SOURCE: Beck, Robert Holmes. “Moral Lessons in Aeschylean Drama.” In Aeschylus: Playwright Educator, pp. 14-41. The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1975.

[In the following essay, Beck explores the Greek moral code and how Aeschylus treated it in his plays.]

“Zeus, who guided men to think // who had laid it down
that wisdom // comes alone through suffering.”

(Aga. 176-78)¹

The Greek moral consensus reached beyond Athens and included other Greek cities in a community of religious and moral values. The contributions that Aeschylus made to this consensus were those of the tragedian, who persuades his audience to learn wisdom through observing the suffering of others. The audience is not deceived by a pretense that it is relatively easy not to transgress by restraining a desire either for wealth or for power or even for status. The playwright is no Plato who has Socrates resort to duping the public by telling them an old Phoenician tale. Aeschylus will not forget the pressures men have on them because of conflicting responsibilities: Orestes, who has responsibility as the sole male heir to Agamemnon and thus has the responsibility of avenging his father's murder, is at the same time the son of the murderess and thus has responsibilities to her. In the case of Orestes, what is righteous to do? Like all the ‘heroes’ of Aeschylus' tragedies, Orestes has to decide. However tortuous the dilemma, Aeschylus showed his heroes making decisions. As I shall argue, Aeschylus thought these decisions were made freely, however many pressures acted on the hero. The kind of man Aeschylus wished for, he let the Erinyes sing of in the Eumenides: “The man who does right, free-willed, without constraint …” (Eum. 550-1) Aeschylus must have wanted the audience to realize that everyone must think because everyone is vulnerable—and everyone acts.

… Greek history up to Aeschylus' day had shown an enlargement of responsibility among more and more of Athens' citizens as more and more of them became parties to decisions of public policy. A less able playwright would flatter them to solve the riddle being played out. Aeschylus would not have felt that temptation; the Greeks loved difficult riddles. Some of the riddles live on like the puzzling prophecies of the Delphic oracle or the long remembered riddle of the Sphinx, finally solved by Oedipus. In any case, Aeschylus made his heroes' decisions, the turning points in his plays, so subtle and so complicated that they justified a scene of judgment, which I think took up most of the third play in an Aeschylean trilogy. Aeschylus obviously hoped to keep his audience in suspense. I have no evidence outside the tragedies to call on. The “hard evidence” that scientists seek is not given us and we must rely on the design that might have fitted the moral lessons Aeschylus wished to teach. With only the Eumenides, as believer, and the Seven Against Thebes to act as examples of third plays, I shall try to make a case for thinking that Aeschylus could have used a long judgment scene to make the moral case crystal clear. There needed to be just such clarification before the trilogy ended. After so much ambiguity had been introduced as a challenge to the thinking of members of the audience, Aeschylus must have known it was wise pedagogical strategy to clarify critical points. …

In reading the tragedies we have a glimpse of a master—little more than a glimpse, though, because of a good deal of corruption of the text as well as the inevitable ravages of time and repeatedly new versions of the plays. There is much of the original we never will know, but our starting point is firm because it is part of the moral code, on which there was consensus. Aeschylus built on the foundation of the moral code, putting pathei mathos (wisdom comes along through suffering) in a dramatic format. It will take all of this [essay] simply to give the essence of that moral code. The immediate task is to sketch the minimal essentials of the Greek view of morality: after all, the Greek moral code was the abstract material out of which Aeschylus built the concrete situations of his tragedies, and was the lifeblood of his teaching.

For even an incomplete catalogue of Greek moral values, the virtue of justice, dike, must stand first. “Dika, dika” (LB. 461) was the anguished cry of Orestes caught between his obligations as the son of Clytemnestra and also the son of Agamemnon, whom his mother had murdered. “What shall I do, Pylades?” Orestes begged of his friend; “Be shamed to kill my mother?” ([Libation Bearers; hereafter LB] 899) The dilemma was true to the superior fashion in which Aeschylus wrote his dramas. The dramatic end was well served, and Aeschylus, as he did with all the crucial decisions in his plays, had taken for his pivot a keystone of Greek moral philosophy, the concept of what was righteous, what was just.

If dike was the alpha of the Greek morality, sôphrosynê (self-knowledge and self-restraint) was its omega. Sôphrosynê was the wisdom that comes to men whether through their own suffering or from the suffering they observe. Sôphrosynê is that to which the audience can aspire in the third play of a trilogy, at least a playwright can hope that that has helped a member of the audience to become sophos. When men have reached sôphrosynê they will have learned to be righteous, to respect dike. This reality dictates the order of this [essay], its progression from dike to sôphrosynê, all the while acknowledging that dike and sôphrosynê are not to be kept at arm's length. Binding them is the concept of the Mean (Metron), a complicated idea that includes the connotation that in the cosmic order nothing is either to exceed or fall short of its proper place. Brought into the affairs of men, the Mean connotes an understanding that human life is limited by death and that within one's life excess, boasting for example, is never to be exhibited. The Greeks meant a very great deal by the Mean, the sum of that wisdom being stored up in the maxims (gnomai) attributed to the Seven Wise Men,² among whom Solon almost always is listed. Principal among these were “know yourself” (Gnôthi sauton)—that is, “realize that you are mortal”—and “nothing in excess” (Mêden agan).

Aeschylus did not depart from the conventional wisdom; he reinforced it. In fact, scarcely anyone questioned it. Even the most advanced of the abstract thinkers, the Pythagoreans, for example, were thoroughly orthodox in preferring the Limited to the Unlimited. This preference was no more than the standard Greek option favoring the Mean, the measured, which was validated by the sacred injunctions, Mêden agan and Gnôthi sauton, with all that these connote for a life of moderation. Even “obey the laws,” sacred and secular, directly related to the Mean for it was because man was a man that he needed the constraint of the law. Had one asked for a brief definition of law in order to understand man's need, it would have been that the law reflected the cosmic order. The Law was the law of nature. Had one pressed to know what was meant by the law of nature, the response would have been that the cosmic order was a collection of Means, that is, of what was dike for this or that mortal and this or that immortal. The cosmic Mean, then, was the aggregate of Means, sometimes known as the justice of Zeus. Only a madman, one out of his senses, would seek to be free of conformity: Aeschylus presents us with such a man in the character of Prometheus.

For some of the Pre-Socratics the cosmic order may have been thought of as amoral, an attribute of physis and nothing more. Were that so, the opinion would have been held by a minority and one in which Aeschylus was not to be found. For Aeschylus maintenance of the Mean was a matter of ethical prudence necessary for peace and prosperity. To put it all in a single sentence, the essence of the Aeschylean message was a disjunctive if-then proposition: if one desired the peace and general well-being the family and the polis, for men, and for citizens, then the Mean had to be the moral code.

THE FATAL FLAW.

The terms we have noted were crucial to the Greek moral code and thereby to the first play of an Aeschylean trilogy in which the code always was violated. Because Aeschylus wished to convince people that they could avoid the unhappy consequences of transgressing, the plays had to present characters who erred of their own free will.

The connotation of hamartia (“fatal flaw”) is that virtue is equivalent to knowledge (of what is righteous) and vice ignorance. In other words, the transgressor does not know what is righteous, sometimes because he or she is overcome by drink, or such powerful feeling as excessive anger, or illness, or is seduced or persuaded to do what ought not to be done. For the Greeks there was no excuse for being swayed and, therefore, every person enjoyed freedom of will or was responsible and could be held responsible.³ As we shall see the Iliad and Odyssey had any number of examples of even a morally strong man being misled or overcome.

Aristotle was to make the “fatal flaw” very well known but the concept can be found in such a play as the Agamemnon (vv. 212, 502, 1197) or in the Prometheus Bound (vv. 9). Hamartia, hamartanô, and exhamartanô (PB. 947), in the sense of moral transgression, were consistent with Aeschylean morality. But only the person who truly transgresses suffers from a moral flaw in his or her character. This is the person who does what ought not to be done, who is illegal, who is ou themistos. (PB. 262, 268, 577, 645). The character of the Agamemnon in the Agamemnon—not the dead Agamemnon of the Libation Bearers—is flawed by an excess in his military role of commander-in-chief. It is this excess that allows Agamemnon to kill his daughter and to carry on a long war, and one in which sacred places are violated and the moral code generally transgressed in the extreme.

Even in the few surviving plays not all of Aeschylus' characters are tarnished with hamartia. The characters in Aeschylean tragedy were neither consummately evil nor consummately good; they were characters with which the audience could sympathize. The situations were persuasive. King Pelasgus has a personal agôn: he wants to preserve Argos from the ravages of war; but he also wishes to have the city-state obey the moral code, which dictates that suppliants must be protected. The daughters of King Danaus come as suppliants and warn the king: “Zeus, the suppliants' god, is terrible in anger.” (Suppl. 346) Aeschylus shows a king distraught: “… I see overwhelming troubles everywhere; // Disasters press upon me like a river in flood. // Here I am launched upon a deep and dangerous sea // Where ruin lurks, and no safe harbour is in sight.” (Suppl. 468-71) Righteousness lies with what the suppliants ask. How will the king decide? Will he decide righteously? The King laments the war that might come if Aegyptus' fifty sons, who have been pursuing the maidens, desiring marriage, wage war on Argos. “Is it not in the end a bitter price to pay, // That men for women's sake should soak the earth in blood?” (Suppl. 476-7) King Pelasgus asks. In the very next lines, Aeschylus shows that the King does not have hamartia; his character is morally sound and he knows what is right to do: “Yet Zeus protects the suppliant, and I must fear // His anger, which of all things most is to be feared.” (Suppl. 478-9) In the Eumenides, Apollo says much the same thing. (Eum. 232-4) For Aeschylus, supplication was not to be taken lightly.

In play after play it is the same: whenever a leading figure in the drama chooses the unrighteous course, the flaw in his character can be detected. This does not mean that Aeschylus is unrealistically harsh. There are important people in the tragedies who are pathetic but in each case Aeschylus—always the moralist—points out some important flaw. Even figures customarily thought altogether pathetic fail the moral test. The three most pathetic who come to mind are Cassandra in the Agamemnon, Io in the Prometheus Bound, and if we can imagine the sequel to the Suppliants, Hypermestra. In the cases of Io and Hypermestra, there are extenuating circumstances; they are more to be pitied than punished. Io is almost the most pitiable, but the audience would have been expected to be on guard, the Io story being presented by Prometheus, himself deluded in his rage against Zeus.

Although we have but a fragment of the satyr-play Amymone, which followed the Danaid trilogy, we know that Amymone is one of the Danaids, that she is persuaded by Poseidon to yield herself to him, and that from that union is born Nauplius, progenitor of great men. The Danaid trilogy, of course, has argued the case for marriage and the eros that must precede it. Io did not yield to Zeus, as Amymone did to Poseidon. But we can be sure that Aeschylus did not mean for Zeus' desire for Io to be thought more brutal than that of Poseidon for Amymone. Incidentally, there is another wanderer in the Prometheia, Heracles, who appears in the Prometheus Unbound. As Io, Heracles is a victim, not of Zeus, but of the jealous wife. Heracles, and Io, were “driven by Hera's hate” (PB. 591), a “victim of jealous plots” (PB. 601). Was Aeschylus warning women not to be blinded by jealousy that may lead to excessive hate? Aeschylus would have taught a lesson while creating a fine bit of symmetry in his writing of the two final plays of the Prometheia.

And what of Cassandra? Cassandra promises to yield to Apollo in return for the gift of prophecy, but she breaks her word. Io can be pitied; she is held back by maidenly fear. But what of Cassandra? Aeschylus intended for his audience to realize that Cassandra was seriously ill—mentally ill, we would say today. “Oh, flame and pain that sweeps me once again! My lord, // Apollo, King of Light, the pain, aye me, the pain!” (Aga. 1256-57) Did Aeschylus wish to have Cassandra seem pitiable? Yes, but the pitiableness of Cassandra only reinforces Aeschylus' hard moral line. Her transgression has made her incurable. Cassandra can be pitied, but not healed. Story has it that Cassandra wished the gift of prophecy so that she might assist her city, Troy. In the Agamemnon Aeschylus does not have Cassandra say anything but that “Apollo was the seer who set me to this work.” (Aga. 1202) That is, Cassandra has accepted the gift of prophecy in return for having intercourse with Apollo. “I promised that to Loxias, but I broke my word.” (Aga. 1208) It makes no difference that we moderns might not be upset by a broken promise; Aeschylus wished to have promises thought sacred. As pitiable as Cassandra is, she has to die, and from her story the audience learns a hard lesson about promises.

But after all their suffering, Io and Cassandra are left with at least some recompense. Cassandra has to die but Aeschylus had the Elders of Argos praise her with what was high praise for the Greeks. “Woman, be sure your heart is brave; you can take much … there is a grace on mortals who so nobly die.” As for Io, Prometheus prophesies the restoration of her mind (PB. 848-9) and the Suppliants tell how Io gave birth to a child by Zeus, (Suppl. 312) who healed Io. After all to have a child by Zeus the Greeks thought a splendid honor.

As for Hypermestra we shall see that there was no dearth of stories of how she lived happily ever after with her husband, Lynceus. Hypermestra, while she is deprived of reason by himeros, really does not transgress at all in not going along with the plan to murder the sons of Aegyptus. I believe that there was a judgment scene in which this is made evident. What a wonderful opportunity Aeschylus had in which to argue Hypermestra's case even though she did disobey her father! But more of this later. Our attention for the moment must be on the general moral law and the pivotal doctrine of pathei mathos.

To make sense of pathei mathos, the absolute heart of Aeschylus' moral philosophy, it is necessary to know that he regarded the second play of the trilogy, the play of punishment, as crucial. The ‘suffering’ was in that play. To no one's surprise, this second play contained more than simply justified punishment; it also introduced a potential transgression, whose assessment set up the judgment scene of the third play. The moralist who taught pathei mathos was a playwright. We can only admire, rueful that so many teachers today cannot make their moral teachings as intriguing. Aeschylus mastered that objective without making his moral position any less stern. And it was stern.

Complementing Aeschylus' unwavering belief that a transgression invited the censure of the immortals and inevitably would be succeeded by atê, was his assurance that there was no relief—none whatever—from constant individual moral responsibility. “Not to do wrong” (Eum. 85) was continuously being preached in Aeschylus' tragedies. If one did wrong, there was no way to avoid punishment—no forgiveness, no mercy, no charity. Nor was there an evolution that relegated punishment, represented by the Erinyes, whom Aeschylus found admirable for dramatic purposes, to the first play in the trilogy. Punishment was not to be left behind as belonging to earlier times, or to monarchy, while the trilogy presented an evolution toward persuasion or something else more suited to the Aeschylean polis.⁴ Aeschylus believed just as much in punishment when he wrote the third play as when he wrote the first or second. Athena did persuade the Erinyes to become Eumenides in the third play of the Oresteia, but that meant nothing else than that the third play was not one emphasizing punishment. As Aeschylus might have said about his formulation of the trilogy, punishment was appropriate to the earlier plays; but its absence from the third, symbolized by the Erinyes becoming Eumenides, did not mean that Aeschylus thought that the lex talionis belonged to the bloody monarchical past. Aeschylus might have added that Orestes really could not have been guilty. After all, was not this the third play whose ending would show the virtue rewarded and vice punished?

Aeschylus did not use language that indicates he believed in anything similar to the Christian idea of grace, or forgiveness of a transgression. “The wages of sin is death” comes closer to Aeschylus' meaning. It is vital to be clear about this. The moral position of Aeschylus is exactly as unrelenting as it appears to be. Consider the matter of grace (charis).⁵ It is difficult to generalize on the true meaning of charis except to say that charis rarely, if ever, connotes forgiveness of sin.

We have argued that Aeschylus would not have wished Greeks to count on charis. No amount of charity from Olympus would hold back the Erinyes. To speak less anthropomorphically, punishment was a “law of nature”: the doer of wrong would be punished, or else his progeny would be punished. (LB. 400-3 and Aga. 373-74)

What could have been an embarrassment for Aeschylus was his challenge to orthodox opinion, as well as to the priesthood of Apollo at such purificatory temples as Apollo's at Delphi. While we do not intend to introduce Aeschylus' perception of the immortals in this [essay], Apollo demands attention: the Greeks gave Apollo a specific role vis-à-vis their notion of the right thing to do. It only requires a moment's reflection on the Eumenides to see the point. The participation of Apollo in the Eumenides was suggestive of how important to Aeschylus was the sacred law of which Apollo was the chief mantis (wise man) or chrêsmologos-mantis.⁶ The chrêsmologoi were presumed expert in this sacred literature, a good deal of which contained prediction of future events and, therefore, was material for seers, religious persons who could foretell the future. Because they were basically religious functionaries, it was inconceivable that what was to happen would not be just.

As a prophet, chief of all prophets and the ‘patron’ of prophets, Apollo was to be thought incapable of telling an untruth. This was strongly stated in the Eumenides where Aeschylus has Apollo tell the court Athena has established: “… I shall speak justly. I am a prophet, I shall not // lie. Never, for man, woman, nor city, from my throne // of prophecy have I spoken a word except // that which Zeus, father of Olympians, might command. // This is justice (dikaion). Recognize then how great its strength.” (Eum. 615-19) These lines were Oliver's basis for saying that when all other chrêsmoi failed, Greeks turned to those of the Delphic temple. “When questions arose for which this extant ancient and Delphic literature provided no guide, there was the possibility of asking guidance again from Apollo the unerring spokesman of his father Zeus …”⁷

When a Greek went to Delphi or consulted an oracle or mantis at some other place, he probably wanted advice on matters that at first glance did not seem to be strictly moral. The questions might involve foreign policy or they might be personal, but they seemed not to involve a question of whether an action contemplated might or might not be themis. And yet almost all questions could be reduced to asking whether a line of conduct was what should be done. The touch-stone was always: Is it appropriate? Is it what ought to be done? But the Greeks did not visit Delphi for advice only. It was believed that Apollo could purify one and atone for transgressions. It was in this respect to the oracles' purifying powers that Aeschylus may have been unorthodox.

The audiences of the Libation Bearers heard the lines of the Chorus: “What can wash off the blood once spilled upon the ground?” (LB. 48) This line could have been about what Christians discuss when using the word atonement. It was only in the third play of the Oresteia that the polluting stain of blood on one's hands, the hands of Orestes in this case, were said to be cleansed in Apollonian ritual. The crucial scene to be considered in any discussion of what might have been the thoughts of Aeschylus on purification is in the Eumenides. Orestes assures Athena that he is not a suppliant unpurified. The youthful son of Agamemnon claims to understand “the many rules of absolution” (Eum. 277) which include purification by clear water. Aeschylus has Orestes tell Athena that he has followed the rules. (Eum. 450-53) Knowing that the Eumenides is the third play in the trilogy and that the agôn logôn between the Erinyes and Apollo comes in the judgment scene of that third play, we are cued to attempt uncovering what it was that made matricide righteous. Apollo will not purify the truly unrighteous, that is, those who can be thoughtfully judged unrighteous. The truly righteous, of course, do not need purification. Thus, the premeditated killing of Clytemnestra is apparently to be ruled righteous, but some of the audience would wish to know why. With only minutes to go before the judgment scene ends and the persuasion begins, the audience would have to figure out why Orestes could have been purified by Apollo. As the saying goes, this was a true “cliff hanger.” At this point in the analysis of Aeschylus' moral philosophy, I wish to place Aeschylus in the moral tradition of Homer. An essential element in my analysis is that Aeschylus was a conservative, conserving a moral code that can be called Homeric. For example, the playwright's frequent use of the law of retributive justice that has transgression bring punishment is Homeric. Even the Aeschylean concept of a man learning by his suffering, as Odysseus learned (and as those who learn of Odysseus learn), is an idea that was strongly evident in the epics of Homer. I will undertake to be specific.

HOMERIC MORAL LESSON: THE ILIAD.

Aeschylus was presumed to have said that his tragedies were bits “from Homer's great feast.”⁸ Although Aeschylus modified the stories in the Iliad and Odyssey,⁹ the modification was consistent with the basic moral lessons taught by Homer. Many could have been learned from the Odyssey, which Aristotle called an “ethical epic.”¹⁰ Others especially on the subjects of pity and persuasion, were set out to be learned from the Iliad. Pity and persuasion often were used in those few plays of Aeschylus which have survived. So, too, being overcome by a great passion, as Prometheus was overcome by intense anger, was in the Homeric story of Achilles. As Prometheus, Achilles finally recovers from his illness of excessive wrath. We knew that Homer has Achilles show pity and return to battle. The great warrior ‘bends’; he relents and obeys his commander-in-chief, Agamemnon. In the face of the missing Prometheus Unbound, we can only guess—as I later will say at greater length—that the relenting of Prometheus and his reconciliation with Zeus parallels the behavior of Achilles.

Pity, persuasion and excessive anger came together in the Ninth Book of the Iliad when Odysseus, Aias, and Phoenix set out to persuade Achilles to recover from his anger with Agamemnon. The old man, Phoenix, who taught Achilles is shown attempting to persuade chiefly by means of pity and a warning against the great wrath which cost Meleager his life.

Phoenix reminds Achilles that “many times you soaked the shirt that was on my body // with wine you would spit up in the troublesomeness of your childhood. // So I have suffered much through you, and have had much trouble …” (490-92) This plea for pity by the old teacher-nursemaid is the mainstay of Phoenix's efforts at persuasion but they are not all of it. He urges Achilles to honor prayer (502 ff.) and to remember Meleager's wrath, at last subdued.¹¹

Achilles, like Prometheus, remains unpersuaded by all the pleas. Achilles will not be reconciled with Agamemnon. “I will join with him in no counsel, and in no action. // He cheated me and he did me hurt. Let him not beguile me // with words again … I hate his gifts …” (374-78)

As one reflects on the lessons taught by the behavior of Achilles, I think that one of the chief lessons of the Iliad was to take into account the responsibilities and rights that go with another person's role. This is the intention of the term aidôs. Achilles is said to be morally in error for not respecting and obeying his leader, Agamemnon,¹² exactly as Aeschylus' Prometheus is lacking in respect for, and obedience to his ‘leader,’ Zeus. Since we have discussed the moral implications of the responsibility attending a role, and also the problems involved in a conflict between roles, it might be enough to say that there was a moral connotation to aidôs.

Following Macurdy's lead,¹³ we know that aidôs in Homeric epic often was associated with eleos, another translation of pity but a rendition that emphasizes mercy, as the mercy shown by the victor in battle for the vanquished. I also believe that aidôs and eleos joined in the thought of propriety. That is, the man who displayed aidos or eleos was not indulgent; he was pious. It must hastily be added that prayerful supplication and sacrifice did not relieve characters from their moral responsibility, either in Homer or in the plays of Aeschylus.

Having showed how wrong and disastrous it was for a man to be so mastered by such a feeling as anger that he is as pitiless and stubbornly insurbordinate as Achilles, Homer has his strong man relent and show pity. The change comes in the final book of the Iliad; for the Prometheus, the change is manifested at the end of the trilogy. We do not have that final play of the Prometheia, the Lyomenos, but fragments indicate that such a change is made. It allows Prometheus and Zeus, symbol of the moral code, to become reconciled. Prometheus recovers from his anger. The Titan is ‘healed’ exactly as one can say that Achilles is ‘healed.’

As strong mortals could change, so could and did a very powerful immortal. In changing his mind, the god recognized the justice of the case at hand. Poseidon changed his mind, subduing his anger in the face of the command of Zeus that the gods refrain from taking sides in the Trojan War. As Homer told about the change, Poseidon was sorely vexed. “Great though he is, this that he has said is too much. // if he will force me against my will, me, who am his equal // in rank.” (XV, 185-87) The words which then follow were worth note. Iris, messenger sent by Zeus, responded. One cannot but contrast this response, which was successful in persuading Poseidon to show aidôs to Zeus, aidôs which Achilles would not show the commander-in-chief of the Achaeans, with that of another messenger of Zeus, the Hermes of the Prometheus Bound. (PB. 944 ff.) Unjustly, Prometheus called Hermes “the lackey of the Gods” (PB. 954), “young” and delivered of a speech Prometheus held “pompous sounding, full of pride.” (PB. 953)¹⁴

The persuasive words of Iris were simple and few: “Am I then to carry, O dark-haired, earth-encircler, // this word, which is strong and steep, back to Zeus from you? // Or will you change a little? The hearts of the great can be changed.” (XV, 201-3) Poseidon's answer was even more brief. “Now this, divine Iris, was a word quite properly spoken. // It is a fine thing when a messenger is conscious of justice.” (XV, 206-07) The Homeric ethical generalization, then, is that no matter how strong one is, no one should stand on that strength.

We know now that there was precedent for change of heart by both strong mortals and immortals given in the Iliad. This teaching was not lost on Aeschylus; neither was the generalization that the formation of character in youth was the greatest opportunity of the educator. Not only was Homer aware, but the example he chose for his lesson was a young man learning to defer to an elder. With a canny eye to the attraction competitive sport has for youth, the lesson Homer wished to teach he taught in the context of the games Achilles offered in memory of his friend, Patroclus. The lesson came in dialogue between Menelaus and Antilochus, son of that wise man, Nestor. Like all such dialogues this one was but a step away from the debate, the agôn logôn of the Aeschylean tragedy.

Antilochus was not one whom age had taught, but he had a formal education and he probably was Homer's model of how a young man should be improved by his instruction. Antilochus was no bookworm when he entered the chariot race which was part of Achilles' games. Antilochus entered to win. The young man beat out the chariot team of Menelaus but fouled Menelaus' horses by urging his own too close to those of the King. When Menelaus asked Antilochus to swear that he “used no guile to baffle my chariot” (XXIII, 585) Antilochus did not lie but conceded the race. No sooner had Antilochus admitted the error of his ways, than King Menelaus returned the prize mare to Antilochus. The lesson was clear. Antilochus had become humble and was rewarded for his humility, deference to age, and honesty. The dialogue itself is so instructive that it should be quoted.

“Enough now. For I, my lord Menelaos, am younger // by far than you, and you are the greater and go before me. // You know how greedy transgressions flower in a young man, seeing // that his mind is the more active but his judgment is lightweight. Therefore // I would have your heart be patient with me. I myself will give you // the mare I won, and if there were something still greater you asked for // out of my house, I should still be willing at once to give it // to you, beloved of Zeus, rather than all my days // fall from your favour and be in the wrong before the divinities.” (XXIII, 586-595)

So graceful were the concessions of Antilochus that they invited the splendid passage of noblesse in which Homer has Menelaus respond.

“He spoke, the son of Nestor the great-hearted, and leading // the mare up gave her to Menelaos' hands. But his anger // was softened, as with dew the ears of corn are softened // in the standing corn growth of a shuddering field. For you also // the heart, O Menelaos, was thus softened within you.” (XXIII, 596-600)

The speech that Homer gives Menelaus is itself a model for the gracious response of the strong and wise hearing a supplication.

Menelaus spoke to Antilochus and “addressed him in winged words.” “Antilochos, // I myself, who was angry, now will give way before you, // since you were not formerly loose-minded or vain. It is only // that this time your youth got the better of your intelligence. // Beware another time of playing tricks on your betters. // Any other man of the Achaians might not have appeased me. // But you have suffered much for me, and done much hard work, // and your noble father, too, and your brother for my sake. Therefore // I will be ruled by your supplication. I will even give you // the mare, though she is mine, so that these men too may witness // that the heart is never arrogant nor stubborn within me.” (XXIII, 601-11)

HOMERIC MORAL LESSONS: THE ODYSSEY.

The Odyssey contains any number of moral lessons, but the principal one is retributive justice. The idea of retributive justice is simple enough: transgression inevitably is followed by punishment. There are a variety of transgressions in the Odyssey, but the outstanding moral error was that of hybris. And hybris was the flaming transgression of the suitors, living in Odysseus' palace and courting his wife, Penelope. In fact, Penelope labels them hybristic. “Never were mortal men like them // for bullying and brainless arrogance.” (XVII, 584-85) Retributive justice clouds the background. Eumaeus, himself righteous, thinks of the hybris of the suitors when Homer has the old swineherd say: “The gods … are fond of no wrongdoing, // but honor discipline and right behavior.” (XIV, 83-5) And at last the suitors are punished.

The suitors are guilty of a long statement of charges. They violate the code of hospitality, most evilly at the instigation of Antinous who throws his footstool at Odysseus and hits him when Odysseus is disguised as an old begging stranger. (XVII, 409 ff.) Antinous' “payment” for this act of evil-doing is death at the hands of the bowman, Odysseus, when the suitors are slain. Not only Antinous, but many other suitors keep mistresses, who are maidservants in the hall of Odysseus. (XX, 8 ff.) This dishonors Penelope, and it was considered especially reprehensible conduct to treat another man's female servants as though they were handmaidens of one's own.

The suitors are an almost unbelievingly bad lot. But there was Amphinomus among them, Amphinomus whose “head is clear,” (XVIII, 125) Amphinomus, at whose knee the disguised Odysseus hides when Antinous shies a footstool at him, had urged his fellow suitors to consult an oracle before killing Telemachus. (XVI, 407-11) When a “portent” showed the murderous plot unlucky, Amphinomus had urged abandoning the plan. (XX, 25-51) Amphinomus had given generously to the “old beggar” (XVIII, 339) and was described as one suitor who had “lightness in his talk that pleased // Penelope, for he meant no ill.” (XVI, 402-03)

It was to Amphinomus whom Homer had Odysseus address most significant lines, whose burden was that mortals are not above the moral law, however strong or fortunate. That was the brunt of Odysseus' words to Amphinomus, which conclude: “No man should flout the law, // but keep in peace what gifts the gods may give.” (XVIII, 142-43) Odysseus urges Amphinomus to return to his home but Amphinomus stays. “Amphinomos, for his part, // shaking his head, with chill and burdened breast, // turned in the great hall. // Now his heart foreknew // the wrath to come, but he could not take the flight, // being by Athena bound there.” (XVIII, 157-61)

The one good man among many evil men seems to have been a precedent for Aeschylus' character, Amphiaraus, stationed at the Homoloean Gate (Seven. 568 ff.), the one admirable soldier among the Argive champions, as we are told in the Seven Against Thebes. (568-96) We shall meet Amphiaraus again, for he was a symbol of how a man ought to behave.

Hybris could not go unpunished in a morality that celebrated the same retributive justice that we find in Aeschylus, but as in Aeschylus, the punishment does not take place immediately. The anger of the gods, in this instance Poseidon's, is announced at the very outset of the Odyssey, but the punishment is put off to the end. Ten years of wandering by Odysseus intervene, wandering caused by Odysseus' own hybris and the greed of his crew, which led them to be mutinous and impious.

The transgression of the crew grew from greed. And, as with Aeschylus, the man who taught Greeks by means of the Odyssey was a type of poet, a minstrel. “All men owe honor to the poets—honor // and awe, for they are dearest to the Muse // who puts upon their lips the way of life.” (VIII, 478-80) It was from a poet-minstrel that the Greeks learned that Odysseus' crew were punished by death “for their own recklessness … children and fools, they killed and feasted on // the cattle of the Lord Helios, the Sun …” (I, 11-12)

For his part, Odysseus learned from the ‘suffering’ of years of wandering. Though strong in his morality, Homer showed that even an Odysseus could transgress. The captain boasted of blinding the one-eyed Polyphemus. The crew begged Odysseus not to taunt the blinded giant. “I would not heed them in my glorying spirit, // but let my anger flare …” (IX, 500) That “glorying spirit” was hybris.

After ten years of wandering Odysseus does return to Ithaca and the suitors are punished. And so are all those who consorted with them. Even the serving girls, who had been mistresses of the suitors are hanged; they “perish … most piteously. // Their feet danced for a little, but not for long.” (XXII, 473-5)

In the literary world of Homer, and later in that of Aeschylus, evil and virtue know no class lines. The noble suitors for Penelope's hand are not less nor more evil than the goatherd, Melanthius, or Melanthius' sister, Melantho. As the crewmen disobeyed Odysseus, so Melantho disobeyed Odysseus' wife. “She was Dolios' daughter, // taken as a ward in childhood by Penelope // who gave her playthings to her heart's content // and raised her as her own. Yet the girl felt // nothing for her mistress, no compunction …” (XVIII, 325-9)

Granting that retributive justice was the first of all the lessons Homer would have learned, the one endorsing hospitality was essential. The granting of guest privileges by King Pelasgus in Aeschylus' Suppliants was thoroughly Homeric. Long before the professional work of Aeschylus, Homer had taught how praiseworthy was the hospitality shown by the poor swineherd, Eumaeus, who gave succor to Odysseus, disguised as a poor old wanderer. Again hospitality was not to be limited by social class. Penelope orders a bath and bed for the poor old wanderer. (XIX, 99 ff.)

Nor was sex a distinction in the moral lessons of Homer any more than it would be for Aeschylus. When Odysseus visits the underworld he talks with the shade of Agamemnon. Perhaps some of the audience at Aeschylus' Agamemnon would remember the gist of that lesson. The ghost draws a moral contrast between Penelope, “Icarius' faithful daughter,” and his own wife, Helen's sister, “the adultress.” The summing up of this contrast was memorable. “O fortunate Odysseus, master mariner // and soldier, blessed son of old Laertes! // The girl you brought home made a valiant wife! True to her husband's honor and her own. // Penelope, Ikarios' faithful daughter! // The very gods themselves will sing her story // for men on earth—mistress of her own heart, // Penelope! // Tyndareus' daughter waited, too—how differently! // Klytaimnestra, the adultress, // waited to stab her lord and king. That song // will be forever hateful. A bad name // she gave to womankind, even the best.” (XXIV, 194-206)

THE HARMONY OF AESCHYLUS.

In ending this section on the moral lessons Homer taught and Aeschylus learned, the manner in which Homer ended the epic comes across to us with very great force. Once again we think of Owen's title, The Harmony of Aeschylus. Almost with delight we recognize that the end of the Odyssey could have been Aeschylus' model for the ending of his trilogies. Harmonia and homonoia have been restored, virtue has its reward and, above all, Athena has been the agent of Zeus in restoring the tranquility of equilibrium where there was stasis before the suitors were punished. There was specific precedence for the Aeschylean happy ending at the close of the Odyssey. At its close Athena made peace between Ithacans seeking revenge for the death of the suitors, and the three generations of Arcisiades, Laertes, his son Odysseus, and Odysseus' son, Telemachus. There was no question of where the right lay. The Arcisiades were in the right but Homer did not permit this righteous plaintiff to obliterate the claims of the male relatives of the evil suitors.

The leader of the avenging Ithacans is Eupeithes. Eupeithes is father of the chief suitor, Antinous. Homer placed before his audience the case of wrongdoing paid; “the wages of sin is death.” But the payment is not complete. As there are generations of the just, there are at least two generations of the unjust. The father of Antinous leads an avenging party, as his son once led the suitors. Is Eupeithes to remain alive? Of course not, for Homer argued that justice and injustice ran in families. The resolution offered by the final book of the Odyssey was instructive. Eupeithes is slain, killed by the equally senior Laertes, father of Odysseus. Athena thereby shows that the gods have been aligned with the forces of righteousness, assuming that Athena can be said to represent the Olympians. Athena has taken the side of the Arcisiades in the trial of right and wrong.

When Eupeithes has died by the spear thrown by old Laertes, the moral lesson of retributive justice is taught, and the struggle must end. It is exactly at this point that Athena makes her appearance, still in the disguised form of Mentor. Homer has already said that the “will of Zeus” is that Athena conclude the matter, as Athena makes the final decision in Aeschylus' Eumenides, a decision which leads to peace.

That Athena is responsible both for the main course of events in the Odyssey and also for the manner in which the principal action ends is manifest in lines given Zeus. Athena asks Zeus what he wishes. What is his will? Zeus responds to the question of Athena in this way: “My child, // why this formality of inquiry? // Did you not plan that action by yourself—// see to it that Odysseus, on his homecoming, // should have their blood? // Conclude it as you will.” (XXIV, 476-80)

Matters are not left at that. Homer spelled out what the right action was, the proper conclusion. And Homer had the concluding act sanctioned by Zeus himself. In substance, that amounted to declaring the action just. Thus Zeus follows his, “Conclude it as you will,” by: “There is one proper way, if I may say so: Odysseus' honor being satisfied, // let him be kind by a sworn pact forever, // and we, for our part, will blot out the memory // of sons and brothers slain. As in the old time // let men of Ithaka henceforth be friends; // prosperity enough, and peace attend them.” (XXIV, 481-7) Most of Odysseus' companions are terrified, their “faces paled with dread” (XXIV, 517) when Mentor roars in a “great voice,” commanding: “Now hold! // break off this bitter skirmish; // end your bloodshed, Ithakans, and make peace.” (XXIV, 515-6)

Homer was careful not to have Athena appear in her form, for it would have been scandalous for Odysseus to be so out of character as to have disobeyed Athena definitely known to him. Odysseus “ruffling like an eagle on the pounce” (XXIV, 524) makes ready to carry on the fight; this prolongs the action just enough, then a thunderbolt of Zeus drops at “Mentor's” feet. The audience already knows the recommendation of Zeus; the Arcisiades now know that further fighting is not in the interest of justice. Odysseus leaves off. “Both parties later swore to terms of peace // set by their arbiter, Athena, daughter // of Zeus who bears the stormcloud as a shield—// though still she kept the form and voice of Mentor.” (XXIV, 531-37) The Odyssey concludes with these words.

When one considers the ending of the Eumenides, it would seem that Aeschylus was adapting the scenes, if not the lines, that rounded off the Odyssey. The skirmish of Arcisiades with the kin of the suitors becomes the debate of the Erinyes and Apollo; as in the Odyssey, Athena is arbiter and the will of Zeus is for reconciliation, harmony, and peace with justice. There is but one fundamental difference between the manner in which Homer and Aeschylus achieved the peace that ends both the epic and the Oresteia. As I think was his habit, Aeschylus concluded the Oresteia with a court scene, a judgment between contending parties, which dominated most of the Eumenides. In the Oresteia it is true enough that Athena founds the Areopagus but Athena's will does not put an end to the action. The court plays an essential part; Athena breaks a tie vote, showing where justice lies; but that does not negate the importance of the mortals' judgment. It is doubtful whether Homer would ever have gone this far. In the Odyssey he did not. He saw no need for mortal decision. Athena brings peace all by herself, and Odysseus goes off to make his peace with Poseidon, guaranteeing that his wanderings are at an end and that he will slip quietly into a gentle old age.

AESCHYLUS' LESSON: DOES ONE HAVE TO SUFFER BEFORE ONE CAN LEARN?

To repeat, pathei mathos, (“Justice so moves that those only learn who suffer …” Aga. 250-51 or “Zeus, who guided men to think // who had laid it down that wisdom // comes alone through suffering.” Aga. 176-78) as a moral law, seems to be generally applicable to Aeschylean tragedy and thought. The law sets mortals on the right path to understanding (mathos) or phronein the latter in the sense of “to be wise, have understanding.” What it comes down to is whether pathei mathos is to be understood as cruelly negative, i.e., that Zeus confers this benefit (setting mortals on the right path to understanding) only after the lesson is too late. An alternate to this interpretation is one which views pathei mathos more constructively. This second interpretation asserts that pathei mathos is a benefit (something positive being implied by “set on the right path”) to man because men learn only from experience. Learning is man's most reliable guide to understanding or wisdom. Of course, “understanding” in this last sentence implies acceptance of the moral law. I think that Aeschylus accepted both the moral law and the second of these two interpretations of pathei mathos.

The imagery is important if we wish to understand what Aeschylus meant. We think that the image Aeschylus used was one in which Justice is likened to a beam-balance type of scale. On one of the trays of the beam-balance is the reward of righteousness and on the other tray atê. Eventually, we think Aeschylus implied, the scale tips. In effect it “weighs out to” someone. That “someone” was “paid what is coming to him.” This is a passive interpretation of the “someone.” In the active sense, the “someone” owes; he has done or acted. In a very famous passage Aeschylus stated a principle that complements that of pathei mathos. “The truth stands ever beside God's throne // eternal: He who has wrought shall pay; that is law.” (Aga. 1563-64) The principle in two words was drasanti pathein. The “action,” of course, could have been just, right, appropriate. Of the extant plays, only the Suppliants makes the main decision an example of what is dikê and themis. The major decision in an Aeschylean tragedy was usually unjust, not right, inappropriate. With this understanding of the imagery serving as background, it would be useful to consider how the eminent classicist, Eduard Fraenkel, translated Agamemnon 250-51. “Justice weighs out understanding to those who have gone through suffering,” writes Fraenkel. The stress is on understanding coming through suffering and only to the sufferer. Fraenkel balances suffering with learning. In my opinion Aeschylus' meaning seems to favor a slight revision of Fraenkel's interpretation. The reconstruction suggests that in Aeschylean doctrine, learning did not derive from suffering necessarily, but from reflection on the inevitability of retributive justice. The Trojans suffer “now” for what Paris did and the Trojans accepted; the Greeks will suffer later; Agamemnon will suffer yet later. Those who merely think of this sequence of crime and punishment can become wise and live righteously, just as can those who actually endure it.

Did Aeschylus use grim examples to point the moral of his lesson? Of course. Turning for examples to the Oresteia—(1) Cassandra bewails the sufferings of Troy, which could not be prevented by Priam's sacrifices to the gods: “They supplied no cure to prevent the city suffering …” (Aga. 1171) (2) The Chorus, bewailing the paschein of Agamemnon killed by his wife, has the famous line: “It abides (the law) while Zeus is on the throne, that the doer suffer.” (Aga. 1564) (3) The same lesson is told by: “It is a thrice-told tale that says this ‘to the doer, suffering’.” (LB. 313) (4) We could have added the lines of Orestes to his mother: “Suffer (or have done to you) what ought not to be done (or suffered) since you killed one whom you ought not to have killed.” (LB. 930)

WISDOM.

We have interpreted wisdom as a negative quality, as the willingness to refrain from what might be called excessive desires and be ruled by law. Aeschylus had Agamemnon say to Clytemnestra: “God's most lordly gift to man // is decency of mind.” (Aga. 927-28) “Decency” of mind translates to mê kakôs phronein (literally, “not to think badly” or “to be wise”). The same phrase occurs in the Eumenides (850) where it is intelligence, the gift of Zeus to Athena. A moral interpretation can be given wisdom and intelligence: the one that seems obvious is having wisdom or intelligence enough to avoid that which is neither appropriate nor fitting nor right: the wise, and therefore decent man, avoids punishment.

There is one more observation to make about Aeschylus' portrait of the wise man. He accepts the idea of inevitable punishment for transgression but remains responsible for his choices. Was this Aeschylus' own personal view; or was it merely the propaganda endorsed by his dramas? No one knows. It only can be assumed that Aeschylus was well aware that injustice was rife and sometimes successful. That may be why he lent support to so many deterrents to unjust behavior. Fear was one (Eum. 691 ff.), and here was the weight of propaganda for the inevitability of eventual punishment for transgression. I take it for granted that Aeschylus accepted fear as necessary. In fact, Aeschylus placed an extended reference to fear in the same speech in which Athena endorsed the Areopagus. The Eumenides is the third play in a trilogy. Wisdom is being unfolded; the great lessons of the Oresteia are being articulated and hammered home. The playwright no longer is dodging by means of images and passages difficult to interpret. All is clear; Aeschylus is straightforwardly didactic.

For Athenians “… this forevermore // shall be the ground where justices deliberate. // Here is the Hill of Ares, here the Amazons // encamped and built their shelters when they came in arms // for spite of Theseus, here they piled their rival towers // to rise, new city, and dare his city long ago, // and slew their beasts for Ares. So this rock is named // from then the Hill of Ares. Here the reverence // of citizens, their fear and kindred do-no-wrong // shall hold by day and in the blessing of night alike …” (Eum. 683-92) And earlier in the same drama: “There is // advantage // in the wisdom won from pain.” (Eum. 519-21)

In a word, Aeschylus hoped that men would be inhibited from doing wrong by fear. Fear of what? Not of Erinyes: they have become Eumenides, friendly to Athens; but fear of retributive justice, that law that binds mortals as surely as death. This may be something less than optimism. But we have claimed that Aeschylus undertook to enliven a feeling of responsibility he may have believed neglected. There is no reason to think that Aeschylus' personal thoughts invariably were revealed in what a Chorus chanted, but concerning respect for restraint, which indeed Aeschylus may have felt to be slighted, there are the choral lines that appear early in the Libation Bearers: “The pride (sebas, literally—reverence, honor, esteem) not to be warred with, fought with, not to be beaten down // of old, sounded in all men's // ears, in all hearts sounded, // has shrunk away. A man // goes in fear. High fortune, // this in man's eyes is god and more than god is this.” (LB. 54-60)

In my opinion Aeschylus is not referring to a golden age when men habitually were just and abjured hybris; he was invoking the respect in which Homer and the Homeric values were held. North saw that the Greek reproof of hybris was standard through heroic, archaic, and classical periods. North's particular interest in sôphrosynê led her to contrast self-knowledge and self-restraint with unlimited or unrestrained desire for military glory, power, status, wealth, or anything resembling self-indulgence. And Aeschylus shared in propagandizing on behalf of sôphrosynê. North was correct; the stand-off between hybris and sôphrosynê was Greek. However, the few specific mentions Homer made of sôphrosynê did not matter. By another century there were more, and the classic Greek question had been asked: How can the gods allow evil to reap benefits?

The poet, Theognis, in the middle of the sixth century, was author of a famous reproach to Zeus for allowing the just to suffer and the wicked to prosper. North quotes the lines (Theognis, 377-80): “How, then, son of Cronus, can your mind bear to hold the wicked and the just in the same respect, whether the minds of men are turned to sophrosyne or to hybris?”¹⁵

And then North added: “The alliance of sophrosyne with justice in this passage marks an important stage in its moral growth, while the opposition of both qualities to hybris prepares us for the use of this theme by Aeschylus.”¹⁶

To these Homeric values we think Aeschylus wished to add retributive justice. The Chorus follows the lines quoted with these: “But, as a beam balances (literally, and perhaps significantly: ‘the sure balance of Justice, Dike’) so // sudden disasters wait, to strike // some in the brightness some in gloom // of half dark in their elder time. // Desperate Night holds others.” (LB. 61-65) The court established by Athena indeed shall be “watchful to protect those who sleep …” (Eum. 705-06) but guarding them by breeding restraint, a “reverence” for the moral law. Greek tradition won a place in memory for respect for law, including the rather extreme statement attributed to Solon: “Obey the magistrates, whether it be just or unjust.”¹⁷

There is a well-known story illustrating the Spartans' veneration of law, law understood as ‘words underwriting good counsel,’ counseling righteousness. Herodotus relates¹⁸ that the memorial stone for the handful of Spartans who fell before a vastly more numerous Persian foe at the pass of Thermopylea leading from Thessaly into Locris bore an inscribed poem composed by Simonides of Ceos: “Stranger, go tell the Spartans we lie here obeying their laws.” Rhêmasi is being translated as “law” but “words” might be preferred in order to remind ourselves that to the Greeks a law had to be morally sound to be worth obedience. The term “words” recalls that Greeks thought of words as vehicles for righteous—right or impious—wrong counsel.

I think it significant for an understanding of Aeschylus to realize that he might have felt truly patriotic in defending Hellas, particularly Athens, against the Persians, and to recall that the Greeks had deep respect for individuals who freely accepted the rule of sacred-secular law as opposed to despotic tyranny.

One of the most moving of the stories reported by Herodotus was the purported words of the Spartan refugee, Demaratus, made to Xerxes: Xerxes had said that he could pit 1000 against every Greek fighter and asked Demaratus whether the Greeks would fight. Demaratus, speaking primarily of the Spartans, answered that they would; the response could have applied to Greeks from many of the city-states that held out against the Persian armies. “Though they are free men,” we read Demaratus as having said to Xerxes, “they are not wholly free; for law is their master, and they fear it more than your men fear you. Therefore whatever it bids them do they do; and its orders are never to flee from the battle whatever the numbers against them, but to stay in their ranks and conquer or die.”¹⁹ Respect for law had become Hellenic tradition and would remain so until well after Aeschylus' death. Is it not this care for law, which students learn from the Crito, that has been the exemplar for the free acceptance of law with its awards and punishments? For all its affect, Plato advocated nothing that had not become conventional thought of Greeks reflecting upon life regulated by nomoi. Living in accordance with nomos was not abhorrent to Greeks. It would not matter whether political power was lodged in many people or in one—be he king or tyrant. What would matter is whether the one or the many be indifferent to (or ignorant of) moral convention (themis).

The formalizations of these moral conventions were the nomoi, the “formally enacted pronouncement of a government” plus a “traditional way of life accepted without question because it was part of the social environment in which men lived.”²⁰ But we know that well before the days of Aeschylus²¹ Greeks desired the condition of harmonia and homonoia rather than stasis, that “state of imbalance” where classes and factions were at each other's throats.²² The presence of what was connoted by nomos in such a term as eunomia (a right and righteous social order) or isonomia (equal before the law)²³ for a while, was more popular than dêmokratia for expressing the concept of a government broadly based on the popular will. By the middle of the fifth century, however, dêmokratia may have had the upper hand in popularity.²⁴ Until the idea of law and its formal administration through courts was accepted, it would have been necessary to argue for its acceptance. Plato does not have to. He had the old and wise Socrates, whose sophia and sôphrosynê were demonstrated in many dialogues, plead a special case in the Crito. That case was no less than the free election of a condemned man to remain in jail and die rather than accept not to “overturn the law.”

The dialogue has been a lesson to many but it would not have been a novel idea to the Greeks. Had not Aeschylus shown that respect for law and law courts was “a sentry on the land?” (Eum. 706) And had Aeschylus not said that this was the decision of that wisest of immortals, Pallas Athena? In the Eumenides it was Athena who said that the court—the Areopagus in that play—was better than either anarchy or tyranny. (Eum. 696)

SôPHROSYNê: SELF-KNOWLEDGE AND SELF-RESTRAINT.²⁵

When we said that sôphrosynê was the omega of the Greek moral code, with dikê being the alpha, we meant that sôphrosynê by far was the jewel in the wisdom which such a moralist as Aeschylus would have wished for his fellows. Knowing the limits of mortals, considering what was appropriate for one to do, being restrained—all this sounds as though joy were being dampened. It is true, Aeschylus did not think that the reward of virtue was joy but good health, prosperity, fecundity and other good things in an economy in which even the most wealthy or powerful were not so wealthy or powerful that they could afford to ignore the moral teaching: be sparing in desire for wealth, power and position. For the bulk of people it was important to know that they could only be thought good citizens if they had sôphrosynê. Macurdy seemed to have this in mind when she wrote in The Quality of Mercy: “The Attic orators, who are exponents of democracy and love of Athens, regard sophrosyne as the characteristic of the good citizen, who is also described by the word metrios; preserving the ‘mean’ in conduct, the kosmios, orderly, which is combined with sophron to describe the ideal citizen of the democracy. That ideal, formed in the fifth century and first described by Aeschylus (Septem., 610) is called by the orators of the fifth and fourth centuries b.c., temperate, orderly, moderate, reasonable, patriotic, philanthropic. From the time of the Persian Wars to the end of Athenian democracy the virtue most praised in their literature is this ‘moderation’ …”²⁶

Is it at all surprising that the sôphrosynê which Macurdy had identified as the characteristic of the good citizen is what Aeschylus attempts to persuade his audience is the most sure source of homonoia and harmonia? It would have been surprising if Aeschylus had not attempted to persuade his audience to strain to show themselves possessed of sôphrosynê. And the persuasion scene of the third play, just before the happy ending, was the appropriate place for urging sôphrosynê. “Good understanding giveth favour …” Although North did not write of sôphrosynê with this in mind, it is in the third play of the Oresteia (and in the third play of any Aeschylean trilogy) that sôphrosynê would be unveiled as the most desirable virtue.²⁷ In mentioning North we have reference to Athena's persuasion of the Erinyes to become Eumenides. The Erinyes are persuaded and “when the Furies have consented to renounce their bitter resentment and become kindly goddesses, their benediction to the Athenians (comparable to the sophrones prayers of the Danaids for Argos) visualizes the citizens seated beside Zeus, beloved by Athena, learning wisdom in time … Here is the true outcome of the doctrine of pathei mathos: the establishment of sophrosyne with justice as the foundation stones of the Athenian polis, and the union of sophrosyne with reverence to achieve the Mean in government. Phobos has been made acceptable, just as Peitho (Persuasion), who was entirely evil and deceitful in the Agamemnon, becomes in the Eumenides a beneficent and wholesome power wielded by Athena, appropriately enough, in the first Athenian law court. She even connects the two, when she bids the Furies hold sacred the peithous sebas (‘reverence for Persuasion’ 885) and give up their wrath.”²⁸

Earlier in her book North had set down characteristics that she felt Aeschylus was for and those he opposed. The list is sufficiently instructive of Aeschylus' thought to be repeated here.

I would, and I will, extend the theses and the antitheses of North but my opinion is that North was correct in thinking that the tension in the conflict between hybris and sophrosyne was fundamental to Aeschylean drama. It had been fundamental in Homer and that was one of the “lessons” that Aeschylus taught as Homer had taught it to him. If Pindar celebrated those who had been victorious and had won fame,²⁹ Aeschylus urged men to show wisdom by attributing their poetic inspiration to the immortals by describing themselves not as sole victors in battles but partners of the gods in the search for retributive justice, and other parts of the moral code. Aeschylus repeated his lesson, which was well known, not as the way of the wise but the prudential wisdom of those who would not tempt the gods by overstepping the bounds of mortals. Xerxes did, for he showed thrasos (rashness induced by too great ambition), and the suppliant maidens also departed from the Mean, that is from what was appropriate for women—to marry and have children.

In Aeschylus' concept of morals there were a variety of roles to be played, and it was important to know which were natural and necessary. For the young woman, or for Penelope, a woman whose husband was gone ten years to the Trojan War, “to be chaste,” sôphronein, was a virtue. Marriage and child-bearing, on the other hand, were natural for a mature woman whose husband was with her. For a father and mother there were appropriate (natural) things to do vis-à-vis children, and so for a husband or a wife vis-à-vis his or her spouse. If a man or woman played each of his natural roles well, he or she could be said to be in harmony with the order of the universe, which was the same as living in accordance with the mean (to metrion). Such a person was well; he enjoyed harmonia and his heart dictated the righteous decisions that led the Erinyes to chant: “out of health // in the heart issues the beloved // longed-for, prosperity.” (Eum. 535-7)

This line from the Eumenides jars us into recognition that Aeschylus believed that there was no division of mind and body. Aeschylus was no dualist but a moral monist who assumed that an action that was morally correct was taken by someone in good health. As there was no great gap between body and mind, there was almost none between poets and the scientific sophists, no “two cultures” that would make it unlikely that Aeschylus think of the disease of monarchia as a kind of imbalance in which some one element dominated the body upsetting the natural equilibrium of health. (And the real meaning of the poetic-medical term hêsychia is the tranquility of being in equilibrium rather than agitated by stasis.)³⁰ In bringing this [essay] on morality to a close, it is the poets of Aeschylus' day who will bear witness to the prevailing moral code.

We have come to the end of this [essay] on the moral code. While the Greek moral tradition did not die with Aeschylus, one of its most effective teachers did leave the scene. Its next great teachers will be Socrates, Plato and then Aristotle, but these men were philosophers, and their moral abstractions, philosophically far better articulated than their manifestations in Aeschylus' plays, only instructed those whose formal education already was far advanced. A most effective teacher of the people was gone. Lessons in the moral code were to be given to the masses by such orators as Demosthenes and Isocrates, who, if not himself much of an orator, was a masterful teacher of those who were. We shall meet oratory again, because orators made use of a technique that truly featured the agôn logôn. The persuasion to which oratory was host made a highly effective tool of something for which Aeschylus had the greatest respect and which always was the prelude to the homonoia and harmonia of his third play.

It is Herington who points out that it was no wonder that sophistic rhetoric appears in Prometheus Bound.³¹ A sophistic / rhetorical cast of language and thought should not be unexpected in a tragedy whose author is convinced that mortals should be convinced by persuasive arguments demonstrating that knowledge of what is just should guide all decisions. One would predict Aeschylus to have been aware of the potential of rhetoric. We do not know whether he was sceptical, nor to what degree he might have been. Herington offers another reason for Aeschylus' use of sophistic rhetoric. As is known, Aeschylus lived his last years in Sicily. If, as Herington thinks, the Prometheus Bound was written in Sicily, it is well to know that “the rhetoricians Corax and Tisias and the young sophist-rhetorician Gorgias were now also at work in it. I would stress that, according to Cicero (Brutus 46), Corax and Tisias wrote the earliest Art of Rhetoric known to antiquity … some time in the years following 466 b.c. Their activity therefore coincided almost exactly with our postulated ‘last phase’ of Aeschylus' career and must have overlapped with his final Sicilian residence of 458-456. In that way the sophistic / rhetorical influence that is so apparent in PV becomes immediately intelligible. The Sicily of that date—but not of an earlier period in which Aeschylus is known or conjectured to have visited there—was in this respect, as in other, far in advance of Athens. We need only recall the impression made at Athens by the arrival there of the elderly Gorgias in 427 b.c., almost exactly a generation later than Aeschylus' death!”³²

The third play in a trilogy recalls the first and the second to mind. Perhaps this had something to do with the passage of time. Perhaps there was development, even evolution in the great forces personified by the gods, the leader of whom was Zeus. Did Aeschylus really mean to have Zeus appear a tyrant similar to the tyrant of the archaic period of Greek history? Was Zeus to evolve³³ in the course of a trilogy as the Greek way of life evolved from a familial, clan and tribal structure into the polis, in time governed by the demos? Was a monarchical god to evolve into a democratic one, who governed by persuasion rather than ruling by force? … Zeus and the other gods have so much to do with the Greek moral code that it makes sense to discuss Aeschylus' view of immortals and the relationship of mortals with immortals before we take up other aspects of Aeschylus' environment, which help us to appreciate the place of the technai, which Prometheus said that he had given to mankind.

Notes

1. This statement of pathei mathos is to be read alongside another: “Justice so moves that those only learn // who suffer …” (Aga. 250-1)

2. The Seven Wise Men, statesmen of the sixth century, articulated a good deal of Greek folk wisdom. “With few exceptions the proverbs of the Seven advise the practice of self-control, particularly the conquest of pleasure (hedone) and passion (thymos) or the recognition of limits in some form … The best-known of the sayings, Gnôthi Sauton (‘Know thyself’) and Mêden agan, were inscribed in the late sixth century over the entrance to the Alcmaenid temple of Apollo, who in the archaic age fulfills the hint of the Iliad that he will become the god of sophrosyne (self-knowledge and self-restraint). The great development of the influence of the Delphic oracle belongs to this same period—a time during which the priests of Apollo preached measure and restraint in public and private life and encouraged decency and civilized behavior in religious rites. It was at this time that sophrosyne acquired a strongly religious flavor.” (Reprinted from Helen North: Sophrosyne: Self-Knowledge and Self-Restraint in Greek Literature. Copyright © 1966 by Cornell University. Used by permission of Cornell University Press. Page 10.)

3. Grube makes this very clear in writing that should an immortal order a mortal to do something, Greeks did not think that in itself relieved the mortal from responsibility. (G. M. A. Grube. “Zeus in Aeschylus.” AJPh, 91 (1970), p. 48.)

4. The classic statement of the evolutionary position on punishment is that of G. Thomson, Aeschylus and Athens, pp. 291, 387.

5. Grace is not a Greek word but charis is often translated as grace. There are shades of meaning carried by charis that shall not be taken up here. One of these appears in the Agamemnon where charis is used to lend strength to the idea that in the absence of the kings the people felt desolate, “… even death were grace.” (Aga. 550) Liddell and Scott define charis as “grace of favors felt” by (1) the doer, as a feeling of kindness or goodwill and (2) by the receiver, as a sense of favor received, thanks or gratitude. (Liddell and Scott. Lexicon, p. 1978.)

   When Cassandra told the Argive elders that she would remain and die, Aeschylus gave the Chorus the line: “Yet there is a grace on mortals who so nobly die.” (Aga. 1304)

6. James H. Oliver. The Athenian Expounders of the Sacred and Ancestral Law. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins Press, 1950, Chapter III.

7. Ibid., p. 10.

8. Athenaeus, VIII, 347e, (cf. Eustath. ad Il., XXIII, 256, p. 1298, 56). We grant that the attribution is not to be accepted uncritically. (Garvie. Aeschylus' Supplices, p. 45 ff.)

9. The edition of the Iliad used is The Iliad of Homer, translated with an Introduction by Richmond Lattimore. Chicago: Phoenix Books, The University of Chicago Press, 1961. Copyright 1951 by the University of Chicago; used here by permission. Random lines from Homer, The Odyssey by Robert Fitzgerald. Copyright © 1961 by Robert Fitzgerald. Reprinted by permission of Doubleday & Company, Inc., and, for the British Commonwealth, by William Heinemann LTD.

10. Else. Aristotle's Poetics, p. 594 ff.

11. The story of Meleager's wrath (IX, 524 ff.) was a part of the oral tradition. It taught that it was well always to remember the gods when the first fruits of a good harvest were gathered. Homer had Phoenix alter the moral to emphasize the folly of extreme and persistent anger. The story had it that Artemis was angry with Oeneus, king of Aetolia, because he did not offer her the first fruits of the harvest. Artemis sent a wild boar to ravage the vineyards of Aetolia. Meleager, son of Oeneus, heading huntsmen and hounds, killed the boar. Artemis, still angry (the blinding effect of great anger applied only to mortals), set the Aetolians and neighboring Curetes to fighting for the boar's head and hide. Presumably Meleager drove back the Curetes and slew his uncle, who was a Curete. Rage had overcome Meleager and Meleager's death was voiced by his own mother, who cursed her son because Meleager had killed her brother.

    Homer told the story in such a fashion that attention was riveted on the war between the Curetes and the “steadfast Aetolians.” (IX, 529-32) The parallel with the Trojan War was made more dramatic in this adaptation. Having established this parallel between the wars, Homer has Phoenix remark the anger of Meleager, caused by his mother's curses, that led him to withdraw from the battle, the Aetolians thereby losing their greatest warrior. The appeal had become a good deal more personal, drawing a comparison between Achilles and Meleager. (IX, 553-94) The clinching argument was presumed to be that the gifts that have been promised Achilles by Agamemnon will be given whereas those promised Meleager were not forthcoming.

12. Bowra. Tradition, pp. 18, 177.

13. Macurdy had it that “the word aidos, shame, regard for others … is joined with the word eleos, pity, in Apollo's indictment of Achilles' cruelty.” (Macurdy. Quality of Mercy, p. 16.)

14. I will defend the “unjustly” later on but would call attention to an excellent discussion by Anthony J. Podlecki. “Reciprocity in Prometheus Bound.” GRBS, 10 (Winter, 1969), pp. 287-292.

15. North. Sophrosyne, p. 17.

16. Ibid., p. 17 ff.

17. Frg. 37, quoted by Freeman. Works and Life of Solon, p. 216.

18. Herodotus. Histories, VII, p. 228.

19. Ibid., p. 104.

20. W. J. Jones. The Law and Legal Theory of the Greeks. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1956, p. 75.

21. Loc. cit. for Jones' reference to Pindar, which we feel allows for the assumption that what antedated Pindar antedated Aeschylus.

22. “In direct contrast with a condition of statis was that of eunomia, the happy position of a city where the citizens had become so habituated to obey the laws that reverence for law was instinctive in them.” (Ibid.)

23. Ibid., p. 84 ff.

24. Ibid., p. 84.

25. While sôphrosynê itself never actually occurs in Aeschylus, its cognates do appear some twenty-two times. To quote from North of Aeschylus' employment of cognates of sôphrosynê, Aeschylus used “sophronein eight times, sophron eleven, sophronizein once, sophronismaonce, and see Suppl. 189 for a disputed compound noun with sophron.” (North. Sophrosyne, fn. 2, p. 33.)

26. Grace H. Macurdy. The Quality of Mercy. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1940, p. 87.

27. For North's treatment of tragedy in Aeschylus see his Sophrosyne, p. 33 ff.

28. Reprinted from Helen North: Sophrosyne: Self-Knowledge and Self-Restraint in Greek Literature. Copyright© 1966 by Cornell University. Used by permission of Cornell University Press. Page 49.

29. Pindar. The Odes of Pindar. Translated by Richmond Lattimore. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1947; C. M. Bowra. Pindar. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1964.

30. North. Sophrosyne, p. 15. North recognizes that hêsychia is as much a medical term as political.

31. Herington. The Author, pp. 94 ff., 111, 114.

32. Ibid., p. 114 ff.

33. The classic statement of the evolutionary position on punishment is that of Thomson. Aeschylus and Athens, pp. 291, 387.

Abbreviations

Aga.: Agamemnon

Apoll. Rhod.: Apollonius Rhodius

Diod.: Diodorus Siculus

Eum.: Eumenides

fn.: footnote

Il.: Iliad

LB.: Libation Bearers (Choephori)

M: Mediceus Laurentianus, codex 32, 9

Od.: Odyssey

PB. (PV.): Prometheus Bound (Prometheus Vinctus)

Pers.: Persians (Persae)

Oxyp.: Oxyrhynchus Papyri

RE: Real-Encyclopädie

Semon. Amorg.: Semonides of Amorgos

Seven.: Seven Against Thebes (Septem.)

Suppl.: Suppliants (Supplices)

Theog.: Theognis

Vita: Vita Aeschyli (in the Codex Mediceus)

Periodicals

AJPh: American Journal of Philology

BICS: Bulletin of the Institute of Classical Studies of the University of London

C & M: Classica et Mediaevalia

CF: Classical Folia

CQ: Classical Quarterly

CR: The Classical Review

CW: The Classical World

G & R: Greece and Rome

GRBS: Greek, Roman and Byzantine Studies

HSPh: Harvard Studies in Classical Philology

JHS: Journal of Hellenic Studies

Phoenix: Phoenix

PCPhS: Proceedings of the Cambridge Philological Society

RhM: Rheinisches Museum

Symb Osl: Symbolae Osloenses

TAPhA: Transactions and Proceedings of the American Philological Association

WS: Wiener Studien