Summaries of Ancient Greek Tragedies and Comedies (original) (raw)
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La presenza degli infanti nelle religioni del Mediterraneo antico: la vita e la morte, i rituali e i culti tra archeologia, antropologia e storia delle religioni. A cura di Chiarra Terranova. Roma, Aracne Editrice. Di prossima pubblicazione (2014)
In Greek tragedy, Orestes’s childhood is closely linked to his father’s tragic destiny and to the expectation of punishment for his father’s murderers. Orestes is the avenging child, upon whom the task of killing those who murdered Agamemnon and thus doing divine justice is incumbent. In "Iphigenia at Aulis", by Euripides, Orestes is depicted as a baby on his sister’s lap on the verge of being offered as sacrifice to the goddess Artemis. Euripides’s tragedy is the only one to include Orestes still as a child and, despite being compared to a small bird (a metaphor commonly used for children in Euripidean poetry), he is at the same time the embodiment of vengeance, so that his mere presence on stage becomes an omen for fulfilment of a tragic fate. In "Electra", by Sophocles, he appears as an adult, but in the first verses of the prologue, the Paedagogus recalls the manner through which he saved the baby Orestes and raised him with the aim of avenging his father’s murder. In "Choephori", by Aeschylus, his childhood is constantly evoked, either in the recognition scene between him and his sister Electra or in Clytemnestra’s dream, in which Orestes, as a serpent, is breastfed by his mother; or in the words of his nurse, who fondly recalls the little baby that she had taken care of; or, furthermore, in Clytemnestra’s attempt to dissuade Orestes from his revenge through showing to him her naked breast. All things considered, this paper will show how Orestes’s childhood is frequently called for in Greek tragedy and how the expectation of vengeance that is still to materialise hangs over it, so that an adult, upon killing his father’s murderers, Orestes is able to assure both fulfilment of his fate and the justice of Zeus.
Courting the Erinyes: Persuasion, Sacrifice and Seduction in Aeschylus's Eumenides
: At the end of the Eumenides, Athena draws on the discourses of propitiatory sacrifice and amatory persuasion in order to successfully persuade the Erinyes to give up their wrath and accept cult honors in Athens. Athena thus founds the cult of the Semnai with an act of rhetorical propitiation and, through the erotic element of her persuasive speech, offers the Erinyes the surprising role of beloved objects, who will be "wooed" by the Athenians in imitation of her own gentle persuasion. , ' , the daunting task of confronting the defeated Erinyes falls to Athena. Angered by the judgment of the newly-established Areopagus court, the Erinyes threaten to vent their wrath on the Athenians in the form of deadly plagues (782-87). These plagues will arise from "poison in return for [their] suffering" (ion antipenthē, 782), which the Erinyes will release into the land, thereby continuing the cycle of retributive violence that has defined the action of the Oresteia to this point.
Courting the Erinyes: Persuasion, Sacrifice, and Seduction in Aeschylus's Eumenides
Transactions of the American Philological Association, 2013
At the end of the Eumenides, Athena draws on the discourses of propitiatory sacrifice and amatory persuasion in order to successfully persuade the Erinyes to give up their wrath and accept cult honors in Athens. Athena thus founds the cult of the Semnai with an act of rhetorical propitiation and, through the erotic element of her persuasive speech, offers the Erinyes the surprising role of beloved objects, who will be "wooed" by the Athenians in imitation of her own gentle persuasion. introduction at the end of the eumenides, after orestes' acquittal and departure, the daunting task of confronting the defeated Erinyes falls to Athena. Angered by the judgment of the newly-established Areopagus court, the Erinyes threaten to vent their wrath on the Athenians in the form of deadly plagues (782-87). These plagues will arise from "poison in return for [their] suffering" (ion antipenthē, 782), which the Erinyes will release into the land, thereby continuing the cycle of retributive violence that has defined the action of the Oresteia to this point. This impasse is the moment of truth for the entire trilogy. If the Erinyes are unwilling to accept the jurors' verdict, Athena's attempt to end the cyclical violence of the lex talionis will fail and the threatened plagues will extend the deleterious effects of the crisis in Agamemnon's household into the Athenian *Part of this paper was presented at the Classics Colloquium in the Department of Classics at the University of Georgia, and I would like to thank the members of the audience, especially my colleagues and students, for their insightful questions and suggestions. I would also like to express my gratitude to Meredith Safran for her comments on an early draft and to thank the editor of TAPA, Katharina Volk, and the anonymous readers for their suggestions. Unless otherwise indicated, all translations are my own.
GREEK TRAGEDY | The Queen on Stage. Female Figures of Regality in Aeschylus [2020]
Skenè. Journal of Theatre and Drama Studies, 2020
The figure of the Queen is the protagonist of two Aeschylean tragedies: Persians and Oresteia. The staging of Persians, which took place in 472 BCE in Athens, probably caused shock among the Greek spectators of the tragedy at the Theatre of Dionysus, on the slopes of the Acropolis, and in particular among Athenians. In particular, the main character that stands out at the centre of the dramatic composition is the Queen: a mother that is anguished for the fate of her son Xerxes, justifying his errors and presenting him as a disturbed and neurotic being, striving to emulate his father, and moreover misled by bad companies that – the Mother says – have instigated him to perform the insane military campaign against Greece. The dramatic emphasis is on the royal figure of the Queen mother, on her care for the image of power, for the dignity of the king’s body, up to her concern for the integrity of the garment of her son Xerxes, torn after the defeat of Salamis. On the set of the early theatre, the second, superb, figure of royalty is Clytaemnestra. Before Aeschylus, the saga of Orestes, as we can reconstruct from literary and iconographic sources, was a traditional story, an epic saga in which the main characters were all male: Agamemnon, the king; Aegisthus, the tyrant; Orestes, the young hero who avenges the murder of the legitimate king – the king-father – and regains the throne. The tradition of this story is interrupted by Aeschylus’ dramaturgical invention. His new Oresteia does not focus on Orestes’ glorious enterprises. Its protagonist is now Clytaemnestra. She is the main character of the plot and is at the centre of the representation: alongside her, there is the usurper, her lover, Aegisthus. Echoing Ernst Kantorowicz’s seminal study The King’s Two Bodies, under the guise of the King, Clytaemnestra unveils her body: yet, hers is not the king’s double body – the natural king’s corpse doubled in a symbolic regal body – but a female one, the body of a mother, the body of the Queen. The male gendered epic – the saga – ends precisely at this turning point and incipit tragoedia.
Clytemnestra as a Nightmare to Patriarchy in Aeschylus Tragedy, The Oresteian Trilogy
2019
Clytemnestra is a powerful, rebellious, controversial character who dominates in Aeschylus’s tragedy, The Oresteian Trilogy. In this play, Aeschylus reflects the perception of women in patriarchal democratic Ancient Greek society by Clytemnestra who is a “non-ideal” image of woman. She exposes the imposed “ideal women” identity on females by the male dominant Athenian sociological system by rejecting it. She is a powerful character, because she has political aspirations; she displays masculinity, and she chooses a sexual partner other than her husband. At the time Athens was in transition to be a democratic society which was male oriented. Therefore, women with the qualities of Clytemnestra are considered as destructive. This play is important because Aeschylus demonstrates the mechanisms of patriarchy by the character of Clytemnestra, and moreover confirms the new system. I will study Clytemnestra in The Oresteian Trilogy concentrating on the facts of perception of women in democra...
Quaderni Urbinati di Cultura Classica, 2018
La tragedia Orestes, una de las últimas obras de Eurípides, comienza con el hijo de Agamenón postrado en el lecho, luego de haber asesinado a su madre. Tras dialogar con su tío Menelao y su abuelo Tíndaro, e intentar convencer al pueblo de Argos de que no lo condene a ser lapidado, el joven acepta la propuesta de su amigo Pílades, que consiste en matar a Helena, y la de su hermana Electra, quien le propone tomar como rehén a su prima Hermíone. Cuando se disponen a llevar a cabo su plan, que incluye quemar el palacio, los tres conspiradores son detenidos por el dios Apolo. El drama parece dividirse en dos partes, la primera caracterizada por el padecimiento y la degradación física de su protagonista, y, la segunda, dónde el personaje presenta un alto nivel excitación. Sin embargo, un cuidadoso estudio del accionar y el discurso de Orestes permite identificar una continua alternancia entre estos dos polos a lo largo de la tragedia que expone la configuración de una forma particular de locura y otorga unidad a la obra. The tragedy Orestes, one of the last plays of Euripides, starts with Orestes lying in bed, after murdering his mother. After talking with his uncle Menelaus and his grandfather Tyndareos, and trying to dissuade the people form Argos from stoning him, the youth agrees to his friend Pylades’ and his sister Electra’s proposal. The former suggest killing Helen and the latter taking his cousin Hermione hostage. When they are about to carry out the plan, which includes burning the palace down, the three plotters are stopped by Apollo. The play, according to part of the critics, is divided in two parts: the first is characterized by the suffering and the physical degradation of the main character, and the second where he shows a great level of excitement. However, a thorough analysis of his behavior and discourse allows to identify a continuous alternation between this poles throughout the tragedy. This exposes the configuration of a particular form of madness and offers unity to the play.