In the queen's mind, the murder of her husband was simply an act of revenge for the earlier death of her daughter.

Agamemnon's wife Clytemnestra and her lover Aegisthus, hoping to rule Argos together, have conspired against him to kill him upon his return. In first play Agamemnon, the victorious king of Argos has returned home after the Trojan War, bringing with him a concubine, Cassandra. There was also a satyr play, the lost Proteus. The Eumenides was the third play of a trilogy, The Oresteia, with the remaining two tragedies being Agamemnon and Libation Bearers. He sees in the play the conflict of two Rights-of justice absolute and inexorable with the relative justice of a civic community-of the lex talionis with equity and he sees in the reconcilement of the Eumenides a mysterious identification of Vengeance and Grace.The Eumenides is a play written by Aeschylus (c 525 – 455 BCE), the “Father of Greek Tragedy,” the most popular and influential of all tragedians of his era. The gods of light fight with the gods of darkness, and overcome.’ Verrall's explanation is allied to this but more refined.

The lower view, that guilt lies in the deed, is embodied in the pursuing Furies, and here conflicts with the higher view that the innocent heart must be saved…. Sidgwick holds that in the Eumenides ‘the stage is lifted from earth to heaven: it is the powers of light, Apollo and Athena, who are active to protect the morally innocent against the powers of darkness, the Erinyes and the shade of Clytaemnestra, who persecute the technically guilty. It is hardly easier for us to give a clear answer to the problem which puzzled those Athenians and we have a further problem which they were spared-what did Aeschylus think? on what grounds did he acquit Orestes? what did he mean by his solution?Įditors and critics have answered these questions differently.

Can he be held guilty for an act which racial custom demanded and a god sanctioned? And yet, shall matricide go unpunished, or can that man claim to escape from the Erinyes, whose right and duty to avenge a mother is no less certain than a son's right and duty to avenge his father? The jury could not make up their minds: their votes were equally divided. A man kills his mother at the order of a god, because she killed his father. In the play of Aeschylus the problem before the first jury of the Areopagus was this.

Aeschylus the eumenides