SUMMARY 

The final play the Eumenides begins with the Furies pursuing Orestes. 

Ηowever Apollo, with the help of
Hermes,helps him escape by putting the Furies to sleep and carrying him to Athens, under the protectio
n of Hermes. Klitemnestra’s ghost then wakes
up the furies, ordering them to avenge her .The Furies find her Orestes at the shrine to Athena. They ag
ree to hand over judgment of Orestes’ crimes to Athena. she sets up a trial made up of
Athenian citizens; Apollo defends Orestes, whilst the furies beg for justice .The vote is tied ,but Athena 
casts the deciding vote to save Orestes Athena also persuades the Furies to accept the decision ,changin
g the Furies names to the Eumenides, meaning the gracious ones .Athena rules that all trials be settled i
n court, rather than carried out personally,thus promoting democracy.
 
 
The Furies 
 
Three sisters :Tisiphone, The punisher, Maegera (jealousy) and
Alecto(Anger)-Alecto is also called the Unmentionable- there are two versions when it comes to the ori
gin of
the Furies, one of these affirms that they are born from the bloodshed caused by the castration of Uranu
s, committed by Kronos ; 
the other version claims that they were the daughters of the king and queen of
the underworld Hades and Persephone and they indeed lived in the underworld in the Tartarus

Τhe furies tormented and tortured τhe σouls of those who comitted terrible sins.
 
 the furies 
  
 
 
 
 
They
had wings and so they kept flying around her victims they victims were tormented 
and disoriented and had no idea where the next strike would come from; but t
he Erinies They were particularly keen on persecuting the murders of parents. 
these were ferociously persecuted; in these cases the furies demanded the death 
of the murderer. 
 currently the most famous case of persecution carried out by the furies was t
he one of Orestes, son of Agamemnon her mother, the queen Klytemnistra, co
nspired with her lover on the death of King Agamemnon

About the world and the reality of the play :

Code of ethics : Honor the gods, honor the stranger, honor the parents. According to Erinyes
Orestes must be punished for killing his own mother because that is what is just for centuries and
no one is above this law. “If bright water you stain with mud, you nevermore will find it fit to
drink.” They insist on that throught the whole play; their persistence reaches a climax during the
scene in which Orestes is grabbing the statue of Athena and they are struggling to bring him
down and send him to the Realm of the dead.
Athena’s reaction: Calm and curious about the bizzare gathering upon her statue. She intends to
research, what happened. Reflection of a new, rising legal system in which a code of ethics or an
oath is not enough for the punishment of the trial of someone that has broken an oath or the law.
Orestes has the chance to elaborate on his deed and the reasons that he committed murder.

Same number of votes for both cases. Athena's isthe "casting vote" that decides the case: "ισόψηφος’’
does not mean indecisive. It means equal votes, which in this case are, as Athena has explained,
decisive. So far from perpetuating contradiction, the equal votes serve to resolve it in a highly
Peter Rose also argues for a movement toward resolution, using a Marxist approach to suggest a
progression from the aristocratic world in Agamemnon to at least visions of democracy to
Eumenides.
According to Albin Lesky, There is absolutely no doubt that the praise of the Supreme Court is
related to events that exposed the aristocratic body that until then handled all trials, from any
political power and influence in 462 BC.

Important counter-subject: Simply put, the resolution achieved in Eumenides comes only at the
cost of a progressive diminishment of human stature and initianly at the cost of a progressive
diminishment of human stature and initiative. This di- minishment is apparent throughout the
final play, which begins with a scene dominated by gods: Apollo, the Erinyes and Athena and the
conflict ends with the confrontation between Athena and the Erinyes. Yes, Orestes has a speak-
ing part in the trial, and a jury of humans plays its god-designated role in moving toward a
verdict, but the strong impression left by the trial is of Orestes as a pawn argued over by the
divinities who surround him: Apollo, the Erinyes, and Athena . need for a powerful father
figure; religion, necessary to help us restrain violent impulses earlier in the
development of civilization, can now be set aside in favor of reason and science.
indeed, in the trilogy's final two hundred and seventy lines, humans are
mute.23
So where is the (human) democracy in that?
he climactic moment we might have expected. Not only does he bestow full credit for his acquittal
on the gods?Athena, Loxias, "the Third Savior"?without a word about his own contribution or
that of his fel- low-humans, the Athenian jurors (Eum. 754-61), but as soon as he leaves we realize
that the larger issues at stake in the trial, and the trilogy, remain unresolved. The climax is still to
come, and it will come in a scene conducted entirely by divinities, and in the absence of Orestes.
it, "The morally debased persuasion of Clytemnestra . . . give[s] way to the morally responsible
rhetoric of Athena." Noting humanity's "unique endowment" of speech, Heath comments,
"[T]he Oresteia can be read as a battle for who can speak, who is silenced, who controls the
conversation, who is pers uaded.
Athena: in this final play, humans do little per- suading. Orestes' initial appeal to Athena is a cry
for help, not an act of civic persuasion (Eum. 23

The Court of the Areopagus, this crowning Athenian achievement, comes into being without a word
from an Athenian citizen, and the collective impact of the votes cast by its human jurors pales before
that of the single vote cast by Athena
The Double standard depicted in adrogynous Athena

Iannis Xenakis: ORESTEIA 

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