Tony Harrison’s version of the Oresteia, produced first at the National Theatre, London, has this:
The people’s reverence and the fear they’re born with will restrain them day and night from acts of injustice as long as they don’t foul their own laws with defilement. No one should piss in the well they draw drink from. Anarchy! Tyranny! Let both be avoided nor banish fear from your city entirely.
Every word of this passage is charged with significance both from the narrative of the play and from its political context in the theatre. Sebas, translated ‘reverence’, indicates the ‘respect’ which allows hierarchical order to be maintained. It is precisely lack of sebas in the Choephoroi that characterized the disorder in the house of Agamemnon. Now the term spreads from the household to the political sphere of the Athenian ‘people’ – asto¯n, the general term which includes free-born men and women. There may be a fascinating ambiguity, however, in the phrase sebas asto¯n. For does it imply ‘the respect of citizens’ for the Areopagus – that is, law-abidingness depends on the citizens’ respect for the institutions of law? Or does it imply the respect for the citizens that the Areopagus is to show – that is, an executive judicial body in a democracy is accountable to the people, and the law-court itself must respect the citizens? Either reading is semantically and grammatically possible – and the ambiguity significantly traces the range of political opinions present in the turmoil of the reforms of the Areopagus. Who is to be accountable to whom?
Along with respect comes phobos, ‘fear’: the term which has pervaded the Oresteia now becomes a positive emotion in the prevention of injustice. This fear is xungene¯s, which may imply ‘kindred’, that is ‘of the same race’, as the ‘respect’; or it may mean ‘in-born’, that ‘they’re born with’ – the inherited characteristic of the race which has been a thematic focus of the narrative, as we have seen. Now it is a propensity to avoid wrong-doing (adikein, the negative of dike¯) that is passed on with the new institution of law. This ‘respect and fear’ will prevent crime ‘day and night’. This is not just an expression for
‘always’, but also recalls the imagery of light and darkness that is so common in the Oresteia, imagery which has developed an association of crime with darkness, obscurity, hidden deceptions. (So, too, the Furies are daughters of Night.) Seen or unseen, this restraint of wrong-doing will operate. Yet its operation depends on the citizens (polito¯n, the full term for ‘citizens’) not innovating or fouling their laws. (The Greek verb is unfortunately meaningless through manuscript corruption: ‘innovate’ translates the commonest emendation; Harrison’s ‘foul’ a less common suggestion.) This political message is supported by an appeal to the world of nature: clean water for drinking is not to be polluted with ‘evil influxes’ – ‘piss’, as Harrison characteristically puts it. The ‘natural’ values of purity and cleanliness as opposed to evil and pollution bolster the goddess’ institution.
Yet what is the political message? Some critics have claimed that Athene speaks quite generally: a well-organized society is distinguished by the stability of its legal system. In particular, the Athenian law on homicide could not – by law – be changed (Macleod). Yet since this is a speech on the Areopagus and the political debates over the Areopagus had been so violent in Athens, most critics have seen Athene’s remarks as more pointed. Yet here too debate has been heated. Some critics have seen Aeschylus as speaking out against the reform of the Areopagus, since the court receives in Athene’s speech such praise, and so strong is the injunction not to innovate: the court is, she says, established for all time. Other critics, however, have pointed out that Ephialtes’ reforms made changes to the Areopagus on the ground that ‘accretions’ had to be removed: the Areopagus should be returned to its original and proper function. Thus, it is argued, when Athene warns the citizens, here at the first trial by the Areopagus, not to make innovations in the laws of her institution, the goddess of the city is to be seen as supporting Ephialtes’ democratic programme (Dover). Other critics yet think that while the Ephialtic reforms are accepted, this speech warns against any further change, since further reforms were in the air in 458 B.C.
