1 00:00:04,840 --> 00:00:08,480 In the humanities we see the aftermath of Orestes' action, 2 00:00:08,656 --> 00:00:13,413 Taking out his mother and her lover and trying to bring justice to his family by 3 00:00:13,413 --> 00:00:17,230 the old order of things. We remember in Homer how differently the 4 00:00:17,230 --> 00:00:22,574 story was u,h portrayed remember it was Homer, Homer held up Orestes as example of 5 00:00:22,574 --> 00:00:25,745 a young man that takes action even when its difficult. 6 00:00:25,745 --> 00:00:30,149 Well, sure he does that and but the focus that Aeschylus gives on the story 7 00:00:30,149 --> 00:00:34,553 something quite a bit different. Its not as though we can rush to a race 8 00:00:34,553 --> 00:00:37,195 Orestes and say we should all be like that. 9 00:00:37,195 --> 00:00:41,255 Instead I think, watching Aeshcylus' play, We think to ourselves, my goodness, 10 00:00:41,255 --> 00:00:45,900 What an awful savage situation to be in. Look here, poor Orestes, at the very 11 00:00:45,900 --> 00:00:49,492 beginning of the play as we meet him, hugging the omphalos. 12 00:00:50,730 --> 00:00:55,623 He's just stuck there at Delphi trying to attach himself to it to make sure that he 13 00:00:55,623 --> 00:01:00,825 has some kind of protection, that hugging of the omphalos is in connection with what 14 00:01:00,825 --> 00:01:05,346 we saw earlier in Homer's story, that getting hold of someone's knees, the 15 00:01:05,346 --> 00:01:09,124 contact that was involved there was thought to be protective. 16 00:01:09,124 --> 00:01:12,840 And in the getting a hold of the knees it was something where, 17 00:01:12,840 --> 00:01:17,544 Someone actually owed you, now, hospitality as a suppliant in their, in 18 00:01:17,544 --> 00:01:22,061 their, in their, in their eyes. And with Orestes getting hold of the 19 00:01:22,061 --> 00:01:26,640 omphalos he now has protection. He's, he's, the Furies are unable to get 20 00:01:26,640 --> 00:01:29,526 at him. You can see them in our depiction here, 21 00:01:29,526 --> 00:01:33,917 wonderfully on this vase. They are just laying around on the ground, 22 00:01:33,917 --> 00:01:38,371 they don't have enough to do. They can't get to him, because he's got 23 00:01:38,371 --> 00:01:43,640 himself in safe, safe, in a safe position, having making contact with that stone, the 24 00:01:43,640 --> 00:01:46,526 omphalos. Recall where that came from, you know, 25 00:01:46,526 --> 00:01:49,278 from Hesiod, the story. This is supposedly in, in, in the 26 00:01:49,278 --> 00:01:53,681 tradition the actual stone that Cronus swallowed instead of Zeus. 27 00:01:53,681 --> 00:01:59,033 It was the supplemental stone at the end it gets regurgitated up by Cronus and, and 28 00:01:59,033 --> 00:02:03,775 dropped right there in Delphi. So you can go to Delphi, and the stone, I 29 00:02:03,775 --> 00:02:07,230 showed you a slide earlier is actually still there. 30 00:02:07,230 --> 00:02:11,693 At least that's what the locals claim. This is the very same stone that was there 31 00:02:11,693 --> 00:02:16,377 in antiquity. That's what they claim and they claim also that Cronos had swallowed 32 00:02:16,377 --> 00:02:17,093 it. Who knows? 33 00:02:17,093 --> 00:02:20,400 [[COUGH]] So Orestes we meet at the beginning of the play hugging the 34 00:02:20,400 --> 00:02:23,210 omphalos. The ghost of Clytemnestra is haunting him. 35 00:02:23,375 --> 00:02:27,398 We've got Apollo and Athena hovering around, trying to keep an eye on the 36 00:02:27,398 --> 00:02:30,594 situation, trying to figure out what they're going to do next. 37 00:02:30,594 --> 00:02:35,113 In other words we have a very top people in the universe are, have eye on this 38 00:02:35,113 --> 00:02:39,687 situation and are trying to solve things. The Furies and Apollo begin with a debate 39 00:02:39,687 --> 00:02:41,725 over justice, What counts as justice. 40 00:02:41,725 --> 00:02:44,572 The two of them have different ideas about it. 41 00:02:44,572 --> 00:02:49,771 There's a long interlude by the Furies as they slither around and give us their own 42 00:02:49,771 --> 00:02:54,227 strong, vociferous statements about how justice works according to blood. 43 00:02:54,227 --> 00:02:58,621 Then, all of a sudden, the scene switches to Athens and we have straight, pretty 44 00:02:59,178 --> 00:03:02,892 straightforward court case. Athena comes in and addresses the furies, 45 00:03:02,892 --> 00:03:06,668 The court case starts. We've got witnesses who come up, we got 46 00:03:06,668 --> 00:03:10,381 cross examination. We have some statements by Aeschylus that 47 00:03:10,381 --> 00:03:15,128 are helping us, understand how the court case is suppose to unfold or kind of 48 00:03:15,128 --> 00:03:20,122 directions as to who goes first on how and how were going to count the votes and all 49 00:03:20,122 --> 00:03:23,412 these things. After the court case we've got witnesses 50 00:03:23,765 --> 00:03:28,053 cross-examination and then the jury decides, but they're deadlocked so Athena 51 00:03:28,053 --> 00:03:32,812 has to come in and solve the deadlock. She then decides in favors of Orestes. The 52 00:03:32,812 --> 00:03:37,747 Furies at that point are upset because the court case is not decided in their favor 53 00:03:37,747 --> 00:03:43,978 and they threaten to scorch the earth, But the Olympians smartly figure out a way 54 00:03:43,978 --> 00:03:48,871 to give the Furies their, their due. They create a place of honor underneath 55 00:03:48,871 --> 00:03:53,701 the court, in the ground underneath it, And the play ends with a procession in 56 00:03:53,701 --> 00:03:58,594 honor of the Furies as they're marched into their new home,, under the Athenian 57 00:03:58,594 --> 00:04:01,919 Acropolis. At stake in this play is a set of ideas 58 00:04:01,919 --> 00:04:05,620 about justice. Two systems are being placed next to each 59 00:04:05,620 --> 00:04:08,505 other. The older order system of justice and a 60 00:04:08,505 --> 00:04:13,461 new one that you and I as Athenians and classical Athenians watching this play. 61 00:04:13,461 --> 00:04:18,482 You and I are rightly proud of a new system of justice that we see emerging in 62 00:04:18,482 --> 00:04:23,015 our own democratic society. This is something that Aeschylus brings in 63 00:04:23,015 --> 00:04:27,030 to his play itself. Ideas of justice that are just emergent 64 00:04:27,030 --> 00:04:32,276 around the time he's writing this play are written into the play, as a kind of a 65 00:04:32,276 --> 00:04:37,846 character, built into the story. Remember this old order of justice, based 66 00:04:37,846 --> 00:04:40,954 on concepts like miasma, We talked about earlier, 67 00:04:41,149 --> 00:04:44,387 Contact with evil blood makes evil rub off on you. 68 00:04:44,387 --> 00:04:48,790 If you have contact with that evil blood, the Furies come to get you. 69 00:04:48,985 --> 00:04:52,994 The strengths of this system are, that it's very clear, justice is going to be 70 00:04:52,994 --> 00:04:57,400 done, according to ties of blood, And if someone does have blood on their 71 00:04:57,400 --> 00:05:02,041 hands, then they're going to get punished. There's no way to kind of weasel you're 72 00:05:02,041 --> 00:05:04,567 way out of it or talk you're way out of it. 73 00:05:04,744 --> 00:05:11,479 Aeschylus talks about this with respect to the, this contact. It is a system that's 74 00:05:11,479 --> 00:05:17,459 based on contagion, contact, and blood. This is what makes this old system work. 75 00:05:17,459 --> 00:05:23,050 And, it is thoroughly associated by Aeschylus with these Chthonic deities. 76 00:05:23,050 --> 00:05:28,486 You'll see I put the term up here. It's not, an obvious English word, 77 00:05:28,486 --> 00:05:32,407 But trust me, those of you who are going to cocktail parties, 78 00:05:32,592 --> 00:05:36,842 That where the language that's being spoken happens to be in English. 79 00:05:36,842 --> 00:05:39,491 Just toss this word out. It makes you sound, 80 00:05:39,491 --> 00:05:43,803 You'll sound very literate. Chtonic theaters, deities are those that 81 00:05:43,803 --> 00:05:49,040 are attached to the earth and we mentioned in our last video of Hesiod and the older 82 00:05:49,040 --> 00:05:51,812 order. Chthonic deities refers to all of those 83 00:05:51,812 --> 00:05:54,584 older order gods, Including the Earth herself. 84 00:05:54,584 --> 00:05:59,020 The pre-Zeus, pre-Olympian layers of divine powers are, are stuck in there. 85 00:05:59,020 --> 00:06:03,713 Throughout the play, Aeschylus lines up this older order of justice with these 86 00:06:03,713 --> 00:06:07,444 Chthonic divinities. He talks about them consistently as being 87 00:06:07,444 --> 00:06:11,958 involved in it, being pulled out to enforce it. When Orestes and Electra are 88 00:06:11,958 --> 00:06:16,531 trying to figure out what to do in a libation bearer, as we mentioned in the 89 00:06:16,531 --> 00:06:19,119 last lecture, They appealed to these Chthonic 90 00:06:19,119 --> 00:06:22,248 divinities. The Furies themselves are representative 91 00:06:22,248 --> 00:06:26,581 of this older order of divinities. And when they speak, they consistently 92 00:06:26,581 --> 00:06:31,214 place the kind of justice that they're after, which is based on contagion and 93 00:06:31,214 --> 00:06:36,012 contact, and blood, against the Olympian order or the different orders of justice 94 00:06:36,012 --> 00:06:38,395 that are going to show up in this newer world. 95 00:06:38,395 --> 00:06:43,925 So the old order and the old system of justice made as a counterpart to Olympian 96 00:06:43,925 --> 00:06:47,641 justice. This happens in lines 149 and 50, lines 97 00:06:47,641 --> 00:06:53,888 162 to 67, 365, other places too, where the older order of things that the, the 98 00:06:53,888 --> 00:07:00,055 Chthonic gods lined up with the idea of justice built into contact, contagion of 99 00:07:00,055 --> 00:07:04,958 blood, and all of that opposed to what the Olympians are up to. 100 00:07:05,195 --> 00:07:11,362 I thought I'd bring out just one line here, the Fury speaking lines 731 to 733 101 00:07:11,362 --> 00:07:15,000 in our translations we're used in for the class. 102 00:07:15,000 --> 00:07:20,837 Since you, a young god, would ride down my elder age, I must stay here and listen to 103 00:07:20,837 --> 00:07:25,108 how the trial goes, Being yet uncertain to loose my anger on 104 00:07:25,108 --> 00:07:28,881 the state. That's the statement of an old established 105 00:07:28,881 --> 00:07:31,871 divinity to a new young one, The Olympians, 106 00:07:31,871 --> 00:07:37,353 Trying to say that what you all decide here is going to have an effect on me, 107 00:07:37,353 --> 00:07:41,624 But it's a, it's a system that this person, the Furies, speaking as a 108 00:07:41,624 --> 00:07:48,042 collective, are not quite ready to say they belong to or that belongs to them at 109 00:07:48,042 --> 00:07:54,406 all, some new structure. The, story, as we see it unfold, recall 110 00:07:54,406 --> 00:07:58,849 what happens after the, After the Furies have the court case 111 00:07:58,849 --> 00:08:02,496 decided against them. Remember what, what happens to them, 112 00:08:02,496 --> 00:08:07,121 Just as in the case of Hesiod, When the Olympian gods overthrow the old 113 00:08:07,121 --> 00:08:12,135 order, and Zeus pushes them all under the Earth and closes them up down there. 114 00:08:12,135 --> 00:08:14,675 So, also at the end of Aeschylus' Oresteia. 115 00:08:14,675 --> 00:08:18,909 The older gods, here the Furies, are actually going to be interred, 116 00:08:18,909 --> 00:08:23,924 Put under the earth, and put into now a temple, where we're going to give them 117 00:08:23,924 --> 00:08:27,636 honor and worship. This is slightly different than Hesiod 118 00:08:27,636 --> 00:08:32,489 locking them down in a jail, But it is, a fine, Aeschylus finding a 119 00:08:32,489 --> 00:08:36,998 place, in the new order for the old order gods to have a role. 120 00:08:36,998 --> 00:08:40,450 Um., The old system of, Fury, of justice 121 00:08:40,450 --> 00:08:45,593 enforced by the Furies, had no way of dealing with the problems that were 122 00:08:45,593 --> 00:08:51,017 showing up in, or, Agamemnon's family. The House of the Atreus was just stuck 123 00:08:51,017 --> 00:08:57,076 according to this older system of justice. It had a, it consistently was, you know, 124 00:08:57,287 --> 00:09:00,740 putting on the family irreconcilable obligations. 125 00:09:00,740 --> 00:09:04,540 Orestes is the figure that is focused on in this trilogy. 126 00:09:04,540 --> 00:09:12,018 He was, it had to, by, by, by, by, by what was counted as being just by the laws of 127 00:09:12,018 --> 00:09:15,909 justice. He had to avenge his father. That was necessary for him. 128 00:09:15,909 --> 00:09:19,060 But at the same time, in order to avenge his father, 129 00:09:19,060 --> 00:09:23,127 He had to kill his mother. These, these are awful obligations and, 130 00:09:23,127 --> 00:09:27,194 and he knows, as well as anyone does that this is a terrible act. 131 00:09:27,194 --> 00:09:31,833 The old system of justice havehad no way of getting out of this cycle and of, 132 00:09:32,024 --> 00:09:37,045 retributive justice back and forth. Instead, what we have, is, a system that 133 00:09:37,045 --> 00:09:41,493 just closes in on itself, By the old order of justice, Atreus' house 134 00:09:41,493 --> 00:09:44,607 is doomed. Now there's something different that's 135 00:09:44,607 --> 00:09:47,467 going to happen in this second half of the play, 136 00:09:47,467 --> 00:09:52,488 When we turn to the, when we turn to the trial set in Athens overseen by the 137 00:09:52,488 --> 00:09:55,686 Olympian, Olympian deities we are going to open up a 138 00:09:55,686 --> 00:10:00,328 discussion of a new kind of justice that is possible. and Aeshcylus is very 139 00:10:00,328 --> 00:10:05,703 cleverly, I think, portraying events and cultural forms that you and I as classical 140 00:10:05,703 --> 00:10:08,757 Athenians, Let's all pretend that we are classical 141 00:10:08,757 --> 00:10:12,788 Athenians for a second. You and I as classical Athenians have seen 142 00:10:12,788 --> 00:10:17,430 these forms of justice emerging, even in our own lifetimes, and now we say to 143 00:10:17,430 --> 00:10:22,316 ourselves, my goodness, well, this history that we are living is playing a role in 144 00:10:22,316 --> 00:10:26,698 the solving of mythic difficulties. A crime that was so troublesome, so 145 00:10:26,698 --> 00:10:31,952 difficult for ancient ideas of justice to take care of is going to get solved by a 146 00:10:31,952 --> 00:10:34,800 contemporary institution of classical Athens. 147 00:10:34,990 --> 00:10:39,991 In the next segment, we'll start talking about how that idea of justice, the new 148 00:10:39,991 --> 00:10:45,181 idea of justice, centered on classical Athens, comes into Aeschylus' play to 149 00:10:45,181 --> 00:10:48,220 solve an otherwise absolutely insoluble problem.