughout the play: (1) the conception of homicide as a ‘pollution,’ and (2) the command which is given by the Delphian Apollo to Orestes, to slay his mother in vengeance for his father’s murder. Thus Orestes says[28]:
There is no doubt about the meaning of these words. Apollo, the oracle-god of the Delphian Amphictyony, which, as we think,[29] contributed so much to the historical homicide code of Greece, has issued a definite command. It must be obeyed. If it is executed, its execution must be just. No penalties can attach to such avenging, but punishment unthinkable follows failure to avenge. Orestes tells us that he would at least have lost his life if he did not slay his mother. But a real Homeric Achaean would not have suffered for failure to avenge. Was this Aeschylean conception, then, derived from contemporary Attic law? Would an Athenian citizen of historical times have suffered in such circumstances? We have seen[30] that pecuniary ‘private settlements’ were actual events, though not, as we think, legal events in historical Athens. In such cases a relative of the slain would have benefited by failure to prosecute.[31] But we have also shown that in Athens a relative of a slain person who did not prosecute could be proceeded against on a charge of impiety: and it is probable that, if convicted, he would have been degraded from citizenship and sentenced to perpetual exile. Are we then to suppose that Aeschylus deliberately imported into the Homeric story conceptions which he borrowed from contemporary Attic law, and that he also imported Apollo as a deus ex machina whose rôle it was to propound Athenian law to an Achaean king? This hypothesis is very unsatisfactory. We prefer to believe that the non-Homeric elements in this play had gradually found their way into the legend as it was transmitted down the ages. It is, of course, unfortunate that the legend-makers did not remember that Orestes lived at a time when murder was not regarded as a ‘pollution’: but in a legend which evolved through a long period of time it was inevitable that sentiments and customs of a later age should have been attributed, anachronistically, to the people of earlier periods.
We have already referred[32] to the anger which it was believed that a slain person felt towards his relatives who did not avenge him, and which contributed to the ‘pollution’ of delinquent relatives. It is only from this standpoint that we can understand Orestes’ reference to the evils that would follow his failure to avenge[33]:
The reference to the State in this quotation is noteworthy. In such a reference we find ourselves very far removed from the Homeric saga and the days of private vengeance! The brand or stigma which is mentioned is that civic degradation which is known as ἄτιμία. We cannot suppose that these actual words were recorded in the legend which Aeschylus follows. The statement is much too long for a real oracle! Did Aeschylus then derive this sentiment from contemporary Attic life? We have seen that the pollution-doctrine was closely associated, in Greece, with the interference of the State in matters of homicide. It follows that the importation of this doctrine into the Oresteian legend would have naturally introduced, also, the conception of Orestes as a State criminal, worthy of State punishment. When once the legend received, so to speak, this colouring, the general atmosphere of the story would have suggested such words as are attributed in this quotation to Orestes. We believe that these words of Orestes are the creation of Aeschylus’ own mind, but we do not attribute to Aeschylus the creation of the legendary atmosphere which makes such words intelligible.
There is a subtle suggestion of the clash of clan-feuds which characterised the transition period of the Dark Ages in the Aeschylean description of the conflict of viewpoints between the Erinnyes of Agamemnon and the Erinnyes of Clytaemnestra—a conflict which it is improbable that Aeschylus invented. The avenging goddesses are conceived as real beings: they are not mere delusions or ‘extrajections’ of a distracted mind. We have already referred[34] to Orestes’ fear of the ‘darkling arrow’ which may be hurled at him by the Erinnyes of his father. On the other side, however, stand the Erinnyes of his mother, who are equally formidable. Orestes says[35]:
This conflict Apollo, of himself unaided, is unable to avert. But we shall now see how Apollo and Athene, in conjunction, persuade the Furies of Clytaemnestra to accept ‘appeasement.’ It was thus, as we conceive it, that the religion of pollution and political synoekism ultimately overcame the resistance of the clans to new laws and new gods. It was thus that, after years of chaos and transition, ghosts came at length to obey State gods and State laws as in tribal life they obeyed the ‘dooms’ of the tribe.
The ‘Eumenides’
The main theme of the Eumenides is the trial, at the Athenian Areopagus, of the Argive Orestes who had slain at Argos his mother and her paramour, and who upon acquittal returns to Argos to occupy the throne of his murdered father. We admit that the exaltation of the Areopagus is one of the motives of the dramatist. There is much to be said for the view of Blass[36] that the conflict between Apollo and the Furies made this ‘divine drama’ worthy of Athenian interest. But we maintain that Aeschylus would not have selected such a theme for presentation to an Athenian audience, if it had not also contained a difficult legal problem which was calculated to thrill the emotions of those litigious men of Athens who were at once judges, litigants and legislators. The play was produced at the time of the curtailment of the powers of the Areopagus by Pericles and by Ephialtes. Aeschylus suggests[37] that it was this Council which held the first trial for bloodshed in a barbarian world. In this view there is no protest against the reform of Ephialtes, for such a reform seemed to recognise that homicide-trial was the sole and proper function of the Areopagus.
Whether the play was produced before or after this reform it is impossible to say. Bury holds[38] that the play is not a protest after the event, that, on the contrary, Aeschylus approved of the reform. Other scholars maintain, however, that Aeschylus was opposed to democratic interference with the established privileges of an ancient Council, and that he left Athens on this account and died in Sicily of a broken heart.[39] Our reading of the play inclines us to support the view of Jevons which will be manifest from the following extract[40]: ‘The Eumenides,’ he says, ‘was produced in 458 B.C. ... at a time of great political excitement in Athens. The oligarchical party had just been defeated on both their foreign and their home policy. Their foreign policy was alliance with Sparta.[41] The home policy consisted in opposing such changes in the constitution as would give more power to the people, and at this time also consisted particularly in supporting the powers and privileges of the Areopagus against the attacks of the democratic party.... The democrats under Ephialtes succeeded in depriving the Areopagus of its political powers, leaving to it only the right of trying cases of homicide....[42] The Eumenides is sometimes said to be a panegyric on the Areopagus and sometimes even to have been a call to all good men to join in preserving to it the political powers which it had long enjoyed. But it is probable that the Eumenides was produced after the reforms of Ephialtes: and as Aeschylus represents the Aeropagus to have been founded to try cases of homicide, the very class of cases which Ephialtes left to it, it is more reasonable to regard the play as having been intended to reconcile those who strove for the preservation of the political powers of the Areopagus to the new state of things which Aeschylus shows to be in harmony with the original nature of the court. This view receives some support from the fact that the alliance with Argos to which the oligarchic party was opposed is also shown by Aeschylus (727 et seq.) to be in harmony with tradition, myth, and religion.’[43]
Verrall takes up a similar attitude to this problem[44]: ‘It is clear,’ he says, ‘from the tone of the final scene and it is generally recognised that Aeschylus did not intend to appear at least as a partisan, that he supposed himself to be a peacemaker and to have advanced only what would be generally approved. He justifies trial by jury: he extols the Areopagus as a court of crime: he leaves room, but in vague terms, for a larger execution of its vigilant protection.... He is for the middle way, “neither tyranny nor anarchy.”... But the attitude of the poet is not that of a practical politician. Religion, always first with him, in the Eumenides covers the whole field.’
We do not agree with Verrall’s view that Aeschylus justifies ‘trial by jury,’ if Verrall means by this phrase trial by popular juries such as the Heliasts of the post-Solonian age. The Areopagus was never invaded by the Heliasts. Its procedure was fundamentally different from that of Heliastic courts. Its personnel was composed of archons and ex-archons. It is to such judges that Athene refers when she says that she will select, for the trial, the best of her citizens.[45] There was for the Areopagus no election by lot, such as characterised the popular juries,[46] nor is there in the phrase ἀστῶν τῶν ἐμῶν τὰ βέλτατα any reference to the Ephetae, the aristocracy of birth. Aeschylus either never knew, or he has forgotten, or he has perhaps deliberately ignored the aristocratic character of the pre-Solonian Ephetae-Areopagus.[47] It is the plutocratic Solonian Areopagus of the sixth century and of his own day that he puts before us. When Verrall says that ‘Aeschylus leaves room ... for a larger execution of its vigilant protection,’ he implies that Aeschylus opposed the reform of Ephialtes. As this view commits Aeschylus to the exaltation of plutocracy, we prefer, with the scholiast, to give a narrower interpretation to the phrase εὑδόντων ὕπερ ἐγρηγορὸς φρούρημα[48] and we translate it: ‘the vigilant custodian of vengeance for the slain,’ whereas Verrall takes the ‘sleepers’ to mean ‘the citizens when they are asleep at night.’
We think, moreover, that Verrall overestimates the religious as distinct from the legal aspect of the play. Apollo and the Furies seem to us to present a rather sordid picture at the trial. If Apollo had maintained his traditional rôle of Olympian autocracy, he would have been more impressive. As it is, he condescends to discuss the justice of Orestes’ act with rival deities of a quasi-diabolical type: and his arguments are rhetorical rather than logical. He advances the absurd opinion that the real parent of a child is the father not the mother.[49] This view and the similar opinion of Athene[50] may of course be explained as a characteristic sentiment of the Eupatridae, an Athenian noble caste, who were excluded from the worship[51] of the Semnai Theai at Athens, a sentiment which is here directed against the Erinnyes, by way of anticipation, in view of their prospective metamorphosis into Semnai Theai.[52] But it is more probable that the argument represents an undignified squabble between Olympian gods and Chthonian goddesses, between the deities of the ‘pollution’ religion and of new-born Greek States, on the one hand, and the old clan-ghosts who are here conceived as Titans, on the other.[53] The Furies are not even consistent with themselves. At one time[54] they pose as the avengers of all kinds of homicide: at another[55] they are only concerned with kin-slaying. The Olympian exaltation of ‘the father’ is met, swiftly and flippantly, in the manner of repartee, by an objectionable quotation from Olympian theology! ‘Did not Zeus,’ the Furies ask,[56] ‘bind in chains his aged father Kronos?’ The answer of Apollo is even weaker than the question: ‘to fetter,’ he says, ‘is not to slay....[57] Remedies for the one are easy, remedies for the other there are none!’ If then the religious aspect of the trial of Orestes had been predominant or paramount in the mind of Aeschylus, we do not think that he would have presented the gods in such a frivolous and futile manner to an audience of Athenian citizens. He would, much more probably, have followed a different form of the legend, which is found in Euripides,[58] and is mentioned by Demosthenes,[59] and which represented the Twelve Olympian Gods as the judges of Orestes’ guilt. Hence we believe that the dramatic aspect of the story was the more important one for Aeschylus. The essence of tragedy is conflict, and there is conflict in the Eumenides, between rival emotions, between rival ethical theories, between rival gods and goddesses, first, last, and all the time! But next in importance to the dramatic motive we place the legal motive of the play. We do not agree with Verrall in maintaining[60] that ‘what is certain is that in the law of the matter, the law proper, he (Aeschylus) took little interest. The ultimate issue of his play is not legal but religious.... It matters nothing that the prosecutors, in different parts of the play, assume, respecting the limits of punishable homicide, views which are not compatible: or again that the question of the validity of the oracular command, though it is a main point in the defence, and though the jury must be supposed to disagree about it, is not argued, unless contradiction is argument, at all.... On law, therefore, and the history of law, the Eumenides is but a dubious authority: and the reader or expositor of Aeschylus as such is not bound or perhaps entitled to consider the play from this point of view.’ This kind of reasoning seems to us very suggestive of a well-defined mental attitude, namely, that of a writer who knows little or nothing about law and who, in addition, does not want to know anything about it. We do not assert that the legal problems of the Eumenides are simple, but they cannot for that reason be ignored. The more difficult a problem is, the greater is the prestige of a court which can decide the issue. Athene confesses the difficulty of the problem in this play and she requests the citizens of Athens to solve it.[61] What an exaltation of religion! What a contempt for law!
The legal complexities of the trial of Orestes arise, we have said, from the circumstances which attended the evolution of the legends. The introduction of the story of Apollo’s command to Orestes was intended by the legend-makers of the ‘pollution’ era to explain and to reinforce the Homeric conception of Orestes’ act as justifiable matricide. That Apollo’s command justified his act is the legal plea of Orestes, in this play; at least, it is the predominant plea.
Thus he says to Apollo[62]:
We may naturally ask: ‘Why is Apollo appealed to for judgment, when he has been cited as a witness?’ We have argued that, in Attic law, if we may trust Plato,[63] matricide could never have been legally justified. On the other hand the Apolline doctrine of pollution declared that the defaulting avenger was polluted. The pollution doctrine permitted and did not condemn ‘private execution.’ It was synoekised State power which made such execution criminal.[64] The conflict which is presented by these different points of view was too grave a matter for the decision of a human court. The command of Apollo was regarded by the legend-makers as the only solution of that conflict. The only question which a human court could be reasonably expected to decide was the question whether Apollo did actually command the act of Orestes. If the actuality of such a command was established, the acquittal of Orestes was inevitable. The only alternative possibility was a verdict of ‘responsibility for murder’[65] against Apollo! But such a verdict, in the religious atmosphere of the ancient City, would have been unthinkable.
So far therefore the legal issue in the Eumenides is comparatively intelligible. But we must call attention to the peculiar fact that in the play Orestes is represented as having been tried not at Argos but at Athens. If Orestes had slain his mother at Athens, his act would have been, in Athenian law, a case of homicide between foreigners, and such an act, though normally in Aeschylean Athens tried by the Palladium court, could quite conceivably, in pre-Solonian times, have been tried by the Areopagus. But Orestes did not slay his mother at Athens, and therefore the case would not have come before any Athenian court, unless Orestes intended to reside at Athens, and his right to reside at Athens was challenged by the relatives of the slain. Now, in Greek extradition law these relatives[66] had no right to object to the residence of the slayer ‘abroad’ unless he was guilty of wilful kin-slaying, as, for instance, of wilful matricide: for the penalty for kin-slaying in historical times was death, without the option of exile. It is precisely on such a charge of wilful matricide that the Erinnyes, in this play, prosecute Orestes. To that extent their prosecution was lawful. But the fact that the prosecution took place at Athens implies that Orestes intended to live in Athens as an exile, at least for a time. We have pointed out that, according to Greek extradition law, the relatives of the slain could have compelled the fellow-citizens of the slayer to try him or to extradite him if he fled to them for refuge. But in cases of kin-slaying it is probable that any State to which the slayer fled could have been compelled to put him on trial before they received him as an exile, or otherwise to expel or extradite him. Yet the avenging relatives were not compelled to accept a verdict of acquittal in any court as a complete restoration of the slayer to social and religious communion, just as in certain cases of kin-slaying the relatives were not compelled to admit the slayer to domestic communion, even when his own State court had permitted his return from exile. Hence, in the Oresteia, a verdict of acquittal brought in by the Athenian Areopagus in regard to a foreign Argive kin-slayer was primarily intended to legalise the residence at Athens of Orestes, but it could not have legalised his return to Argos unless the relatives of the slain accepted the verdict of the Athenian court as a final verdict of innocence, and ceased, of their own accord, from further prosecution. Now, the legends of Orestes seem to differ in their account of the ‘appeasement’ of the Erinnyes of Clytaemnestra. In some legends, as in that upon which is based the Iphigenia Taurica of Euripides, the Furies do not accept the verdict of the Areopagus, and continue to pursue him over land and sea. The fact that they can drive him out of Athens is due to their divine power. In law, ordinary human relatives could not have done so. But it is clear that, in the absence of unanimity in regard to the attitude of the Erinnyes to the Areopagus, the Attic legend-makers who emphasised the connexion of Orestes with the Areopagus must have assumed that Orestes intended to reside, at least for a time, as a homicide-exile at Athens. Now there is no evidence in Homer of such an intention on the part of Orestes. In Homer, Orestes went to Athens before, not after, he slew his mother. Hence the whole basis of the Attic legends of Orestes is a pure assumption, without any historical foundation.
The main difficulty which the ancients found in the post-Homeric legends of Orestes was the interpretation of the command which Apollo gave to Orestes. Some legends, of course, such as that which we have called the ‘Argive legend,’[67] did not include any reference whatever to such a command. But in the Attic legends, which represent this command as an essential element in the story, there is no precise and definite answer to the question: ‘Did this command justify the vengeance of Orestes or was it a mere “extenuation” of his guilt?’ We have said that the conception of this command as a complete justification predominates in the Eumenides, though the Erinnyes naturally object to this interpretation. But the command may also be regarded as an abnormal psychic factor which would make it possible to interpret the act of Orestes as ‘kin-slaying in a passion,’ or extenuated kin-slaying, which is akin to involuntary homicide. It is only thus that we can explain the reference in certain forms of the legend to a penalty of one year’s exile: and to other details of punishment which are never associated with voluntary homicide. The Furies, in the Eumenides,[68] find it difficult to conceive that Orestes will ever return to his domestic religion. Now Plato[69] asserts that a son who slew his parent in a passion could not, unless the dying parent ‘forgave,’ return again to his domestic hearth, even though he could return, after a period of exile, to his native State. We cannot suppose that the Furies, in the Eumenides, represent an attitude of ‘forgiveness’ on the part of Clytaemnestra, and hence we could not expect them to accept the possibility of Orestes’ return to his native home in Argos. But the mere mention of such a detail suggests a plea of quasi-involuntary matricide. A verdict of acquittal on a plea of justifiable slaying is precisely the verdict which the Erinnyes in Aeschylus, before their ‘conversion,’ cannot recognise. But they might have accepted as an alternative to their charge of wilful matricide a charge of extenuated matricide. Such a charge, such a conception of Orestes’ guilt, is very prominent in a form of the legend which Euripides gives.[70] But even in Aeschylus this conception is not altogether absent, though it is very much suppressed, perhaps because it was inconsistent with the dominant viewpoint of the Aeschylean drama. Thus, Orestes suggests that before he came to Athens to stand his trial he had already atoned for any element of guilt which was involved in his obedience to Apollo. He says to Athene, before the trial[71]: