Political rhetoric
For my final passage I wish to look at some lines from the Eumenides where Athene establishes the court of the Areopagus. It is in such writing that Aeschylus’ direct involvement with the polis, his audience, has been most repeatedly discussed; it will also offer an opportunity, after a lyric ode and a piece of dialogue, to consider a lengthy set speech (rhe¯sis), another basic part of Aeschylean dramaturgy. I can, however, consider only a few lines from the speech here. Athene has described the setting of the Areopagus as the hill (pagos) where Theseus, king of Athens, sacrificed to the god of war (Ares) before his battle with the Amazons. The establishment of the court is thus immediately linked into the corpus of the city’s myths. Theseus is a founding figure of the polis of Athens as a polis. The Amazons (depicted on so many temples and other art works) are archetypally negative female figures who reverse all the expectations of a female’s role, not least in their violent, armed hostility to men: this may, then, be thought to be significantly invoked before the trial of Clytemnestra. Athene continues (Eum. 690–9):
en de to¯i sebas asto¯n phobos te xungene¯s to me¯ adikein skhe¯sei to t’ e¯mar kai kat’ euphrone¯n homo¯s, auto¯n polito¯n me¯ ’pikainonto¯n nomous; kakais epirroaisi borboro¯i th’ hudo¯r lampron miaino¯n oupoth’ heure¯seis poton. to me¯t’ anarkhon me¯te despotoumenon astois peristellousi bouleuo¯ sebein kai me¯ to deinon pan poleo¯s exo¯balein.
[Ellopos’ note: the text in the original Greek characters (ed. Murray):
ἐν δὲ τῷ σέβας ἀστῶν φόβος τε ξυγγενὴς τὸ μὴ ἀδικεῖν σχήσει τό τ΄ ἦμαρ καὶ κατ΄ εὐφρόνην ὁμῶς͵ αὐτῶν πολιτῶν μὴ ΄πικαινούντων νόμους κακαῖς ἐπιρροαῖσι· βορβόρῳ δ΄ ὕδωρ λαμπρὸν μιαίνων οὔποθ΄ εὑρήσεις ποτόν. τὸ μήτ΄ ἄναρχον μήτε δεσποτούμενον ἀστοῖς περιστέλλουσι βουλεύω σέβειν͵ καὶ μὴ τὸ δεινὸν πᾶν πόλεως ἔξω βαλεῖν.
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