1 00:00:04,780 --> 00:00:08,222 As we're watching this play, we ancient Athenians, 2 00:00:08,222 --> 00:00:12,156 Sitting in our theater, staring down at what's happening, 3 00:00:12,156 --> 00:00:17,846 The action that's happening on the stage. We can also see, looming up above us, one 4 00:00:17,846 --> 00:00:22,412 of the main features of what the play is supposed to be all about. 5 00:00:22,412 --> 00:00:26,837 There's the Acropolis right there, and it is magnificent to see. 6 00:00:26,837 --> 00:00:32,246 This in an old pre-copyright photo. It is magnificent to see and if you and I 7 00:00:32,246 --> 00:00:36,532 are out in this, in the, in the theater of ancient Athens and we're actually very 8 00:00:36,532 --> 00:00:39,383 close. We can see, right up above behind us,, 9 00:00:39,564 --> 00:00:43,004 The court that's being talked about in Aeschylus' place. 10 00:00:43,004 --> 00:00:47,591 So, what's being, the location of the performance is being set on stage. 11 00:00:47,591 --> 00:00:52,420 But the stage setting is not more than,, is, is a very short distance away,uh from 12 00:00:52,420 --> 00:00:55,920 the court itself, which you and I have in our own eyesight. 13 00:00:55,920 --> 00:01:00,087 And at the end of the play, when the Furies get marched underneath the 14 00:01:00,087 --> 00:01:04,548 Acropolis and put into a temple,uh right underneath the Earth,uh they could've 15 00:01:04,548 --> 00:01:07,598 marched right off the stage and gone right down there. 16 00:01:07,598 --> 00:01:11,439 We would've been able to see it, as those that were viewing the play. 17 00:01:11,439 --> 00:01:15,223 So, it, it's very much what we're seeing, it's very much embedded in the 18 00:01:15,223 --> 00:01:19,289 surroundings, the actual physical surroundings of the play as it's being 19 00:01:19,289 --> 00:01:22,847 performed in the Athens. It's also referring to important themes 20 00:01:22,847 --> 00:01:26,970 that are emerging in classical Athens. Remember, this is the birthplace of 21 00:01:26,970 --> 00:01:29,286 democracy. New, new system of, of rule is being 22 00:01:29,286 --> 00:01:32,279 instituted here. And when Aeschylus's play is first being 23 00:01:32,279 --> 00:01:37,350 performed in 458,uh the institutions of democracy were not many decades old. 24 00:01:37,350 --> 00:01:42,715 It was back in the year 510 B.C. When a group of people that were known as 25 00:01:42,715 --> 00:01:48,149 the tyrants,uh were eventually kicked out.uh Nowadays, the English term tyrant 26 00:01:48,149 --> 00:01:51,215 mostly is synonymous with a terrible leader. 27 00:01:51,215 --> 00:01:55,256 Then, it was a one man one rule kind of indicator. 28 00:01:55,465 --> 00:02:00,969 Some of these were worse than others, But the tyrants were these one man one 29 00:02:00,969 --> 00:02:06,194 rule kind of system,uh system and, and, for many, for centuries, they had ruled 30 00:02:06,194 --> 00:02:10,755 ancient Athens with the advent of democracy, they're kicked out and the new 31 00:02:10,755 --> 00:02:15,063 system is put into place., This new system has obvious strengths to 32 00:02:15,063 --> 00:02:17,906 it. I don't need to rehearse the benefits of 33 00:02:17,906 --> 00:02:22,202 having a democratic system of justice, a democratic system of society. 34 00:02:22,202 --> 00:02:27,102 These are the, the, the, the goodness of the system is constantly being tested over 35 00:02:27,102 --> 00:02:32,547 history and that's, of course, the right kind of thing and, presumably, democracy 36 00:02:32,547 --> 00:02:37,629 has its own arguments to justify itself. But it's surely at the time it's forming 37 00:02:37,629 --> 00:02:42,711 in ancient Athens a new form of ways of doing things, and it needs to have a kind 38 00:02:42,711 --> 00:02:48,040 of argument built into the play for it, and we can see in Aeschylus' treatment of 39 00:02:48,040 --> 00:02:53,791 this new system of justice,uh a reference to what's happening, happening in the 40 00:02:53,791 --> 00:02:59,106 democratic society around him. Remember, Athena at line 696, endorses 41 00:02:59,106 --> 00:03:04,057 this new form, she talks about no anarchy, no rule of a single master. 42 00:03:04,057 --> 00:03:09,881 Thus,thus I advise my citizens to govern. So, she jumps right in and says it's, it's 43 00:03:09,881 --> 00:03:15,633 time for just the citizens to be governing, governing and part of governing 44 00:03:15,633 --> 00:03:21,502 is going to be taking over questions of justice in a citizenry-based place of 45 00:03:21,502 --> 00:03:25,135 arbitration. So, we're going to remove what had been 46 00:03:25,135 --> 00:03:30,407 the purview of these ancient beasts, The Furies following the blood and 47 00:03:30,407 --> 00:03:33,541 attacking and counterattacking and revenge. 48 00:03:33,541 --> 00:03:40,220 We remove move that away and put it into a court of justice that's run by a group of 49 00:03:40,220 --> 00:03:45,909 people like you and I. Now, in order to talk about the virtues of 50 00:03:45,909 --> 00:03:50,122 this way of making things work and Aeschylus surely does that. 51 00:03:50,122 --> 00:03:55,585 We also have to understand some of what was different about this system and a new 52 00:03:55,585 --> 00:03:59,272 and different things there's always some sort of thread. 53 00:03:59,272 --> 00:04:03,551 The old order, for example, had a strong basis in traditional ties, 54 00:04:03,551 --> 00:04:08,027 Ties of family and clan were what were thought to be most important. 55 00:04:08,027 --> 00:04:10,750 Well now, The law, the state, the city,uh A new 56 00:04:10,928 --> 00:04:16,609 institution in the previous decades before Aeschylus was working on a, a complicated 57 00:04:16,609 --> 00:04:21,166 network of voting districts. These were things that started to claim people's 58 00:04:21,166 --> 00:04:25,309 allegiance and sometimes, these would run parallel to family interests, 59 00:04:25,309 --> 00:04:29,688 Sometimes they would run at, cross-purposes to what family interests 60 00:04:29,688 --> 00:04:33,476 are. The old system, in other words, had certain kinds of benefits. 61 00:04:33,476 --> 00:04:37,086 It was based on a tradition of family ties that was clear, 62 00:04:37,086 --> 00:04:41,110 It was easy to understand. All of us would endorse family ties as 63 00:04:41,110 --> 00:04:47,154 being an important thing. So it seemed as though things,uh in moving 64 00:04:47,154 --> 00:04:51,103 to this new system of justice, we're going to have to give some things up. 65 00:04:51,103 --> 00:04:55,899 In order to try to get a grip on what that is, I thought I'd just thought I'd just 66 00:04:55,899 --> 00:04:59,228 toss out a experiment for you, two possibilities. 67 00:04:59,228 --> 00:05:03,573 Imagine that there is a, a situation where a son does something wrong. 68 00:05:03,573 --> 00:05:08,256 A father comes in and punishes the son.uh Just thinking myself to my own situation. 69 00:05:08,256 --> 00:05:12,150 If my father came along and decided that he wanted to punish me, well, 70 00:05:12,150 --> 00:05:16,505 I would kind of just have to take it. I would have to sit back and say, well, 71 00:05:16,505 --> 00:05:20,665 you know, here's my father punishing me, this is what dad's do and I might 72 00:05:20,665 --> 00:05:23,815 disagree. I might say, this, of course, dad's got it 73 00:05:23,815 --> 00:05:26,402 wrong. I, I didn't understand the whole context. 74 00:05:26,402 --> 00:05:30,789 I'll, I'll, I'll, I'll try to state my case later, but I know I'm getting 75 00:05:30,789 --> 00:05:34,220 punished now. I might think the, I might think that the 76 00:05:34,220 --> 00:05:36,470 father is wrong, But I'm never going to say, 77 00:05:36,470 --> 00:05:38,991 This father has no right to punish me, his son. 78 00:05:38,991 --> 00:05:41,677 Of course, a father has a right to punish his son. 79 00:05:41,677 --> 00:05:45,953 That, that just goes with the territory. That's kind of built in to the order of 80 00:05:45,953 --> 00:05:50,228 things.um Again, I might disagree with what's happening, I might resist, I might 81 00:05:50,228 --> 00:05:54,614 struggle, I might toss up my hands, but in the end, I kind of know that this is 82 00:05:54,614 --> 00:05:58,232 something that I just sort of understand, it's just way things are. 83 00:05:58,232 --> 00:06:02,617 Fathers have the right to punish sons. Now imagine, if I've done something that's 84 00:06:02,617 --> 00:06:06,714 a little sketchy, a little wrong, and I'm walking past some stranger and the 85 00:06:06,714 --> 00:06:09,314 stranger says to me, you've done something bad. 86 00:06:09,314 --> 00:06:13,718 Let's say I, I jaywalked across the street and the stranger comes up to me and says, 87 00:06:13,718 --> 00:06:17,114 now I'm going to punish you, and starts to give you a punishment. 88 00:06:17,114 --> 00:06:19,555 What right does a stranger have to punish you? 89 00:06:19,555 --> 00:06:23,644 Now, if your father wanted to punish you for jaywalking across the street, you just 90 00:06:23,921 --> 00:06:26,461 have to take it. The stranger wanting to punish you for 91 00:06:26,461 --> 00:06:29,603 jaywalking across the street. Who are you to get involved in my 92 00:06:29,603 --> 00:06:32,149 business? You don't understand anything about me. 93 00:06:32,308 --> 00:06:35,597 I don't owe anything to you. You're just a person just like me. 94 00:06:35,597 --> 00:06:39,734 What's your position of authority for you to be in a position of punishing me? 95 00:06:39,734 --> 00:06:44,243 Now, imagine that our thought experiment moves away from issues of not all that 96 00:06:44,243 --> 00:06:48,168 much consequence where you get things that are socially awkward happening. 97 00:06:48,168 --> 00:06:52,358 Imagine that it moves into a venue where the thing that's being punished is 98 00:06:52,358 --> 00:06:56,654 something of great consequence and great import, for example, a murder and imagine 99 00:06:56,654 --> 00:07:00,155 that the punishment is hugely consequential and may result in the 100 00:07:00,155 --> 00:07:04,604 depriving of a person of their fortune, of their family, their family fortune. 101 00:07:04,604 --> 00:07:08,864 May the, involvement of, depriving them of their freedom, to lock them up for years 102 00:07:08,864 --> 00:07:11,513 and years. Could be even to depriving them of their 103 00:07:11,513 --> 00:07:14,785 own life, they could get a punishment that takes their own life. 104 00:07:14,785 --> 00:07:19,620 Now, you're going to have to take this new system in which strangers, 105 00:07:19,620 --> 00:07:24,717 Who are your peers, all the sudden have the power to mete out justice and you have 106 00:07:24,717 --> 00:07:29,568 to say, huh, do I trust people I've never met, total strangers to me, who are just 107 00:07:29,568 --> 00:07:36,686 like me, to now judge an issue, judgement against me that has real teeth, that could 108 00:07:36,686 --> 00:07:39,664 do horrible things to me in my own personal future. 109 00:07:39,664 --> 00:07:43,576 Would I rather have those kind of situations being decided within my own 110 00:07:43,576 --> 00:07:45,970 family, Where people know me, they know my 111 00:07:45,970 --> 00:07:50,349 strengths, they know my weaknesses, they surely know what contexts there are. 112 00:07:50,349 --> 00:07:54,319 They're going to give me the benefit of the doubt the best they can. 113 00:07:54,319 --> 00:07:59,353 They have a long term connection with me. Wouldn't I want them to decide what the 114 00:07:59,353 --> 00:08:02,852 appropriate punishment is for me rather than some stranger? 115 00:08:03,149 --> 00:08:07,775 It's surely the case that we would want that to happen because we would think that 116 00:08:07,775 --> 00:08:12,698 we would get off easier, but it could also be that even correcting for that just to 117 00:08:12,698 --> 00:08:16,612 say, yeah, I'd rather get off easy for the crime I know I committed. 118 00:08:16,612 --> 00:08:21,808 I think that most of us would at least agree that there's some help and having 119 00:08:21,808 --> 00:08:26,939 people that know you well trying to make a judgement about you, rather than having 120 00:08:26,939 --> 00:08:31,945 strangers make a judgement about you. So this new system has to figure out a way 121 00:08:31,945 --> 00:08:37,013 to justify itself to a group of people who may be uncomfortable being judged and 122 00:08:37,013 --> 00:08:40,580 punished by their peers, Strangers, who are their peers. 123 00:08:40,580 --> 00:08:44,230 As opposed to people they're use to having connections with. 124 00:08:44,230 --> 00:08:49,573 Now, in this new system there's no blood relation, we've got abstractions, we have 125 00:08:49,774 --> 00:08:55,518 now a law that we're supposed to follow and we have, peers and strangers who are 126 00:08:55,518 --> 00:08:59,526 meting out the authority. Aeschylus chooses to dramatize the 127 00:08:59,526 --> 00:09:04,269 Oresteia using this as a new kind of justice, the system that I've just 128 00:09:04,269 --> 00:09:07,675 described. It's not at all obvious that someone has 129 00:09:07,675 --> 00:09:12,685 to tell the Oresten story this way. Aeschylus makes it go in this direction 130 00:09:12,685 --> 00:09:17,695 and he makes it a story that overall is about the proper way of meting out 131 00:09:17,695 --> 00:09:20,886 justice. This old crime that the old system had no 132 00:09:20,886 --> 00:09:25,883 way of solving, it turned into a cycle of retribution out of which there was no 133 00:09:25,883 --> 00:09:29,384 escape. The house of Atreus famously turning in on 134 00:09:29,384 --> 00:09:33,724 itself by this old system of justice. Aeschylus moves in and says, ancient 135 00:09:33,724 --> 00:09:38,306 Athens, you contemporary people watching this play, you have created a system 136 00:09:38,306 --> 00:09:42,285 that's going to be able to solve this most knotty of all problems. 137 00:09:42,285 --> 00:09:44,998 And, in fact, this is what happens in the play. 138 00:09:44,998 --> 00:09:49,821 The climatic moment is when this court comes to a decision that counts as being 139 00:09:49,821 --> 00:09:54,463 just those in the audience, presumably think, yeah, there's some kind of justice 140 00:09:54,463 --> 00:09:57,959 being done here. You and I might disagree over the details 141 00:09:57,959 --> 00:10:01,154 of the argumentation, Some of them are things that, that 142 00:10:01,456 --> 00:10:06,049 contemporary observers of Aeschylus' drama are not going to with. 143 00:10:06,240 --> 00:10:09,036 But we've got a system that's being sewn up. 144 00:10:09,036 --> 00:10:13,484 And if we're classical Athenians, at least, our watching this saying to 145 00:10:13,484 --> 00:10:16,598 ourselves. You know, there is some promise to this 146 00:10:16,598 --> 00:10:19,903 new system. It can even solve this old crime or this 147 00:10:19,903 --> 00:10:23,780 old question of justice. Even more important, it takes the old 148 00:10:23,780 --> 00:10:28,673 system of justice based on the Furies and blood, and it gives them a new role. 149 00:10:28,673 --> 00:10:33,567 It builds a temple for them, puts them underneath in the cathonic area, as the 150 00:10:33,567 --> 00:10:38,015 kind of business and of this now human, this human court centered at the 151 00:10:38,015 --> 00:10:41,344 Areopagus. It now becomes a kind of harsh side, 152 00:10:41,581 --> 00:10:46,236 It's the violence behind what courts have a capacity to do. 153 00:10:46,236 --> 00:10:51,481 It now becomes institutionalized, Violence, thoroughly controlled and 154 00:10:51,481 --> 00:10:57,066 regulated by human institution. All of this in the end is authorized by 155 00:10:57,066 --> 00:11:01,669 Apollo and Athena. The Olympian gods are overseeing the whole 156 00:11:01,669 --> 00:11:05,518 process. And you and I as Athenians get to watch 157 00:11:05,518 --> 00:11:11,858 our court being shaped before our own eyes and having it solved something that even 158 00:11:11,858 --> 00:11:15,660 mythic times people were not wise enough to solve.