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The monopoly on value: thinking women and honor in and through Aeschylean tragedy

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The monopoly on value: thinking women and honor in and through Aeschylean tragedy

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Content THE MONOPOLY ON VALUE: THINKING WOMEN AND HONOR IN AND THROUGH AESCHYLEAN TRAGEDY By Elke M. Nash A Dissertation Presented to the FACULTY OF THE USC GRADUATE SCHOOL UNIVERSITY OF SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA In Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY (CLASSICS) December 2022 Copyright 2022 Elke M. Nash ii ACKNOWLEDGMENTS This project was first begun under the incisive and always insightful tutelage of Tom Habinek, who was its co-supervisor before he passed away in 2019. I feel his absence strongly even now, and know that, if not for his enthusiasm in those early days, the work I offer here may never have been. My sincere gratitude goes to Greg Thalmann for his steady guidance and careful criticism throughout this project, and for his patience as I found my way. I am also deeply grateful to Virginia Kuhn, who showed me new ways of seeing, reading, and writing, and Susan Lape, whose astute and sensitive observations have greatly benefitted my work. Thanks go to Tony Boyle, whose unflagging support has meant the world to me. By my side the entire way have been Hannah Čulík-Baird and Afroditi Angelopoulou. They are, the both of them, formidable scholars and their work is inspiration for my own, but more importantly they have offered me friendship, love, laughter and conversation and for that I cannot thank them enough. I thank also Suzanne Lye, Jennifer Devereaux, Tom Sapsford, and Maxine Lewis for their intellectual and emotional support. Conversations and correspondence with Douglas Cairns and Mirko Canevaro were invaluable for my research, as was indeed the entirety of the Honour in Classical Greece research group, which I found at an especially crucial point of my project. The Classics and Ancient History program at Waipapa Taumata Rau – University of Auckland has given me a home away from home; my colleagues and students here have inspired me with their dedication and generosity. Thanks go to my parents, who instilled in me from an early age a deep love of learning, and to my siblings for their constant support and who each in their own way have shown me how to be brave. I owe my deepest gratitude to my grandmothers, Tess and Opal Lee. I thank my husband Jon for his unwavering supply of confidence and encouragement; truly, I have known no steadier presence nor source of comfort (although our dog Pippa is a close second in both). And lastly: I dedicate this work to my daughter, whose existence reminds me daily that in looking at and thinking about the past I am – always and only – trying to imagine new futures. iii TABLE OF CONTENTS ACKNOWLEDGMENTS .............................................................................................................. ii ABSTRACT .................................................................................................................................... v INTRODUCTION: THE MEANING OF A WORD ..................................................................... 1 On honor ..................................................................................................................................... 6 Approach ................................................................................................................................... 14 Structure and summary of the project ....................................................................................... 24 PART I: THE ORESTEIA TRILOGY ......................................................................................... 31 CHAPTER 1: EUMENIDES ........................................................................................................ 31 Context of production ............................................................................................................... 36 The cosmic sphere ..................................................................................................................... 38 The civic sphere ........................................................................................................................ 50 The religious sphere .................................................................................................................. 60 Conclusion ................................................................................................................................ 70 CHAPTER TWO: CHOEPHOROI .............................................................................................. 71 Timê in the funerary context ..................................................................................................... 74 Timê and the gendered violence of vengeance ......................................................................... 84 Electra atimos ............................................................................................................................ 87 Conclusion ................................................................................................................................ 94 CHAPTER 3: AGAMEMNON .................................................................................................... 98 The unwritten laws: timê and the gods ................................................................................... 100 Timê for the gods ................................................................................................................ 101 Divine Retribution .............................................................................................................. 110 Timê from the gods ............................................................................................................. 118 The unwritten laws: timê and xenia ........................................................................................ 121 The unwritten laws: familial timê ........................................................................................... 133 Conclusion .............................................................................................................................. 139 Conclusion to Part I: the Oresteia ........................................................................................... 140 PART II: THE DANAID TRILOGY ......................................................................................... 142 CHAPTER 4: SUPPLICES ........................................................................................................ 142 Danaids in the polis ................................................................................................................. 144 Timê and the divine ................................................................................................................. 148 Gendered timê in the civic space ............................................................................................ 154 The use of metoikia ................................................................................................................. 160 Conclusion .............................................................................................................................. 163 CHAPTER 5: DESIRING DANAIDS ....................................................................................... 165 The Danaids and Audre Lorde’s erotic ................................................................................... 165 Conclusion .............................................................................................................................. 177 iv EPILOGUE ................................................................................................................................. 179 BIBLIOGRAPHY ....................................................................................................................... 184 v ABSTRACT This dissertation explores the intersection of honor and gender in 5 th century BCE Athenian tragedy, with a particular interest in female participation in and performance of Greek timê, a term which is regularly translated as “honor,” but one which, when understood more capaciously, signifies a complex network of values that encompasses ideas of status, duty, privilege, and respect between both human and divine agents. Using four plays of Aeschylus as case studies (Agamemnon, Choephoroi, Eumenides, and Supplices) the project aims to make more legible the contours of the system of timê in Athens, and to situate the roles and lives of women within it and alongside. In addition, it aims to interrogate and complicate previous views on female honor which emphasize the importance of chastity from an androcentric perspective, thus providing a more nuanced understanding of women’s honor which moves beyond sexual fidelity to include cosmic and civic functions such as participation in funerary ritual, interpersonal relationships both within and without the oikos, and membership in a civic body. The work I present here takes a lexical approach as its foundation – tracing as it does the movement of a term and thus idea through a constrained body of work – while also endeavoring to move beyond disciplinary boundaries by engaging with a diverse range of voices in both scholarly and cultural spheres, integrating feminist work by, for example, bell hooks, Audre Lorde, Luce Irigaray and Saba Mahmood, the decolonizing praxis of Linda Tuhiwai Smith, Eve Tuck, K. Wayne Yang and others, and contemporary philosophical explorations on honor as well as psychological studies on grief and trauma. Rather than seeking to reify timê on behalf of women past and present, this project leaves the question of female timê open, concluding that, in Athens, timê was a demarcating strategy – one of many – for civic inclusion and exclusion, and that, at a fundamental level, both timê and honor can be understood as a measure of the value a person holds in their community/ies. 1 INTRODUCTION: THE MEANING OF A WORD To play with mimesis is thus, for a woman, to try to recover the place of her exploitation by discourse, without allowing herself to be simply reduced to it. This language work would thus attempt to thwart any manipulation of discourse that would also leave discourse intact. Not, necessarily, in the utterance, but in its autological presuppositions. Its function would thus be to cast phallocentrism, phallocratism, loose from its moorings in order to return the masculine to its own language, leaving open the possibility of a different language. Which means that the masculine would no longer be “everything.” That it could no longer, all by itself, define, circumvene, circumscribe, the properties of any thing and everything. That the right to define every value—including the abusive privilege of appropriation—would no longer belong to it. […] the recognition of a “specific” female sexuality would challenge the monopoly on value held by the masculine sex alone […] 1 Although what follows is not an Irigarayan approach to classical texts per se, nonetheless in the working of this project I have found that Luce Irigaray’s essay “The Power of Discourse,” from which the above quotations are taken, has strongly influenced my thinking and the project’s shape; that these textual moments have been unmoored from their philosophical grounding – taken out of context, out of order, and, in the case of the last, incomplete – is not, I think, at odds with Irigaray’s own sinuous and provocative discursive mode. I have been particularly struck by Irigaray’s insistence that “the masculine” need not “be ‘everything’,” and the idea that there is a means by which we might divest – both for ourselves now and for others in the past whose lives we might barely glimpse – identity, pleasures, values, and, even, language, from the masculine “monopoly on value.” 2 This divestment is not, at its core, a resistance to or reappropriation of the masculine, but a stepping aside from it, another way of thinking and moving – tentatively, fiercely, with curiosity – through the daily practices that make up a life, which, for some of us, includes the 1 Irigaray (1985), 76, 80, 73, emphasis original. 2 Hence the title of my own project. 2 practice of scholarship. Which, for some – and I include myself in this group – intersects also with one’s positionality and politics. 3 When I first began this project I had a very simple question in mind: Could women have timê? I found, quite early on, that the answer was clearly Yes, and yet I have also found that this simple statement of fact has not been made assertively in scholarly literature on the topic. Indeed, the topic of women and honor (or women and timê) has barely been addressed until recently, 4 except for perhaps a few pages or a footnote within studies on honor in the ancient world, which tend to focus on the decidedly androcentric values and systems that are represented in the literature (usually by men), and from a masculine perspective (although typically not explicitly so). Indeed, my own project began as a series of questions on “honor” in antiquity, and in ancient Greece in particular. We have now encountered a pair of terms that I have found, methodologically-speaking, quite complicated to work with. Honor, on the one hand; timê, on the other. The former is a typical 3 Or, I could say more accurately, “intersects consciously with one’s positionality and politics”; that scholarship can exist separately from such – in a vacuum, as it were – is a fallacy long held dear by certain contingents of the scholarly community. Rabinowitz (1993), 3-4: “To return to the contradiction between feminist theory and the classics: while the conflict would appear to be between feminist theory, which is avowedly a politics, and, classics, which claims to be simply the study of the Greek and Latin languages, as well as Greek and Roman culture in the ancient period, the conflict is in fact between two different and even antithetical forms of politics. […] What is construed as the avoidance of any special interests [by, e.g., objective philologists] in reality reflects one special interest group’s attempt to maintain its authority and control.” Although these statements from Nancy Rabinowitz were published nearly 30 years ago, and undoubtedly some progress has been made with regards to gender equity in the field (which is also to say that there has been only a little progress in terms of racial and class equity, at least within the ranks of tenure-track faculty), nonetheless the debates over “classics,” politics, privilege, scholarly rigor etc. rage on still – we might only think of the infamous incident that occurred at SCS 2019 in San Diego to be reminded of how pertinent such conversations still are; on which, see Padilla Peralta (2019) and, more formally, on the intersection of personhood and scholarship, Padilla Peralta (2020). The example of Joshua Katz, who felt he could claim to be “apolitical” while also criticizing anti-racist groups on the Princeton campus as “terrorist” in a notoriously right-wing and conservative publication, demonstrates perfectly that a certain demographic of scholars still refuse to acknowledge the role personal politics, history, and biases always play in scholarship; in insisting on their apolitical position what they are really proclaiming is, of course, the steadfast and unquestioning belief that the values they hold and uphold are so incontrovertible as to be unmarked. 4 For example, the dissertation project of Bianca Mazzhinghi Gori at the University of Edinburgh, which examines timê in domestic and interpersonal contexts of classical Athens in order to resist the male chauvinism that has dominated studies of honor thus far. 3 translation for the latter, 5 but the two are not equivalent, although I will say that timê at least seems to be one of the closest renderings in Greek to Eurocentric notions of “honor,” a primary reason that I chose it originally as the focus of my examination and a point on which Tom Habinek and myself agreed from the start. 6 Timê is a term of great complexity and scope; while it can mean different things in different contexts, when taken more capaciously, timê can signify ideas of status, privilege and/or duty, function in a social context (and in this I include religious as well as political and other civic contexts), worship and reverence to the gods, and notions of value and worth, both self-evaluative worth and the value that is gained when respect is given by another. There is an outward-facing aspect to timê, and for some time I have been convinced that, at a fundamental level, both timê and honor can be understood as a measure of the value a person holds in their community/ies. In this regard, access to timê then can act as a demarcating line between inclusion and exclusion – although to this I would add that the boundary between the two is not always firm but is porous and shifting, as I explore throughout the chapters of this dissertation. Simply put: to have timê and to be able to participate in its exchange is then to belong to the group, at least to an extent. Recent studies on honor, such as those by Alexander Welsh, Frank Henderson Stewart, and, in the context of classical and ancient Mediterranean studies, Douglas Cairns, have also emphasized this particular aspect of the term and its use, that is, that honor is developed and distributed within a collective and those who belong to it; I discuss the work of these individuals and others below. 5 LSJ I.1: “worship, esteem, honour, and in pl. honours, such as are accorded to gods or to superiors, or bestowed (whether by gods or men) as a reward for services”; LSJ I.2: “honour, dignity, lordship, as the attribute of gods or kings”; LSJ 1.3: “a dignity, office, magistracy, and in pl., civic honours”; LSJ I.4: “present of honour, compliment, offering, e.g. to the gods.” 6 The meaning of both ‘honor’ and timê is often still taken to be self-evident, as demonstrated perhaps by the lack of an entry for either in the Oxford Classical Dictionary (3 rd . ed. rev.), although there are brief entries for Lat. honos (which is listed with virtus alongside) and Gk. philotimia, which suggests merely that “the pursuit of honour was a constant of élite behaviour throughout Graeco-Roman antiquity.” 4 There is clearly a semiotic overlap between the two terms. Despite their slippery nature, I have tried in this project to be careful about their use, and typically in my discussions of Greek texts I will refer to timê, while reserving my usage of the term “honor” for occasions when I mean to refer to corresponding (and usually modern) Eurocentric ideas. 7 Nevertheless, I have found it difficult, at times, as the project has progressed and evolved, to pin down exactly the parameters of my research and what it is I am trying to articulate. Did women have timê? Do women have honor? If yes (to either), what is it? The same as that which is available to men, or something different? In looking at timê and women – for women, by, and between – do we find a past which leads us towards optimism or pessimism, and are my conclusions empowering for women past/present/future or do they ultimately re-emphasize their constraints? 8 Part of the difficulty has arisen, I think, out of the fact that I am writing and working on these questions at a particularly quicksilver moment in time – or, to be more accurate, series of moments – as the world has changed in unprecedented ways from the time of the project’s inception to now, and, simultaneously but perhaps unrelatedly (although perhaps not) the conversations on honor in Classical Greece in particular and in contemporary culture more generally have also been shifting. So, to some extent, the work in this project responds to scholarly opinions on honor in Classics which were, for some time, quite narrow, as I discuss further below. While narrow, these views were nonetheless dominant and rarely contested until only recently, and I have felt since the early stages of my project that there is room for a broad reappraisal of honor in antiquity. In this, it seems, I was not alone, and in cultural studies there was, I would say, a resurgence of interest in “honor” from the left especially in the late 2000s, with surveys by Alexander Welsh, an American scholar of English prose fiction, published in 2008 and by philosopher and cultural theorist Kwame Anthony Appiah 7 Often I will not offer a translation for timê, in doing so preferring instead to recognize its innately multivalent nature. 8 For optimism and pessimism in Classics, see Richlin (2014), 289-318. 5 in 2010. Classicists as well seemed to be having more capacious conversations about the nature of honor in antiquity in the years following. As I detail further below, there has been much scholarly work taking place on the topic at the same time as I have written the chapters of this dissertation, and I expect that further publications will be coming out on honor and timê in Greek antiquity in coming years. In this regard, then, I have found it tricky to be writing at a time when published work so conspicuously lags behind the views expressed by many in the current discourse. And, while there is room for a near-complete re-evaluation of honor in the ancient Greek sources, such an undertaking is quite clearly beyond the scope of a single dissertation, and so my work here focuses on women and timê, with the understanding that timê itself is a notion currently under scrutiny, but a kind of scrutiny that is focused on expansion. In this regard then, it is difficult for me to say with any certainty what exactly timê was for women in 5 th -century Athens, but I can say absolutely that in understanding timê as a more supple and flexible concept than has previously been allowed there is more room for women as well. 9 While reading Maggie Nelson’s recent book of essays, On Freedom, I was reminded of Ludwig Wittgenstein’s edict “the meaning of a word is its use,” 10 which succinctly encapsulates such ideas as, language is social practice, and, words have meaning only in context; the same word can mean many different things to different people in different times and places (or, different things to the same people, etc). My project then, is to examine timê in the context of Aeschylean tragedy, and to think about what implications such an examination has for our understanding of the lives of women in 5 th century Athens, when the plays of Aeschylus were produced and performed. It 9 Although I will also say that, in examining the position(s) and role(s) of women vis-à-vis the operations of timê within the Athenian polis, timê as a civic value seems to act as a kind of constraint which dictates appropriate behavior for women and in this sense then is limiting. However, with respect to earlier conversations on women and honor, such a view is still expansive and worthy of further exploration. 10 Nelson (2021), 4. 6 aims, by parsing out uses of timê, to interrogate previous views on honor, and to thus provide a more complex understanding of women’s accessibility to timê which looks beyond sexual fidelity to include also cosmic and civic function, ritual performances, and participation in collective bodies. I also take Wittgenstein’s axiom to indicate that my own use of timê (and honor, for that matter) has the power to shape its meaning; the conversations that we have as people and as scholars are important. On honor I have just stated that I mean to interrogate previous views on honor. Well, what are those views? In most studies on the topic, both within Classics and outside of it, at least until fairly recently it was commonly held that honor functioned as a commodity within a system of exchange, one which scholars and cultural critics would typically think of as androcentric and firmly situated within the ethos of heroic warfare and masculine valor. Within this framework, the status of woman as object is well accepted and much discussed, and scholars of both ancient and modern cultures for many years have suggested that a woman’s main source of value within an honor system lies in her sexual chastity. 11 Inviolate, in her exchange she solidifies bonds between men; failure to guard her 11 Women’s status as object is particularly well-documented in Lévi-Strauss’s seminal study on kinship (1969), which was influenced strongly by Mauss (1925). For the masculine=valor/feminine=chastity paradigm within the context of “honor,” see Peristiany (1966), Pitt-Rivers (1966) and (1977), Du Boulay (1974), Brandes (1975) and (1987), Stewart (2000), Bowman (2004), all of whom insist that female honor, such as it is, is fundamentally related to female chastity and subordinate always to male honor, which is made vulnerable through violations – whether real or perceived – of said chastity. Bowman (2004) argues that “America” (by which he means the United States of) has in the last century lost its sense of honor and to its detriment; he asserts that as a result the United States has become vulnerable to the threats of other “primitive honor cultures,” and he goes so far as to conclude that in order to regain its hegemony on the world stage America must recover its sense of honor by way of “a new acceptance of old forms of inequality” and specifically through a suppression of women’s rights, in order to boost a nationwide sense of masculine virility and to re-establish “patterns of dominance not only between men but between nations.” Contra Bowman, see Cairns (2011a). Recently, Appiah (2010) and Zoepf (2016) have also explored the honor/chastity model but with a more critical view than those listed above, although the former in particular I think is not critical enough, with respect to the way that the author recognizes the problem in various contexts – e.g., 20 th century Mediterranean villages, so-called “honor- killings,” see pp. 137-72 – but does not necessarily and explicitly question the gender disparities that lie at its core and neither does he seem to offer a path forward. 7 chastity results in dishonor for the man to whom she belongs, be they father, husband, brother, or son; 12 such dishonor was also viewed as potentially destructive to the community at large. 13 This model was especially predominant in 20 th century anthropological studies of modern Mediterranean societies, of which the works of J. G. Peristiany and Julian Pitt-Rivers are paradigmatic. Within the field of classical studies, honor for women is only rarely a topic of conversation, and, when it is, the conclusions adhere to the model outlined above. A notable example is David Cohen’s monograph Law, Sexuality, and Society: The Enforcement of Morals in Classical Athens (1991), which identifies honor and shame as central poles of Greek social order. The author uses sociological and anthropological methods combined with close textual analyses in an attempt to understand the ways that Athenian society defined and regulated sexual and religious behavior. He then uses this study of classical Athens to think more broadly about the way any society produces and reproduces and represents its moral structures. Of especial interest to the author is the relationship between what literary, and in particular, legal, sources offer as representations of normative behaviors – e.g. pederastic relationships, the seclusion of women – and Athenian social practice, that is, whether those normative behaviors were enforced or even enforceable. Cohen is primarily interested in sexual behaviours and attempts at regulating the body, and thus a significant 12 Pitt-Rivers (1966), 42: “As the basis of repute, honour and shame are synonymous, since shamelesness is dishonourable. […] A woman is dishonoured, loses her vergüenza [(according to the author, “shame” or “concern for repute”)], with the tainting of her sexual purity, but a man does not. While certain conduct is honourable for both sexes, Honour = shames obliges a man to defend his honour and that of his family, a woman to conserve her purity.” 13 Brandes (1975), 234: “In San Blas, a family’s honor is probably more dependent on the sexual conduct of its woman than on any other single factor.” Cf. also Du Boulay (1974), 12: “The public element in the organization of village life has an important bearing on the way in which the quality of sexual shame is lived out, for since honor is given to the individual by the community, and since feminine honor depends on the possession of shame, it is vital for the possessor of shame that this fact should be demonstrated to the community. It is in fact as important to be seen to be chaste as it is to be chaste.” 8 portion of his study focuses on women in Athens. 14 He identifies honor and shame as the central poles around which the social systems of classical Athens and the modern Mediterranean are structured, and he uses the model of the latter to explore the social practices of the former, offering the following observations: The crucial point here is that the honor of men is, in large part, defined through the chastity of women to whom they are related. Female honor largely involves sexual purity and the behavior which social norms deem necessary to maintain it in the eyes of the watchful community. Male honor received the active role of defending that purity. A man’s honor is therefore involved with the sexual purity of his mother, sisters, wife and daughters – of him chastity is not required. As in modern Mediterranean societies, in Athens men’s perception of female sexuality complicated the task of guarding the honor of a family. Indeed, male perceptions of women’s unchastity appear as a commonplace in [Attic] drama, and, linked with the values of honor and shame, make clear how women must be guarded so as to protect the family and, ultimately, the social order. 15 Cohen’s assertions above suggest that female honor 1) is dependent on her chastity and 2) exists in a hierarchic relationship to male honor. 16 Her honor-as-chastity has direct bearing on his honor, 14 cf. Cohen 1991, Chapter 5: The law of adultery and Chapter 6: Adultery, women, and social control. In general, this is a very good study, with many examples and sources; Cohen is exceptionally thorough, and, in particular, his emphasis throughout on the primacy of knowledgeable agents to create and continue to reproduce social structures over established conventions (e.g. laws), which, he suggests, influence but do not fully determine social norms, is well-received, as are his observations on the complexities of gender-relations in classical Athens. I am still doubtful about how far we can take a comparative model, which Cohen spends some time defending in Chapter 3: Models and Methods II. Such a model seems too easily to lend itself to generalizations and efforts towards mapping the present onto the past or vice versa (both equally dangerous when taken too far). Although Cohen endeavours strongly to avoid reductive generalizations, and, on the whole, is fairly successful, on this point in particular, that is, the Athenian conception of honor (which he extends more broadly to the Mediterranean region, ancient, modern, and in between), his stance is resolute; again and again he maintains that within normative social structures female modesty is directly linked to the honor of her husband or other male relatives. Although the boundaries of restriction are not homogeneous from culture to culture, all share as a common thread that a violation of a woman’s chastity (whoever the agent, i.e. a man or the woman herself in engaging in sexual actions, or even merely in the perception of such engagement) results in dishonor for men, and there is the danger that this dishonor will contaminate as well the community to which she belongs. This is a paradigm that Cohen revisits and reaffirms in, I think, every chapter, and he offers no further possibilities for female honor. 15 Cohen (1991), 140, 144, 145. 16 Cf. also Cairns (1993), 120-6; 186. Also on women-chastity-honor in the classical context, Adkins (1960), 36-7, Lloyd-Jones (1990), 6. Cairns has revised his views on honor – and specifically timê – since the publication of Aidôs in 1993 – see for example, Cairns (2011) – and now approaches the issue of women and honor with more nuance, 9 but not vice versa. Significantly, the masculine model of honor to which her own actions are so closely identified is not regularly conceived of as sexual chastity, but, rather, something entirely different, hinging on a certain quality that the Greeks might have called andreia and the Romans virtus, both of which are related to words for "man." At stake here is the issue of erotic or even bodily autonomy – the control of an individual’s sexual agency and the potentially disastrous consequences of its expression outside of normative social boundaries. This anxiety over female sexual agency and attempts at its regulation manifest themselves in various ways – e.g. through institutionalized marriage, gendered space/seclusion of women, restriction of social rights and political access, to name only a few examples – but the shared core of these practices is an effort to control what a woman’s body is doing. 17 Such control is then sought by men in order to maintain their own honor, which, importantly, is understood as a “zero-sum game,” 18 by which I mean that although his work is geared towards the non-verbal elements of ritual and social interaction and has not the same explicitly feminist aims and scaffolding as my own; see Cairns (2002), (2009), (2011c), (2016). 17 Control over and violence against women’s (and non-binary) bodies and the basic and alarming gender inequity they represent is still a problem; the examples are innumerable (and enraging) – here are only a few: the “Texas Heartbeat Law” of 2021, which prohibits abortion once a heartbeat is detectable – much earlier than many people even know they are pregnant, similar legislation in Oklahoma passed in 2022 (quite literally, as I write this draft – my google search puts the news at 4 hour ago, related, the appointments of Brett Kavanaugh and Amy Coney Barrett to the Supreme Court by an anti-Roe U.S. president, a recent swell of anti-trans legislation that is often introduced under the guise of “protecting children” (analogous to control as protection of women), so, for example, a 2022 bill in Texas which would allow prosecution of parents of minors who receive transition care (puberty blockers, hormone therapy, and the like (note, at time of writing the bill has been blocked by a federal injunction but will be reviewed in July 2022); studies have shown that such care can reduce self-harm and death by suicide in trans youth), the 2016 CDC recommendations on alcohol-consumption for women, access to contraceptives world-wide, so-called honor killings, female genital mutilation. At time of writing, the Supreme Court of the Unites States of America has now recently voted to overturn Roe vs. Wade, thus no longer protecting the choice of abortion or important medical treatments and conditions that require abortion. One may note that the above examples are not the focus of this project, which is quite narrowly constrained to (representations of) women, timê, and four tragedies of Aeschylus. But, the narrative on honor (and even, at times, timê, e.g., Aesch. Suppl. 1013, see Ch. 4) is related very much to issues of bodily and erotic autonomy, and violence as control as, at times, protection. So, while the above are not necessarily “relevant” to the topic at hand, they are always in the background of my writing and research. 18 Cohen (1991), 183. The concept of the zero-sum game was originally applied to classical Athens by Gouldner (1965), 49-51. 10 there is only a limited amount of a certain commodity – here, “honor” – and so one’s acquisition of such can only be at the expense of another. 19 Recently, however, the conversation has shifted and new views have emerged, both within classical studies and more broadly. Within the discipline, an exciting research group has been convening since 2018 under the project name “Honour in Classical Greece: esteem, status, identity, and society in ancient Greek literature, life, and thought”; Douglas Cairns is Principal Investigator with Mirko Canevaro as Co-Investigator. 20 One of the project’s primary aims is to “challenge [the] erroneous and misleading ideas” that honor is a “zero-sum competition between alpha-males,” 21 and its members are exploring a broad range of topics including but not limited to timê in the domestic and interpersonal sphere in Athens in the 4 th century BCE, 22 timê within the context of Attic law and juridical practice, 23 inequalities of wealth and inequalities of status, 24 and honor in the Ethics and Politics of Aristotle. 25 In particular, the group’s conversations and findings emphasize that: honor is “not one value among many [but] a measure of the value of any quality or set of qualities, a motivational mechanism that could accommodate both competitive and cooperative behavior” and thus is not inherently hierarchical (although it can underpin social hierarchies); 26 that it is reciprocal and that there is a strongly social element; 27 that honor can be 19 Against an understanding of timê as zero-sum is, e.g., narratives around the creation of new gods, as in the Homeric Hymn to Hermes when Hermes is born and receives his timê from Zeus (516). 20 Hereafter HCG; see in bibliography as Cairns (2018). The project is funded by the European Research Council under the ERC-ADG – Advanced Grant scheme. 21 ibid., “About.” Also: “The project will show that, far from being a single value among many, timê is a pluralist, inclusive, and flexible notion, as important to ancient values of justice, friendship, and social solidarity as it is to the violence of heroic self-assertion and the pursuit of vengeance.” It is hopefully clear from the above statement on timê that much of this project’s conclusions on honor align with my own, which I was very pleased to find when I began to participate in the HCG weekly reading group in 2021. 22 Bianca Mazzinghi Gori; for further see Cairns (2018), “People”. 23 Linda Rocchi, ibid. 24 Canevaro (2018). 25 Kleanthis Mantzouranis; see Cairns (2018), “People”; also, Cairns (2022). 26 Mirko Canevaro, in a private correspondence. 27 Welsh (2008), 10. 11 not only “vertical” (i.e., hierarchizing) but also “horizontal” (i.e., a cooperative and egalitarian value); 28 and that honor is bidirectional, that is, it comes from both within and without; that is, it can both be received from others (through, e.g. but not only, respect) and is also self-assessed – an individual can have a sense of and assert their own value. 29 30 The work of the HCG project and its members has been strongly influenced by that of Alexander Welsh and Frank Henderson Stewart, both of whom have written books on the topic of honor outside of the discipline of Classics. 31 It is useful to briefly summarize their findings here. Welsh, in a study on the history and meaning of honor in “Western culture,” defines honor as “the respect that motivates or constrains members of a group,” and suggests that it is a type of moral obligation within a reciprocal relationship, one which he explicitly separates from “obedience,” which is another strand of moral imperative in his taxonomy. 32 He emphasizes the importance of the peer group (my “collective” or “community”) as the necessary background to any conception of honor, and in addition he suggests that there is strong relationship between access to honor and personal autonomy and thus respect granted to an individual is a way to acknowledge their autonomy, which can often be situated within the context of group participation. 33 In other words, 28 Stewart (1994), 54-63, Welsh (2008), 12-15 29 Cairns (2019), 76-8. As Mirko Canevaro has noted to me, honor can be bidirectional and still asymmetrical, especially along gender lines. Such an understanding is not in conflict with the aims of this project, which does not seek to find the same timê for women as men, but only to assert that women did in fact have access to timê and that it was not only through their sexual chastity. 30 These conclusions about honor are, I think, very much in line with my own thinking and my findings on timê in this project, although not always explicitly so – much of this work was introduced to me in 2021, when the bulk of my chapters had already been written. In revising, I have attempted to go through and draw out the resonances between my conclusions on timê and the conclusions that have been emphasized by HCG, but I think future iterations of this project would very much benefit from a stronger integration of these ideas and the corresponding literature, on which, see the below paragraph. 31 Stewart (1994), Welsh (2008). Also, Appiah (2010), although this author emphasizes honor in its competitive manifestation more strongly than, I think, the HCG members would. 32 Welsh (2008), xv, 5-6. This distinction between obedience and respect is perhaps useful, given the rhetoric around obedience that has long tried to constrain the movement of women and others, e.g., children. I am not sure I would agree that timê, at least, has the same connotation of “respect” as Welsh sees for “honor.” 33 ibid. 1-8. Welsh sees the relationship between honor and personal autonomy as an idea that becomes particularly visible during the period of the “Enlightenment”; see esp. his chapters on Kant and Adam Smith. 12 in order to be able to participate as a member of a collective, to some extent one’s autonomy is recognized and validated by the respect they receive; conversely, membership itself validates one’s autonomy and right to respect. These points are particularly relevant for the way I am conceiving of women as participants in the Athenian community, who actively give and receive timê to other members of the community. 34 In addition, Welsh engages with certain significant ideas that had been introduced previously by Frank Henderson Stewart, an anthropologist whose project sought to establish “what exactly honour is.” 35 In his important study, Stewart concludes that “honor” is by no means a value exclusive to Mediterranean societies and that, furthermore, it is a mistake to conceive of “the Mediterranean” as a monolith. Additionally, he argues against the conception of honor as an inherently elite phenomenon (i.e., honor is accessible to and a value of other classes as well) and suggests that honor and wealth are not necessarily correlates. Broadly speaking, Stewart emphasizes the need to contextualize honor in order to understand its meaning, as I am doing as well, with timê, affirming its multivalent and flexible nature. Specifically, Welsh makes use of Stewart’s ideas of “vertical” and “horizontal” honor, which I have introduced above in the context of the HCG group. 36 Stewart asserts that there are different types of honor which either verticalize, i.e., establish hierarchies, or are horizontalizing, i.e., honor as a value that is egalitarian in nature 34 Josine Blok would go as far as to say that women are participants or members of the Athenian civic body, i.e., they are citizens, as she has argued in her recent book on Athenian citizenship; see Blok (2017). Although her focus is historical, whereas mine is literary, still I have found her conclusions very convincing and illuminating, although I am not sure that the view is as optimistic as she has presented. I think Blok’s criticism of Aristotle (as the primary source for our understanding that Athenian women were not citizens) is particularly important, and I find convincing her argument that it is anachronistic to assume that Athenian citizenship followed the same criteria as modern democratic citizenship, however, I think it is still important to recognize that certain and strong constraints were put upon the role and movement of women, and that, even if we are to think about them as citizens, their ‘rights’ by which I suppose I mean, more so, their autonomy, was not equal to that of their male counterparts. For timai (= inherited privileges) available to women, see particularly pp. 187-248. 35 Stewart (1994), ix. 36 Although note that Stewart was not the first to use these terms, as he himself acknowledges; see ibid. 59 n. 15, with bibliography. 13 and distributed between members of a peer group. 37 It is this latter type in which I am most interested in, although to be sure both can be found in Aeschylean tragedy. 38 Importantly, horizontal honor is “a respect that is due an equal”; 39 another way of reading this assertion is that, when respect is given, it is, as I have commented on timê above, a mark of a person’s standing within a collective. However, I will note that Stewart sees the Greek idea of timê as only verticalizing, with which I would not necessarily agree. 40 In this he has been largely influenced by scholarship on honor in ancient Greece (and in particular, scholarship on honor); thus, there is a kind of self- fulfilling prophecy at play. In addition, as Linda Rocchi has noted, “Stewart seems to endorse the idea of honour as a pre-eminently masculine, violent, and aggressive element of ‘zero-sum’ competitions, thus subscribing to the anthropological stereotype which he otherwise questions consistently.” 41 Indeed, in other places as well Stewart’s work reinscribes the very honor paradigm which I seek to resist. 42 Thus, while I find his ideas of verticalizing and horizontalizing honor 37 ibid. 54-63. Contrast Finley (1977), 118 on honor in the context of the Odyssey, who claims that: “It is the nature of honour that it must be exclusive, or at least hierarchic. When everyone attains equal honour, then there is no honour for anyone.” 38 And Stewart notes that they are not necessarily incompatible, ibid. 59. I will discuss specific examples of vertical and horizontal honor in Chapter 1. 39 ibid. 59. 40 Stewart (1994), 59-60. 41 Cairns (2018), “Literature Review” > F. H. Stewart, Honor (1994). 42 Stewart (2000), 22, 25: “Every adult man has honor unless he has lost it; the Bedouin will also occasionally refer to the honor of a tribe as a whole, but women do not have honor. […] In fact – and this is a crucial point – no offense committed directly against a Bedouin man can endanger his honor. In principle, the only thing that can harm a Bedouin’s honor is his own failure to meet any one of a small class of special obligations. […] These obligations fall into two classes. One consists of the duty to take action if a woman for whom one is responsible (usually a sister or daughter) is sexually interfered with. The other class contains all the remaining items of the honor code.” (emphasis my own). We should note, of course, that Stewart here is discussing a non-Greek context, and thus I run the risk of universalizing his conclusions when that is surely not his intention. Still, given the similarities between Stewart’s words and those of other anthropologists of the Mediterranean, I think they are worth including. Indeed, making a more categorical statement, Stewart (1994), 107 asserts that “In societies where honor is important, it tends to be mainly something for men. […] Where women do have personal honor, the main component of that honor is very often chastity; women are given little opportunity to display such virtues as courage in battle, and qualities of integrity that they display tend to be confined to the domestic sphere. If there is a system of reflexive honor, women are not normally direct participants in it: when a woman’s honor is impugned and a counterattack has to be made, then it is usually a man who will make it.” 14 useful, especially in the context of Aeschylus’s Eumenides, as I discuss in Chapter 1, I have little use for the normative gender paradigms that his work supports. The ideas on honor that I have summarized above are, by and large, useful also for thinking about Greek timê, in any context. 43 From these ideas I have taken away especially strongly the point that honor is not inherently hierarchizing and that it is a value that can be situated within the context of the collective. As I have stated already above: for some time I have been convinced that, at a fundamental level, both timê and honor can be understood as a measure of the value a person holds in their community/ies. Approach My project is, at its foundation, a lexical study on the uses of timê in four tragedies of Aeschylus: Eumenides, Choephoroi, Agamemnon, and Supplices. 44 In this regard, these four plays are meant to serve as case studies for thinking about timê in a broader Attic context; my research also lays groundwork for future studies on timê and women in Greek antiquity, of which there is still a dearth. In her 1981 essay “The Conception of Women in Athenian Drama,” Helene Foley concluded that “We need to understand considerably more about the role of women in Greek religion or the Greek conception of honor in order to analyze women’s role in drama.” 45 I see this project then as a response to that call. 43 It would be remiss of me not to point out that nearly all studies of honor, in the ancient world or otherwise, are carried out by men. This surely skews their conclusions. If nothing else, it highlights the need for a greater diversity of voices on the topic. A notable area of exception is in the field of Middle Eastern studies, where there have been some very interesting studies on women and honor; see, e.g., Abu-Lughod (2016), first published in 1986. 44 In the order that I address them in this project. 45 Foley (1981), 163. This article is the basis for the author’s extensive treatment of women and tragedy in her 2002 monograph, which, however, does not specifically treat the intersection of women and Greek honor. Foley engages with the work of Pitt-Rivers (1971), Bourdieu (1977), and Peristiany (1966); I have discussed already how such modern conceptions on honor, especially the models provided by Pitt-Rivers and Peristiany, are unsatisfactory for thinking through the ancient Greek material. Foley’s study is an excellent introduction to the role of women in Greek drama and the productivity and limits of pyscho-analytic and structuralist approaches to Greek literature. 15 I am a philologist by training, and I have a deep respect for the text and its nuances. Furthermore, I am a philologist who believes firmly in the socially embedded nature of text and that media is both constituted by and constitutive of the culture – layered and complex – within which it is produced. With this in mind, I have tried to keep in mind the broader context of Athenian politics and social mores as I engage in my analysis of Aeschylus’s plays, and to make use of historical studies when I can. And yet, while I am keenly interested in the history of Athens and the real-life experiences of the people who lived there, I am not a historian, and this project is undeniably literary in nature. This is also a feminist project, and my work (and my personhood, for that matter) has been shaped by feminist classicists as well as by feminist thinkers from outside the discipline. 46 It is useful I think to lay out explicitly what my feminism is: I follow the ideas set forth by the late bell hooks, who defined feminism as “the struggle to end of sexist oppression.” 47 I like this definition because it removes specific gender identity from the equation; the implication is that feminist work resists sexist oppression for all. We all benefit from feminism, and specifically a feminism which is inclusive and intersectional. 48 And, although hooks’ definition explicitly posits an “end,” I would note (and I don’t think that she would have disagreed) that the practice of feminism is iterative, constant, and with a view towards the future, even that future which is beyond our own lifetimes, and that no one project can accomplish its aims. 49 With this in mind, I envision this 46 In particular – but in no particular order – formative has been the work of, in Classics, Amy Richlin, Nancy Rabinowitz, Froma Zeitlin, Sheila Murnaghan, Sarah Pomeroy, Rebecca Futo Kennedy. Outside of Classics I have been particularly influenced by the writing, criticism, and activism of bell hooks, Audre Lorde, Adrienne Rich, Jenny Odell, Maggie Nelson, Sara Ahmed, Judith Butler, Luce Irigaray, Julietta Singh. 47 hooks (2014 [2000, 1984]), 26. Also useful, ibid. 27: “By repudiating the popular notion that the focus of the feminist movement should be social equality of the sexes and by emphasizing eradication of the cultural basis of group oppression, our own analysis would require an exploration of all aspects of women’s political reality. This would mean that race and class oppression would be recognized as feminist issues with as much relevance as sexism.” 48 On intersectional feminism, see, now paradigmatically, Crenshaw (1989); also, Collins (2000). 49 The characterization of scholarly and activist work in this way is something that has really been impressed upon me by work in decolonizing studies; see, for example, Smith (2021), and Smith, Tuck, and Yang (2019). 16 project as part of an ongoing conversation – neither its beginning nor its end – whose participants are, I hope, diverse and in both present, past, and future. I have tried to open a space for questions rather than arguments; although there is a perceptible trajectory to my work it is not necessarily my intention to “prove” any single point. This as well is, I think, a feminist act. 50 I have come back to bell hooks and her work many times over the course of this project; her words always there in the back of my mind, even if unmentioned on the page. I think it is important to include hooks’ definition of feminism here, at the start of my project, because it has really helped to shape my movement through the text. I ask myself often, does this contribute to the end of sexist oppression, where “this” could be the project as a whole, a particular conclusion or an interpretation of a certain passage. And, in the same way that hooks’ definition does not insist upon – does not even include, really – the category of woman, at times likewise my work looks beyond women in the text and considers how timê works as a system, which is represented in the text by performances of both female and male figures. 51 Uncovering the contours of this system is, I think, feminist work in the way that bell hooks has defined it. This also means that at times, what I uncover and set forth is not obviously in resistance to patriarchal normativity, but may seem to confirm or even support certain patriarchal structures. While I try not to dwell on the masculine (e.g., the male gaze, masculine anxiety, etc), neither do I insist on the agency of women. As I have articulated above, previous scholarship on honor has often perpetrated an honor/chastity paradigm that insists that the value of woman depends on her virtue, and on the constraints which protect it. The response to such insistence on the restriction of bodily autonomy as a crucial element of honor is not to insist inversely on unfettered movement 50 In the sense that thesis (as evidence of productivity) seems to me a very patriarchal – and specifically patriarchal within a neoliberal context – idea. Indeed, the idea of making one’s point has always struck me as phallic. 51 As when I examine both Orestes and Electra in Chapter 2. 17 or an agency that has been concealed amidst the layers of the past. Rather, my approach is to explore the complex, nuanced, and oftentimes explicit, ways female figures in the tragedies of Aeschylus both embody and perform timê and are, sometimes simultaneously, constrained by it. In this regard, I have found the concept of “agency” to be one that is difficult for me to grasp in this project, and I am not convinced it would be entirely useful for me to do so. 52 Agency has recently fallen under scrutiny in other, non-Classical contexts such as history, anthropology, and archaeology. 53 So, Walter Johnson, a historian of African and African American studies, commenting on the use of agency in the context of histories of those who have been enslaved, asserts: the term ‘agency’ smuggles a notion of the universality of a liberal notion of selfhood, with its emphasis on independence and choice, right into the middle of a conversation about slavery against which the supposedly natural (at least for white men) condition was originally defined. By applying the jargon of self- determination and choice to the historical conditions of civil objectification and choicelessness, historians have, not surprisingly, ended up in a mess. 54 Johnson also suggests that efforts in scholarship to “give the slaves back their agency” could be viewed as an “advertisement of good will”; 55 in other words, looking for agency as the answer to 52 Questions of agency garnered significant attention as studies on women (and feminist studies on women in particular) became more commonplace in Classics, especially following the 1980s and ‘90s. Studies on women and/or studies from a feminist perspective in the field seem to follow one of several approaches. Some attempt to recover some sense of female agency and/or resistance to Greek patriarchal oppression, e.g., Lyons (2012), while some have sought to identify the real-life experiences of women in the past following the model advocated by Culham (1986). Others have tried to find a “third-position” between agency and object, e.g., Rabinowitz (1993) and Wohl (1998), both of which explore representations of women, marriage, and exchange in Attic tragedy. This is closer to what I am aiming for. 53 Many thanks go to Lisa K. Bailey at the University of Auckland, who has shared with me generously the work on agency that I engage with here, and who has been a wonderful inspiration for ways to work with the past both imaginatively and rigorously – many, I believe, think the two are at odds, but she and I – and hopefully others – are very much in agreement that they are not. 54 Johnson (2003), 115; see also Thomas (2016), which thinks explicitly about the usefulness and limits of agency in historical analyses of the role and position of women. ibid., 335: “We can also rethink agency by examining it as a historical concept, a concept that people in the past have defined and deployed in quite different, and sometimes disorienting, ways. Moving beyond agency as argument will enable more compelling, less predictable histories and aid in distinguishing agency from political resistance.” Furthermore, poststructuralist critiques of the usefulness of agency as argument go back at least to the 1980s; see Scott (1986) and (1991), and Spivak (1988). 55 Johnson (2003), 120. 18 a historical question was a way for scholars, and white scholars in particular, to demonstrate their alignment with the ongoing struggles of Black people – virtue signalling, if you will, or, to borrow a term from decolonization studies, a kind of “move to innocence.” 56 As a woman writing on women who is often questioned about the place of agency in my work, this point strikes me particularly strongly. The feminist anthropologist Saba Mahmood has offered a nuanced critique of the use of agency in studies on women in her sensitive analysis of the women’s piety movement in Cairo, which was part of a larger movement of Islamic political revival and reform. Her subject matter is particularly tricky, from a feminist perspective, given the difficulty of understanding the values and choices of individual women or groups of women acting under and in accordance with the practices of Islam, about whom, from the more generous feminist perspectives, the best thing that can be said is that they have internalized the values of the system which constrains them, rather than that they are actively promoting such misogyny. 57 Mahmood problematizes agency as a critical tool that, situated as it is within arguments over resistance and subordination, depends to a large extent on a set of ideas that have arisen from progressive left politics: 58 the presupposition of freedom as a social ideal, and the attendant “positing of women’s agency as consubstantial with resistance to relations of domination.” 59 Furthermore, on the idea of freedom, she adds, “I want to emphasize the concept of individual autonomy that is central to both, and the concomitant elements 56 Tuck and Yang (2012). 57 Mahmood (2005), 1-2 lays the foundation well: “One of the most common reactions [from feminists] is the supposition that women Islamist supporters are pawns in a grand patriarchal plan, who, if freed from their bondage, would naturally express their instinctual abhorrence for the traditional Islamic mores used to enchain them. Even those analysts who are skeptical of the false-consciousness thesis underpinning this approach nonetheless continue to frame the issue in terms of a fundamental contradiction: why would such a large number of women across the Muslim world actively support a movement that seems inimical to their ‘own interests and agendas,’ especially at a historical moment when these women appear to have more emancipatory possibilities available to them?” Emphasis added. 58 And here we might include, I think, second-wave feminism and in particular the type that has been practiced by White feminists. 59 Mahmood (2005), 10; on agency, freedom, politics, and women, ibid., 1-39. 19 of coercion and consent that are critical to this topography of freedom. In order for an individual to be free, her actions must be the consequence of ‘her own will’ rather than of custom, tradition, or social coherence.” 60 This point on the free will of an individual in binary opposition to custom, tradition, and social coherence is particularly relevant to my study, which looks at representations of women in Aeschylus and how they might be reflective of women’s roles in collective contexts, such as the civic or ritual. For one thing, given the evidence we have, it is nearly impossible to say anything about any individual woman’s “will.” It is also important to keep in mind that the evidence from Athens – and for that matter, criticism and commentary on it, from antiquity on – is androcentric in nature, and the society it offers glimpses of is similarly dominated by men, at every level. My intention in this project is not to challenge the existence of patriarchal structures and values in Athens, nor is it necessarily to explore the ways in which those ideologies have been constituted. 61 Rather, I am interested in thinking about the movement and practices of women within such a structure, neither in support of or in resistance to it, but, I suppose, alongside. This is especially germane in my exploration of Aeschylus’s Choephoroi, which focuses on establishing a relationship between women, timê, funerary ritual, and collective participation and identity. To return to Mahmood’s excellent work, she summarizes her thoughts on the matter quite succinctly in a statement worth quoting in full: Put simply, my point is this: if the ability to effect change in the world and in oneself is historically and culturally specific (both in terms of what constitutes ‘change’ and the means by which it is effected), then the meaning and sense of agency cannot be fixed in advance, but must emerge through an analysis of the particular concepts that enable specific modes of being, responsibility, and effectivity. Viewed in this way, what may appear to be the case of deplorable passivity and docility from a progressivist point of view, may actually be a form of 60 ibid., 11, emphasis added. 61 An important project, to be sure, but one on which much work has already been done. The examples are many, but, see, e.g., Rubin (1975), a seminal essay for contextualizing and criticizing the subordination of women as an idea. 20 agency – but one that can be understood only from within the discourses and structures of subordination that create the conditions of its enactment. In this sense, agentival capacity is entailed not only in those acts that resists norms but also in the multiple ways in which one inhabits norms. 62 This, I think, is a very productive point of engagement for working on women in the past. In one of her most well-known statements, Audre Lorde, talking about the second-wave feminist rally the personal is political at a conference in 1979 with the intent of insisting on the necessity of an intersectional feminist practice, contended that “the master’s tools will never dismantle the master’s house.” 63 Amy Richlin noted that this has at times placed feminists in Classics in an uncomfortable position, “uneasily conscious that the master’s house is our home.” 64 I think about this a lot, “this” being both Lorde’s powerful essay and the way classicists in particular have responded to it. It seems at times as if there is no way out of this particular structure, given the evidence we have and the long history of the discipline as a buttress of conservative, patriarchal, Anglocentric ideals, 65 not to mention the bureaucracy and politics of many institutions of higher education. 66 However, just as recent archaeological studies have shown that the understanding that women were constrained to the inner domains of the oikos is not entirely accurate, 67 so too do I think that any sense of entrapment within social and disciplinary structures 62 Mahmood (2005), 14-15, emphasis original. Although Mahmood in certain places criticizes Irigaray’s feminism as attempting to recover an unproblematic feminine experience, there are aspects of Irigaray’s project that are not in conflict with what Mahmood articulates here. So, Irigaray (1985), 78: “the issue is not one of elaborating a new theory of which woman would be the subject or the object, but of jamming the theoretical machinery itself, of suspending its pretension to the production of a truth and of a meaning that are excessively univocal.” 63 Lorde (2007), 112. She continues, “They may allow us to temporarily beat him at his own game, but they will never enable us to bring about genuine change. And this fact is only threatening to those women who still define the master’s house as their only source of support.” 64 Richlin (2014), 14. 65 That the material of the “classical” past is easily and often co-opted by the far-right is evident; see Zuckerberg (2018). 66 A tweet by author and academic Jes Battis, commenting on decolonization efforts in the academy, summarizes the issue well: “Academia: how do we decolonize? / Everyone: give the land back / Academia: *creates Dean of Decolonization.” Battis (2022). There is much overlap, I think, in the strategies and practices of feminist and decolonization, as evident in, e.g., Smith (2021), although the two are obviously not equivalent and neither are they always in harmonious relationship. 67 e.g., Mann (2015). 21 is, to some extent, open to question. Key is Lorde’s identification of a source of the problem as “the master’s tools,” which I take to mean that we need not only to find new tools (easier said than done, especially in certain conservative fields) but also to make the master’s tools our own. I also think, to some extent, that the task is not to “dismantle” the master’s house, but to put our efforts towards building a new one. 68 There are several ways I have tried to engage in these efforts in this project. 69 The use of the personal voice, met with less discomfort now, I think, is one way to resist the sort of desensitized objectivity that was once de rigueur, the need to establish one’s critical distance from the text and all that it conveys. Moreover, concomitant to my use of the personal voice I attempt at times to insert my own body – my positionality and personhood – into my writing, and to make transparent the social and historical contexts of my own work and thus underline why I am interested in the questions I am asking. 70 It was not all that long ago that personal-voice writing in Classics was first deemed acceptable, as Richlin articulates in the introduction to her 2014 collection Arguments with Silence, and to write in the personal voice can be a kind of activism. 71 Richlin, citing the work of Nancy Rabinowitz, concludes that “the personal voice must be characterized as one committed to social change.” 72 This right here – what I am doing now, what Richlin and others have practiced before me – is another type of feminist practice: the act of feminist citation, as defined by feminist scholar 68 There are many scholars in classical and ancient Mediterranean studies who are doing this kind of work. To name only a few: Rebecca Futo Kennedy, Dan-el Padilla Peralta, Suzanne Lye, Joel Christensen, Mathura Umachandran, Debby Sneed, and Hannah Čulík-Baird; also, the Classics and Social Justice group, founded in 2017. 69 To be clear, none of these practices are required of any project, and there are plenty of critical, feminist and otherwise projects that do not necessarily deploy these tactics, and also scholars who I think would unabashadly support such work and at the same time do not make it their primary focus, or even explicit. 70 So, e.g., at the conclusion of Chapter 2. 71 Richlin (2014), 3-4. On personal-voice writing in Classics, see also Hallett and Van Nortwick (1997), and the special volume of Arethusa in 2001 (issue 34(2)). 72 Rabinowitz (2001), 207. 22 and author Sara Ahmed, who argues that “citation is how we acknowledge our debts to those who came before; those who helped us find our way when the way was obscured because we deviated from the paths we were told to follow.” 73 Citation – of scholarship, of text – can be impersonal, in the way that Hannah Čulík-Baird has recently described the practices of Cicero in a book on fragments and quotation in the Ciceronian corpus, but it doesn’t have to be, as Čulík-Baird also emphasizes. 74 Ahmed would argue that it shouldn’t be, and I would agree. Although the conventional practices of citation are so ingrained that I have not been able to resist them entirely (nor do I want to), nevertheless they are something that I think critically about, and typically when a person’s name and words are included in my project it is because I want them to be. This is particularly true for the material that I include in the body of my chapters. 75 In this regard, I both engage in the practice of citation as is conventional to the discipline and academic writing more generally, but I do so with an explicitly feminist perspective and objective, and in doing so I positioning myself intentionally in a genealogical relationship with others whose work I respect, admire, and want to carry forward. Furthermore, in being intentional about the work I cite I am also motivated to engage with a more diverse range of voices – both in the sense that I attempt to diversify the voices with which I engage within the field of Classics and in the sense that I look beyond disciplinary boundaries and even beyond scholarly writing for work that speaks to my own. In this way I aim to create a space for a bigger and more inclusive conversation. Writing in the personal-voice can, I think, 73 Ahmed (2017), 17. Hartman (2007), 100 expresses a similar idea, writing, “Every generation confronts the task of choosing its past. Inheritances are chosen as much as they are passed on.” 74 Čulík-Baird (2022). 75 Which is not to say that the material found in the footnotes is meant to be relegated to the margins in any desultory sense, but only that I have been particularly careful with what I include in the body of each page. 23 have this effect as well, and can be an especially effective tool for creating an inclusive space on the page, in the way that bell hooks has identified in Teaching to Transgress. In this project, I also engage with a wide range of critical approaches – which was not necessarily my intention at the start, when I wanted nothing so much as a clear theoretical underpinning for my analysis of the text. I never did find the approach that would set off that lightbulb in my head, but rather, I found bits and pieces here and there that resonated with me and what I saw in these plays of Aeschylus – thus, I lean on the work of feminist theorists like Luce Irigaray and Judith Butler and Black feminists bell hooks and Audre Lorde, while also engaging with and utilizing the taxonomies introduced within histories of honor such as those by Alexander Welsh and Frank Henderson Stewart, along with K. A. Appiah’s more philosophical incursion into the topic, and additionally when relevant integrating the research of contemporary psychology, as with Kenneth Doka’s work on grief in Chapter 2. This wide-seeking approach combined with a careful and critical eye for the text encourages, I think, nuanced and even imaginative interpretations of these 5 th century BCE plays, and additionally resists the risks of canonization, in terms of the modern scholarship, at least. 76 The above-outlined practices – writing in the personal voice, the practice of feminist citation, the intention of inclusivity, a refusal to engage narrowly – I view as a way of taking up the tools of my training and wielding them as my own. In this regard I think I can be seen to embody what artist and activist Jenny Odell has articulated as the practice of “standing apart”: But most important, standing apart represents the moment in which the desperate desire to leave (forever!) matures into a commitment to live in permanent refusal, where one already is, and to meet others in the common space of that refusal. This kind of resistance still manifests as participating, but participating in the ‘wrong 76 As I have commented above, “imaginative,” I think, is often considered to be the antithesis of rigorous scholarship. This dissertation is not, after all, a creative writing project. But I have recently been growing more and more convinced that there is a place for imagination in rigorous scholarly work, and that to engage in such a practice is a type of activism. 24 way’: a way that undermines the authority of the hegemonic game and creates possibilities outside of it. 77 Structure and summary of the project As I now near the end of this project’s introduction, it occurs to me that I have said very little about Aeschylus, his plays, or the context within which they were produced. This may seem like a mistake, given the content of this dissertation, but in my defense I will remind the reader that I have come to Aeschylean drama as a case study, and thus my interests are not in Aeschylus per se (although to be sure I have found a great deal of pleasure in working with these texts) but in exploring the constellation of ideas and practices linked by timê: interpersonal relationships, the values of a collective, community formation and identity, the position of the individual within those communities. The extant Aeschylean corpus is, I think, well-suited to the scope of a dissertation, limited as it is – of the considerable body of work that he produced, we have remaining only six plays, plus another whose authorship is less secure. In addition, his oeuvre is positioned well for the issues which I am interested in exploring, situated as it is in the first half of the 5 th century BCE, early in the Athenian democratic project and during a time when Athens was enjoying a rise in status among the Greek poleis following its victories in a series of conflicts with the Persian empire. At the same time there seems to have been a clear debate over the Athenian collective identity and who, properly, could lay claim to such an identity. Certainly this was a period when the citizen body of Athens was under negotiation, as were its civic institutions and socio-civic organization. 78 Issues of civic engagement and collective identity are very much expressed by the language of timê, and not only for men. 79 77 Odell (2019), 62. 78 Cf. Pericles’ Citizenship Law of 451 BCE, the reforms of Cleisthenes, innovations to the jury in the 5 th century such as the introduction of pay in the 450s, etc. 79 Especially if one accepts, as I do, the importance of religious participation as a component of civic identity, as Josine Blok has recently argued; see Blok (2017), noted also above. 25 With tragedy as with any form of art there is a question about the relationship of the object to its context. Given what we know of Aeschylus’s biography – that he was born, likely in Eleusis, in the second half of the 6 th century, that his father was said to be a member of an aristocratic Athenian family, that he had military experience and fought against the Persian military at the battle of Salamis, and perhaps at the battles of Marathon and Plataea as well – it does not seem a stretch to say that Aeschylus was interested and invested in Athens, its history, its customs, its institutions. 80 The conservative tone discernible in many of his plays is likely not feigned. Furthermore, as has been well accepted since, especially, the publication of Simon Goldhill’s article “The Great Dionysia and Civic Ideology” in JHS in 1987, Athenian tragedy as a genre was particularly and uniquely civic in motivation and location; Froma Zeitlin has suggested that Attic drama “was designed as an education for its male citizens in the democratic city.” 81 Likewise there is a question about what can be gained for our understanding of women in Athens, whose voices are filtered only through the perspective of the male playwright. Some scholars have noted that we are not likely to find evidence of the real-life experiences of women in Greek tragedy, 82 and many seek instead to read against the text and to problematize the structures and relationships it represents. 83 Some do so under the understanding that “we cannot practice wishful thinking”; in other words, we can’t read feminisms where they didn’t exist. 84 I think the latter opinion is to some extent right, but I also think that the texts may support a more optimistic reading, which I endeavor to find. While I would agree that Greek tragedy doesn’t tell us much about women’s real-life experiences, nevertheless I would argue that we can use tragedy 80 For Aeschylus’s biographical tradition, see Sommerstein (2010), 1-16; for Aeschylus’s military experience, see esp. p. 5 and p. 8. 81 Zeitlin (1985), 66. 82 E.g., Richlin (2014), 5, 14, with further bibliography. 83 These studies are, at this point, nearly innumerable, but a few I find particularly engaging and productive are Rabinowitz (1993), Wohl (1998), Lyons (2012). 84 Rabinowitz (1993), 23. 26 – and other genres as well – to support an imaginative understanding of women’s lives in the past, women who surely did exist, even if their voices have been silenced or were never there in the text. It is not too much to say: women lived in Athens during the years that Aeschylus’s plays were produced, they had everyday lives, occasionally some had extraordinary lives, they cared for the bodies of their loved ones in life and in death, they had sex (and enjoyed it!), they worried over a lack of social support, they were mothers and daughters and sisters and friends and, at times, very alone. They were there. This is something I keep in mind, nearly always, as I go about the work that I do. In the chapters that follow, I focus on four plays from the Aeschylean corpus that seem to me to be particularly relevant for a study on women and timê: Eumenides, Choephoroi, Agamemnon, and Supplices, and in that order. There are several reasons why I have chosen to begin with the Eumenides, which is the last tragedy of the Oresteia trilogy, rather than the Agamemnon, its first. For one thing, the use of timê in the Eumenides is so insistent that it makes that play a good place to start such a study. In addition, there are certain specific parallels between the Eumenides and the Supplices that I think make them an especially suitable beginning and end to this project – both emphasize collective aspects of timê, both represent women as occupying a kind of in-between space in the conceptual geography of Athens, both display a similar and strong focus on gender dynamics and in particular a gendered hierarchy and power disparity. Lastly, in addressing the plays out of order, I make an effort to underline the circular nature of my questions rather than the linear trajectory of an argument; this way of reading also resists, in an Irigarayan manner, their established recto-verso order. 85 85 Irigaray (1977), 79-80: “How, then, are we to try to redefine this language work that would leave space for the feminine? […] To put it another way: there would no longer be either a right side or a wrong side of discourse, or even of texts, but each passing from one to the other would make audible and comprehensible even what resists the 27 Since I have chosen to structure my chapters upon individual plays, there is accordingly some thematic overlap, although I hope to show that timê is used flexibly and in different ways according to context, and each play seems to emphasize particular facets of its semantic range. Chapter 1 offers an analysis of Aeschylus’s Eumenides, which is notable for its heavy use of timê and other honor-terms. I attempt to parse out the varying nuances of timê by organizing their occurrences by context, identifying four primary “spheres” in which timê in the Eumenides seems to reside: cosmic, civic, religious, and domestic. I pay particularly close attention to the playwright’s representation of the Erinyes, who are paradigmatic for their preoccupation with their own timê, which I understand in the case of the Erinyes especially to articulate something like C. W. MacLeod’s “status-role,” a term borrowed from anthropology with which I engage in this chapter and others. 86 The phrase articulates two important strands of timê – that of timê as status and timê as function (where function indicates not only the duty of performance but also the right to do so – i.e., “privilege”) – and emphasizes the way in which they are often intertwined, as, I argue, certainly they are for the Erinyes. In the integration of the Erinyes into Athens, accomplished in large part by their acceptance of the new version of timê offered by Athena, I see a metaphor for the position of Athenian women in the civic collective of the polis, which, following the argument of Josine Blok, is contingent upon and evidenced by their participation in the polis’ hiera kai hosia. Chapter 2 focuses on timê in a ritual context, and specifically in the context of funerary ritual, as seen in the second play of Aeschylus’s Oresteia trilogy. While the role of women in religion and ritual has been well-attested in the scholarship for some time, less attention has been recto-verso structure that shores up common sense. […] that is, the retroactive impact of the end of each word, utterance, or sentence upon its beginning must be taken into consideration in order to undo the power of its teleological effect […].” For the influence of Luce Irigaray on this project, see the Introduction, especially at its opening. 86 MacLeod (1982). 28 paid to the fact that the practices around death and dying are often articulated explicitly in terms of timê, and thus this sphere – a kind of Venn diagram of the civic, religious, and domestic – offers an opportunity to think about how women both could give and receive timê in a context that is not tied explicitly to their sexual fidelity. 87 In addition, this chapter examines Electra’s representation in the Choephoroi in order to consider the importance for the individual of the ability to grieve and mourn as part of a collective, suggesting that this too is encompassed by timê. In this regard, I would suggest that to be atimos, that is, to be cut off from one’s community and the structures of support it might provide, as Electra appears to understand herself to be at Ch. 444., can have a lingering psychological effect, what Kenneth Doka has termed as “disenfranchised” grief. Electra then allows us a glimpse at the experience of an individual who is experiencing a certain kind of atimia, even if only through a representation. The third chapter concludes my examination of the Oresteia, with an analysis of its first play, the Agamemnon. I consider also the movement of timê throughout the trilogy as a whole, suggesting that timê in the Agamemnon is intentionally deployed by the playwright to emphasize the otherness of Argos, which he does by utilizing timê with a particularly “heroic” and at times even “epic” nuance – where “epic” both recalls the poems of Homer but also evokes a more generalized mythic past. In this regard, timê in the Agamemnon is particularly associated with kings and the divine, and with a specific type of retribution that the Athenians might have seen as dangerous and unconstrained by any legislative force. I argue that Clytemnestra embodies precisely this kind of retribution, and that her understanding of timê is that of an epic hero, suggesting also that she subverts the heroic model by rejecting the lure of kleos. Ultimately, this kind of timê is subsumed in the trilogy within the civic timê embraced – if only after extended 87 Note, however, Holst-Warhaft (2008) which argues for an understanding of death and sexuality (especially female sexuality) as intrinsically intertwined. 29 resistance – by the Erinyes. I see the movement of timê in the trilogy, Agamemnon to Choephoroi to Eumenides, as mirroring to a large extent the shifting conceptions of timê in the 6 th and 5 th centuries BCE. Chapters 4 and 5 leave aside the Oresteia in favor of Aeschylus’ Supplices, a play which was produced, almost certainly, not long before the Oresteia. Chapter 4 takes the same lexical approach as previous chapters, exploring and analyzing timê quite closely in the context of the play. Here we find many of the same themes and motifs that Aeschylus deploys in the Oresteia, and in particular in the Eumenides; there are several interesting parallels between the two plays, as I have noted already above. Both emphasize collective aspects of timê, both represent women as occupying a kind of in-between space in the conceptual geography of Athens, both display a similar and strong focus on gender dynamics and in particular a gendered hierarchy and power disparity. I see the daughters of Danaus as ambiguous figures like the Erinyes, characterized by their in-betweenness. In this regard, the security of Athenian women within such a collective was not, however, absolute, and I argue in this chapter that Aeschylus uses the metaphor of metoikia to conceptualize women as neither here nor there (or, perhaps better, here and there), part of the group but not quite. A final chapter, Chapter 5, shifts focus from timê to honor, and attempts to interrogate certain prominent views on the latter – the honor-chastity paradigm that I have discussed earlier in the introduction – by resisting the shame that is its by-product, and specifically the shame that is ascribed to women in association with sex and sexual pleasure. By reading the Danaids through the lens of Audre Lorde’s “erotic,” I attempt to show that, in the Supplices, we can see in the representation of these young women a kind of burgeoning sexual curiosity, exhibited in particular through their perception of the relationship between their ancestor Io and Zeus, and the eroticized 30 language of touch that characterizes those episodes. In concluding with this reading – a kind of reparative approach to this Aeschylean artifact – I aim to shift our focus from the atmosphere of male anxiety, which has undeniably so shaped modern understandings of gender and women in classical Greece, to the women themselves, imagined as they may be. 31 PART I: THE ORESTEIA TRILOGY CHAPTER 1: EUMENIDES ὅτι μὲν οὖν εἴδη πλείω πολίτου, φανερὸν ἐκ τούτων, καὶ ὅτι λέγεται μάλιστα πολίτης ὁ μετέχων τῶν τιμῶν, ὥσπερ καὶ Ὅμηρος ἐποίησεν, ὡσεί τιν᾿ ἀτίμητον μετανάστην· ὥσπερ μέτοικος γάρ ἐστιν ὁ τῶν τιμῶν μὴ μετέχων. These facts then show that there are various kinds of citizen, and that a citizen in the fullest sense means the man who shares in the honours of the state, as is implied in the verse of Homer: Like to some alien settler without honour,— since a native not admitted to a share in the public honours is like an alien domiciled in the land. 88 In the above passage, Aristotle very neatly and concisely identifies that which is precisely what I am interested in exploring in this project and in this chapter in particular: the idea that a citizen (politês), someone who belongs within the polis collective, is someone who has a share in its timê. Now, elsewhere in the Politics Aristotle puts a narrower boundary around who a citizen was, in particular seeming to suggest that only men were citizens (a view which has recently been put under pressure by Josine Blok), but here he appears to provide a more capacious understanding of citizenship. 89 It is precisely the relationship between timê and polis-inclusion that I seek to explore. In a project about timê and tragedy it makes sense to begin with Aeschylus’s Eumenides, which revolves, in part, around the question of the Erinyes’ status within both divine and human communities, and which is notable for the heavy use of honor language that pervades the play. By my count, timê and its cognates appear 48 times, more than double any other extant Attic tragedy. Interestingly, timê in its nominative form appears only twice, in the following lines: 88 Arist., Pol. 1278a35-1278a39. Text and translation are from Rackham’s Loeb edition (1932). 89 Arist. Pol. 1275a33– 1275b17. I have mentioned Blok (2017) already in the introduction, and discuss further below. 32 ΑΠ. τίς ἥδε τιμή; κόμπασον γέρας καλόν. 90 What is this honorable role of yours? Go on, boast of your noble privilege. (Eu. 209) ΧΟ. καὶ δὴ δέδεγμαι – τίς δέ μοι τιμὴ μένει; Suppose I do accept it: what privilege awaits me? (Eu. 894) To some extent, these lines articulate what I think of as central questions of the play, that is, who belongs in the polis, in what capacity, and to what extent? 91 The timê – by which here I mean something like function or, as Alan Sommerstein often translates, “privilege” – that the Erinyes end up with is not the same as that with which they began; this shift is indicative both of the flexibility of timê in the ancient Greek world – a flexibility which is showcased to masterful effect in the Oresteia trilogy, as I will attempt to show in, especially, the first three chapters of this dissertation – and indicative also of the way timê can take on a particularly civic nuance within the Athenian context. And while it is certainly clear that in the Oresteia timê retains its flexible nature, nonetheless I am arguing that there is a specific and intentional movement in the meaning or at least contextualization of timê and its related vocabulary as the narrative progresses from Argos to Athens, and that ultimately timê is positioned as a value within the social and specifically civic context of Athens, in this trilogy and in other places in the oeuvre of Aeschylus as well, as I hope to show in my discussion of the Supplices in Chapter 4, which suggest broader concerns in the 90 The text for all citations of Aeschylus in this project is from Denys Page’s Oxford edition (1972), unless otherwise noted. All translations are from Alan Sommerstein’s Loeb edition (2008), unless otherwise noted. For the Eumenides I have relied on the commentary of Sommerstein (1989). 91 Timê occurs in the nominative singular only three times in total in the trilogy; the third occurrence is at Ag. 637, where the Herald refuses to recount the storm that overtook Menelaus’ ship, giving as their reason that “the honour due to the gods stands apart from that,” χωρὶς ἡ τιμὴ θεῶν; For this instance, see my discussion in Chapter 3. 33 early 5 th -century around community identity and social cohesion, of which access to timê is an important component. 92 The movement of timê in the play and in particular the shift in the Erinyes’ timê has been noticed already by scholars such as Douglas Cairns in his monograph Aidōs: The Psychology and Ethics of Honour and Shame in Ancient Greek Literature and by C. W. MacLeod in his 1982 article for JHS, although I would say that my examination of the Erinyes’ timê is more comprehensive than those which have previously been offered and my interest in women more specific. 93 I have found particularly helpful MacLeod’s articulation of timê and the concept of “status-role” that he introduces: Now τιμή is both a ‘position’ and a ‘function’ in a society; it is also the ‘honour’ which a person receives in virtue of them. So the word refers both to a ‘status-role’ and its acknowledgement, the feeling or behaviour which guarantees it and is evoked by it. And society is no more or less than a ‘system of relationships’ ([Beattie (1964)], 221). Therefore when τιμή is at stake so is society itself. 94 MacLeod offers the same flexibility of timê that I have offered above, and in particular he notes the way that timê can be used to indicate both “status” (or, “position,” to use his terminology) and “function,” which are both of critical interest to the Erinyes’ perception of their identity and place within a community. The concept of the “status-role” is one which I make use of repeatedly in this chapter. In this first chapter my objective is to explore and more firmly delineate the contours of the system of timê as it is represented in the Eumenides and the other plays of the trilogy, 95 as well as to consider how women fit into such a system and what implications a full and nuanced 92 This emphasis on timê as a community-building value is familiar from recent literature on honor, as I have discussed in the Introduction. 93 Cairns (1993), 213-14; MacLeod (1982), esp. 133ff. 94 MacLeod (1982), 139; ‘status-role’ is an anthropological term for which MacLeod cites John Beattie (1964). 95 I thank Greg Thalmann for this metaphor, which I have found to be a very useful way to articulate the aims of this project. 34 interpretation of timê in the Aeschylean context has for our understanding of the position of women in Athens. Although there are arguments against using the Erinyes – who are, after all, divine figures and thus not bound by the same constraints as mortals – in order to construct an argument about the experience of actual women, nevertheless there is scholarly precedent for doing precisely that. The most well-known example of is likely Froma Zeitlin’s early article “The Dynamics of Misogyny,” first published in Arethusa in 1978 and reprinted several times since then. 96 Zeitlin in this powerful and still-influential essay suggests that in the Oresteia we find “an inquiry into the nature and limits of feminine power,” 97 arguing that through the careful relocation of the Erinyes into Athens and the transition of that female group from Erinyes to Eumenides Aeschylus provides a mythological model for the control and oppression of women through social institutions such as marriage. I agree with much of Zeitlin’s reading although I would say my focus is more directed towards questions of community inclusion and collective identity, and the ways in which we might view women in Athens as part of the civic body and to what extent. In this way I see this project as participating in the conversation on women and citizenship and civic and social inclusion in Athens; particularly vocal in this conversation have been Josine Blok, Cynthia Patterson, Robin Osborne, and Rebecca Futo Kennedy, all of whose work I have found challenging and useful in different ways. 98 However, while I am interested in the histories of women I would not name myself as a historian, and so, while I attempt to remain aware always of the socially embedded nature of the text, nevertheless I would identify my own approach as literary rather than historical. In this sense, as I think through Aeschylus’ representations of the Erinyes and other female figures, 96 Zeitlin (1978), reprinted in Peradotto and Sullivan, eds. (1984) and Zeitlin (1996). 97 Zeitlin (1978), 173. 98 Patterson (1986), Osborne (1997), Blok (2017) are all concerned with the extent to which women belonged to the Athenian citizen body; Kennedy (2014) explores the question of identity and community through the lens of “immigration” (her translation for metoikia); useful also for thinking through questions of social status in Athens is Kamen (2013). 35 I consider myself to be occupying a middle (methodological, topical) ground between such scholars as Zeitlin and Blok. I have argued in my introduction for an expanded understanding of Greek timê, and I have positioned my research within a growing body of work that acknowledges the polyvalence of timê in the Greek world. In this chapter, I argue that Aeschylus’ Eumenides clearly illustrates the flexible and polyvalent nature of timê, and that, rather than finding one meaning for timê, e.g., “honor” or “privilege,” “status” etc., there exists in the play a multiplicity of meanings, which are contextualized in different and fairly specific ways. These observations are indeed true for the Oresteia as a whole but the Eumenides is particularly good to start with because the language of timê and related vocabulary is so steady and insistent. In analyzing Aeschylus’s use of timê and its corresponding vocabulary I have found it useful to categorize occurrences according to their context, and in doing so I have identified four primary ‘spheres’ or ‘registers’ in which timê seems to reside: cosmic, civic, religious, and domestic. It is important to note that, although for the clarification of discussion I make these distinctions, to some extent these categories flexible, overlapping, and, to some extent, arbitrary, in the sense that the use of timê in each sphere articulates different roles which are all intrinsically social in nature. 99 In this first chapter on the Eumenides I have found the cosmic and civic categories to be particularly rich for thought, and, furthermore, following the arguments of Josine Blok in Citizenship in Classical Athens, I see a particular overlap between civic and religious spheres, which has significant implications for the way we view women and timê in Athenian tragedy. 100 This overlap is something I explore more 99 My thanks go to Douglas Cairns for pointing this out to me. He is quite right; as the Erinyes transition from Furies to Eumenides by accepting the new timê offered by Athena the meaning of timê does not change – timê is still, in part, a “status-role,” to use the term of MacLeod/Beattie, and thus social – but still I have found it productive to think of timê as situated within the spheres I identify above. 100 Blok (2017). 36 closely in Chapter 2, with my examination of the Choephoroi and in particular the figure of Electra. Consideration of each one of these categories changes our understanding of the ways in which women performed honor and embodied value in the ancient world. By carefully parsing uses of timê and related words 101 it is possible to widen our understanding of the boundaries within which ancient women moved and to grant their presence a heavier weight in the balance of polis participation and identity formation, in which I argue that women played a more significant role than the prevailing view on honor and women would acknowledge. To some extent, I see the Eumenides as providing a microcosmic view of timê in Athens (at least as represented by Aeschylus), and the categories examined in this chapter establish the foundation for further exploration in later chapters, although I will not insist on positioning every occurrence within a specific (and, to some extent, limiting) sphere, and these four spheres do not scaffold each chapter in any strict sense. I will use them when they are useful. Context of production The Oresteia, composed of Agamemnon, Choephoroi, Eumenides, and the lost satyr-drama Proteus, offers the only extant tragic trilogy from classical Athens. It was produced in 458 BCE for the City Dionysia, at which it won first prize; its production was financed by Xenocles of Aphidna, of whom we otherwise know nothing. 102 The Aeschylean corpus is positioned uniquely near the start of Athenian democracy, when social relationships and institutions are being considered, established, negotiated. Although there has been debate over whether Aeschylus uses the Oresteia to refer to and comment on specific 101 Although discussion will center primarily on uses of timê and its cognates, at times I will expand my observations to include passages and vocabulary that show a sense of timê, if not its presence. 102 See festival records IG ii2 2318.49-51/ Hypothesis. 37 historical events, it would not be very controversial to state that the trilogy reflects contemporary Athenian concerns and must, in some cases, evoke recognizable moments in Athens’ recent history; the most well-known example is of course the reforms of Ephialtes in 462/1, which curtailed the authority of the Council of the Areopagus and limited its functions to only a few, one of which was to oversee certain types of homicide trials. 103 It is clear from his corpus that Aeschylus had an interest in the development of Athenian political processes and institutions; in addition to the issues introduced in the Oresteia, our earliest references to demokratia come from Aeschylus’ Suppliants. 104 I am interested in the role of honor in the emergent democracy, especially as pertains to the shaping of a civic community and matters of inclusion/exclusion, and the means by which both are accomplished. Some scholars have suggested that democracy by nature depends on the exclusion of women, 105 while others – most notably and forcefully Josine Blok in her recent book on Athenian citizenship – have argued that women held a more important role in Athenian society than has been previously acknowledged. 106 I am of the mind that the answer lies somewhere in between these extremes, and that in the Eumenides Aeschylus masterfully plays on these tensions and uses timê as a way to explore the boundaries – which are in any case, to some extent, porous – of community identity. 103 For the political nature of Aeschylus’ Oresteia see Dodds (1960), Bowie (1993), Griffith (1995); for an argument contra Dodds and against reading the Oresteia from a specific historical and political perspective see Macleod (1982), who suggests, quite usefully, that “if we speak of ‘politics’ in the Oresteia if may be helpful to give the word a different sense, a ‘concern with human beings as part of a community’,” p. 132. MacLeod’s emphasis on community throughout his article “Politics and the Oresteia” is one that I very much appreciate. For a concise exploration of the reforms of Ephialtes in their particular historical moment, see Raaflaub (2007). 104 604, 699; Ehrenberg (1950). 105 See, e.g., Alexiou (1974), Holst-Warhaft (1992). To say that democracy excludes women is too reductive, I think, but certainly historical democracies like that of Athens and that which is currently in place in the United States seem to depend on the marginalization of certain groups, or at least there is nothing about democracy that in practice seems intentionally to foster inclusivity and social/political/economical equity; see also Kasimis (2018) and Kasimis (2022), a recorded lecture on the role of the systematic subordination of women in both sustaining and imperiling democracy in Athens. 106 Patterson (1986), Osborne (1997), Blok (2017). 38 The cosmic sphere First, a note on terminology. I use ‘cosmic’ here to mean something like cosmology or the role of the gods within an early Greek theology, which, according to the definition provided by Jenny Strauss Clay in Hesiod’s Cosmos, is “the speculation inherent in those works concerning relations between gods and men and […] their evolution to the world’s present state.” 107 Clay’s work on Hesiod is particularly helpful for my own and relevant to the present context, given the wealth of Hesiodic allusions to be found in the Oresteia, as is well-noted. 108 Aeschylus’s Erinyes seem particularly concerned to elucidate how to live in the world as it is constituted (to paraphrase Clay (2003), 2) and, as minor – or marginalized? – deities who bear clear ties to mortal women (notably Helen and Clytemnestra) they are positioned in such a way that they must manage relationships both with gods and with men (and are a kind of mediator between gods and men). I would suggest that Aeschylus uses the Erinyes’ preoccupation with their own status/function to illustrate and interrogate the cosmology established in epic poetry (including but not limited to Hesiod) and then, as the play progresses, shifts the timê of the Erinyes from that which was granted in the old cosmology to the new Athenian context where theology and the civic are intertwined. 109 Three times in the Eumenides the question of the specific timê of the Erinyes is asked and answered. The first figure in the play to demand an articulation of the Erinyes’ timê is the god Apollo, who in his initial confrontation with the Erinyes asks, “What is this honorable role of 107 Clay (2003), 1. 108 The seminal text on Hesiodic influence in Aeschylus is Solmsen (1949), which was re-published with a new foreword by G. M. Kirkwood in 1995. Regarding the formation of an Aeschylean cosmos there is also the recent publication by Nuria Scapin (2020), which explores the relationship of Aeschylean tragedy to early Greek philosophy, especially the presocratic philosophers; see also Allan (2006). 109 Which is not to say that outside of the Athenian context theology/religion and civic structures are mutually exclusive – not at all – only that the evidence of Attic literature offers a clearer context for interpretation than, e.g., Homeric or Hesiodic epic, and thus it is easier to articulate the relationship of the civic to other areas. This is particularly true for Attic tragedy, which is self-consciously situated as a product(ion) of the “state”; on which see the seminal article by Simon Goldhill (1987). As I have noted above, the shift I am describing has been noticed already in MacLeod (1982) and at Cairns (1993), 213-14. 39 yours? Go on, boast of your noble privilege!,” τίς ἥδε τιμή; κόμπασον γέρας καλόν (209). Apollo’s tone is challenging and contemptuous, as it has been since he entered the stage; from his opening lines Apollo has positioned himself as hostile to the Erinyes: ἔξω, κελεύω, τῶνδε δωμάτων τάχος χωρεῖτ’, ἀπαλλάσσεσθε μαντικῶν μυχῶν, μὴ καὶ λαβοῦσα πτηνὸν ἀργηστὴν ὄφιν χρυσηλάτου θώμιγγος ἐξορμώμενον ἀνῆις ὑπ’ ἄλγους μέλαν’ ἀπ’ ἀνθρώπων ἀφρόν, ἐμοῦσα θρόμβους οὓς ἀφείλκυσας φόνου. Out, I tell you, get out of this house at once! Get away from my inner prophetic sanctum, in case you find yourself on the receiving end of a winged flashing snake speeding from my golden bowstring, and vomit out in agony black foam taken from human bodies, bringing up the clots of blood that you have sucked. (Eu. 179-84) This passage illustrates well the questions of inclusion/exclusion that define this play. The first word spoken by Apollo is hexô (179); right away the line is drawn, with Apollo on the one side and the Erinyes on the other, a metaphor which Apollo desires to make literal. Hexô provides adverbial accompaniment to the imperative that shortly follows, choreit(e), the exclusionary force of which is only emphasized by apallassesthe, a second imperative nearly attached to the first by the elision of choreite’s final vowel. These first two lines are followed by a fear clause and a threat (mê… anêis) which uses light (chrusêlatou thômingos) 110 and dark (melan’ … aphron) to emphasize the distance between Apollo and the Erinyes and which continues the association of the Erinyes with the gruesome and grotesque that had been established already by the Pythia in the prologue (46-56, especially, on which see further below). 111 Throughout their confrontation, 110 In other places as well Apollo is associated with golden accouterment, e.g., Pi. O. 14.10-11. 111 On the well-known trope of light and dark in Eumenides see, e.g., Goheen (1955), Peradotto (1964), Porter (1986). It is worth noting that the disparity here between the Erinyes and Apollo is metaphorical but perhaps also visual – it seems clear that the Chorus would have been clothed in dark tones; it is less clear what the actor who played Apollo was wearing but light tones would makes sense and this would perhaps make the donning of red robes by the Chorus at the trilogy’s end even more striking, a way of transitioning them away from the darkness of the Erinyes but still not a complete visual match to the dress of the others; this would mark them as belonging/not-belonging as I am arguing. 40 Apollo through his language and repeated demands for ejection insists on the unseemliness of the Erinyes’ presence and, in his view, the insultingly invalid nature of their pursuit of Orestes, and his demand at 209, which is formulated as a question followed immediately by a (sarcastic) imperative phrase, kompason geras kalon, conveys a level of antipathy suitable to the derisive tone already at play. 112 In addition, Apollo’s question to the Erinyes seems to carry an epic resonance, with geras kalon in particular recalling scenes from the Iliad, where geras can be both a physical reward extended to a warrior and a symbol of their value. 113 By value I mean both internal value (how one rates oneself) and that which is externally assessed; related to both of these senses, geras can be used to indicate or confirm one’s standing within a peer group; interestingly, in Homeric epic, it also functions to demonstrate the privilege or dignified status allotted to a king or member of the aristocratic class, as at Od. 7.150 and Il. 20.182, which is similar to one of the ways that Aeschylus uses timê, as I discuss in Chapter 3. It is worth noting that γέρας is more frequently found in archaic poetry, and, although occurrences in literature from the classical period are not rare, I would suggest that its inclusion here marks Apollo’s words with a Homeric resonance, one which works on two levels: on the one hand, it situates the question of the Erinyes’ timê within an epic context, which, as I argue in Chapter 3, Aeschylus positions in conflict with the civic context of 112 For 209 as sarcastic, see Sommerstein ad loc., who says that “in Apollo’s eyes the Erinyes are utterly ἄτιμοι […] and nothing about them is in the least καλόν.” I have not considered the relationship between kalos and timê in this project but it is worth noting that kalos (which, in modern scholarship is often understood to be a “gentlemanly” quality) carries with it class connotations (especially in its pairing with agathos in the now well-known phrase kalos kagathos) which surely must have to do with conceptions of “honor” in both ancient and modern thought; on kalos kagathos as an attribute of the aristocracy see Wankel (1961); however, see Donlan (1973) for the argument that “its usage as a socio-political epithet tended to follow class lines and that its application as a term of general value or (later) as a predicate of ethical worth cannot be connected with an aristocratic ethos,” p. 374. Donlan also argues that kalos on its own lacks any class sense (ibid., 367-8). For a brief overview of the scholarship on kalos kagathos see Davies (2013). 113 e.g., Il. 1.119, 133, 161; Another interesting occurrence of γέρας is found near the Iliad’s conclusion, when Achilles urges the Myrmidons to gather and mourn Patroclus, understanding that such actions are the γέρας of the dead (Il. 23.9). I address the relationship between timê and death/funeral ritual in Chapter 2; timê itself does not appear explicitly in a funereal context in Homeric epic, but the language of geras etc. provides a clear link to honor. 41 Athens in the Classical period; on the other hand, with geras Apollo excludes the Erinyes by recalling an androcentric and heroic world to which they would not comfortably belong. Apollo’s question is mocking and his sarcastic tone renders tis timê as rhetorical. In the eyes of Apollo, the Erinyes do not belong, neither there in his sanctuary nor among the Olympic gods whom he calls kin. While he himself is secure in his place in the pantheon and in Delphi, as is firmly established by the Pythia in the prologue, in contrast the Erinyes have no such security or sense of place, at least according to Apollo – and this seems to be a fear of their own, as well, as is I think evidenced by their intense attachment to their function, which they understand to be divinely-mandated and inextricably intertwined with their status (what MacLeod calls their “status-role”) and earlier in the play he has claimed that “none of the gods is friendly to a flock like you,” ποίμνης τοιαύτης δ᾽ οὔτις εὐφιλὴς θεῶν (197); we might note also that philos is regularly used to affirm familial relationships, as articulated beautifully by Antigone at Ant. 69-77, another passage which is redolent with the language of timê. 114 Apollo will drive this point home during the trial of Orestes, and strongly, asserting that the Erinyes have no timê among either the younger or older gods - ἀλλ᾽ ἔν τε τοῖς νέοισι καὶ παλαιτέροις/ θεοῖς ἄτιμος εἶ σύ· (Eum. 721-2). Apollo’s words in these lines show how access to timê can act as evidence of membership in a group; when he spitefully declares ἄτιμος εἶ σύ, “you are atimos,” he effectively others the Erinyes, drawing a line between ‘us’ and ‘them.’ At 213-24, Apollo positions the Erinyes’ timê against that of the other gods, which I would argue both recalls the agonal atmosphere of epic and emphasizes the exclusion of the Erinyes from their Olympic kin, although, as I have already noted in the introduction, here again I want to emphasize that this agonistic aspect is not inherent in timê but rather is reflective of one way that 114 While the lines between chthonic and Olympic are drawn clearly in this play (as is often noted), at this particular moment Apollo draws no such distinction and seems to exclude the Erinyes from every/any divine realm. 42 timê can be adapted to a social (here, hierarchical) context. Apollo draws a complex configuration of timê among the gods when he claims that, by fulfilling what they understand to be their duty and, furthermore, in doing so, insisting on their own value, the Erinyes devalue the roles of Hera, Zeus, and Aphrodite: ἦ κάρτ᾿ ἄτιμα καὶ παρ᾿ οὐδὲν ἠργάσω Ἥρας τελείας καὶ Διὸς πιστώματα· Κύπρις δ᾿ ἄτιμος τῷδ᾿ ἀπέρριπται λόγῳ, ὅθεν βροτοῖσι γίγνεται τὰ φίλτατα. εὐνὴ γὰρ ἀνδρὶ καὶ γυναικὶ μόρσιμος ὅρκου ᾿στὶ μείζων, τῇ δίκῃ φρουρουμένη. εἰ τοῖσιν οὖν κτείνουσιν ἀλλήλους χαλᾷς τὸ μὴ τίνεσθαι μηδ᾿ ἐποπτεύειν κότῳ, οὔ φημ᾿ Ὀρέστην σ᾿ ἐνδίκως ἀνδρηλατεῖν. τὰ μὲν γὰρ οἶδα κάρτα σ᾿ ἐνθυμουμένην, τὰ δ᾿ ἐμφανῶς πράσσουσαν ἡσυχαίτερα. δίκας δὲ Παλλὰς τῶνδ᾿ ἐποπτεύσει θεά. Truly you have held in utter contempt the pledges of Hera, goddess of marriage, and of Zeus, and <treated> them as being of no account; and Cypris too is cast aside in dishonour by this argument, she from whom come the closest, dearest ties that mortals have. The bed of a man and a woman, when hallowed by destiny, is something mightier than an oath, and Justice stands sentinel over it. If, then, you go easy on those who kill each other by not punishing them and not casting a wrathful eye on them, I say you have no right to harry Orestes from his home. One kind of action I perceive that you take very much to heart, while about the other kind you are blatantly acting more gently. The goddess Pallas will oversee a trial of this issue. (Eu. 213-24) As Apollo delineates the domain of each of the gods, he positions them in competition with one another and he articulates a scenario in which divine figures deny timê to other divine figures. In doing so Apollo suggests a hierarchization of timê, or, to use a concept from both Stewart and Welsh, “vertical honor.” His words indicate the complicated network of values and obligations within a group, and they identify the anxiety that can arise when privileges of individual members of the group are in tension, especially when that group is organized according to hierarchical power dynamics, into which we might also fit intersections of gender, age, birth order, familial 43 relationships, etc. Apollo subtly undermines the Erinyes’ function by claiming that marriage (which is the privilege of Zeus and Hera) and marital sex (Aphrodite) have greater value than oath- taking, which in Homer is the privilege or domain of the Erinyes. This allusion to their Homeric function is strengthened by Apollo’s use of tinesthai at 220, which is similarly used to articulate the Erinyes’ function as avengers of oath-breakers in the Iliad. 115 That Aeschylus uses a Homeric intertext here is perhaps indicative of a view on Apollo’s part that, in the Eumenides, the Erinyes are overstepping the bounds of their established timê, which in the Eumenides is defined as the avenging of matricides (210) and murderers/homicides (421), articulations which I will discuss further below. This transgression would be problematic, I think, in either a vertical or horizontal conception of honor; in moving beyond the bounds of their established role the Erinyes run the risk of committing hubris against the others of their peer group. However, in attempting to deny the Erinyes any timê whatsoever (721-2), Apollo also oversteps as he tries to exclude them from the divine community completely, to which they belong by birth. That the Erinyes were in fact born into the divine community is, I would argue, an element of their identity that Apollo attempts to elide and undermine by placing them explicitly in an antagonistic relationship with Aphrodite, who, according to Hesiod’s Theogony, is kin of sorts – both the Erinyes and Aphrodite are born from drops of blood from the castration of Ouranos (Hes. Theog. 176-200). In insisting on privileging the bed, eunē, over the oath, horkos, Apollo creates a hierarchical relationality between Aphrodite and the Erinyes, whose relationship, according to 115 Il. 3.278-79: καὶ ποταμοὶ καὶ γαῖα, καὶ οἳ ὑπένερθε καμόντας ἀνθρώπους τίνυσθον, ὃτις κ᾽ ἐπίορκον ὀμόσσῃ. 19.259-60: ἴστω νῦν Ζεὺς πρῶτα, θεῶν ὕπατος καὶ ἄριστος, γῆ τε καὶ ἠέλιος καὶ ἐρινύες, αἵ θ᾽ ὑπὸ γαῖαν ἀνθρώπους τίνυνται, ὅτις κ᾽ ἐπίορκον ὀμόσσῃ, Note the use of tinumai in both these passages, the same verb Apollo uses for the Erinyes at line 220 (above). As at 209, Apollo’s words have an epic intonation; perhaps he is so unwilling to allow their function in the Eumenides because it differs from his (epic) understanding of what it should be. 44 other factors (e.g., kinship) might be perceived as symmetrical. Furthermore, in his attempt to deny timê to the Erinyes he asserts that it is in fact the Erinyes who desire to deny timê to others in the group. In creating a timê-hierarchy that is seemingly zero-sum, he emphasizes competitive aspects (privilege, status) over aspects upon which community could be built (kin relations, divine peer group). In this regard, I see Apollo as embodying in certain ways the normative view of honor that has been emphasized in the model of 20 th century Mediterranean anthropology. However, his model still doesn’t work: to some extent, in identifying the Erinyes’ ability to make the others atimos, he acknowledges that they do, in fact, have a place – however tenuous – within the group, or at least, that their words and actions matter. If the Erinyes’ were truly worthless then the threat they pose against the timê of the others would be inconsequential. To Apollo’s demand at 209 – τίς ἥδε τιμή; κόμπασον γέρας καλόν, “What is this honorable role of yours? Go on, boast of your noble privilege!” – the Erinyes respond that their timê is “[to] drive from their homes those who assault their mothers,” τοὺς μητραλοίας ἐκ δόμων ἐλαύνομεν (210). Their answer is straightforward, as is their zealous grip on their task, which, for the Eumenides, is always connected to status. When Apollo tries to muddy the waters – “What if there’s a woman, one who would remove her husband?”, τί γὰρ γυναικός, ἥτις ἄνδρα νοσφίσῃ; (211), 116 the Erinyes remain resolute, responding that such an offense would not be their concern 116 nosphisêi is often translated here as “murder” vel sim, as in, e.g., translations by Morshead (1881), Smyth (1926), Hughes (1999), Sommerstein (2008) etc...; however, as Sommerstein notes in his commentary, nosphizô is used in this way only in Aeschylus, and more typically means something like “deprive, rob,” or, in the middle voice, “abandon” (particularly in Homer). I suppose my point here is that in Aeschylus’ use of this ambiguous verb we are invited to imagine some broader scope for blame than simply murder; perhaps rather than envisioning only Clytemnestra we are also encouraged to think about other women who wrong men in other ways, e.g., Helen. It is also interesting that the Erinyes emphasize this particular aspect of their charge, i.e., that it has to do with kin specifically, given their own desire to situate themselves within a kin group as when, e.g., they are speaking to Athena. This emphasis on kin groups is perhaps reflective of growing tensions in Athens over who belongs, which feed into Pericles’ Citizenship Law of 451 BCE, legislation which emphasizes more than other factors blood ties. 45 since it would not be a murder of kin (homaimos, “of the same blood.” 117 Their understanding of their role is specific and clear; there is a comfort that they find, I think, in knowing their place. In addition, their description at 210 is very close to what they will later tell Athena when she too requests – albeit more courteously than Apollo – that they articulate their timê, the second of three such articulations in the play: ΧΟ. πεύσῃ τὰ πάντα ξυντόμως, Διὸς κόρη. ἡμεῖς γάρ ἐσμεν Νυκτὸς αἰανῆ τέκνα, Ἀραι δ᾽ ἐν οἴκοις γῆς ὑπαὶ κεκλήμεθα. ΑΘ. γένος μὲν οἶδα κληδόνας τ᾽ ἐπωνύμους. ΧΟ. τιμάς γε μὲν δὴ τὰς ἐμὰς πεύσῃ τάχα. ΑΘ. μάθοιμ᾽ ἄν, εἰ λέγοι τις ἐμφανῆ λόγον. ΧΟ. βροτοκτονοῦντας ἐκ δόμων ἐλαύνομεν. CH. We will tell you everything in brief, daughter of Zeus. We are the everlasting children of Night, and in our home below the earth we are called the Curses. ATH. I now know your parentage, and the name by which you are called . . . . CH. And you will soon learn my privileges also. ATH. I would, if someone gave me a clear account of them. CH. We drive from their homes those who kill human beings. (Eu. 415-21) The Erinyes’ response at 421 is an almost exact repetition of their statement to Apollo at 210, and there is a sense of the formulaic to these two lines, with ἐκ δόμων ἐλαύνομεν repeated, and in the same line position, from one to the next. At 421 there is a broadening to their function; whereas before their role was to expel matricides, here they extend their jurisdiction to all homicides. We might contrast this statement to their function in the Iliad, where part of their role is to punish (tinusthon) oath-breakers, as I have discussed already. Again, I would argue that it is not insignificant that, in this play, Aeschylus both changes and refers to their timê as it has been established in earlier traditions; what he accomplishes, I think, is creating a sense of instability 117 212: οὐκ ἂν γένοιθ᾽ ὅμαιμος αὐθέντης φόνος; in the case of authentês, “one who does by his own hand; a murderer,” I wonder if it is possible to see something of the same resonance that Loraux (1986), 167 has found for auto- in Antigone, i.e., that it “speaks of the blood-tie as a place of incest, of parricide, and of suicide.” 46 around the Erinyes’ identity as they understand it, thus laying the foundation for their integration into Athens and the new timê they will accept at the trilogy’s end in an effort to find security. However resistant to giving up their timê the Erinyes seem to be, Aeschylus has already started creating a space for them to change their minds. By broadening the scope of the Erinyes’ jurisdiction from matricides to homicides, Aeschylus neatly prepares both Erinyes and audience for the establishment of the Areopagite court in Athens and its association with the Erinyes in their new manifestation as Semnai Theai; although there is a shift in their timê at the play’s conclusion (it is no longer their privilege to elaunein anyone), spatially, the cult of the Semnai was situated beneath the Areopagus, at least according to Pausanias, and thus the Erinyes-Semnai remain linked to the functions of the Areopagite court by their proximity. 118 The above passage also hints at the Erinyes’ obsession with their place among the gods, a deep-seated desire to belong. Straightaway they establish a link to Athena through their divine parentage – they are the children of Night, ἡμεῖς γάρ ἐσμεν Νυκτὸς αἰανῆ τέκνα (416), while Athena is the daughter of Zeus, Διὸς κόρη (415). 119 I would suggest that the subtle emphasis of the Erinyes on their divine birth at 415-17 responds to Apollo’s earlier insistence on their exclusion (from Delphi, from the Olympic pantheon) and his effort to create a tension with Aphrodite where there could otherwise be kinship. Ironically, perhaps, the specific nature of Athena’s birth is the reason the goddess will give for siding with Orestes against the Erinyes, although there she will create a space for their inclusion (by inviting them to stay in Athens), as indeed she has already done upon her arrival on the stage. In contrast to Apollo, her tone in her opening lines (397-414) 118 Paus. 1. 28. 6. 119 Aeschylus shares a different origin story for the Erinyes than what Hesiod provides in the Theogony, where they are born from the blood of Ouranos following his castration (Hes. Theog. 173-87). This divergence of origin story might also have to do with his separation of the Erinyes from their Homeric function, in that he seems to provide a narrative that is distinct from that which would have been familiar from Homer and Hesiod. 47 is not nearly so adversative, and neither is she as fixated as Apollo on their absolute exclusion. Although she does identify the strangeness of the Erinyes’ appearance, remarking that they look neither like the gods nor mortals (410-12), she seems to emit curiosity but not necessarily hostility – their appearance instills not fear but surprise, and she asks quite simply “Who are you?”, τίνες ποτ᾽ ἐστέ; (408); although the indefinite enclitic pote does lend a certain intensification to her question (LSJ III 3), the sarcasm and contempt that came across so clearly in Apollo’s speech are missing from her own. Her depiction of the Erinyes is uniquely circumspect and diplomatic, especially when compared to the extended description given by the Pythia at the play’s opening, where the Erinyes are dark in color (melainai, 52), disgusting (bdeluktropoi, 52), and emitting foul matter from both mouth and eyes (ῥέγκουσι δ᾽ οὐ πλατοῖσι φυσιάμασιν,/ ἐκ δ᾽ ὀμμάτων λείβουσι δυσφιλῆ λίβα, 53-4). Furthermore, Athena in her refusal to further detail their appearance is explicit about the need to speak of the Erinyes with a sense of propriety and in a manner that befits dikē and themis (413-14). In the rather open-ended nature of her question – who ever are you? – Athena begins to allow space for the Erinyes, although, crucially, a space which belongs already to the landscape of the polis (at least, this is how I read her use of dikê and themis). It is to this opportunity for inclusion that the Erinyes seem to respond, by creating a space for similarity of their own in the shared experience of their parthenogenic birth. As the Erinyes endeavor to affirm their belonging, they attempt also to stake their claim to their timê, that is, to that which they contend is their cosmic duty. There is an interesting repetition of peusêi in this passage, which occurs at 415 and 419; in the first instance, the Erinyes declare to Athena that she will learn “everything,” ta panta, before beginning with their parentage, and then in the second instance that she will come to know their timê. I might tentatively suggest that through this repetition the Erinyes express a connection between their timê (419) – function/duty/privilege – and their 48 position in a divine lineage (415-17), which can be linked to the matter of status. Again, the term “status-role” that was introduced by MacLeod in the context of the Eumenides is useful here. On the third and final delineation of the Erinyes’ timê, it is Athena, not the Erinyes themselves, who delivers their function. However, before I discuss Athena’s description, which is the most generous of the statements made about the scope of the Erinyes’ activities, I will first situate her offer (and the Erinyes’ favorable response to it) by looking at the exchange between the Erinyes and Athena that takes place following the acquittal of Orestes. At 894 the chorus of Erinyes ask καὶ δὴ δέδεγμαι – τίς δέ μοι τιμὴ μένει;, “Suppose I do accept it: what privilege awaits me?” 120 Their question comes as the culmination of a fierce debate over the trial ruling and how the Erinyes will respond, in which the Erinyes assert repeatedly that they have been dishonored, or perhaps, that they exist in a state of dishonor, while Athena insists that they have not. From lines 780-894, i.e., when the Erinyes first respond to the ruling to when they ask their question of Athena, there are 18 occurrences of timê and its cognates. The language of timê is insistent, repetitive, vigorous verging on violent. Indeed, it is the violence of the Erinyes that Athena fights to contain, and she ultimately proves victorious when the Erinyes acquiesce to the specific version of timê she offers. The response of the Erinyes to the ruling of the trial is, in marked contrast to Orestes’ jubilation (754-77), explosively bitter, a fury only heightened by the exact repetition of song in strophe and antistrophe (778-92 and 808-22 respectively). The Erinyes maintain that they are atimos and atimopentheis (780, 792, repeated at 810, 822), they are angered that the younger gods, theoi neôteroi (778, 808) have taken what they see as their own due, cherôn heilesthe mou (779, 809), they feel as if they are a “laughing-stock”, gelômai, (789, 819), and have been treated 120 It is worth noting that Sommerstein translates timê on all three occasions that I examine here – 210, 421, 894 – as “privilege.” 49 unbearably by the citizens, δύσοιστ᾿ ἐν πολίταις ἔπαθον (789-90, 819-20). They remind the audience that they are the daughters of Night (792, 822), thus affirming the genealogy that had been shared with Athena earlier; in so doing they remind us also of their indisputable position in a kin group. In their resistance to Athena and the position she now embodies the Erinyes struggle to articulate where they belong and how to constitute their own identity; a key point of honor as I understand it is that, at its most basic, it is a measure of the value an individual holds in their community. For the Erinyes, their value among the community of the gods (and men) is intrinsically tied to their function, to their ability to perform their cosmic mandate unhindered, and from their perspective Athena and the citizen jurors have limited or even erased their function and thus prevent access to their rightful timê: ἀπό με γὰρ τιμᾶν δαναιᾶν θεῶν/ δυσπάλαμοι παρ᾿ οὐδὲν ἦραν δόλοι, “The evil scheming and trickery of the gods has sundered me from my age-old privileges, and made me into nothing!” (845). I see the attitude of the Erinyes in these lines as a reiteration of the concerns that they have expressed – and that I have been discussing – already, a kind of fixation on function and place and performance and belonging, all of which are wound up in the meaning of timê. It is within the space of the polis that Athena, when the Erinyes ask at 894 what will our function be? – τίς δέ μοι τιμὴ μένει 121 – situates their new power, answering ὡς μή τιν᾿ οἶκον εὐθενεῖν ἄνευ σέθεν, “That no house will prosper without your aid” (895), or, if we should like to adhere more closely to the Greek, “without you.” It is perhaps not insignificant that, whereas the previous two iterations of the Erinyes’ timê were defined and articulated by the Erinyes themselves (at 210 and 401), on this final occasion it is Athena who provides its definition. In the lines following she goes on to provide further illumination on their timê, adding that “[she] will uphold 121 As Sommerstein translates, “what privilege awaits me?”. 50 the fortunes of those who revere you,” τῷ γὰρ σέβοντι συμφορὰς ὀρθώσομεν (897, we are reminded of the importance of reciprocity), and that the Erinyes, by staying in Athens, will “gain new friends,” epiktêsê philous (901; again, Athena offers what was earlier denied; see Apollo at 197 and my discussion above on philos). Thus, Athena successfully integrates the timê of the Erinyes, their privilege and duty, into the structure of the polis, and, following their agreement with Athena, they themselves also belong within the physical, civic, and cultic space of Athens. In this way, here as above, timê operates to signify simultaneously both function and status within a group, both of which are connected to how the Erinyes and the Athenian audience constitute their identity. From the moment the Erinyes ask Athena to define their new timê at 894, their cosmic function is tied to their role within a civic space, and all remaining occurrences of timê in the play speak to the place of the Erinyes in the polis and the relationship between the citizens and the divine. 122 That they understand their new timê as existing within the polis is particularly well- illustrated by the statement of acceptance the Erinyes make to Athena’s offer: δέξομαι Παλλάδος ξυνοικίαν,/ οὐδ᾿ ἀτιμάσω πόλιν, “I will accept a residence with Pallas, and I will not dishonor the city” (916-17). The civic sphere In the above section, I argued that Aeschylus uses the figures of the Erinyes to explore a layer of timê that most closely signifies function, duty, obligation, privilege and the like, as well as status, and in particular status or identity within a group. In this section I continue exploring these nuances, especially timê as indicating status or inclusion within the specific context of the Athenian polis, what I am calling here “the civic sphere.” 123 It is important to note that, in my discussion, 122 At 915, 917, 997, 993. 123 It is perhaps useful here to note that Eng. honor, understood typically as the equivalent of timê, derives from Lat. honos/honor, the early uses of which designated public office. 51 “cosmic” and “civic” are not necessarily mutually exclusive – the cosmic and the civic are, to some extent, both roles that are social in nature, 124 but, as the timê of the Erinyes is negotiated and reimagined it does take on a specifically civic intonation, a transitioning of signification that is further emphasized by the movement of timê throughout the trilogy, which I will discuss in detail in Chapter 3. In addition, as I hope will become evident, the occurrences of timê and its cognates in Eumenides that I have identified as “civic” show a large degree of interconnectedness and overlap with the sphere of cult and, more broadly, religion and ritual. This is not surprising, and, as I have noted, recently Josine Blok has argued for a closer understanding of the civic and the cultic with respect to Athenian citizenship than the prevailing view on citizenship might allow. 125 I have found Blok’s observations immensely useful, and I am especially influenced by her argument for the importance of cult as a citizen act, which has important ramifications for our understanding of women in Athens. Nonetheless, I am choosing here to treat the civic and the cultic separately, with the admission that in the Athenian polis they were critically intertwined. Timê in relationship to civic status and participation in the polis manifests itself in different figures at different levels. There is the timê of a ruler, timê of those who are ruled and who participate in the political, timê at the level of the polis (e.g., in the context of interpoleis relationships), and timê of the divine in particular relationship to the political community. As I have noted already in the introduction, there is also the sense, across the entirety of its semantic 124 I thank Douglas Cairns for making this point to me. 125 Blok (2017). 52 range but particularly strongly in the civic context, that timê is a shared value, and that the timê, or, conversely, the atimia, of an individual can affect that of the collective, and vice versa. 126 Before considering the timê of the Erinyes in a civic context, I would like first to comment on another relevant use of timê, which is to articulate the status of a ruler and specifically to establish a link between kingship and the divine. Although the single-figure rule (e.g., an anax, a basileus, or a tyrannos) such as that held by Agamemnon would not have had a place within the Athenian constitution in the 5 th century, nevertheless it is possible to see in the background of Aeschylus’ representation of Agamemnon and Argos certain democratic resonances, and thus it is appropriate, I think, to examine uses of timê for kingship in this section on the civic sphere. When Apollo defends the oracle given to Orestes that convinced him to avenge his father by slaying his mother, he justifies his own position primarily in two ways: he claims that he, Apollo, has acted on the authority of Zeus (614-21), and he implies that vengeance for Agamemnon’s death is merited, to some extent, because of his position as a member of a noble class (andra gennaion, 625) and a monarch whose rule has been legitimated by Zeus (diosdotois skêptroisi, 626), in a set of passages that are perhaps worth looking at in full: ΧΟ. Ζεύς, ὡς λέγεις σύ, τόνδε χρησμὸν ὤπασε φράζειν Ὀρεστῃ τῷδε, τὸν πατρὸς φόνον πράξαντα μητρὸς μηδαμού τιμὰς νέμειν; ΑΠ. οὐ γάρ τι ταὐτὸν ἄνδρα γενναῖον θανεῖν διοσδότοις σκήπτροισι τιμαλφούμενον, καὶ ταῦτα πρὸς γυναικός, οὔ τι θουρίοις τόξοις ἑκηβόλοισιν ὥστ᾿ Ἀμαζόνος, ἀλλ᾿ ὡς ἀκούσῃ, Παλλάς, οἵ τ᾿ ἐφήμενοι ψήφῳ διαιρεῖν τοῦδε πράγματος πέρι. 126 This is not dissimilar to the understanding that prevails already with regard to women and honor – that, e.g., a woman’s dishonorable act would bring dishonor upon her family, community, etc. However, the prevailing view does not, I think, allow for honor to move in the opposite direction, i.e., family à woman, and neither does it acknowledge that giving or receiving honor are, by nature, reciprocal and reciprocating acts, by which I mean that being in a position to give honor (or dishonor) also means that said person is in a position to receive honor (or dishonor). Honor does not move in one direction only, and likewise neither does timê. 53 CH. Zeus, according to you, gave you this oracle to tell to this man Orestes, that in avenging the murder of his father he should take no account at all of the rights of his mother? AP. Yes, because it is simply not the same thing—the death of a noble man, honoured with a royal sceptre granted him by Zeus, and that too at the hands of a woman, and then not by the far-shooting martial bow of, say, an Amazon, but in the manner of which you shall hear, Pallas, and you who are sitting with her to decide this case by your votes. (Eu. 622-30) The first thing we might note is that Agamemnon’s status (and thus social value) is articulated explicitly in terms of timê – διοσδότοις σκήπτροισι τιμαλφούμενον. These lines recall Agamemnon 42-4, where the same three elements of timê, sceptre, and Zeus are positioned together to indicate royal status: Μενέλαος ἄναξ ἠδ᾿ Ἀγαμέμνων, διθρόνου Διόθεν καὶ δισκήπτρου τιμῆς ὀχυρὸν ζεῦγος Ἀτρειδᾶν, ... King Menelaus, together with Agamemnon, the Atreidae, a pair firmly yoked in the honour of their twin thrones and twin scepters given by Zeus ... While I have been discussing the timê of the Erinyes primarily with MacLeod’s idea of the “status- role” in mind (where timê signifies both function and status, and in fact they are part and parcel), I would say that, with respect to the timê of a ruler or of a man with a certain class position, there is more of an emphasis on “status” than “role,” as I explore further in Chapter 3. We see this with both Agamemnon and Menelaus, for whom there is not the same fixation on function, duty, and obligation as there is for the Erinyes, and whose position in a (vertical) social hierarchy explains and reinforces their timê rather than any performance of certain duties or obligations. 127 With this in mind, I wonder if the timê of monarchs, at least as they are represented in Aeschylus, might be 127 On timê and kingship in a 5 th -century context, see Cairns (2019). 54 illustrative of the ways in which vertical honor might prevent some of the community elements and bidirectionality that is emphasized in horizontal honor models. Aeschylus’s use of timalphoumenon (626) for Agamemnon in the passage above is interesting. On the one hand, it seems to respond to the honor-language used by the Erinyes in the lines directly preceding; if we look again at those lines we see that the Erinyes have framed Orestes’ violence against his mother as a matter of timê as they question the intention and legitimacy of the oracle: is it “that in avenging the murder of his father he should take no account at all of the rights of his mother?”, τὸν πατρὸς φόνον/πράξαντα μητρὸς μηδαμού τιμὰς νέμειν (623-4). Sommerstein here has translated timas as “rights” which I think does communicate to some extent the expectations that Clytemnestra could understandably have had as a member of the same peer group as Agamemnon (i.e., as part of his oikos and as part of a spousal partnership, but also as part of the civic community of Argos especially given that she has ruled and wielded power in his stead), expectations which the Erinyes believe Orestes has not taken proper account of. 128 There is a gendered element in this exchange that I see especially clearly in the echoes of language as the Erinyes ask timas – associated with mother/woman (explicitly: mêtros, 624) – and Apollo answers timalphoumenon – associated with man/monarch (explicitly: andra gennaion, 625). The Erinyes ask very clearly whether Zeus compelled Orestes to prioritize father over mother, that is, I think, to bestow timê on one rather than the other (and in fact at latter’s expense). The Erinyes seem to understand the model Apollo pushes as one of vertical hierarchy, in which giving timê to one member of a group by necessity takes away timê from another (we might understand this as 128 Strictly speaking, perhaps, timas in 624 most likely refers to the respect that is due to a mother from her son. However, “mother” is still a relational position, one which depends on and is situated within a familial context as well as a civic context, given the position of power Agamemnon and Clytemnestra are in (and which Clytemnestra retained after his death). We might note that elsewhere the Eumenides makes a clear statement about the honor that is due to the parents, with no such gender qualifications, on which, see my discussion in Chapter 3. 55 “zero-sum), and they articulate this hierarchy in gendered terms. However, this is a model they resist; in their view, the timê of a father is not worth more than the timê of a mother, as is perhaps evidence by their articulation, twice, of the so-called Unwritten Laws of the Moirai which enjoin reverence to gods, foreigners, and parents, 129 and in fact their pursuit of Orestes in the Eumenides is driven in large part by a need to restore to Clytemnestra the timê that she has lost in the circumstances of her death (but this has not necessarily to do with the fact of her gender but rather their divine mandate). 130 Apollo’s response to the Erinyes is equally clear (Zeus favors father over mother) and at the same time more complicated, in the sense that, while he responds within the same gendered framework that the Erinyes have called attention to, rather than positioning the question of timê for Agamemnon and Clytemnestra as a matter of father vs. mother (as the Erinyes explicitly do, patros/metros, 623 and 624), he re-situates the matter into the framework of gender and class, which for him is related also to the cachet of an individual with the gods. The answer that Apollo provides speaks not necessarily about the distribution of value between father and mother, but between a person who has received their timê from Zeus and a person who has not. 131 In using timalpheō to respond to the Erinyes’s timai, Apollo both echoes their language and, as I have just suggested, re-situates timê to better fit his own perceptions of its value and function. It is worth looking at other uses of timalpheō in the play, which are few in number; in 129 At 269-72 and 538-49. 130 As the ghost of Clytemnestra enters the stage she declares indignantly, ἐγὼ δ᾿ ὑφ᾿ ὑμῶν ὧδ᾿ ἀπητιμασμένη/ ἄλλοισιν ἐν νεκροῖσιν, “I am shunned in dishonour like this among the other dead, thanks to you,” 95-6. Her opening passage conveys a strong sense of Clytemnestra’s suffering in the underworld – blame is her constant attendant, ὄνειδος ἐν φθιτοῖσιν οὐκ ἐκλείπεται, 97 – brought on by a confluence of factors: her murder by kin (twice-emphasized by πρὸς τῶν φιλτάτων, 100, and πρὸς χερῶν μητροκτόνων, 102), her murder of kin (96), 130 the lack of vengeance on her behalf (οὐδεὶς ὑπέρ μου δαιμόνων μηνίεται, 101), despite the egregious circumstances of her death (κατασφαγείσης πρὸς χερῶν μητροκτόνων, 102). At stake for Clytemnestra is her status and prestige among the dead (mirroring the Erinyes concern with cosmic function); until she regains the timê she feels she deserves she is doomed to wander in disgrace (aischrôs, 98). 131 In this sense, I would say the Erinyes misunderstand Apollo, as at 640 they show that they clearly believe Apollo favors father over mother; Aeschylus offers an opportunity for differing/conflicting interpretations. 56 addition to its use at 626 for Agamemnon, it can also be found at line 15, for Apollo, and then again at 807, for the Erinyes – a combination inviting curiosity. In the case of the former, which is the first instance of timê language in the play, the Pythia describes the genealogy of the Delphic oracle and Apollo’s entrance and acceptance into the land: μολόντα δ᾿ αὐτὸν κάρτα τιμαλφεῖ λεὼς Δελφός τε χώρας τῆσδε πρυμνήτης ἄναξ· τέχνης δέ νιν Ζεὺς ἔνθεον κτίσας φρένα ἵζει τέταρτον τοῖσδε μάντιν ἐν θρόνοις· Διὸς προφήτης δ᾿ ἐστὶ Λοξίας πατρός. When he came here, he was greatly honoured by our people, and by Delphus, the king and helmsman of this land; and Zeus caused his mind to be inspired with seercraft, and installed him on the throne here as its fourth prophet. Loxias is thus the spokesman of his father Zeus. (Eu. 15-19) At 807, Athena promises the Erinyes that, if they refrain from punishing Athens, a sacred space will be created for them and they will receive honors from the Athenians: ὑμεῖς δὲ <μή>τε τῇδε γῇ βαρὺν κότον σκήψητε, μὴ θυμοῦσθε, μηδ᾿ ἀκαρπίαν τεύξητ᾿ ἀφεῖσαι πλευμόνων σταλάγματα, βρωτῆρας αἰχμας σπερμάτων ἀνημέρους. ἐγὼ γὰρ ὑμῖν πανδίκως ὑπίσχομαι ἕδρας τε καὶ κευθμῶνας ἐνδίκου χθονός, λιπαροθρόνοισιν ἡμένας ἐπ᾿ ἐσχάραις, ἕξειν, ὑπ᾿ ἀστῶν τῶνδε τιμαλφουμένας. So do not send down grievous wrath against this land; do not be angry; do not create sterility by releasing a dripping liquid from your lungs to make a savage froth that devours the seed— because I unreservedly promise you that you will have an underground abode within our soil where, sitting on gleaming thrones close to your altars, you will receive honours from these citizens. (Eu. 800-7) The three above occurrences have several features in common: there is the “seat” or “sceptre” as symbol of authority, there is the will of Zeus, there is the existence of a surrounding community. Using timalpheô, Aeschylus links Apollo, Agamemnon, and the Erinyes, and I would argue that 57 one significant effect of this relationship is the creation of a space for the the Erinyes to be integrated into the religious and political landscape of the polis. Athena makes the political aspect explicit by stating that the Erinyes will be honored hup’ astôn. 132 Timalpheô is not an especially common Greek verb; in fact, Epicharmus derides Aeschylus for its use. 133 Pindar also uses timalpheô, more commonly in its active forms, in his epinician poetry, e.g., Nemean 9.54, εὔχομαι ταύταν ἀρετὰν κελαδῆσαι σὺν Χαρίτεσσιν, ὑπὲρ πολλῶν τε τιμαλφεῖν λόγοις νίκαν. A critical function of the epinican is the reintegration of the victor into their community, and my suggestion is that we might read timalpheô in Aeschylus in a similar context, that is, as a way to mediate the tension that can arise when a member of a community experiences elevated status; this may work as well for integrating an “outsider” (whether real or perceived) into another communal space. 134 This aspect of integration is applicable to all three of the figures I have been discussing, at moments when timalpheô is used – Apollo, who is integrated into the space and function of the Delphic oracle, Agamemnon, who both would have experienced a reintegration when returning to Argos from Troy and who, as a monarch, was perhaps always cognizant of the need to negotiate the tension that elevated status could bring, 135 and the Erinyes, whose identity is resituated and integrated into an Athenian context. It is worth remembering that timê has (or can have) multiple functions within the same situation; it marks an individual as, to an extent, special (both in the eyes of the group and in that individual’s self-evaluation) and at the same time it acknowledges their value within a group, for timê is valuable primarily in a social context. 132 On the language and terminology of Athenian citizenship, see Patterson (1986), Blok (2017). 133 Epich. Fr. 214. 134 On the integrative function of epinician, see, e.g., Mackie (2003). 135 Although this is much later, Plutarch’s Praeceptae gerendae reipublicae contains an interesting meditation on the need for office-holders to mediate public emotions such as phthonos which I think is applicable here (see esp. section 15). 58 Timê can be used not only to indicate the value and status of an individual, but also to extend value to the collective. This is evidenced by the use of timalphoumenas, 807, and atimoi for the Erinyes, 824, who are referred to in both the singular and plural throughout the play. Additionally, Athena speaks of the honor that belongs to the citizens as a group when she states, οὑπιρρέων γὰρ τιμιώτερος χρόνος/ ἔσται πολίταις τοῖσδε, “Time as it flows on will bring ever- greater glory to these citizens” (853-4). There is a sense of reciprocity in this passage as well; timiôteros of 853 is directly echoed by timian in 854, an echo that one translator acknowledges by rendering both with forms of “glory.” 136 If the Erinyes accept Athena’s offer and stay in Athens then their presence will bring honor to the citizens, who in turn bestow back honor upon them. Although it is common for considerations of honor to focus on the honor of an individual, especially when thinking about timê as signifying “function” as in, e.g., the Homeric Hymn to Hermes, or about timê as signifying “status/value”, as in, e.g., epic (Achilles, Agamemnon, etc…), here we see that notions of status and prestige can also be understood as communal values, which, presumably, any who belong to that community can access. 137 There is still, of course, the question of when those values are accessible, to what extent, etc. These are the sorts of questions that I will attempt to address as I consider the implications my observations on timê have for our understanding of the role of women in the Greek honor system, but, I think crucial to an understanding of how women operate in the ancient world is the fundamental notion that belonging to a group means access to communal values. In addition to timê at the level of the individual and the polis, timê can also operate panhellenically, as an immaterial good whose value is recognized from one poleis to another, 136 Sommerstein’s Loeb, “Time as it flows on will bring ever-greater glory to these citizens, and you too will have a glorious abode, close to the house of Erechtheus, and will receive from processions of men and women such honours and you would never get from any other race of mortals.” (Eu. 853-7) 137 As indeed the passage from Aristotle’s Politics that opens this chapter emphasizes. 59 which can be given from one to another, and which operates within and bolsters Greek systems of reciprocity. Illustrative of this point is Orestes’ oath to Athena: ἐγὼ δὲ χώρᾳ τῇδε καὶ τῷ σῷ στρατῷ τὸ λοιπὸν εἰς ἅπαντα πλειστήρη χρόνον ὁρκωμοτήσας νῦν ἄπειμι πρὸς δόμους, μήτοί τιν᾿ ἄρη δεῦρο πρυμνήτην χθονὸς ἐλθόντ᾿ ἐποίσειν εὖ κεκασμένον δορί. αὐτοὶ γὰρ ἡμεῖς ὄντες ἐν τάφοις τότε οῖς τἀμὰ παρβαίνουσι νῦν ὁρκώματα ἀμηχάνοισι πράξομεν δυσπραξίαις, ὁδοὺς, ἀθύμους καὶ παρόρνιθας πόρους τιθέντες, ὡς αὐτοῖσι μεταμέλῃ πόνος· ὀρθουμένων δὲ καὶ πόλιν τὴν Παλλάδος τιμῶσιν αἰεὶ τήνδε συμμάχῳ δορὶ αὐτοῖσιν ἡμεῖς ἐσόμεθ᾿ εὐμενέστεροι. καὶ χαῖρε καὶ σὺ καὶ πολισσοῦχος λεώς· πάλαισμ᾿ ἄφυκτον τοῖς ἐναντίοις ἔχεις, σωτήριόν τε καὶ δορὸς νικηφόρον. Now I depart for my home, but first I swear solemnly to this land and to your people, for the fullness of all time to come, that no helmsman of my land, well equipped with arms, will ever come bringing war against this place. For we ourself, being then in our tomb, will act against those who violate my present oath, inflicting hopeless misfortunes upon them, making their ways dispirited and their paths ill- omened, till they repent of their effort; but if my oath is uprightly maintained, and if they always honour their obligations to this city of Pallas by fighting at its side, we shall be more favourable to them. Now farewell to you and to the people of your city: you have a means to success that your enemies will be unable to escape, which will give you safety and make your wars victorious. (Eu. 762-77) The passage links honor, timôsin, 773, to oath-taking, 765, 768, 772, and the military, summachôi dori, 773, doros nikêphoron, 775, and establishes a long-term reciprocal relationship between Argos and Athens, which, I would argue, reflects contemporary concerns about the role of Athens in the Mediterranean. Rebecca Futo Kennedy in her 2009 study of the role of Athena in Attic tragedy has argued that tragedy, in addition to being a site for the negotiation of Athenian identity amongst Athenians, was also “about projecting an image of Athens to her allies and subjects as well,” suggesting that in Attic tragedy it is possible to see reflected the growth of an Athenian 60 imperialist attitude and how it affected Athenian values and ideals. 138 In her chapter on the Eumenides, Kennedy argues that, via the success of Athena both in her persuasion of the Erinyes and in the successful conclusion of the first trial by jury, Aeschylus positions Athens as a seat of justice, and she interprets the relationship established with Argos (via Orestes, as in the passage above) in the play as an illustration of the successful exportation of Athenian dikē within the empire. 139 Although the scope of this dissertation does not extend to a full consideration of the role of timê in empire-building (as, e.g., a means to solidify relationships and to articulate shared values and a collective identity), nevertheless it is an interesting question and one which perhaps bears further consideration. The religious sphere In considering the ways that timê works in a communal (and civic) setting it would be remiss of me to neglect an examination of timê in a religious context. Although for the purposes of structure and clarity I am addressing the “civic” and the “religious” separately, as I have already noted, the boundary between the religious and the political in 5 th century BCE Athens is not well-defined, and thus the categories I offer present varying degrees of emphasis and not absolute distinction; indeed, in this chapter in particular I am thinking of the religious sphere as a kind of subset of the civic/political sphere, whereas in later chapters I explore timê and the religious qua religion. Nevertheless, I would suggest that there is a distinction between the “civic” examples that I have discussed above and the “religious” examples I explore in this section, and the distinction is this: for the most part, I would say that the instances discussed above show timê that operates primarily along a horizontal axis (whether that axis is representative of a human or divine 138 Kennedy (2009), 3. 139 “The Eumenides creates and supports a vision of Athenian imperialism as both justified and desirable,” ibid. p. 34. 61 community), by which I mean that they show the allocation of timê within a peer group, and, while figures like Apollo urge an understanding of timê that is hierarchized, timê itself is not an inherently hierarchizing value and in the civic context above I think we can see glimpses of the “horizontal honor” that Frank Stewart Henderson and Alexander Welsh encourage, where timê articulates access to and participation within a collective, is not necessarily zero-sum, and is dispersed and withheld across and within the group. In contrast, when thinking about the timê that exists within the divine-mortal relationship and is exchanged between humans and gods, I think what we are dealing with are, fairly clearly, representations of timê along the vertical axis, or “vertical honor,” in the sense that there is no possibility of equality between the two groups. This section focuses on those vertical relationships. 140 Timê in the context of the religious sphere in the Eumenides seems to operate in two ways: to indicate some aspect of cult worship, and to articulate the relationship between humans and the divine. To be sure, the two are related; to my mind, cult worship is one means of demonstrating and sustaining a bond with the gods. However, I would argue that cult worship in Athens belongs primarily to the realm of polis-religion, whereas an exploration of the relationship between humans and the divine asks us to think also about religion “beyond-the-polis” in addition to those polis- centric aspects that have typically been the focus of studies on Greek religion. 141 With that said, much of what I consider here will be “polis-religion” but I am cautious about the limits of such an approach. 142 140 Horizontal and vertical also work in a spatial sense; the gods are often envisioned to be “above” or “below” whereas interactions between humans take place on the earth’s plane. 141 For a good introduction to “polis-religion” and religion “beyond-the-polis,” see Kindt (2012), with bibliography. 142 And indeed, while the ideological force of tragedy is well-established, especially since the publication of Goldhill (1987), it is worth thinking again about tragedy “beyond-the-polis,” that is the function and effect of tragedy outside of – or perhaps, beside – it’s explicitly democratic setting. 62 Timê in the Eumenides can be used quite generally to articulate a relationship between humans and the divine, especially near the end of the play as Athena and the Erinyes between them give voice to their place within the polis, and thus lay out the specificities of the relationship between the Erinyes and their new community. Three examples will suffice. When the Erinyes accept the proposed role of Athena, they vow not to dishonor her city: δέξομαι Παλλάδος ξυνοικίαν, οὐδ᾿ ἀτιμάσω πόλιν τὰν καὶ Ζεὺς ὁ παγκρατὴς Ἄρης τε φρούριον θεῶν νέμει, ῥυσίβωμον Ἑλλά- νων ἄγαλμα δαιμόνων· ᾇ τ᾿ ἐγὼ κατεύχομαι θεσπίσασα πρευμενῶς ἐπισσύτους βίου τύχας ὀνησίμους γαίας ἐξαμβρῦσαι φαιδρὸν ἁλίου σέλας. I will accept a residence with Pallas, and I will not dishonour the city in which there dwell also Zeus the almighty and Ares—the guard-post of the gods, the protector of their altars, the delight of the divinities of Greece; for which city I pray, and prophesy with kind intent, that the bright light of the sun may cause blessings beneficial to her life to burst forth in profusion from the earth. (Eu. 916-26) Their use of atimasô at 917 is difficult to render with any specificity – “I will not dishonor” (a la Sommerstein) for oud’ atimasô does indeed seem a very reasonable translation, although as I and others have discussed the semiotics of “honor” have ceased to hold much value in our own contemporary social context, and thus such a translation does not necessarily convey the level of nuance that one might desire. 143 The Erinyes qualify oud’ atimasô to some extent at 923-4 with ἐγὼ κατεύχομαι/ θεσπίσασα πρευμενῶς, “I pray wholeheartedly and I prophecy with gracious intent,” thus identifying specific actions that they will undertake in their position as honored 143 For the difficulties that “honor” presents in contemporary, 21 st century vocabulary and culture, see Welsh (2008), 1-8. 63 benefactors of Athens. In agreeing not to dishonor (i.e., ‘to honor’) the polis they cement the model of timê that Athena has offered. In addition, I would argue that their use of atimasô polin at 917 responds to Athena’s use of timân polin at 915, when, after enumerating her expectations for the reciprocal benevolence of the Erinyes, 144 she declares: τοιαῦτά σοὔστι. τῶν ἀρειφάτων δ’ ἐγὼ πρεπτῶν ἀγώνων οὐκ ἀνέξομαι τὸ μὴ οὐ τήνδ’ ἀστύνικον ἐν βροτοῖς τιμᾶν πόλιν. Such things as these are for you to grant; for my part, I would find it unendurable not to honour this city among men by making her a city of victory in glorious martial struggles. (Eu. 913-15) We might notice the emphatic positioning of timân polin at line-end and the closeness of timê to polis; indeed, this entire line shows the envelopment of timê within its human and political constructs, neatly made literal by the placing of polin just outside of the attributive construction. Athena in these lines also subtly reinforces the idea that each deity has their own timê from which presumably they should not stray – she would not dishonor (ou timān) Athens by failing to ensure that they are astunikos (an Aeschylean hapax), and so also should the Erinyes fulfill their own obligations by providing the blessings outlined in the preceding lines (903-11). Furthermore, the conversation that Athena and the Erinyes are now having, as evidenced by the two passages above, emphasizes to some large extent the reciprocal relationship that exists between the polis and its gods vis-à-vis timê. While the city is expected to extend timê to the gods (“honor” or “reverence,” perhaps are the best translations for this context), so also might they expect to receive timê from the gods. In the latter case it is, I think, much more difficult to accurately render the meaning of 144 Unfailing agricultural abundance and a fertile human population; we might understand that fecundity all around is an important part of their new timê . 64 timê into English, but I would say that what it accomplishes is the affirmation of a kind of mutually beneficial relationality that exists between mortal and divine. Finally, I would add that a sense of historical specificity is created at 919-21, as Alan Sommerstein has noted in his translation, 145 and I would suggest that this specificity works to affirm the bond between Athens and the Semnai Theai in the present day, i.e., for the audience in 458 BCE, when the tragedy was first staged. In fact, the bond is not just between Athens and the Semnai, but the Chorus’ song here includes as well Zeus, Ares, and “the divinities of Greece”, Hellanôn daimonôn, more generally. Their words both evoke a sense of the Hellenic pantheon and the sacred relationship of the divine to the Athenians, and by aligning their intended actions with those outlined by Athena they confirm their own position within the immortal community. Also illustrative of the mechanics of the timê-relationship between gods and men is Athena’s exhortation to the Athenians to honor the Erinyes-Semnai in exchange for justice and glory: ἆρα φρονοῦσιν γλώσσης ἀγαθῆς ὁδὸν εὑρίσκειν; ἐκ τῶν φοβερῶν τῶνδε προσώπων μέγα κέρδος ὁρῶ τοῖσδε πολίταις· τάσδε γὰρ εὔφρονας εὔφρονες αἰεὶ μέγα τιμῶντες καὶ γῆν καὶ πόλιν ὀρθοδίκαιον πρέψετε πάντως διάγοντες. Are they minded to find the path of fair speech? From these fearsome faces I see great benefit coming to these citizens; for by always kindly giving great honour to these kindly powers, you will keep your land and city on the straight road of justice and be glorious in every way. (Eu. 988-95) 145 “These phrases [of 918-21] have little relevance to the Athens of the heroic age, but much to the Athens of Aeschylus’ day, which claimed to have defended, and to be taking vengeance on behalf of, the gods and their sanctuaries against the sacrilegious Persians who had looted and destroyed temples and altars in Athens and many other places (cf. Persians 809-812).” Sommerstein (2008), 469. 65 Interestingly, timôntes at 993 is the final occurrence of timê in the play; in this final occurrence the relationship between religious and civic elements is cemented, while the polyptoton of euphronas euphrones signals the newfound reciprocity between the Erinyes-Semnai and the Athenian citizens, a reciprocity upon which the position of each depends. The use of prepsete at 995 also seems to signal the position of Athens among a community that extends beyond their own polis – prepô can mean “to be clearly seen, to be conspicuous among a number” (LSJ I.1) – which I take to be suggestive of an understanding of their own communal honor in the eyes of the gods and the rest of Greece. 146 The association of prepô with the senses, and in particular, the sense of sight and the eyes, also works well with the outward-facing quality of honor, which is often articulated in metaphors of sight. 147 While timê in its religious manifestations is commonly used to indicate the actions and behaviors of mortals before the gods, certain articulations also express expectations for divine comportment towards mortals, as evidenced at Eumenides 915-20: τῶν δ᾿ εὐσεβούντων ἐκφορωτέρα πέλοις· στέργω γάρ, ἀνδρὸς φιτυποίμενος δίκην, τὸ τῶν δικαίων τῶνδ᾿ ἀπένθητον γένος. τοιαῦτά σοὔστι· τῶν ἀρειφάτων δ᾿ ἐγὼ πρεπτῶν ἀγώνων οὐκ ἀνέξομαι τὸ μὴ οὐ τήνδ᾿ ἀστύνικον ἐν βροτοῖς τιμᾶν πόλιν. But may you give greater fertility to those who are pious; for like a shepherd of plants, I cherish the race to which these righteous men belong. Such things as these are for you to grant; for my part, I would find it unendurable not to honour this city among men by making her a city of victory in glorious martial struggles. 146 Many thanks to my advisor Greg Thalmann for sharing this observation. 147 Welsh (2008), 9; also Appiah (2010), Preface, where K. A. Appiah suggests that there is a connection between the face/eyes (metaphorically and literally) and one’s honor standing/understanding; in addition in his first chapter he discusses the relationship between “respect” and “honor,” suggesting that “two kinds of respect – esteem and positive recognition respect – correspond to two kinds of honor,” which are “competitive honor” and “peer honor,” and, although he does not make this point, it works very neatly that “respect” comes from, of course, Lat. respicere, “to look back at.” 66 This passage, in which Athena expresses the blessings she hopes the Erinyes will bestow upon the Athenians, shows a timê which moves in the direction of divine --> mortal. In addition to the use of timê to indicate and affirm the sacred bond between the Athens and their gods, timê is also used in Eumenides to signify cult practice specifically. When Athena urges the Erinyes to curb their wrath and endeavors to convince them to relinquish their ancestral function, she offers as recompense a place in Athens and the opportunity to receive timê from the Athenians in the form of cult worship. Here, timê means something like “value” and is an immaterial good offered in exchange for divine benevolence, a reimagined replacement for the prestige and position that the Erinyes fear losing so fiercely. That this timê operates explicitly in the sphere of cult is evidenced by Athena’s responses to the Erinyes’ choral laments. 148 For example, in her first speech (794-807) she attempts to persuade them of the validity of the trial and promises the Erinyes that, should they stay their rancor, they will be objects of cult worship in Athens: ἐγὼ γὰρ ὑμῖν πανδίκως ὑπίσχομαι ἕδρας τε καὶ κευθμῶνας ἐνδίκου χθονός, λιπαροθρόνοισιν ἡμένας ἐπ᾿ ἐσχάραις, ἕξειν, ὑπ᾿ ἀστῶν τῶνδε τιμαλφουμένας. ... because I unreservedly promise you that you will have an underground abode within our soil where, sitting on gleaming thrones close to your altars, you will receive honours from these citizens. (Eu. 804-7) Athena’s words envision a future sanctuary for the Erinyes, one which is dedicated to them and where they will be made to feel welcome. This is in stark contrast to the sanctuary within which the Erinyes found themselves at the start of the play, the Temple of Apollo at Delphi, where they were distinctly unwelcome. Aeschylus’ use of timalpheô, found here for the Erinyes and at 15 for 148 There is an interesting interplay in this episode in that the Erinyes fixate on a timê that articulates their cosmic position, as I discuss above, while Athena’s responses situate timê within the polis (both civic and cultic aspects). 67 Apollo, encourages this contrast, as does his use of liparothronoisin, “thrones bright with oil” to replace the unmarked thrones upon which the Erinyes were first seated (en thronoisin, 47). As Alan Sommerstein notes in his commentary to the play, liparothronoisin must refer to the sacred stones that were situated in the precinct of the Semnai, which were anointed with oil. 149 In this passage, her first attempt at persuasion, Athena recalls through her use of timalpheô their earlier condition as outsiders while offering a more palatable substitute, one in which they clearly “belong” to the community, in both a literal, geographic sense, as well as conceptually. The second response of Athena further details the shape of the Erinyes’ cult offerings, as well as reiterating their inclusion in Athens: κοίμα κελαινοῦ κύματος πικρὸν μένος, ὡς σεμνότιμος καὶ ξυνοικήτωρ ἐμοί· πολλῆς δὲ χώρας τῆσδε τἀκροθίνια, θύη πρὸ παίδων καὶ γαμηλίου τέλους, ἔχουσ᾿ ἐς αἰεὶ τόνδ᾿ ἐπαινέσεις λόγον. Lull to rest the bitter force of the black surge; think of yourselves as being held in august honour and as sharers of my home. From this land, mighty as it shall be, you will for ever receive the first-fruits, sacrifices before childbirth and before the completion of marriage, and you will thank me for these words. (Eu. 832-6) Athena’s third speech (848-69) again promises the Erinyes the opportunity for acknowledgment of value through cult and a position within the Athenian religious landscape: οὑπιρρέων γὰρ τιμιώτερος χρόνος ἔσται πολίταις τοῖσδε, καὶ σὺ τιμίαν ἕδραν ἔχουσα πρὸς δόμοις Ἐρεχθέως τεύξῃ παρ᾿ ἀνδρῶν καὶ γυναικείων στόλων ὅσ᾿ ἂν παρ᾿ ἀλλων οὔποτ᾿ ἂν σχέθοις βροτῶν. Time as it flows on will bring ever-greater glory to these citizens, and you too will have a glorious abode, close to the house of Erechtheus, and will receive from processions of men and women such honours as you would never get from any other race of mortals. (Eu. 853-7) 149 Sommerstein (1989), ad loc., Burkert (1985), 72. 68 Her words foreshadow the procession at the trilogy’s conclusion, which completes the transformation of Erinyes to Semnai and welcomes them into their new home. I would argue that in the passage at hand she also indicates a more generalized acceptance among the gods, explaining to the Erinyes that in addition to experiencing the restoration of their timê, eu timômenên, 868, they will have a share in the land which is most beloved by the gods, χώρας μετασχεῖν τῆσδε θεοφιλεστάτης, 869. Metechô links the Erinyes directly to the Attic landscape, and indirectly to the gods who sustain it; in my view, what Athena offers here is a an assurance of continued status amidst both divine and mortal communities and of their ability to fulfill their cosmic function (which, however, has shifted). As the land is most beloved by the gods, so will they be. What finally convinces the Erinyes to stay their anger and accept the offer of Athena? In Athena’s fourth and final response to the Erinyes’ mournful complaints she extends an offer that the Erinyes cannot refuse: ἀλλ᾿ εἰ μὲν ἁγνόν ἐστί σοι Πειθοῦς σέβας, γλώσσης ἐμῆς μείλιγμα καὶ θελκτήριον—σὺ δ᾿ οὖν μένοις ἄν· εἰ δὲ μὴ θέλεις μένειν, οὐ τἂν δικαίως τῇδ᾿ ἐπιρρέποις πόλει μῆνίν τιν᾿ ἢ κότον τιν᾿ ἢ βλάβην στρατῷ· ἔξεστι γάρ σοι τῆσδε γαμόρῳ χθονὸς εἶναι δικαίως εἰς τὸ πᾶν τιμωμένῃ. If you have reverence for the awesome power of Persuasion, the charm and enchantment of my tongue— well, anyway, please do stay. But if you prefer not to, it would be unjust for you to let fall on this city any wrath, or any anger, or any harm to its people; for you have the opportunity to be a landholder in this country, and be justly honoured for ever. (Eu. 885-91) In short, Athena offers to the Erinyes timê “forever,” eis to pan (891); she extends to them the opportunity to belong, to be valued and to rest assured in their value, free from fear of its theft. I 69 suppose she offers them the security of a home. 150 This offer finally persuades the Erinyes; 151 their interest is piqued, and rather than responding with choral lament as they have previously done, they enter into a stichomythic exchange with Athena over the nature of their Athenian residence, which they articulate in terms both physical, “what abode do you say I am to have?”, τίνα με φὴς ἕξειν ἕδραν; 892, and immaterial, “what privilege awaits me?”, τίς δέ μοι τιμὴ μένει; 894. In like manner, Athena’s speech and her replies to their questions characterize timê as a value that resides at the level of polis participation (890-1, above, note also the use of dikaiôs at 891) and within the space of cult and religion, further defining their timê (read: “privilege”, “duty”) as a benevolence that benefits the oikos, specifically for those who venerate the Erinyes-Semnai (895, 897). There is a kind of circle of reciprocity here, between Athena, the Erinyes, and the Athenian citizens (astoi, 807, 862, 908; polîtai, 854), 152 and a sense of alliance between Athena and the Erinyes that results in the Erinyes relinquishing the anger which Athena originally implored them to stay (kotou, 900, koton, 800). 153 Interestingly, whereas up until now Athena was responding in spoken trimeters to the Erinyes’ song, following their acquiescence she shifts from iambs to (chanted) anapaests at 927, mirroring to some extent the metrical shift the Erinyes had made at 892 from sung lyrics to spoken trimeter. In a really lovely expression of the force of meter, Athena and the Erinyes each make adjustments to their own rhythm as they finalize their negotiations. However, 150 Not only a home, but ownership and civic inclusion – as Sommerstein notes ad 890, “since only citizens of a πόλις could normally own land within its boundaries, the word suggests […] that the Erinyes are to become part of the Athenian civic body.” However, as Sommerstein also notes and as I will discuss shortly, the inclusion of the Erinyes is ultimately limited by their characterization as metoikoi. 151 What I am suggesting is a different motivation for the Erinyes’ acquiescence than that which has been suggested by other scholars, i.e., that the Erinyes give in to Athena because of the threat of Zeus that she introduces at 826-9, see, e.g., Winnington-Ingram (1979), Lloyd-Jones (1971). Kennedy (2009), 37 argues that the Erinyes’ submission is due to persuasion, Peithô, (as embodied by Athena) and justice, Dikê. 152 Circular reciprocity is very appealing from a feminist perspective. 153 For alliance between Erinyes and Athena cf. ξυνοικήτωρ, 833, ξυνοικίαν, 916 70 we might note it is only after the Erinyes have given in fully (i.e., after they have accepted her offer, given up their anger, and vowed not to dishonor the polis) that Athena’s rhythm changes. Conclusion In this chapter, I have begun to sketch out the Athenian system of honor in broad strokes, with a particular focus on the ways that timê articulates matters of function, especially divine function as established in the Greek cosmology, and status, especially status within a community and, in Aeschylus, especially a civic community; in this sense I have relied strongly on C. W. MacCleod’s concept of status-role and endeavored to expand that conversation. I have argued that in the Eumenides it is possible to observe timê operating primarily in two separate yet interconnected spheres, the cosmic and the civic, where there is also a strong intertwinement with the religious in the latter. Furthermore, no one of these spheres excludes the participation of women in any meaningful manner. In addition, although I have articulated these spheres individually for the purposes of my discussion, I hope that I have shown how the nuances of timê are tangled and complex; at times timê will operate differently in different spheres, while at other times timê at one level will mirror and/or overlap its use in another. Lastly, I have tried to show that, in the Eumenides, both vertical and horizontal honor structures are at play, with Apollo representing the former particularly strongly. Ultimately, although timê retains its flexible nature in the Eumenides, through the integration of the Erinyes into Athens, Aeschylus centers and solidifies the institutions of Athens as a democratic polis in the 5 th century, which provides critical context for his representation of timê. Although I have discussed particular uses of timê in detail, an overarching theme present on all occasions is the communal nature of timê and ideas of inclusion and exclusion. 71 CHAPTER TWO: CHOEPHOROI Why does tragedy exist? Because you are full of rage. Why are you full of rage? Because you are full of grief. – Anne Carson, Grief Lessons (2008) That Greek tragedy reflects an overwhelming concern over the treatment of the dead is undeniable. Each tragedian explores the topic in their own way, and some of Athens’ most renowned and influential productions meditate on the relationship between the living and the dead and the importance of performing burial rites well and according to custom that was so fundamental to Athenian culture. 154 The presence of the dead is felt heavily in the Aeschylean corpus from its earliest moments when Atossa summons the ghost of Darius, and the dead and their demands are a particularly strong motivating force in the plays of the Oresteia as well. It is clear from the evidence of Attic tragedy that funeral ritual and the treatment of the dead more broadly is an area where women do participate in exchanges of timê, not only bestowing timê on the dead but receiving it as well. This is not at all surprising, considering what we know about the participation of women in religion and ritual in the ancient world – for some time, this has been an area where scholars regularly acknowledge the “agency” of women – and yet, to my knowledge, there has been no sustained nor pointed examination of the connection between women, timê, and ritual. 155 In addition, I would argue that this is one place where timê diverges, 154 Paradigmatically, Sophocles’ Antigone; also, OC, Ajax, Elektra; Euripides’ Hecuba, Iphigenia at Aulis, Suppliants, Alcestis; Aeschylus’s Septem, although most scholars agree that its conclusion, most useful for my interests, is spurious. 155 For a general survey on the participation of women in Greek religion, with sources and bibliography, see Dillon (2002). Garland (1985) and, more recently, Mirto and Osborne (2012) provide good general introductions to death in Greece during the archaic and classical periods. For the ritual of death as social phenomenon, see esp. Erasmo (2013). It is also interesting that timê does not seem to be used in this particular way in earlier, non-Athenian sources. Although an exhaustive exploration of the topic is beyond the scope of this project, I have noticed, in looking at canonical scenes of mourning and funerary scenes (e.g., for Hector and Patroclus in the Iliad), that timê does not appear. In making this observation I am not suggesting that such moments were not moments of honor – certainly 72 fairly significantly, from our understanding of the modern notion of “honor.” While the language of honor is still common in death practices and remembrance of the dead, it seems reasonable to say that its use is primarily formulaic while its significance as a core tenet of contemporary (American and Eurocentric) society has been lost, and certainly scholarship on honor, in both classics and contemporary cultural commentaries, focuses more strongly on honor as it is situated within gender and class structures. 156 For women in particular, where our understanding of “honor” (as a “Western” idea) has been fairly limited, thinking about their performance of timê in the treatment of the dead offers an opportunity to consider the topic with further nuance. Nevertheless, it is worth noting, as I have done too in the Introduction, that my interest is not in recovering a paradigm for powerful female agency vis-à-vis, e.g., burial rites, but rather to lend complexity to a previously quite narrow scholarly conversation. My argument is not that we might find, in these performances, a way out of traditional patriarchal structures of the past, but rather that through attentive exploration we might push back against patriarchal structures of the present. Expanding our understanding of timê in Attic tragedy – to include, as here, participation in customs that are critical to the stability of Athenian community – is a means to resist the conversation around honor and sexuality that is still prevalent in contemporary American and European narratives. 157 And while, on the one hand, it is possible to say that figures like Electra, Antigone, etc are operating within the structures and values of Athenian patriarchy – that the community which they stabilize is in fact the community which constrains their movements – it is also possible to say, on the other hand, that within those structures there is space nevertheless for the values of an individual to be they were – but it is interesting that timê specifically does not appear. Alongside this observation, we might note the Solonian legislature of the late 6 th century that seemed to have limited – at least in theory if not in practice – the participation of women in funerary ritual; on which, see, e.g., Stears (1998), 114ff. Thus, I would say that the relationship of timê to the funeral (and mourning) in Athens is an open question which merits further consideration. 156 The military sphere might be an exception to this argument, in the United States in particular. 157 As in other places as well, such as Iran, Pakistan, Syria. 73 expressed and for those individuals, of whatever gender and including women, to have a strong sense of self-value, which is one component of ‘honor’ in the way Alexander Welsh concludes. It is not that these women are resisting or moving outside of patriarchal structures; it is that I am attempting to do so on their behalf. I cannot pretend that the patriarchy did not and does not exist; I can insist that women like these women did exist. The first half of this chapter explores the use, in Aeschylus’s Choephoroi, of timê in a funerary context, with a particular focus on the roles of Electra and Orestes and how they differ. Since little attention has yet been paid to the connection between women, timê, and the funerary, it would be very useful if the relevant evidence were brought together in a succinct and straightforward manner; however, it is well-beyond the scope of this dissertation to provide a study of such breadth, and thus I have chosen, as in the other chapters of this dissertation, to focus on this single play of Aeschylus as a case study. 158 The second half of this chapter considers the figure of Electra in the Choephoroi; by paying particularly close attention to her movements and mindset I argue that we might read her experience following the death and funeral of Agamemnon as one of unresolved grief, which we might now identify as a specific type of trauma that occurs when an individual is forced to process the loss of another entirely alone, cut off from their communities and the social structures that have been put in place in order to prevent precisely that. In Athens this kind of unmoored exclusion was, on occasion, identified as atimia (as indeed it is for Electra), and thus a consideration of the psychological impact of grief is entirely relevant to this project. 158 Particularly significant to a more exhaustive study of timê and the funerary in tragedy would be Sophocles’ Antigone and Euripides’ Alcestis, which show women at either end of the timê spectrum, that is, giving and receiving. The former also encourages questions of the relationship of timê to community formation and identity, which I emphasize in this chapter as well. 74 Timê in the funerary context It is interesting that nearly all uses of honor-language in the second play of Aeschylus’s Oresteia trilogy occur in a funerary context, and indeed, all except one occur while the narrative is centered on the tomb of Agamemnon. 159 Also interesting is that timê does not operate in this way in the other plays of the trilogy; as I have detailed in Chapter 1, timê operates across a range of different yet overlapping spheres, invoking different layers of meaning in different contexts, and yet timê in the context of the funeral does not appear in Eumenides, entirely fitting given the subject matter of that play – although we might recall that Clytemnestra bemoans her state of atimia in the underworld, so there is a kind of correlation via death to be made. 160 This difference in meaning in the two plays illustrates very well the flexibility and adaptability of timê as a concept. In addition, Aeschylus’s use of honor-language in Choephoroi bolsters the argument I have made in my examination of Eumenides that timê experiences a narrowing of meaning in the Athenian democratic polis, one which is decidedly polis-centric, where timê is used as a kind of official language whose use both identifies members of the community (i.e., members of the Athenian community have access to its official language) while, by dint of that selfsame inclusion, simultaneously constraining their movements to that which the polis deems acceptable. 161 In 159 The final use of timê, at 916, occurs at the palace and is spoken by Clytemnestra. This is not uninteresting, given that Clytemnestra also speaks the final occurrence of timê in the Agamemnon; however, I am hesitant to read too much into this, since there is another potential occurrence of timê at Cho. 1018, where Page gives διὰ πάντ᾽ <ἂν> ἄτιμος ἀμείψαι, in which case the final occurrence would go to the Chorus. However, there are some textual problems with this line; what the manuscript offers (διὰ πάντ᾽ ἄτιμος ἀμείψαι, M) is unmetrical, and Garvie and others have read ἄτιμος as a corruption of ἀτίτης, where the original line might have been διὰ παντ᾽ ἀτίτης ἂν ἀμείψαι (the suggestion of Garvie). If ἀτίτης is correct we might translate it as something like ‘unpunished,’ although in any case it is not entirely out of the realm of honor-language, being from τίνω, which has also to do with obligations, recompense, etc. For a full discussion of this line see Garvie ad loc. 160 Although I don’t think it would have been surprising for timê to be used in this way in the extended verbal exchange between Athena and the Erinyes, or perhaps at the play’s conclusion where their timê is articulated and expanded and when they have been situated into the Athenian polis. 161 I would argue that access to timê must expand in the generations following Aeschylus; we might need only think of, e.g., Xenophon’s Oeconomicus, where household slaves are said to have timê (LOCATE CITATION). However, Aeschylus is writing at a particular moment in time where there is an emphasized concern over who belongs to the Athenian polis-community, especially as Athens grows its hegemonic power as an incipient democracy. The disputes over citizenship and classes of bodies clearly indicates an anxiety over the make-up of the citizen body. 75 Choephoroi we see timê used in a fairly specific manner, and in a way that indicates an acceptable arena for both male and female performance. For women in particular, timê in tragedy can articulate the general act of mourning, as illustrated by the actions of Electra and the reported actions of Clytemnestra. 162 Timê is also used more generally to reflect familial concerns, with respect specifically to matters of both vengeance and status, although it is important to note that when timê occurs in this latter (familial) sense it is still within the context of the treatment of the dead. Aeschylus’s representation of Electra reflects the connection between timê and mourning; from the start, she is fixated on the circumstances of her father’s death and how best to interact with his spirit: τί φῶ χέουσα τάσδε κηδείους χοάς; πῶς εὔφρον᾿ εἴπω; πῶς κατεύξομαι πατρί; πότερα λέγουσα παρὰ φίλης φίλῳ φέρειν γυναικὸς ἀνδρί, τῆς γ᾿ ἐμῆς μητρὸς πάρα; ἢ τοῦτο φάσκω τοὔπος, ὡς νόμος βροτοῖς, [93] ἰσ᾿ ἀντιδοῦναι τοῖσι πέμπουσιν τάδε [94] στέφη, δόσιν γε τῶν κακῶν ἐπαξίαν; [95] ἢ σῖγ᾿ ἀτίμως, ὥσπερ οὖν ἀπώλετο [96] πατήρ, τάδ᾿ ἐκχέασα, γάποτον χύσιν, 163 [97] στείχω, καθάρμαθ᾿ ὥς τις ἐκπέμψας, πάλιν [98] δικοῦσα τεῦχος ἀστρόφοισιν ὄμμασιν; [99] What to say as I tip my cup to the dead? What are the right words, what prayers shall I make to my father? That this gift is made from loving wife to a man beloved? When that wife is my mother? 162 By which I mean that honor-language, i.e., timê and its related vocabulary, is regularly used in Attic tragedy to describe different elements of death and dying and burial practices, and is also used in the context of mourning generally, i.e., not only to describe a specific act like the making of a libation. I would also like to note that, although we should acknowledge that men in Athens and elsewhere also played an important role in the funeral and the treatment of the dead more generally, my argument is not for the prominence of either sex in the funeral, as has been the approach of, e.g., Hame (2004) and (2008) (who argues for the prominence of male figures in funeral ritual), but only for a re-evaluation of the way women participate in this sphere and the relationship such participation bears to timê. 163 It is also worth noting that gapoton chusin (97) recalls the libations – gapotous timas (Pers. 621) – that Atossa makes while summoning the ghost of Darius, as A. F. Garvie remarks on these lines in his commentary to Choephoroi, which speaks to my point about the connection between timê, women, and ritual for the dead. 76 What about this, as is the custom for our kind, that these offerings be returned in the spirit offered, a fair trade for her crimes? Or maybe I’ll say nothing? I could allow the earth to swallow their spill unacknowledged, as also was my father when he died, and then go, like someone who tosses aside a ritual vase without a second glance. 164 (Aesch. Choe. 87-99) 165 This passage highlights several important elements regarding the treatment of the dead. Electra’s concern over how best to make the libations indicates that there is a proper formula for doing so; her care is not necessarily due to any fear of her mother (as Diggle suggests and Garvie discards) but perhaps more likely to the fear that in performing the act badly she would mistreat her father and arouse the anger of his spirit and the chthonic deities, as Antigone claims can occur in her eponymous play by Sophocles, if later evidence can be of use. Electra’s words indicate that it would be entirely normal for a wife to pour libations for a dead husband – as does Atossa in Persae – but the spousal relationship has been fractured by the circumstances of Agamemnon’s death, to say the least. Electra’s graveside musings convey a sense of the reciprocity that must exist between the living and the dead; it is conceivable that Agamemnon, in his current state, could repay (antidounai, 94) whatever gifts he receives, whether that repayment takes the form of blessing or curse. Reciprocity was an important element of timê in the Greek world, and one which is particularly emphasized in this play, as I discuss further below. Electra’s use of atimôs at 96 is interesting and situates this initial act within the realm of timê. Her positioning of atimôs seems to draw a line between performing the action as she should, i.e., according to custom, (89-95), which we might assume would assure timê for those involved 164 Translation my own. 165 Text and translation follow the line order of M. For discussion of line order and other readings see Garvie ad 89- 100. 77 in such an exchange (i.e., the one receives timê, but also the other participants and interested parties, such as the one who gives, the gods, the familial and civic community), and alternatively performing the action in a way that would deny the act its significance (i.e., without saying anything at all, 96) 166 and thus withhold timê from the one to whom the offering is made (and likewise, to the others involved and interested in the exchange, the force of which is never directed in only one way); here, I understand Agamemnon as the implied object of the action contained within the adverb atimôs. 167 Given the contrast here between actions which would assure timê and by which it could be withheld, I also understand the meaning of lines 88-90 to be that any offering made by Electra on her mother’s behalf cannot possibly convey any proper sense of honor, because Clytemnestra has already proven a failure in preserving her husband Agamemnon’s honor and indeed has herself actively dishonored him, both in the manner of his death and the treatment of his body. 168 And yet the risk of further dishonor is high, and so in the end Electra offers the libations while making appropriate prayers. What would further dishonor mean? Although timê in the specific context of ritual for the dead is difficult to translate as anything besides “honor” – which, as I have discussed in the introduction, lacks a certain important level of nuance, – I would argue that we should understand timê/honor here to signify status, where status indicates not only inclusion in a community (as is a central concern of Suppliants, as I discuss in Chapter 4) but more importantly standing, both for the dead who receive timê and those who bestow it. Broadly speaking, there is the suggestion that in the Greek imagination the form and condition of one’s body at the time of death is carried over 166 Alexiou (1974), 8 establishes that ritual offerings were normally never made in silence; to do so is to perform the offering improperly. Electra’s comments here inadvertently draw attention also to the relative power that she herself possesses in this moment. 167 For adverbial atimôs with active force, see Garvie ad 96, with further references. 168 Clytemnestra treats Agamemnon’s corpse with cruel degradation: he is buried without the presence of community, unmourned, unlamented, mutilated, (429-33, 439-43). 78 into the underworld, 169 and there is also evidence to suggest that the hierarchies of the world of the living and one’s status within it are maintained in death as well. 170 Illustrative are the words of the Chorus at 355: φίλος φίλοισι τοῖς ἐκεῖ καλῶς θανοῦ- σιν, κατὰ χθονὸς ἐμπρέπων σεμνότιμος ἀνάκτωρ πρόπολός τε τῶν μεγίστων χθονίων ἐκεῖ τυράννων· βασιλεὺς γὰρ ἦν, ὄφρ᾿ ἔζη, μόριμον λάχος πιπάλλων χεροῖν πεισίβροτόν τε βάκτρον. Cherishing and cherished by those who died nobly there, prominent among them beneath the earth as a ruler honored and revered, and an attendant of the greatest underworld lords in that realm; for he was a king while he lived, wielding in his hands the power of life and death and the sceptre that gained men’s obedience. (355-62) In this passage, the Chorus imagine the death that might have been for Agamemnon – had he perished in battle at Troy, the death of a warrior, he would have maintained that prominence, emprepôn, in the underworld, and, as imagined by Orestes, he would have received the glory, eukleian, (349), befitting a hero, which would have been an “easy burden,” euphorêton, (353), for his children to bear. Although not laid out as explicitly, the implication is that Agamemnon’s actual standing in the underworld is similarly in alignment with the less illustrious circumstances of his death, which stand in stark contrast to the scenario described above. Much is made by the Chorus in later lines of the treatment of Agamemnon’s corpse; according to them his body was mutilated, 169 So, e.g., Oedipus in the OT gives as reason for blinding himself that he does not want to be able to see his father and mother in the underworld, Soph. Oedipus Tyrannos, 1371-4. 170 See, e.g., Sommerstein (2008), n78 to this play, remarking that Polyxena “though a princess, fears that if she dies like a slave she will be a slave in Hades” (Eur. Hec. 551-2). 79 and he was buried without the participation of kin or community, unlamented and unmourned. 171 This treatment is summed up as duas atimous, “degrading sufferings” by the Chorus, (443), responding to Orestes’ lament that his father was treated with “utter degradation,” to pan atimos, (434). It is manifestly clear that Agamamenon has already been much-dishonored; certainly for Electra then the concern of further loss of timê (as she worries over at 87ff.) would have been strong. In addition, the Choephoroi displays a marked concern for the standing of the living, which is imagined in direct relationship to the status of the one who is deceased. 172 While the dangers for the living of the failure to honor the dead are well-attested in Greek literature, I would argue that in the figures of Electra and Orestes we see a very specific anxiety over their own status which seems different from the general fear that dishonoring the dead typically evokes. 173 As evidence of this anxiety I point to Orestes’ extended description at 270-96 of the abuse he would suffer if he were to fail to avenge Agamemnon’s death, a lengthy string of humiliations which includes diseases of the flesh, madness, and exile, all of which would ultimately culminate in Orestes “finally [dying], devoid of all respect and devoid of friends, cruelly shriveled in a death of total decay,” πάντων δ᾽ ἄτιμον κἄφιλον θνῄσκειν χρόνῳ/ κακῶς ταριχευθέντα παμφθάρτῳ μόρῳ, (295- 6). Orestes here describes a death which is utterly lacking any sense of honor whatsoever, one where he is completely without status and without community, πάντων δ᾽ ἄτιμον κἄφιλον. 171 429-33, 439-43. 172 The relationship is one of inheritance and also kinship more broadly; timê is something that can be passed down through generations and as well is what some might call “a corporate value,” meaning that timê to some extent is seen to belong to the family as a whole, and thus its lack – or its inverse, atimia – is also shared in common with the members of an oikos. 173 Mistreatment of the dead is imagined to invite the displeasure and wrath of the gods, as articulated in, e.g., Antigone or Ajax, and the relationship between mortals and the divine which is solidified by adherence to proper ritual is often couched in the language of timê. Although later than the period of Aeschylus, the punishment of the generals after Arginusae in 406 is an excellent historical example of the brutal repercussions the living might experience for the failure to secure proper burial for the dead (Xen. Hell. 1.7, Diod. Sic. 13.101) 80 Interestingly, the language he uses in these lines seems to inversely parallel the language used to describe the death that the Chorus wistfully imagines for Agamemnon, in the passage discussed above – we might note the dichotomies between aphilon/philos philoisi (295, 355, respectively), kakoqs/kalôs (296, 355), and atimon/semnotimos, (295, 357). There is the sense that, depending on the actions taken by Orestes himself, either outcome could still be realized for himself; i.e., in 295-6 Orestes worries over a negative outcome, but the language-echoes between these two sets of lines (295-6 and 355-9) allows the possibility for a much more positive outcome. In addition, there is also the sense for Orestes that it is still possible to restore or at least preserve timê for his father, as is evident from the following lines, as Orestes prays directly to Agamemnon: οὕτω γὰρ ἄν σοι δαῖτες ἔννομοι βροτῶν κτιζοίατ᾿· εἰ δὲ μή, παρ᾿ εὐδείπνοις ἔσῃ ἄτιμος ἐμπύροισι κνισωτοῖς Χθονός. in this way the feasts that are customary among men will be made for you; otherwise, you will be dishonored, while others dine well, on the days when Earth receives savory burnt sacrifices. (483-5). 174 With the aid of his father, Orestes could secure vengeance on his behalf and thus restore Agamemnon’s timê in the underworld; if he is unable to accomplish this then Agamemnon will remain atimos amongst others who enjoy a higher standing than his own. Furthermore, by assuring timê for his father Orestes also seeks to restore a certain level of status for himself: at 479-80 he has prayed to Agamemnon to “bestow on [him] the rule of his house,” αἰτουμένῳ μοι δὸς κράτος τῶν σῶν δόμων, and it is to this request that the houtô at 483 recalls. Orestes frames his desires and actions as mutually beneficent to both himself and his father, 175 and their timê – which I 174 The comparison drawn here between Agamemnon and others in Hades supports my point above that timê can signify standing within a community of the dead. 175 Likewise, his failure to act and to exact vengeance would be mutually destructive – Agamemnon would remain atimos and Orestes would be disgraced. 81 understand in these passages to articulate particularly strongly the element of status and standing – is placed in a direct and reciprocal relationship. Albeit in a slightly different manner, Electra also understands her status, timê, in relationship to Agamemnon’s own. She prays at his tomb: Ηλ. καὶ τῆσδ᾿ ἄκουσον λοισθίου βοῆς, πάτερ· ἰδὼν νεοσσοὺς τούσδ᾿ ἐφημένους τάφῳ οἴκτιρε θῆλυν ἄρσενός θ᾿ ὁμοῦ γόον. And hear this final cry too, father: see these nestlings perched on your tomb, and take pity on the lament of the female and also of the male. (500-2) For Electra, the form her request takes is important; when she identifies her act as a lament (goos) she marks it as sacred and functional in a ritual context. Her mourning embodies timê – in the sense that mourning in general belongs within the realm of timê – and as well deserves timê in return, as becomes more explicit in the following lines: Ορ. καὶ μὴ ’ξαλείψηις σπέρμα Πελοπιδῶν τόδε· οὕτω γὰρ οὐ τέθνηκας οὐδέ περ θανών. [παῖδες γὰρ ἀνδρὶ κληδόνος σωτήριοι θανόντι, φελλοὶ δ’ ὣς ἄγουσι δίκτυον τὸν ἐκ βυθοῦ κλωστῆρα σώιζοντες λίνου.] Ηλ. ἄκου᾿· ὑπὲρ σοῦ τοιάδ᾿ ἔστ᾿ ὀδύρματα, αὐτὸς δὲ σώιζηι τόνδε τιμήσας λόγον. Or. And do not erase your Pelopid offspring; For thus you will not have died though dead. [For children secure a man’s name, even once dead, and like corks they carry the net as they keep secure the flaxen fibers from the bottom up.] El. Listen! It is on your behalf that we make our laments. You yourself gain security by paying heed to our words. (503-9) As is evident from the text above, there is a problem with these lines, and, although the editions of both Page and Garvie allow 505-7 without mark, I have chosen to follow the suggestion of the 82 latter that the lines are spurious, thus assigning 508-9 to Electra rather than Orestes. 176 These lines express a strong sense of reciprocity; Electra (and Orestes) pray for a mutually beneficent course of action, emphasizing the reciprocal nature of their requests through phrases such as huper sou, at 508, and repetitions of sôtêr/sôizô throughout. In addition, the lines above express the collective nature of timê and its role in upholding familial security over time. I have accepted 505-7 as spurious; however, if we wanted to read them as original to the play we might suggest that the simile can be extended to the timê that Agamemnon’s children are endeavoring to restore on his behalf. Even without these lines, the family as collective is emphasized by Orestes’ naming of himself and Electra as σπέρμα Πελοπιδῶν τόδε at 503, and the collective nature of timê is a concern for Orestes in the lines I have discussed above (483-5). If Agamemnon’s timê is not secured by his children, the entire family could suffer for generations to come. 177 The suffering that comes with prolonged and generational disgrace is perhaps already evident for Electra, in her exclusion from Agamemnon’s funeral, as articulated by Electra herself at 444-50: λέγεις πατρῷον μόρον· ἐγὼ δ᾿ ἀπεστάτουν ἄτιμος, οὐδὲν ἀξία, μυχῷ δ᾿ ἄφειρκτος πολυσινοῦς κυνὸς δίκαν ἑτοιμότερα γέλωτος ἀνέφερον λίβη, χέουσα πολύδακρυν γόον κεκρυμμένα. τοιαῦτ᾿ ἀκούων <τάδ᾿> ἐν φρεσὶν <γράφου>. You speak of our father’s death. I was not there¾ I was dishonored, treated as worthless; shut up in the bowels of the house, like a dangerous dog, I brought up drops that flowed more readily than laughter, pouring out a lament full of tears, though hidden from view. 176 I find particularly convincing Garvie’s argument that the lines disturb the symmetry of the scene; for detailed discussion of these lines and their history see Garvie’s comments ad loc. Whether or not we attribute 508-9 to Electra or Orestes, the possibility remains that the lines could, not unreasonably, have been spoken by Electra, which is significant for me since I am interested in her use of timê at 509. 177 The cyclical suffering from one generation to another is of course emphasized in this play through repeated mentions of Pelops and Thyestes. 83 Such is the tale you must hear: record it in your mind. 178 (444-50) Electra’s description here of herself as dishonored, atimos, echoes Orestes’ use of atimôsin for Clytemnestra’s treatment of Agamemnon at 435 – πατρὸς δ᾽ ἀτίμωσιν ἆρα τείσει, “she shall pay for degrading my father.” Likewise, just as Electra “was not there,” ἐγὼ δ᾽ ἀπεστάτουν, (445), unable to perform her grief, Agamemnon’s funeral took place aneu politân, “away from his people,” and aneu penthêmatôn, “without mourning,” (431, 432). There is a link here between the status of daughter and father which speaks to the importance of timê as a family trait, both in the sense that it is a shared value and that it can flow, multi-directionally, between members of the family. Additionally, this passage suggests that Electra understands the ability to properly perform the ritual of mourning to be related to her own timê, as she claims that she herself has been dishonored (ἐγὼ δ᾿ ἀπεστάτουν,/ ἄτιμος, οὐδὲν ἀξία, 444-5) because her presence was not allowed at the funeral of her father; thus she was not permitted to mourn him publicly and according to custom. I will have more to say about Electra’s state of atimia in the second part of this chapter, where I treat this passage in detail. Lastly, it is worth noting that, when Electra is finally able to pay honors to her father (as upon her entrance to the stage, discussed above), she does so after an unspecified period of time following the funeral. 179 Thus, while studies of women and mourning tend to focus on participation in the events that occur directly after a death, e.g., preparations of the body and lamentation during the ekphora and at the gravesite, the Choephoroi offers an opportunity to think also about women 178 Translation my own. 179 Enough time that Orestes has heard the news of Agamemnon’s death and returned to Argos from his exile. 84 participating in tomb-cult over a more extended period. 180 Atossa in the Persae perhaps provides a useful comparison; when she pours libations – which, we might note, are explicitly identified as timai – in order to summon the Ghost of Darius, it is long after his death, which occurred in 486 BCE. In both these examples the offerings to the dead are made in response to some sort of crisis – Electra visits Agamemnon’s grave at the behest of Clytemnestra after she experiences a disturbing dream, and Atossa’s invocation of Darius occurs in the context of Persian defeat. With the examples of Electra and Atossa we might see that the participation of women in these rites demonstrates the continued importance of their role; their participation helps to ensure the long- term stability of the living community which continues to recognize the dead, even if only at particularly significant moments, i.e., when the living community has experienced some sort of threat to its stability. In the case of Choephoroi, that threat is both immediate – the dream of Clytemnestra – and sustained; it is not unreasonable to suggest that the events of the Choephoroi are to some extent a response the continued instability in Argos that has been introduced by the rule of Clytemnestra and Aegisthus and their murder of Agamemnon. Timê and the gendered violence of vengeance While most occurrences of timê in Choephoroi appear in the broader context of mourning and the treatment of the deceased Agamemnon, a fair number of those that belong to this broader category can be read in the subcontext of vengeance and recompense, an area which shows particularly well the role of reciprocity in structuring Greek timê, and which is clearly identifiable as a prominent 180 As in, e.g., Havelock (1981), Garland (1985), Stears (1998). Barbara Goff (2004), 34, in her book on women and ritual does note that ‘In ancient Greek society too it appears that the association between women and mourning extended beyond the moment of the funeral itself to include regular visits to the tomb’; however, she does not explore this point much further except to note that such occasions would be an opportunity for women to move beyond the domestic sphere of the oikos and in general her examination of women and funerary ritual is also restrained to the funeral itself (see also pp. 31-4, 261-4). 85 motif both in this play and the trilogy in its entirety. 181 Indeed, one way to read the Oresteia is as a movement from retributive (individual) justice towards that which belongs within an ordered and institutionalized system of law. Electra’s question at 120, πότερα δικαστὴν ἢ δικηφόρον λέγεις, “Do you mean a judge, or an avenger?” is perfectly indicative of this distinction. Both Electra and Orestes pray for vengeance, Orestes at the very start of Choephoroi, asking Zeus to allow him to avenge, teisasthai, 18, Agamemnon’s death, and Electra only slightly later, beseeching the spirit of her father for some avenger, timaoron, 143, 182 and Orestes states very explicitly, in a passage already discussed, that if he fails to secure recompense for his father’s death he himself will experience atimia 183 As noted above, the form he imagines this atimia to take is exceptionally vivid and absolutely humiliating. Beyond the matter of vengeance – or perhaps related to it – Orestes seems to believe that he and Electra are due aid from the gods, demonstrating a kind of imagined reciprocity between human and divine agents. 184 Illustrative are the following lines: καὶ τοῦ θυτῆρος καί σε τιμῶντος μέγα πατρὸς νεοσσοὺς τούσδ᾿ ἀποφθείρας πόθεν ἕξεις ὁμοίας χειρὸς εὔθοινον γέρας; And if you allow us nestlings to perish, whose father was the greatest sacrificer who greatly glorified you, from whence will you get the honour of a fine feast given with comparable generosity? (255-7) 181 For a good introduction to reciprocity in Greek antiquity, see Seaford (1994); Gill, Postlethwaite, and Seaford (1998). Particularly useful in the context of my discussion here is the chapter in the latter volume by Robert Parker on reciprocity between mortals and the divine, pp. 105-25. 182 Interestingly, this is the same word Cassandra uses in Agamemnon 1324; the term is missing from Eumenides. As I have noted in Chapter 1, timoria has its earliest secure attestations in Aeschylus, and vengeance expressed as such seems to belong to a particularly Attic worldview. Although timaoros appears only twice in the trilogy, Ag. 1324, and here at Choe. 143, its use by Aeschylus aligns very well with my argument for the narrowing of timê into a primarily civic context. 183 295. 184 On reciprocity between humans and gods, see Parker (1998). 86 Clear here is that children inherit the father’s timê. 185 Through this inheritance Orestes and Electra are placed in the position of both beneficiary and debtor; the sacrifices of Agamemnon entitle them to benevolence from the gods, and at the same time Orestes recognizes that receiving such benevolence will place upon the siblings the obligation to engage in further performances of honor to the gods, here in the form of “fine feast(s) of comparable generosity”. The system of reciprocity in which Orestes views his participation is interesting in that it seems to operate on both the level of the imagined and the real: imagined in that, in the cycle of gift-giving between gods and men, it is the mortals who will always be positioned at a deficit – do the gods truly *need* the obeisance Orestes offers? 186 – and yet the repercussions for Orestes and Electra are very real. Lastly, I would suggest that there is a gendered element to be found in the way timê is articulated throughout this play, in that Electra seems more easily to find access to her desired role through the practice of mourning, while for Orestes timê seems intrinsically linked to timoria. Orestes’ desire for revenge as a matter of timê can be easily situated within the context of a familiar heroic ethos, so in this sense his characterization aligns with the emphasis on masculine valor, control, and status in a hierarchy that has been so well-observed in modern scholarship. In contrast, the access Electra gains to timê through mourning is not as well documented, and thus seems an interesting area for examination, as I hope to have shown. However, it is also worth noting that in certain aspects timê, regardless of its particular manifestation, seems to operate similarly regardless of gender, and reciprocity as a fundamental feature of timê is one such aspect. Both Orestes with vengeance and Electra with mourning expect that their desired actions will garner them timê, which I would suggest we can understand in the context of this play to mean inclusion and, crucially, status, within a community, as well as validation of the standing of their father. 185 On the inheritance of timai in a legal context, see Blok (2017), 187-93. 186 Although I suppose to some extent this is the way religion works. 87 Electra atimos Few figures in tragedy are as characterized by their grief as Electra, and, indeed, she is a figure whom the tragedians returned to again and again. A comparative study of Electra in all her manifestations lies beyond the scope of this project, and I focus here on the representation of Electra in the Choephoroi only. 187 In particular I am interested in a set of passages from the kommos that highlight Electra’s experience of grief, beginning with her description of her father’s funeral, from which she was banned, at 444-450. I have discussed this passage briefly above, but here I hope to approach these lines with a closer eye; my objective is to show how we might attempt to understand the psychological impact of grief on Electra, which I think is related to timê, in the sense that, as I have been trying to show, timê is largely about being a part of a community, and to experience – as Electra perhaps does – what psychologists now would call “unresolved” or “complicated grief” is to find oneself bereft of the community structures which should support the process of grieving and mourning. 188 In the Choephoroi this exclusion is named by Electra as a form of atimia, as I show below. Disenfranchised grief, a term from modern psychology, may also be “good to think with” in the current context. 189 Psychologist Kenneth Doka has defined this state as one that can occur when the loss of an individual and their subsequent responses are “unacknowledged by surrounding others or society at large.” 190 Furthermore, he notes that, “although the individual grieves, others do not acknowledge that the individual as the right to grieve. The person is not 187 For more comprehensive studies on the representation of Electra, see, recently, Rabinowitz (2015), and on Electra’s reception, Bakogianni (2011). 188 Joel Christensen (2020) discusses the role of grief and grieving in creating and sustaining community and examines the idea of complicated grief in a classical context, which he defines as a prolonged process that can occur for the individual when their loss is unresolved, for example when the circumstances of a death are uncertain or when the social and community structures needed to process such a loss are lacking. 189 This terminology was introduced to me by Han Baltussen, to whom I owe a great debt for so generously familiarizing me with the vast world of grief studies. The authoritative volume on disenfranchised grief is Doka (2002); see also Sprang and McNeil (1995), Parkes, Laungani, and Young (1997), Archer (1999). 190 Doka (2002), 6. 88 offered the ‘rights’ or the ‘grieving role’ that would lay claim to social sympathy and support.” 191 Although I am not a health expert, the terms “disenfranchised” grief and “unresolved” or “complicated” grief seem to me to articulate very similar ideas; however, I will note that “disenfranchised” is, I think, particularly well-suited to the topic at hand given the way that it emphasizes the social aspect of the experience of grieving, adding a layer which resonates strongly with the social nature of timê. 192 The passage with which I start occurs within the kommos, in this play an extended lyric composition spanning 172 lines, the longest lyric composition in an extant Greek tragedy, during which Orestes, Electra, and the Chorus engage together in an almost delirious dance before the tomb of Agamemnon, invoking his aid in their plans for vengeance. 193 As Orestes and the Chorus deliberate over Agamemnon’s death, Electra returns to her own disgrace in its aftermath: λέγεις πατρῶιον μόρον· ἐγὼ δ᾿ ἀπεστάτουν ἄτιμος, οὐδὲν ἀξία, μυχῶι δ᾿ ἄφειρκτος πολυσινοῦς κυνὸς δίκαν ἑτοιμότερα γέλωτος ἀνέφερον λίβη, χέουσα πολύδακρυν γόον κεκρυμμένα. τοιαῦτ᾿ ἀκούων <τάδ᾿> ἐν φρεσὶν <γράφου>. You speak of our father’s fate. 194 But I was kept away, worthless in my exclusion; 195 sequestered in the dark like a raving dog, 196 the tears I offered more ready than laughter, 191 ibid. 192 ibid., 10-17 offers a “typology” of disenfranchised grief, articulating certain categories of the experience such as “lack of acknowledgment of the loss” and “exclusion of the griever.” He suggests that such disenfranchisement occurs when: there is a lack of recognition of the relationship, the loss is not acknowledged, and/or the griever is excluded. In future iteration of this project, these categories could be useful for mapping onto representations of Electra. 193 Critics are divided over whether Orestes, and Electra I suppose, have already committed themselves to the matricide or whether that decision comes about as the culmination of this section. 194 I read patroios not only as a possessive (“of or belonging to one’s father,” LSJ A.II), but see also the resonance of inheritance, that thread of continuity from one generation to the next (LSJ A). In this way, Electra’s use of the adjective here. 195 Contra Adkins (1966a), 91-2, I have taken ouden axia as indicative of Electra’s own worth, rather than articulating the perspective that she herself is suffering undeservedly, as Adkins contends. Taking ouden axia as I have better emphasizes the value-aspect of atimos and the fact that Electra is describing an experience where her value (as it relates to function) has been denied. 196 Also likened to dogs are Clytemnestra (at Ag. 607) and Cassandra (Ag. 1093). 89 so weighty with weeping was my keen, though hidden. Let that which you hear be etched in your mind. (444-50) Electra here describes her experience following Agamemnon’s death and funeral, from which she was banned and indeed distanced as much as she could have been while remaining within the limits of Argos, shut as she was in the very depths of the house, muchôi d’ apherktos, (446). She sits alone, refusing to allow her solitude to prevent her mourning. Hidden away in the deepness of the dwelling, she stockpiles tears and wails; they have nowhere to go, there is no outlet in which her grief might be resolved. Electra describes herself performing familiar elements of Greek funeral ritual that would have taken place graveside, singing a lament, goon, 448), crying copiously, kheousa poludakrun, also 448, and, although she does not explicitly describe herself doing so, to my mind the rhythmic assonance of that line is evocative of the ritual beating of the head and chest – cheousa poludakrun goon kekrummena – notice the repetition of the velar consonants: kh, k, g, k, k. However, importantly, her performance is not shared and thus it cannot accomplish what it is meant to accomplish, which is the honoring of her father in death. Because she is hidden away (kekrummena) and alone, not allowed to attend the funeral, she identifies herself as atimos and indeed “worth nothing,” ouden axia. Her exclusion is the source of her atimia; the fact that she is atimos is likewise a mark of her exclusion from the community to which she belongs, or to which she has belonged, and it is also a mark of her forced inability to perform the function that she sees as both her right and duty. Electra has been characterized by many as embodying a kind of ceaseless mourning. Electra’s words in the above passage echoes the exchange between Electra, Orestes, and the Chorus that immediately precedes these lines, as Electra denounces their mother and the Chorus describes the cruel conditions of Agamemnon’s funeral, at 429-43: 90 Ηλ. ἰὼ ἰὼ δαΐα πάντολμε μᾶτερ, δαΐαις ἐν ἐκφοραῖς ἄνευ πολιτᾶν ἄνακτ’ ἄνευ δὲ πενθημάτων ἔτλας ἀνοίμωκτον ἄνδρα θάψαι. Ορ. τὸ πᾶν ἀτίμως ἔρεξας, οἴμοι, πατρὸς δ’ ἀτίμωσιν ἆρα τείσεις ἕκατι μὲν δαιμόνων, ἕκατι δ’ ἀμᾶν χερῶν· ἔπειτ’ ἐγὼ νοσφίσας <σ’> ὀλοίμαν. Χο. ἐμασχαλίσθη δέ γ’, ὡς τόδ’ εἰδῆις· ἔπρασσε δ’ ἅπερ νιν ὧδε θάπτει, μόρον κτίσαι μωμένα ἄφερτον αἰῶνι σῶι· κλύεις πατρώιους δύας ἀτίμους. Electra: Ió, ió, cruel mother of limitless audacity, it was a cruel funeral when you had the hardihood to bury your husband, a king, without the presence of his city’s people, without mourning and with no lamentation! Orestes: You tell a tale of utter degradation! Well, she shall pay for degrading my father, with the help of the gods and with the help of my hands. Then, when I have removed her, let me die! Chorus: And –so you may know this– he was mutilated as well; and the perpetrator was she who buried him thus, striving to make his death unbearable for you to live with. Do you hear these degrading sufferings of your father? Electra’s emphasis on her state of solitude (apestatoun, 444; kekrummena, 449) is perhaps meant to recall a similar state that Agamemnon experienced, buried as a king without his people, aneu politān anakt’ (430); in addition he received in death neither mourning nor lament, aneu de penthēmatōn, 432, anoimōkton, 433, echoed by Electra in her insistence on greiving with wails, 91 tears, and (perhaps) the beating of the breast, as I have discussed above. Moreover, Electra’s characterization of herself as atimos recalls the Chorus’ description of Agamemnon’s treatment as duas atimous, “degrading sufferings,” 443; there is the further repetition of atimōs and atimōsin in the response of Orestes (434 and 435, respectively). The repetitions in these passages, where both Electra and Agamemnon are depicted as alone, and the repeated emphasis on their shared atimia, effectively emphasize another theme of the play: that the status of father and daughter (and son) are intertwined, as I have discussed above. In like manner to the dishonor her father has experienced, in his murder and the treatment of his body, Electra as well is dishonored, in her exclusion from his rites. As I have noted already, timê is a way to articulate the boundaries of a community, to show who belongs and who doesn’t; one of the primary ways to show belonging to a group is participation in its ritual and institutions. 197 As I have discussed in the first part of this chapter, there is a relationship in Attic tragedy between funerary ritual and timê (which women have access to as well as men), and denying Electra the ability to participate in her community in this particular way – and here I think we can understand community on multiple levels, both as a civic peer group and the community of the oikos to which Electra and her father belong – is effectively to render her as atimos, that is, to take away her value within the group. Through her inability to participate in the funeral she is denied the opportunity to fulfil her role as an Argive woman; she is also denied the opportunity to bestow the proper filial honor on her father; in her failure to secure his honor in death she agonizes over the prospect of continued exclusion and atimia for herself in life. 197 This aligns with the arguments Josine Block has recently and, I think, convincingly made in her book on Athenian citizenship (2017), in which she contends that we should understand Athenian women as able to be “citizens” (a topic of much debate for many years). 92 Electra in the Choephoroi is both bereft of a community on which to depend and deprived of the space to grieve in the way she is accustomed. She has lost the ties by which she is constituted, and in that loss she experiences a kind of trauma and an unmooring from identity. The work of Judith Butler is particularly good “to think with” here. She writes in the article, “Violence, Mourning, Politics,” from 2003: When we lose certain people, or when we are dispossessed from a place, or a community, we may simply feel that we are undergoing something temporary, that mourning will be over and some restoration of prior order will be achieved. But, instead, when we undergo what we do undergo, is something about who we are revealed, something that delineates the ties we have to others, that shows us that these ties constitute what we are, ties or bonds that compose us? […] When we lose some of these ties by which we are constituted, we do not know who we are or what to do. On one level, I think I have lost “you” only to discover that “I” have gone missing as well. At another level, perhaps what I have lost “in” you, that for which I have no ready vocabulary, is a relationality that is neither myself nor you, but the tie by which those terms are differentiated and related. 198 Electra seems to me a figure who has lost the relationality of which Butler writes, in an article which is very much about whose grief is allowed to be seen and validated. Butler’s words remind me of the porosity of our bodies, of the ways that we exist, always, in a state of relationality to those around us. When that relationality is disrupted – as, e.g., perhaps for Electra in the loss of her father, the absence of her brother, the inability to recognize any longer her mother as mother – the desire, the desperate need to affirm one’s own personhood through inclusion to a community – the ability to say, yes I belong here – becomes all the more essential. When a person is denied that belonging, what happens to their sense of self? As I have said at the start of this chapter, there is a psychological impact to consider here, as well. We might think of her inability to process her grief through normative avenues, that is, with her community, in view of others, as a type of trauma, which mental health experts and sociologists might now call “complicated grief” or 198 Butler (2003), 12. 93 “disenfranchised grief.” In Electra we might see a figure who experiences grief sliding into trauma, a trauma which leads ultimately, we might say, to the death of her mother at the hands of her brother, a truly horrific outcome by nearly anyone’s standards. I think Butler’s comments about the temporal nature of loss are also applicable to Electra, who embodies a kind of “insatiable mourning,” to use a phrase from a 2015 chapter by Nancy Rabinowitz, who reads Electra and her grief as “melancholic” (invoking Freud via Butler). I would suggest that we might read her exclusion from her father’s funeral as a kind of aetiology for precisely the repetitive and never-ending mourning that she embodies; because she is not allowed to mourn him in the accustomed manner she can never move beyond it. In addition, I am curious whether the restoration of order which Electra and her brother believe their revenge will accomplish is imagined to be stalled or even impossible in part because the regular order of things has so collapsed, and if we might read the banning of Electra from Agamemnon’s funeral as indicative of this turmoil. In the complete perversion of order that is Agamemnon’s death and funeral, which the chorus and Electra have described, it is possible to understand risks for both the individual and the collective. Because Agamemnon does not receive proper burial rites, Electra experiences a loss of status and perhaps an unraveling of identity and at the same time the stability of Argos is threatened. The elements which I have been discussing – status, order, community, duty, the privilege of participation – are threaded together, in Athens, by timê. There is a fixation in this play, as in the others of its trilogy, on timê, and specifically the atimia done to Agamemnon and experienced also by Electra and Orestes. This fixation is carried forth and resituated in the trilogy’s final play, as I have attempted to show in Chapter One, as the Erinyes/Eumenides fixate on the nature and security of their own timê, a conflict which is ultimately resolved by their transition into the 94 Athenian polis. As scholars have noted, the trilogy as a whole moves from conflict to reconciliation, and at this point, in the second play, conflict and its bitter spirit very much still dominate the stage. 199 However, for Electra there is to be no reconciliation, and her final words occur at the end of its long first episode, at 508-9, before she disappears quietly from the stage at 585 after Orestes details his plan. 200 As A. F. Garvie notes in his commentary to the play, in the kommos, and specifically in this second section in which the passage that I started with occurs, there is a break in sense between the roles of Orestes and Electra; whereas before this point their roles were parallel – both beseeching Zeus, the gods below, and Agamemnon himself for aid – from this point forward it is Orestes who takes up the mantle of vengeance – it is his responsibility but also his privilege. To me it is striking then, that this passage which calls attention to Electra’s aloneness and exclusion and the remembered futility of her mourning occurs at a point when that isolation is, to some extent, only solidified. 201 In this play at least, as Electra steps back from the stage, she does so I think still relatively unmoored from the anchor of community and family. 202 Conclusion In conclusion, while much has been written already about the importance of female participation in religion and ritual, and in funeral ritual particularly, little scholarly attention has been paid to the specific way that performance in this sphere has been articulated as timê in the ancient literary evidence. Thus, in this chapter, my primary objective has been to show that there is a clear 199 See, e.g., Peradotto (1964). 200 Interestingly, in her final words she again links mourning and timê when she says, beseeching the spirit of her father, “Hear us; they are for your sake, we tell you, these laments of ours (ὀδύρματα), and by respecting our words (timêsas logon) you gain security for yourself.” 201 We might also note that, in Aeschylus’ version of these events, there is no third sister, although earlier vase paintings do support the tradition that there was a fourth sibling. 202 The reading of Kasimis (2021), which explores Electra’s identification as a pheugos, an “exile,” in Euripides’ Electra similarly emphasizes her position as an outsider, albeit at Electra’s own choice. 95 connection between women, timê, and the treatment of the dead, which opens up a new space for our understanding of the relationship between women and timê, one which diverges from the attention paid to the importance of chastity that is found in much of the scholarship on honor, which I think would not exclude the treatment of the dead as an important aspect of timê/honor but neither does it emphasize it. While I have not been able to offer a comprehensive treatment of the topic across Attic tragedy, I have focused my examination on Aeschylus’ Choephoroi as a case study, suggesting that the funerary shows a space where status, function, and community identity and participation coalesce. I have argued that, via the performance of funerary ritual, women in Athens could both bestow and receive timê, 203 and that their participation in this sphere might be viewed as a fundamental privilege analogous to the cosmic function so fiercely defended by the Erinyes. In addition to demonstrating the connection between timê and the funerary, I have argued that the use of timê in this context is further evidence of the narrowing of timê in the fifth century Athenian polis. Thus, while I am choosing to read this type of participation as an expansion of the role of women, at the same time we might recognize their participation in this prescribed arena as another (different) kind of limitation on the movement of their bodies. And yet, there is an undeniable sense of value and personal satisfaction that might be found in fulfilling this type of socially prescribed role, both in the doing of the work and in its impact, imagined and real, on social cohesion. 204 It is this individual sense of value that I think an examination of timê does not 203 Although I allow that this comes across more clearly in other plays, like Sophocles’ Antigone and Euripides’ Alcestis, Hecuba, and Suppliants; there is further work merited here. 204 It has been suggested to me that this, is of course, the insidious way that systems of inequality work, and so I think it must be acknowledged that the satisfaction of which I speak here might also – indeed, should also – be understood as an internalization of the very values which constrain and oppress. And yet I am firm in my belief that to see the system only and not the individuals within it is itself another type of oppression. It is certainly true that, as far as we can tell, women in Athens were a marginalized class, and subjugated in the way that many have demonstrated. The literature on this is vast. It has not been my intention to contend otherwise, nor is it my objective to recover for 96 allow access to, and yet I do believe that understanding the “official” values of a (political) community also provides a foundation for imagining the myriad values of the individuals who make up that community, in its absolutely broadest sense – the deep personal pride and simple quotidian satisfactions of those unnamed and innumerable human beings whose hands once touched the body of someone they held dear. It is precisely this experience of an individual that has shaped the final section of this chapter, and I have suggested that in Electra there might be found something of the psychological impact of grief which has no outlet and the displacement of an individual from their community. In this way, the Choephoroi demonstrates the value grief and grieving hold, and in particular, collective grief, for the health and solidarity of a community. Although I think we might acknowledge that, in contemporary America, at least, there has grown a certain unfamiliarity with death, more now than ever I think we are understanding, again, the need to mourn and celebrate the dead, to proclaim and share both loss and love. This is one reason the COVID-19 pandemic (which provides the inescapable background to the writing of this chapter) has been so brutally hard – not only the countless lives lost but the loneliness of that loss in a time where we must all remain apart. Early on in the pandemic, Filipinx writer Elaine Castillo wrote, I was talking to a friend the other day, and in the way of things as they are now, the talk turned to the end of the world. […] I said something like, But maybe the dystopic is just this. Not the big freeze or the great fire, not the kaiju. Just us, not being able to come close to each other. 205 Athenian women ‘agency’, as I have discussed in the Introduction. But I do think it is possible to recover – or at the very least, imagine – a fullness of experience which allows for personal satisfactions, griefs, values, and all the moments of a human life even amidst – despite and at times in resistance to – a social system which we understand to be oppressive. And it is this willingness to decenter the social apparatus at work in favor of acknowledging the real experiences of women in the past, which for the most part do not exist in the evidence we have (and in this I include the representation of Electra which I explore here) that, in part, marks this project as a feminist act. 205 Castillo (2020). 97 In a certain way, I see the of reading of Electra that I have attempted to offer, which really centers her experience and what I am suggesting is her trauma, as way to begin to bridge that gap, as a means by which we might again become close in our individual losses, large and small. Nearly a century ago the anthropologist Ernest Crawley noted, in an observation which has been taken up many times since, “every touch is a modified blow,” or, contact is crisis; however, in doing this kind of work on grief, on community, on relationships and values, I am reminded over and over again that, truly, our interdependence knows no bounds. 98 CHAPTER 3: AGAMEMNON In this third and final chapter on Aeschylus’s Oresteia I come to the first play of the trilogy. There are two reasons, to my mind, to examine the plays in the order I have, as discussed already in this project’s introduction. On the one hand, addressing the plays in this way allows me to read the trilogy verso-recto, in an Irigarayan sense, and thus to resist or at least place in tension conventions of discipline and discourse. 206 Secondly, as I have noted, the abundance of timê-uses in the Eumenides render it a logical starting point. In a similar fashion to my approach with the Eumenides, this chapter is primarily a lexical study. In the Agamemnon, forms of timê and its related vocabulary appear 25 times. This is enough to be interesting – more occurrences than any other extant tragedy save Eumenides – although, considering the length of the play, not especially significant as far as weight overall. 207 Still, usage of honor-language in this play is enough to merit consideration and I would argue that Aeschylus deploys these terms quite strategically, in this play and the others. This is certainly true in Eumenides, as I hope I have shown, and the tightness of the trilogy, not only in form but content, inclines me to believe that timê is an important thematic element from the start of the trilogy and that it operates similarly if with flexibility throughout. By which I mean, while the particular nuance of timê in each of the plays is contextual, in all three plays, timê is a social value that articulates relationships between social actors as well as internalized individual values. Despite 206 See Intro, p. 25. This Irigarayan resistance of linear reading might also be placed into conversation with Walter Mignolo’s more specific notion of epistemic disobedience, for which, see Mignolo (2009). 207 It is perhaps useful to look at the occurrences of timê-language in each of the trilogy’s play as a ratio. Thus, in the Agamemnon there are 25 occurrences in 1673 lines, a ratio approximately of 1:67. In Choephoroi, 24 uses in 1076 lines, approximately 1:45. And in Eumenides, 48 uses in 1047 lines, approximately 1:22. As noted in Chapter 1, these plays display a higher occurrence of timê and related terms than all others in the tragic corpus. I would like to note that the above ratios, while interesting, are limited in their usefulness in that they don’t reflect at all the movement of timê throughout each play, and its particular weightiness at certain moments; so, e.g., there is a nearly frantic accumulation of these terms in the exchange that takes place between the Erinyes and Athena following the acquittal of Orestes, as discussed in Chapter 1. 99 this foundational continuity, it nevertheless also seems clear that timê is contextualized in different ways in each of the three plays of the Oresteia, and that ultimately Aeschylus’s use of timê – concomitant to the movement from conflict to reconciliation that shapes the trilogy – shifts timê in such a way that it becomes securely situated within the civic context of the Athenian polis. That then the semantic range of timê varies according to context is not, by this point, unexpected, but, perhaps less expected (or, at least, less observed) is that, within the early- democratic context of Aeschylean tragedy, timê appears to be a site of negotiation, and Aeschylus’s representation of timê then is a reflection of a similar negotiation of meaning that is taking place in Athens at the same time. As I have been discussing already, timê seems to be used in Aeschylus to articulate community boundaries (i.e., inclusion/exclusion, and to what extent) and to highlight appropriate and even estimable actions and pursuance of fulfilling social function. I have argued in Chapter 1 that in the Eumenides, which is the final play of the Oresteia, timê articulates the boundaries of a community which is specifically political, where the “polis” at the root of the term is Athens, and that it identifies appropriate actions for the Erinyes as newly accepted members of that civic community. This emphasis on timê as a political – and specifically Athenian – value is different to the manner in which timê functions in other and non-Athenian contexts, including the second and third plays of the Oresteia. 208 In this sense, the trilogy itself embodies the shift in notions of timê that have taken and are taking place in the fifth-century Athenian context, as I discuss in my conclusions about the trajectory of timê in the Oresteia as a whole, at the end of this chapter. 208 It is beyond the scope of this dissertation to engage in any type of prolonged consideration on the question of timê outside of Athens. On timê in epic and in the Iliad in particular, see Brown (2016), 102-43. In the last chapter I offered a few brief comments and exploratory questions about the nature of timê in epic versus tragedy, especially in the context of funerary ritual. Here, I note that the most obvious development from earlier evidence to that of fifth-century Athens is that, not uncommonly in the Attic evidence timê and the related idea of timoria assume an explicitly legal and juridical connotation. 100 The use of timê in the Agamemnon seems to respond, at least to an extent, to the three unwritten laws that are laid out on at least two occasions in the Eumenides, at 269-72 and 538-49, which command honor for the gods, xenoi, and parents, and typically in that order. 209 These categories for reverence might loosely be applied to articulations of timê in the Agamemnon, which is indeed how I have chosen to use them in this chapter, depending on the playwright’s own categories for timê to structure my examination rather than any of my own. Thus, the first section of this chapter examines the role of the gods in this play and their relationship vis-à-vis timê with mankind. The second section considers the relationship between timê and xenia, and places within its framework an interpretation of Helen and her unique relationship to timê, which, perhaps more than any other, has cast a long shadow over the actions of women since. The third section looks at the representation of familial timê in the Agamemnon, which is particularly apt considering the emphasis in this play on the complex entanglements of kin. The unwritten laws: timê and the gods I would argue that there is an emphasis in this play on the timê that is due to the gods, and, more broadly, that timê is used to articulate and mediate the relationship between human and divine. The general nature in the Agamemnon of Aeschylus’ representation of timê, as it pertains to the reverence one has for the gods, at least, seems to be in contrast to the focused and extended deliberation on the specific nature of the Erinyes’ timê that occurs in the Eumenides; we might interpret this contrast as part of a shift that takes place over the course of the trilogy in the way 209 For the three unwritten laws in other 5 th and 4 th cent. Greek sources, also Supp. 701-9 and Ar. Ra. 145-50. Bacon (2001), 50 suggests that the Furies, in parallel with Zeus, are represented by Aeschylus as the enforcers of these laws. This is an interesting conclusion, especially in the sense that it positions the Furies and Zeus not in a hierarchical formation but as having equal power and investment, in this particular matter at least. As Bacon notes (ibid.), “Nowhere in the play or the trilogy is Zeus said to control the Furies.” 101 timê is deployed. In the section that follows I use three sub-categories to structure my examination of timê of and for the gods in the Agamemnon: timê for the gods, divine retribution, and timê from the gods. 210 Timê for the gods Timê in its nominative singular form occurs only three times in the entire trilogy, once in this play, at Ag. 637, and twice in the Eumenides, at Eu. 209 and 894, as indeed I have noted at the start of Chapter 1. On all three occasions Aeschylus refers to the timê of the gods, extending a point of contact between these two plays that I find striking. Indeed, these three uses of timê are, to an extent, indicative of the way in which timê is used in relationship with the gods in the two plays; in the Agamemnon, timê that has to do with the gods is often articulated in quite general terms, while in the Eumenides, timê is used much more pointedly to articulate the status and function of the Erinyes and to confirm and solidify their role within both a peer group (the gods) and a civic community (Athens). Even a quick glance at these three occurrences might support what I am suggesting. First, the lines from Agamemnon (636-7): Κη. εὔφημον ἦμαρ οὐ πρέπει κακαγγέλωι γλώσσηι μιαίνειν× χωρὶς ἡ τιμὴ θεῶν. It is not proper to defile a day of good omen by the uttering of bad news: the honour due to the gods stands apart from that. These lines from the herald suggest that there is a proper way to pay honor to the gods, and to do otherwise is thus to dishonor them. In this regard, then, the herald alludes to an established set of social norms that direct attitude and action towards the divine. Now, ironically perhaps, the herald 210 While, as throughout this project’s entirety, my focus here is on timê, it should be noted that reverence for the gods is often articulated as well with other terms that seem to belong to the same semantic constellation, such as sebas and aidôs. 102 continues on to share in vivid detail the very event that he had just claimed would be ou prepei, “not fitting,” to speak, the storm that befell Menelaus and his fleet during their return voyage from Troy (650-80). On the one hand, we might read the herald’s initial resistance as pro forma. On the other hand, however, we might well note that the herald seems to absolve himself by prefacing his account with the following qualification (638-9, 644-5): ὅταν δ᾽ ἀπευκτὰ πήματ᾽ ἄγγελος πόλει στυγνῶι προσώπωι πτωσίμου στρατοῦ φέρηι […] τοιῶνδε μέντοι πημάτων σεσαγμένον πρέπει λέγειν παιᾶνα τόνδ᾽ Ερινύων× When a grim-faced messenger brings a city the painful news of an army lost, news it has prayed not to receive […] well, when someone is loaded down with that kind of misery, it is fitting to sing this paean to the Furies. The herald makes clear that, while it is not fitting (ou prepei, 636) and in fact a form of dishonor to the gods for him to temper the good news of victory with bad, it is fitting (prepei, 645) to share such bad news as a “paean to the Erinyes,” 211 which is then what he proceeds to do. By making such a statement, he clears himself of any potential wrongdoing (and the ire it might incur) and, importantly, he separates the Erinyes from the gods to whom he is bound to show such reverence (and thus also from the reverence, or timê, itself). Reading the herald’s statement and speech in this way lends further nuance to our understanding of the two moments in the Eumenides when the exact nature of the Erinyes’ timê is explicitly questioned, at 209 and then later at 894 (below, respectively): ΑΠ. τίς ἥδε τιμή; κόμπασον γέρας καλόν. 212 What is this honorable role of yours? Go on, boast of your noble privilege. 211 As Fraenkel notes ad loc., a “blasphemous paradox,” since a paean is more typically a song of praise, triumph, or joy. 212 The text for all citations of Aeschylus in this project is from Denys Page’s Oxford edition (1972), unless otherwise noted. All translations are from Alan Sommerstein’s Loeb edition (2008), unless otherwise noted. For the Eumenides I have relied on the commentary of Sommerstein (1989). 103 ΧΟ. καὶ δὴ δέδεγμαι – τίς δέ μοι τιμὴ μένει; Suppose I do accept it: what privilege awaits me? There is no need for me to expound on these lines in detail, since I have done so already in Chapter 1. I would, however, like to add one further point, which is that, in reading the three above uses of timê (the only occasions on which timê appears in its nominative singular form in the trilogy) alongside and against one another, it is possible for us to see that already in the first play Aeschylus seems to introduce a question over the Erinyes’ inclusion within a (divine) peer group – to use again the term of Frank Henderson Stewart – which is in part defined by their access to timê. In addition, there seems to be a difference in the nature of timê in the above three passages, where the Agamemnon passage makes a general statement about the kind of timê that is due to the gods while the Eumenides passage fixate on the Erinyes’ timê specifically. This contrast (general vs. specific) is emphasized, I would argue, by Aeschylus’ representation of the role of the gods in the two plays. While the figures of the Erinyes, Athena, and Apollo could not be made more vivid in the trilogy’s final play, in its first the gods are more of an abstraction and removed from the dramatic action. Although individual gods are referred to or invoked at various moments, and indeed their mentions pepper the play, 213 none shape the plot strongly in the sense that they do not act as agents on the stage, and at pivotal moments (human) figures like Clytemnestra seem almost entirely to take ownership of their actions. 214 213 Named in this play are: Zeus, Apollo, Pan, Artemis, Ares, Hades, the Erinyes. Interestingly, for my purposes, Zeus is identified at line 43 as the one from the timê of the Atreidae, which I discuss below, and Hermes at 515 is identified by the Herald as his timaoros, “tutelary god”, LSJ A.II. Athena is conspicuously absent. 214 So, for example, when Clytemnestra first speaks after the slaughter of Agamemnon and Cassandra: ἐμοὶ δ᾽ ἀγὼν ὅδ᾽ οὐκ ἀφρόντιστος πάλαι νείκης παλαιᾶς ἦλθε, σὺν χρόνωι γε μήν× ἕστηκα δ᾽ ἔνθ᾽ ἔπαις᾽ ἐπ᾽ ἐξειργασμένοις., “This showdown was something that had long been in my thoughts, arising from a long-standing grievance; now it has come – at long last. I stand where I struck, with my work accomplished.” (1377-9). Against Clytemnestra’s willingness and even pleasure in claiming the act as her own, we might contrast Orestes, whose matricide was at Apollo’s behest, as Apollo himself clearly states at Eu. 203; see also the lines of Orestes at 443-69. At 465 Orestes identifies Apollo as 104 In addition to the statement of the herald above, the Agamemnon implies in other places as well that reverence for the gods takes a particular shape. So, for example, when announcing the fall of Troy, Clytemnestra maintains that the Achaeans will return safely home, εἰ δὲ εὐσεβοῦσι τοὺς πολισσούχος θεούς, “If they act reverently towards the protecting gods of the city,” (338); the Chorus seem assert a similar idea when, responding to her news, they say ἐγὼ δ᾽ ἀκούσας πιστά σοῦ τεκμήρια θεοὺς προσειπεῖν εὖ παρασκευάζομαι× χάρις γὰρ οὐκ ἄτιμος εἴργαστα πόνων. And having heard trustworthy evidence from you, I am preparing to address the gods in an appropriate manner, for a reward, which ought not to go unhonoured, has been given in return for our sufferings. (352-4) In both examples above, we might note that proper deference towards the gods is articulated only in general terms. On the one hand, this generality suggests that the deference to which both Clytemnestra and the Chorus refer is so much a part of a shared vocabulary and social mores that further explanation is unnecessary. On the other hand, we might read these moments as contributing to the impression of generality that appears to define (to the extent that generality can do such a thing) this play’s treatment of the gods. The specificity of the Erinyes’ timê then might respond to this generality; not only is the nature of their timê defined but also its performance both by the Athenians and by the Erinyes themselves. 215 Before I discuss, in broad strokes, certain characteristics of those gods, I would like to take a moment to examine a term that Clytemnestra uses above, polissouchos (338), a compound adjective meaning “dwelling in” or “protecting the city” (LSJ; cf. also the entry for poliouchos, for metaitios, “accessory to,” the murder of Clytemnestra. Neuburg (1991), 65-8 examines the use of aitios and its compounds in the trilogy, concluding that the Oresteia does not necessarily display a concern with the notion of responsibility but rather sidesteps the issue and allows a tension to remain in place between the reprehensible nature, for the Chorus, of Clytemnestra’s killing of Agamemnon and the “just” nature of her vengeance. 215 Cf. Eu. 834-6. 105 which the former is poetic). The term is most often used to refer to a city’s patron deity or deities, as indeed it does here in Agamemnon, but more rarely it can describe the people themselves of the city, as is the case for the word’s three occurrences in the Eumenides: at 775, when it is used by Orestes in his farewell to Athens; at 883, when Athena endeavors to convince the Erinyes to abate their wrath; and at 1010, when Athena instructs the members of the Areopagus Council to lead the way for the Erinyes-Semnai into the polis. 216 This difference in the use of polissouchos is relevant to my discussion in this chapter, as it seems possible that this difference is intentional, used as it is on the one hand for the gods, on the other for the Athenians. In this way Aeschylus redistributes, perhaps, some of the traditional function of the gods to the polis collective, an idea that I explore further below when considering the shift that takes place in the trilogy from vengeance to justice. The gods in Aeschylus are darkly capricious in nature and, at times, uncaring. Having no sense of pain themselves (553), I would imagine it is difficult for them to empathize with the suffering Tuchê might inflict. Over and over, this play makes the point that destiny (moira) can neither be avoided nor controlled – not by mortals, at least, – as is illustrated by the scales brandished by Ares on the battlefield (438-44), which may call to mind Zeus’s weighing of the fates of men in Iliad 22, albeit with an even more grim overtone – whereas Zeus weighs the fates of Hector and Achilles (and death is a certainty only for one), the role of Ares in the Agamemnon is to exchange urns of ashes for the men who fought and died in Troy. 217 Indeed, it is only via the willingness of Tuchê that the Argives arrive home at all, after experiencing a savage storm at sea 216 Interestingly, the Eumenides uses appear close to or within statements about timê/atimia. 217 Iliad 22.209-213; Sommerstein (2008) in his translation of the play notes the comparison (n.94). For an interpretation of the Ares metaphor within the Athenian context, see Bakewell (2007). 106 on the journey home: Τύχη δὲ σωτὴρ ναῦν θέλουσ᾽ ἐφέζετο (664); many others are not so lucky. The Chorus perhaps alludes to the unpredictability of fate when they say 218 εἰ δὲ μὴ τεταγμένα μοῖρα μοῖραν ἐκ θεῶν εἶργε μὴ πλέον φέρειν Were it not that one destiny, prescribed by the gods, prevents another destiny from getting more than its due. 219 (1025-7) My sense of these lines is that, out of myriad possibilities, only one comes to pass for men, although it should be noted that these lines are notoriously challenging both to render and understand. While it is not my intention here to engage fully with their long history of scholarly debate, the comments of William G. Thalmann may be helpful. In a pair of articles published in Phoenix (1985), Thalmann asserts: Lines 1025-1027 express an idea firmly rooted in early Greek though: that the world-order is an equilibrium of separate parts each with its own circumscribed place and function (moira), and that in parallel fashion man’s experience consists of a regular alternation of events, fortunes, and conditions. The principal of reciprocal restraints on one another by the moirai of different things, by which order is maintained, is dike. 220 To the connection Thalmann establishes between moira and dikê I would like to suggest we add timê, for the latter seems to be connected to the same notion of “circumscribed place and function” that moira offers, as is indeed one of the central preoccupations of the Eumenides. There are other moments in Aeschylus that support the idea that timê is something that can be divinely apportioned or inherited by birth. Indeed, the Erinyes’ fierce insistence of their own cosmic function can be 218 Here I make a connection between tuchê and moira, both of which belong broadly to the idea of “fate”; see Greene (2014), esp. pp. 105-37 for fate in Aeschylus. 219 I depend on the translation of Sommerstein for these tricky lines. 220 Thalmann (1985a), 104; see also n22. Thalmann also discusses various interpretations for these lines, with further bibliography. 107 understood in the context of allotment: they protest, “but this function has been assigned to us¾,” ἀλλ᾽ἔστιν ἡμῖν τοῦτο προστεταγμένον (Eum. 208) when Apollo attempts to expel them from his temple at Delphi. 221 The same idea is present at Eum. 334-41: τοῦτο γὰρ λάχος διανταία Μοῖρ’ ἐπέκλωσεν ἐμπέδως ἔχειν, θνατῶν τοῖσιν αὐτουργίαι ξυμπέσωσιν μάταιοι, τοῖς ὁμαρτεῖν ὄφρ’ ἂν γᾶν ὑπέλθηι· θανὼν δ’ οὐκ ἄγαν ἐλεύθερος. For this was the lot that death-dealing Destiny spun for us in perpetuity: for those mortals to whom there happen wanton murders of kinsfolk, to dog their footsteps till they go beneath the earth—and when he has died he is not all that free. Uncaring though they may be, the gods are not indifferent to human affairs, which creates an interesting dynamic with respect to human agency. Indeed, it would be a mistake to believe that the gods are indifferent, and those that do are in transgression of the natural boundaries put into place by the gods and thus ripe for punishment (367-78). The paradigmatic example of this in the Agamemnon is Artemis, whose displeasure at the slaughter of a pregnant hare by an eagle leads to the sacrifice of Iphigenia by Agamemnon (104-257). While the language of timê is not used explicitly in the Chorus’s description of Artemis’ demand and what follows, sacrifice and offerings to the gods would have been understood as belonging to its sphere. 222 In this particular instance, it seems that timê to the gods can create an untenable situation for the men who need them, in that 221 Prostetagmenon here seems to parallel tetagmena at Ag. 1025; see also Eum. 943. For Fraenkel, tetagmena moira is “the lot of man in general, established and ordered by God (or by ‘the natural order’); it is his fate or destiny” (ad 1025-9). 222 This is true for humans as well, e.g., offerings to the dead. 108 the mortal Achaeans were beholden to the beneficence of Artemis in order to embark on their campaign against the Trojans, but that beneficence was dependent on an “impious, impure, unholy” action. 223 There is an interesting relationship here between mortal and divine in that, on one side of the equation (humanàgod) timê is expected and even demanded, while on the other side of the equation (godàhuman) timê is given at will and often inexplicably so. 224 Another good example of the involvement of the gods in human affairs is the image of the divine casting votes for the fate of Troy (814-16), which seems prescient of the votes cast in the verdict of Orestes in Eumenides, although there are crucial if subtle differences between these two scenes. The first, here in Agamemnon, depicts the gods themselves casting votes into vessels; the “urn of blood,” αἱματηρὸν τεῦχος, 815, is resonant of “the urns and ashes,” τεύχη καὶ σποδός, 435, returned home after Ares, “the moneychanger of bodies,” ὁ χρυσαμοιβὸς δ᾽ Ἄρης σωμάτων, 438, descends the battlefield. As I have noted above, the image of Ares at 438-44 recalls the Iliadic weighing of fates (Il. 22.209-13), and now I am suggesting that the repetition of the urn (teuchos, at 435 and 815; an alternative, lebês, is used at 444) offers a link between these three scenes – the gods casting votes, Ares on the battlefield calculating the human cost of conflict, the weighing of fates in the Iliad – that lends a heroic resonance to this particular moment of judgement, although the scene overall seems to one look forward to the vote of the jurors at Eumenides 708-10. However, to my mind it is significant that in the case of this latter scene the context is clearly that of the Athenian juridical system; in Eumenides, the jurors who cast their votes are mortal men, in contrast to the gods of the Agamemnon scene, 225 and there is a much clearer sense of juridical 223 219-20. 224 cf. Suppliants, the desires of Zeus can’t be known. There is a similar sense in Agamemnon that the will of the gods is at times unclear and may continue to be so as events unfold, as, for example, for the Trojans with Helen, whose coming to Troy the Chorus describes as at first being like “a gentle adornment of wealth, a soft glance darted from the eyes, a flower of love to pierce the soul,” (741-3), but which is ultimately revealed to be “an evil settler, an evil companion sent by Zeus god of hospitality, a Fury who made brides weep,” (747-9). 225 Although we might note that it is Athena who casts the deciding vote in Eumenides. 109 procedure: the court is established, arguments are made, votes are cast, the verdict is announced. 226 The resonances of the scenes in Agamemnon and Eumenides with their differences suggests that there is a careful shift in the trilogy in how it represents notions such as fate and justice, concomitant also to its treatment of timê. On the one hand, in the earlier play, notions such as these are associated with a divine involvement that is at times capricious; on the other hand, in the later play, dikê and timê are undeniably contextualized as specifically Athenian, and furthermore their representation seems to indicate a codification of these values within the Athenian juridical system. 227 Importantly, the gods are not missing from the new Athenian order – it is Athena herself who casts the deciding vote for the acquittal of Orestes – but, by the end of the Eumenides, their presence is established firmly in the background to the institutions of the polis. Indeed, if later evidence can be of use, we might recall that, in Plato’s Protagoras, it is only when Zeus via Hermes sends dikê and aidôs to the human race that the polis community is formed in such a way that it can be sustained – prior to that moment humans were lacking politikê technê and thus treated each other badly and moved always towards self-destruction (Plat. Prot. 322c-d). 228 The muthos of the Great Speech of Protagoras offers a similar narrative to that which runs through the Oresteia: a movement from chaotic divine order (epitomized in the dialogue perhaps by the figures of Prometheus and Epimetheus, who, importantly for my argument, bear a strong Hesiodic resonance) to structured and sustainable polis institutions which have been bestowed by a god. Although Plato does not use timê explicitly in this episode, it is worth bearing 226 On Athenian voting procedure, see Boegehold (1963). 227 It is after Orestes’ acquittal is announced that Athena and the Erinyes engage in their verbal battle over the nature of the Erinyes timê, which is ultimately situated within the physical and conceptual space of Athens – indeed, the entire trilogy moves towards this moment of integration. 228 The sending of aidôs and dike by Zeus belongs to the narrative of Protagoras’s “great speech” (320c-328d); for the democratic nature of the speech see, most recently, Kierstead (2021). 110 in mind the close relationship between aidôs and timê, 229 and indeed also between dike and timê. 230 In addition, to circle back to the passage of the Agamemnon with which I began (Ag. 40-7), the narrative of the Great Speech seems to apply a similar model to that of divine favor which I have discussed above (in that aidôs and dikê are given by the grace of Zeus), but in Plato that favor is granted to the polis rather than the individual; we might then understand the polis to take over the distribution of justice, honor, status, etc. 231 Whereas in the model presented in Agamemnon there is a direct line of timê between the gods and (certain classes of) men, as I explore below, in polis- centered narratives like Eumenides and the Protagoras the polis-collective acts as a kind of middle-man between gods and mankind. 232 Divine Retribution In the last section I laid out, in general terms, the treatment of the gods in the Agamemnon, and I analyzed several occurrences of timê that articulate and explore the nature of the relationship between mortals and the divine, a relationship which is built on a model of general reverence towards the gods which is returned, at least sometimes, by their favor. In this section, I examine the connection established in this play between timê and retribution that is either sanctioned by 229 Cairns (1993). 230 On dikê in the trilogy, see Goldhill (1984), esp. 208-83, with references. Cf. also Gagarin (1976). 231 The motif of distribution that colors the earlier passages of the Great Speech seems important in this context. As I have discussed above, timê in the Agamemnon seems to be something that an individual could have received by allotment – i.e., starting off with a certain amount/type of timê (for which we might best translate “status” or “privilege”) by birth, whether from the gods directly (as is the case for Menelaus and Agamemnon) or via inheritance. We might contrast this to timê which is “earned.” At the start of the Great Speech there is this same sense of distribution, and in particular distribution which is not well-considered, at least in the case of Epimetheus who, according to Protagoras, “was not very wise at all,” οὐ πάνυ τι σοφὸς ὤν, 321c1, and did not possess the acumen to plan a fair and suitable distribution of qualities between beasts and mankind. The allotment of these qualities – size, strength, swiftness, the natural protection of skin and hair from Epimetheus; later, fire, smithing from Prometheus – is in stark contrast to the distribution of aidôs and dikê, which according to the orders of Zeus are “for all, and all have a share. For poleis can not exist if only the few have a share of these things (i.e., aidôs, dikê, politikê technê) as happens with other technê,” ἐπὶ πάντας και πάντες μετεχόντων× οὐ γὰρ ἂν γένοιντο πόλεις, εἰ ὀλίγοι αὐτῶν μετέχοιεν ὥσπερ ἄλλων τεχνῶν×, 322d3-4. 232 The way Aeschylus uses timalpheô in the trilogy may provide additional support here. 111 divine figures or accomplished at their hands. This connection is picked up in Choephoroi and Eumenides – so, for example, Electra and Orestes implore the gods for vengeance which is, to them, a restoration of both their own timê and their father’s; the Eumenides begins with a similar but more furious appeal from Clytemnestra that the Erinyes provide redress for her own current status as atimos – but whereas in the Eumenides vengeance is reconfigured as lawful punishment, in the Agamemnon it is still a volatile force which resists constraints. In addition to repeated mentions of avenging deities like the Erinyes and the Alastor, three figures in particular are associated with (divine) retribution: unsurprisingly, Clytemnestra, Aegisthus, and Cassandra. 233 Cassandra, in her lengthiest speech of the play, prophesies that vengeance will be sought for her death and that of Agamemnon: οὐ μὴν ἄτιμοί γ’ ἐκ θεῶν τεθνήξομεν· ἥξει γὰρ ἡμῶν ἄλλος αὖ τιμάορος, μητροκτόνον φίτυμα, ποινάτωρ πατρός· Nevertheless, we shall not, in death, remain unavenged by the gods. There will come yet another to take vengeance for us, an offspring that will kill his mother and exact requital for his father. (1279-81) In these lines there is a quick repetition of timê found in atimoi at 1279 and timaoros at 1280, which creates a sense of emphasis, even if only lightly felt. 234 The context of these lines is relevant: they occur as Cassandra explicitly describes the fate she has endured (and will endure) as a debt collected by Apollo, καὶ νῦν ὁ μάντις μάντιν ἐκπράξας ἐμὲ, 1275. 235 Earlier in this episode Cassandra has described how she was approached by Apollo offering the gift of prophecy in 233 On the Alastor and Clytemnestra in Agamemnon, see Neuburg (1991). 234 On the relationship between timê and timôros, see Fraenkel ad 1279, with additional bibliography. 235 For the sense of πράττω as payment or vengeance, see LSJ VI; interestingly, found in this sense also at A. Choe. 311 and Eum. 624; also, this play 1443 by Clytemnestra re Agamemnon/Cassandra. The intertwinement of Apollo and Cassandra via a bond of reciprocity is emphasized by their identification as manteis and the placement of the terms, i.e., mantis mantin. 112 exchange for sex; she accepted his offer and then refused to comply, for which he punished her with the gift of true prophecy unbelieved (1202-12). 236 Mirroring her description of the retribution of Apollo, Cassandra also articulates Clytemnestra’s vengeance with the language of compensation and payment, using misthon at 1261 and antiteisesthai phonon two lines below at 1262. Layers of reciprocity are at work here; to add to its complexity, tangled amidst Cassandra’s narrative is the cyclical violence of the House of Atreus (1090-7, 1217-22), which from this point forward remains a prominent motif in the final quarter of the play and which adds to the sense of back-and-forth that so insistently shapes the movement of the trilogy. Interestingly, Cassandra uses the word timaoros here; as I have discussed elsewhere in this project, Aeschylus seems to provide the earliest secure attestations of timoria, and I wonder if Cassandra’s prophecy provides a hint of the transition of order to come, by which I mean that timoria in Athens is firmly situated within the juridical sphere, and Cassandra’s use of it here may look forward to the establishment of the lawcourt and jury in the Eumenides. On the one hand, her narrative seems rooted in a heroic or perhaps even epic context and the old ways of justice, timê, and vengeance; on the other hand, she is looking forward to a resolution of the cyclical violence such a system provokes. Given the intersection of the Cassandra’s scene with the cyclical violence of the Atreidae, it is then fitting, perhaps, that timaoros is also used by Aegisthus at 1577-82: ὦ φέγγος εὖφρον ἡμέρας δικηφόρου· φαίην ἂν ἤδη νῦν βροτῶν τιμαόρους θεοὺς ἄνωθεν γῆς ἐποπτεύειν ἄχη, ἰδὼν ὑφαντοῖς ἐν πέπλοις Ἐρινύων τὸν ἄνδρα τόνδε κείμενον φίλως ἐμοί, χερὸς πατρώιας ἐκτίνοντα μηχανάς. O gracious light of the day that brings me justice! Now at last I will say that there are gods above who look down upon the sorrows of earth and avenge mortal 236 On Cassandra, see Schein (1982); also Thalmann (1985a), McClure (1999), esp. pp. 71-2 and 92-7. The narrative of Cassandra’s rape by the lesser Ajax may also be relevant here. 113 wrongs, now I have seen this man lying in the woven snare of the Furies¾a sight precious to me¾and paying for the deed his father’s hand contrived. In this passage it is quite clearly the gods themselves who are avengers, rather than mortal agents acting at the behest of the divine; they are named as timaorous theous. Aegisthus roots his sense of justice within the explicit context of divine retribution rather than the order of law that will be established to resolve the crisis of Orestes later in the trilogy. Like Cassandra, Aegisthus also uses the language of payment to contextualize his understanding of retribution – χειρὸς πατρῴας ἐκτίνοντα μηχανάς, 1582, – thus underscoring its reciprocal nature. Also, like Cassandra, retribution for Aegisthus transcends generations; I think it is important for my argument that, for both, their understanding of retribution is couched specifically in the language of timê. As I have discussed above, timê is a value that can be passed on and inherited; importantly women as well as men could inherit timai (in the sense of status) in Athens and additionally we might recognize that women held an integral role for the smooth transition of property in the Athenian polis. As shown by both Aegisthus and Cassandra, the transitioning of an inheritance was not always a positive thing, and debts both material and immaterial could be passed on. Most significant for my interpretation is that both of these figures depend on the gods to exact vengeance, timoria, rather than (Athenian) civic institutions. 237 Through this dependence, Aeschylus marks these occasions as specifically non-Athenian. 238 Interestingly though for Aegisthus, the justice of the gods that is exacted upon Agamemnon seems to him the end of the cycle, and his speech at 1580-1611 does 237 As I have noted in Chapters 1 and 2, timoria/timaoros appears in both Choephoroi and Agamemnon, but not at all in Eumenides, which I think is very interesting, although difficult to read much into. 238 The fact that the setting is Argos is not enough, I would argue, to explain the lack of Athenian institutions and customs; we might compare, e.g., the Supplices, which contains our earliest references to demokratia and which shows the need for egalitarian agreement in decision-making, as when Pelasgos brings the question of the Danaids’ protection to the citizens. 114 not convey the same sense of ominous futurity that Cassandra’s does. This makes sense given Aegisthus’ position as agent of revenge, in contrast to Cassandra who is still awaiting retribution. And I suppose it is the same for Clytemnestra, in the sense that, like Aegisthus, she can only see as far as her revenge, about which she gloats: 239 καὶ τήνδ’ ἀκούεις ὁρκίων ἐμῶν θέμιν· μὰ τὴν τέλειον τῆς ἐμῆς παιδὸς Δίκην, Ἄτην Ἐρινύν θ’, αἷσι τόνδ’ ἔσφαξ’ ἐγώ, οὔ μοι φόβου μέλαθρον ἐλπὶς ἐμπατεῖ […] ἄτιμα δ’ οὐκ ἐπραξάτην, ὁ μὲν γὰρ οὕτως, ἡ δέ τοι κύκνου δίκην τὸν ὕστατον μέλψασα θανάσιμον γόον κεῖται φιλήτωρ τοῦδ’· ἐμοὶ δ’ ἐπήγαγεν εὐνῆς παροψώνημα τῆς ἐμῆς χλιδῆι. You will now also hear this righteous oath I swear: by the fulfilled Justice that was due for my child, by Ruin and by the Fury, through whose aid I slew this man, no fearful apprehension stalks my house […]. They [(i.e., Agamemnon and Cassandra)] have not gone without their due reward: he is as he is, while she, after singing, swan-like, her final dirge of death, lies here, his lover¾and to me she has brought a choice side-dish to the pleasure in which I luxuriate. (1431-4, 1443-7) This passage weaves together ideas of justice (Dikê), revenge as embodied by Atê and the Erinys, timê, and repayment. Clytemnestra’s language is sophisticated – note in particular the double- negative of 1443, atima ouk 240 – and the images and metaphors she invokes complex. This kind of wordplay is perfectly fitting to the image of Clytemnestra that the play offers. 241 While there are so many factors at play in the Agamemnon – the background of the Trojan War, the internecine violence of the House of Atreus, the extramarital relationships of both Agamemnon and Clytemnestra – I would argue that for Clytemnestra it is the loss of her daughter which drives her 239 Does the likeness of Clytemnestra and Aegisthus in terms of their refusal to look beyond revenge contribute to the theme of “gender confusion” in this play? On which, see Winnington-Ingram (1948), Zeitlin (1978). 240 I am tempted to read atima here as a response to Cassandra’s atimoi, 1279, discussed above, but that may be pushing the text too hard. 241 On the language of Clytemnestra, McClure (1996), (2000.) 115 rage so strongly. 242 In this play at least she does not look towards any future beyond avenging Iphigenia, and these lines reveal her sense of completion and satisfaction: not only does Clytemnestra lack any sense of fear (phobos) but she has not even any expectation (elpis) of fear in the future. 243 Indeed, rather than fear of future retribution there is for Clytemnestra only a kind of hedonistic pleasure (chlidê, 1447) in the deaths of Agamemnon and Cassandra. 244 Although Clytemnestra’s motivations in this play are almost diabolically complex, one of the clearest dominating factors – if not the clearest and most dominant – is her desire to punish Agamemnon for his role in their daughter’s sacrifice, and this desire for revenge shapes Clytemnestra’s own understanding of timê, even if she does not say so explicitly. For Clytemnestra, revenge takes on a kind of divine force, an impulse that cannot be denied; in this sense, the motif of divine retribution that I have been discussing acts as the background to Clytemnestra’s revenge. Furthermore, I would argue that we should understand the characterization of Clytemnestra and her motives for revenge as heroic or even epic in quality, although, to be clear, I do not mean necessarily that Aeschylus’s Clytemnestra is figured after the Clytemnestra of, e.g., the Odyssey, but rather that Clytemnestra in the Agamemnon, by virtue of both her actions and language, is to some extent made akin to an epic hero. 245 I see as evidence of this her desire to take matters into her own hands, to punish Agamemnon severely for his failure to show proper timê to Iphigenia when the polis has neglected to do so: 242 She is a kind of inverse of Medea, in this sense. We might also compare Hecuba and her loss of Polyxena. 243 With a caveat: 1435-7. For a similar sense of completion see her speech at 1567-76, which she concludes by saying, “anything is enough for me if I can remove the madness of mutual slaughter from our house,” πᾶν ἀπόχρη μοι, μανίας μελάθρων/ἀλληλοφόνους ἀφελούσηῃ (1575-6). 244 I am wondering if the saffron garment that Iphigenia is described as wearing at her sacrifice would qualify as a chlidê, a luxury (for chlidê used of garments see, e.g., Aesch. Supp. 1003); if so, there is a nice if subtle parallel here between the sacrifice of Iphigenia and the vengeance wrought on her behalf by her mother. 245 Laura McClure sees in Clytemnestra an epic resonance, identifying her as “a heroic figure with corresponding epic speech practices” (2000), 98. On revenge in Attic tragedy see Burnett (1998); on revenge in Athens more generally, McHardy (2013). 116 νῦν μὲν δικάζεις ἐκ πόλεως φυγὴν ἐμοὶ καὶ μῖσος ἀστῶν δημόθρους τ’ ἔχειν ἀράς, οὐδὲν τότ’ ἀνδρὶ τῶιδ’ ἐναντίον φέρων, ὃς οὐ προτιμῶν, ὡσπερεὶ βοτοῦ μόρον, μήλων φλεόντων εὐπόκοις νομεύμασιν, ἔθυσεν αὑτοῦ παῖδα, φιλτάτην ἐμοὶ ὠδῖν’, ἐπῳδὸν Θρηικίων ἀημάτων. οὐ τοῦτον ἐκ γῆς τῆσδε χρῆν σ’ ἀνδρηλατεῖν μιασμάτων ἄποιν’; Now you judge me to have incurred exile from the city (polis), the hatred of the community, and loud public curses; but you didn’t show any opposition at all to this man at that former time, when, setting no special value on her¾treating her death as if it were the death of one beast out of large flocks of well-fleeced sheep¾he sacrificed his own child, the darling offspring of my pangs, as a spell to soothe Thracian winds. Shouldn’t you have driven him from this land in punishment for that unclean deed? (1412-20) Achilles is paradigmatic of acting against the collective in order to satisfy one’s own sense of timê, and Clytemnestra might be said to follow his model. 246 And, as I have emphasized by underlining in the passages above, Clytemnestra justifies her actions by explicitly blaming Agamemnon for failing to show the right amount/type of timê to Iphigenia. 247 It seems like Clytemnestra may have, in the past, been satisfied with a more “democratic” type of punishment, exile from the community (1420); however, since the polis failed to act, she has exacted justice (dikê, used by Clytemnestra at 1432) as seems fitting to her . While Clytemnestra seems to display a heroic mindset when it comes to matters of justice and revenge, she is distinctly antiheroic in her pursuit of kleos, or rather, lack thereof. Although Clytemnestra does not denounce kleos explicitly, she does declare to the Chorus 246 Importantly, Agamemnon “dishonors,” atimazô, Achilles when he takes Briseis for himself, Il. 1.94, as noted above. A similar figure in tragedy is, of course, Antigone. On the parallels between Achilles and Antigone, Knox (1966), Davies (1986); from the perspective of political theory, Honig (2009), which explores the clash of Homeric/epic and democratic mores as centred around practices of mourning. 247 What timê signifies in this context is unclear, although I will discuss further below in my comments on Iphigenia. 117 ἐγὼ δ’ ἀτρέστωι καρδίαι πρὸς εἰδότας λέγω· σὺ δ’ αἰνεῖν εἴτε με ψέγειν θέλεις, ὁμοῖον· But I say to you, with undaunted heart, what you know to be true¾and I am indifferent to whether you choose to praise or condemn me. (1402-4) Clytemnestra’s future reputation, how she will be remembered and spoken of – these things have no weight for her. Her disdain for public opinion is juxtaposed with the heroic posture she embodies: she speaks “with an undaunted heart,” ἀτρέστῳ καρδίᾳ, the use of the verb treô here evoking, perhaps, images of the epic battlefield – Diomedes unflinching before Aeneas and Pandaros, 248 or Achilles holding fast amidst the swirling eddies of the Scamander. 249 Both Clytemnestra and Aegisthus act out of a sense of personal vendetta, driven by a desire to avenge those closest to their hearts. In acting on this desire, they believe that they are accomplishing a kind of divine plan – Clytemnestra in particular attributes her actions to the Alastor, the Fury, and Atê personified – and I would position their actions against the background of divine retribution that threads throughout the play, which at particular moments is explicitly articulated in terms of timê. While I would not argue that the notion of divine retribution, which the Agamemnon illustrates and which is a motif throughout the trilogy as a whole, is particular to this play and its non-Athenian, heroic setting – the gods will always inspire fear – I do think that there is to be found in the Agamemnon a facet of divine retribution that the trilogy ultimately rejects: that kind of retribution which is best illustrated by the image of the Erinyes as seen by Orestes “wearing a dark rage on face and body, entwined in snakes thickly-wound,” 250 a vengeance 248 Il. 5.256. 249 Il. 21.256. 250 σμοιαὶ γυναῖκες αἵδε Φοργόνων δίκην, φαϊοχίτωνες καὶ πεπλεκτανημέναι πυκνοῖς δράκουσιν× (Aesch. Choe. 1048-50) 118 which is savage and difficult to restrain once given life. 251 In rejecting retribution of a certain type, the Oresteia makes the argument that eventually this sense of personal vengeance, personal codes of honor, timê, must cede to the timôria of the lawcourt. This befits the context of Athens in the early 5 th -century BCE, when institutions of the democratic polis, like the lawcourts, were relatively new and still developing and changing. Timê from the gods δέκατον μὲν ἔτος τόδ’ ἐπεὶ Πριάμου (40) μέγας ἀντίδικος 252 Μενέλαος ἄναξ ἠδ’ Ἀγαμέμνων, διθρόνου Διόθεν καὶ δισκήπτρου τιμῆς ὀχυρὸν ζεῦγος Ἀτρειδᾶν, στόλον Ἀργείων χιλιοναύτην (45) τῆσδ’ ἀπὸ χώρας ἦραν, στρατιῶτιν ἀρωγήν, This is the tenth year since against Priam his great prosecutor, King Menelaus, together with Agamemnon, the Atreidae, a pair firmly yoked in the honour of their twin thrones and twin sceptres given by Zeus, launched the thousand-ship expedition of the Argives from this land as military backers for their suit, […] (40-7, emphasis my own) The first appearance of timê in this play, appearing in the lines above, establishes a link between the Atreidae and the gods and thus explains their elevated status in the human world: the timê of Agamemnon and Menelaus comes from Zeus (diothen); by virtue of this timê they are rulers and 251 On the problems with this kind of vengeance in a 5 th century Athenian context, see Holst-Warhaft (1992). 252 As Fraenkel notes, this seems to be the earliest attestation of this word, which is perhaps interesting in the context of my argument; he adds that undoubtedly it is “part of the technical vocabulary of the Athenian courts.” Its presence here suggests a slippage between epic/tragic and perhaps looks forward to the emphasis on dikê found in Eumenides, on which see Goldhill (1984), 208-83. 119 wield a great deal of military and political power (43-7). 253 I read this passage as an indication that, to some extent, timê is a value that one possesses by virtue of divine favor – at times exclusively so. This seems to be particularly true for the type of timê that signifies status within a collective, at least within the aristocratic context that the Argive Chorus here describes (versus a more egalitarian collective, e.g., the Athenian polis). Interestingly, I would suggest that these lines intentionally juxtapose Athenian democratic institutions – such as trial-by-jury – with the monarchical rule of the sort that Argos represents – we might notice that the Chorus describes Agamemnon as the antidikos of Priam, a term that for an Athenian audience would have a predominantly legal resonance. In using antidikos for Agamemnon, I would argue that the Chorus articulates a tension that exists between the civic context to which the term belongs and the archaic, aristocratic social structure within which the timê of lines 43-4 is situated; the idea that those in power are deserving of their position by virtue merely of their relationship to the gods would not necessarily have sat well in the democratic polis of Athens. There is, then, in this passage a tension between civic and divine rule, one which Aeschylus explores throughout the entire trilogy, ultimately making an argument for the primacy of the civic in Eumenides, which does not exclude the gods but rather consciously incorporates them into the space of the Athenian polis. 253 For timê specifically used in tragedy to establish a relationship between the divine and those who rule, see also Aeschylus Pers. 72-5, where the ghost of Darius claims that the “privilege/honor,” timê, of monarchical rule over their empire came to the Persian royalty from Zeus. In the archaic context we might think of Hesiod. Th. 81-93, where the Muses are said to “honor,” timêsousi, kings “cherished by Zeus,” diotrepheôn (Athanassakis trans.); such kings are persuasive, just, and conspicuous among men. There is a useful point of comparison to be found as well in the Iliad, where Agamemnon is said to be the best, aristos, by virtue of his position as a leader (Il. 2.580); although timê is not used in this context it is useful to remember that the conflict between Agamemnon and Achilles develops out of the dishonor done by the former to the latter. For a contemporary comparison to tragedy we might look to the epinician odes of Pindar, who seems to utilize a genealogical relationship with the gods when celebrating victories of kings; see, e.g., Pythian 4 and 5, both of which were composed in 462 BCE in honor of Arcesilaus, the basileus of Cyrene; in contrast, Pythian 9, composed in celebration of the victory of Telesicrates in the hoplite race in 474 BCE. 120 It is within this context of fate, which is connected also to ideas of allotment and divine will, 254 that I see certain instances of timê operating – in particular, those that draw a line between the gods and men, as in the passage I have been discussing, Ag. 40-7. In this passage, it is made explicit that the timê of Agamemnon and Menelaus comes “from Zeus,” diothen, which, we might note, is in line with the rhetoric of monarchies in many places, both past and present. Another side to this is that such an understanding – of timê as divinely apportioned – opens up a space for questioning such a person’s position relative to other values; we might think of the once-popular scholarly debate over the “best of the Achaeans” 255 It is useful here to remember that the conflict between Achilles and Agamemnon is positioned in Homer as one of timê – Agamemnon “dishonors” Achilles (Il. 1.94). 256 Also useful may be our own contemporary (20 th /21 st century) understanding of “privilege” – a regular translation for timê – where, while certain privileges are obtained through, e.g., hard work, other types of privilege such as social position and status are largely determined by the luck of birth. 257 And indeed, it is those privileges that are allotted (versus obtained) that, in the 21 st century United States at least, are almost certainly the most significant factors for determining one’s position in life, although of course they are not the only factors, and, significantly, my observation here has only to do with position and status within a reigning hierarchy, which is not necessarily a determiner of other, less tangible values such as happiness, contentment, or even grief. 258 That timê is used in Aeschylus in relationship to both these ideas – 254 As noted by Fraenkel ad 1025-9. 255 Nagy (1979). 256 The use of atimazô at Il. 1.94 echoes its uses earlier at 11, and in fact I believe that these two occurrences create a kind of bracket around the articulation of two primary and related sources of conflict in the epic, the (negative) exchanges of Chryseis and Briseis. 257 “White privilege” is the most obvious example, here. It is perhaps also useful to note that regarding the question of who is “best” Agamemnon and Achilles are contenders for the title for different reasons – Agamemnon has a higher social status but Achilles demonstrates military prowess. 258 And indeed, even privilege within a hierarchy operates along a variety of different axes; there is not only one set of values that determine privilege (although certain values supersede others by normative standards). The concept of 121 i.e., hierarchical timê and privilege, as well as self-evaluation and the experience of an individual – is very interesting to me, and, as I have suggested above, the relationship that Aeschylus posits here, between rulers and gods through timê, is not entirely positioned as a positive but is open to interrogation. The unwritten laws: timê and xenia I have suggested in the preceding section that the treatment of the gods is more general than that which is seen in the Eumenides, and that, as part of this generality, no single or set of divine figures holds as prominent of a position as Apollo, Athena, and the Erinyes do later on, although many gods are mentioned throughout the play’s lines and mentions of the gods are many. It is worth noting, however, that one god is named more often than the others. That god is, unsurprisingly, Zeus; it is more interesting, perhaps, that he is invoked on several occasions as Zeus Xenios, the protector of strangers and the institution of xenia. 259 Given my use in this chapter of the three unwritten laws – honor to gods, xenoi, and parents – as a loose frame for my analysis, I find this detail striking, or, at the very least, noteworthy. The second of the unwritten laws enjoins timê towards xenoi, and it is within this frame that I would suggest we can place certain significant uses of timê in the Agamemnon: those that have to do with the story of Helen, who is positioned throughout the play as a foil for her sister Clytemnestra. 260 Returning to the observation above, it is perhaps significant that Zeus is named as Xenios in the opening song of the Chorus, as they recount the necessary background of the relative privilege may be useful here, which suggests that bodies experience different levels of privilege depending on context; positioning is always relational. 259 Zeus Xenios: 61, 362, 748. Other designations are used for Zeus in this play, so, e.g., xunestios at 703, and basileus at 355, but xenios is the only epithet used more than once. 260 On Helen in this play, Doyle (2009). General studies on the figure of Helen: in Greek literature, Austin (1994), Blondell (2013); for a comparative approach to the myth of Helen and the stolen bride, Edmunds (2015). Also, Fraenkel vol.2 p.357 offers a few comments on Helen in the play. 122 Trojan War, and, more specifically, at the moment in their narrative when they identify the source of the conflict as Paris’ seduction of Helen (60-7), a figure who, in this play, provides an interesting opportunity for further meditation on the nature of timê. The way that timê is deployed for Helen is pointed and exclusive to her: timê is used in connection with her on three occasions (412, 703, 705), and on each occasion with the same significance, to describe the “dishonor” suffered by Menelaus in her desertion of him for Paris. To this extent, Helen in the Agamemnon (and more generally) offers the clearest support for understandings of honor and women that hinge on the restriction of female erotic autonomy and interpret transgressions such as adultery as having a direct and negative impact on male honor. I have maintained in my Introduction and elsewhere that the aim of this project is not to invalidate this view but rather to interrogate and complicate it; one reason I think the prevailing view on women and honor is lacking is that statements about the matter are often made as if they are self-evident. After all, in the context in which many such statements were written, 261 it makes sense that we might read an act such as the leaving of one’s husband as “dishonorable,” as having a negative effect both on his social status (i.e., he is devalued in the eyes of his peers) and self-value. 262 But why does it make sense? A complicated question to be sure, with an equally complex diversity of responses, but the figure of Helen offers one answer. Thus, I think it is productive to look at Helen in the Agamemnon and think carefully about how timê is used in her representation, how this particular use of timê supports certain views on honor in modern examinations, and how she colors our understanding of other women in the play specifically (most significantly, Clytemnestra) and indeed “women” as a category. 263 261 For the most part, in a 20 th century European or American context, mostly – if not entirely – by male authors. 262 Pitt-Rivers (1977). 263 With respect to the latter, there is an important question to be asked: Does Helen offer an aition or is she instead a specter to loom over all generations of women to follow? I am not sure I have an answer – I want her to be a specter, a kind of Ur-moment for masculine paranoia, but I’m not sure the evidence supports my desired interpretation. And, in any case, the scope of this project does not really extend to any extensive consideration of Helen – and in any case such studies exist already, as I have noted above – and so I will do my best to restrain my readings to the play at hand. 123 Timê is used for Helen three times in the Agamemnon (412, 703, 705), and always in the same way, that is, in a negative form with alpha-privative and to qualify what occurs between Helen and Paris. 264 The first time it appears is during the first choral stasimon after the Chorus has learned of Troy’s fall, 265 an ode that reflects on the nature of the justice of Zeus, moving from the events leading to the Trojan War to the discontent and suffering of the Argives waiting at home, and concludes on a note of disbelief from the Chorus that the news brought by Clytemnestra can be true. While the first strophe of this ode centers on Paris, the second shifts focus to the unnamed Helen and her departure from Sparta: λιποῦσα δ’ ἀστοῖσιν ἀσπίστορας κλόνους λοχισμούς τε καὶ ναυβάτας ὁπλισμούς, ἄγουσά τ’ ἀντίφερνον Ἰλίῳ φθοράν, βεβάκει ῥίμφα διὰ πυλᾶν ἄτλητα τλᾶσα. πολὺ δ’ ἀνέστενον τόδ’ ἐννέποντες δόμων προφῆται· “ἰὼ ἰὼ δῶμα δῶμα καὶ πρόμοι, ἰὼ λέχος καὶ στίβοι φιλάνορες· πάρεστι σιγὰς ἀτίμους ἀλοιδόρους ἀπί- στους ἀφειμένων ἰδεῖν· 266 πόθῳ δ’ ὑπερποντίας φάσμα δόξει δόμων ἀνάσσειν· εὐμόρφων δὲ κολοσσῶν ἔχθεται χάρις ἀνδρί, ὀμμάτων δ’ ἐν ἀχηνίαις ἔρρει πᾶσ’ Ἀφροδίτα. Leaving to her fellow-citizens the turmoil 264 Helen is also alluded to at the start of the play (60-7), as mentioned already, and there the sense is the same although there is no explicit articulation of timê/atimia. 265 On the first stasimon, see Athanassaki (1993) and Fletcher (1999). 266 This passage is deeply corrupt and for the most part I have chosen to retain the text of Page, although for lines 412- 13 I have followed the text of Fraenkel’s edition and modified Sommerstein’s translation accordingly. Like Fraenkel and Hermann before him, I found the †σιγᾶς ἄτιμος ἀλοίδορος/ ἅδιστος ἀφεμένων† troubling for its metre and sense; in particular, I struggled to understand the meaning of the lines with the impersonal construction πάρεστι + infinitive accompanied by the nominatives ἄτιμος, ἀλοίδορος, ἅδιστος, and so I find the restorations of Hermann (where the three alpha-privative adjectives take the accusative plural ending -ους, and σιγᾶς is read also as accusative plural σιγάς) are convincing. In any case, the sense is broadly the same, for my purposes; left in Helen’s absence is atimia. 124 of shield-bearing warriors, the setting of ambushes, the arming of men to go in ships, bringing destruction to Ilium instead of a dowry, she went lightly through the gates, daring to do what she should not have dared; and the seers of the house said this, with many a groan: “Alas for the house, alas for the house and its chiefs! Alas for the bed and the traces of a loving wife! It is possible to see the silences of those forsaken, silences without honor, without reviling, without belief. Because of his longing for her who is beyond the sea, a phantom will seem to rule the house. The charm of beautiful statues has become hateful to the husband: because they lack eyes, all their loveliness goes for nothing. (403-19) Although Helen has been mentioned in the play prior to these lines (62-3, where she is called “a woman of many men,” πολυάνορος ἀμφὶ γυναικός), this is the first time the Chorus offers an extended reflection of her role in the Trojan War, in a passage which acts as a precursor to an ode that is entirely devoted to her. 267 Here, Helen is characterized as “leaving,” lipousa, as a “bearer of destruction,” agousa phthoran, and as “daring,” tlâsa. She leaves behind only “husband-loving traces,” 268 stiboi philanores. This last phrase, taken in the way Sommerstein does, suggests a certain complexity of character that is not always allowed for Helen, and perhaps insinuates that her departure was not entirely voluntary in nature – she is leaving behind a husband whom she loves, philanores – which is strengthened by the naming of Aphrodite at 419, reminding both audience and reader that Helen’s departure from Sparta was engineered by the gods. I would like to introduce another possibility, which is that the anêr of philanores could refer to Paris, which would lend a more devious – and, to my mind, more interesting – nature to the impressions left by 267 681-809; the other two occurrences of timê for Helen occur within these lines. 268 To use Sommerstein’s translation of this phrase, (2008), 48 n.89 125 Helen’s body in the bed. If rendered in this way there is a nice echo in sense between the earlier poluanoros, 62, and philanores here, 411; such a reading would also recall the Helen of Sappho 16, whose agency is clear. 269 This agency of Helen’s – which also comes across very clearly in the passage above – is important to note; part of the trouble, in the modern rhetoric at least, with dishonorable women is not just their sexuality but the fact that they cannot be controlled. Helen as she is depicted here is headstrong and seems to have little care for the consequences of her actions, as indicated by 403-5. In contrast to her daring and her lightness of foot (and, I would say, mind – on rhimpha Fraenkel notes that it conveys a “divinely untroubled swiftness), 270 Menelaus is a heavy presence, and the language used to describe him is curiously passive in contrast to Helen’s agency. He has no active verbs; rather, he is found within the impersonal construction introduced by paresti and in the dative andri. 271 Even Helen’s likeness is more grammatically active than him: “her phantom will seem to rule the house.” His heaviness is emphasized by the many closed syllables of 412-3, which is so weighty that the final word of the tricola drags from one line to the next. The effect of the grammatical, verbal, and aural and even physical 272 contrast between the descriptions of Helen and Menelaus is perhaps to convey the momentousness of her leaving, and perhaps also to create an opportunity for the identification of Menelaus with the Achaeans who are left behind (and, beyond the diegetic level of the drama, the Athenians), bereft in war. 273 269 But: philanôr elsewhere in Aeschylus means “husband-loving,” as at Pers. 136 and. Ag. 856; however, in the latter case it is worth mentioning the Clytemnestra is clearly dissembling. 270 ad 407; that rhimpha is found otherwise only in epic and in Pindar seems relevant to my argument below that Helen adds to the “heroic” flavor of the play. 271 His presence also lies behind pothôi at 414. 272 As there would be accompanying movement. 273 Sommerstein (2008) 51 n.92 makes a similar observation: “the sense required is that Helen’s departure (and the resulting war) have brought sorrow to every house in Greece just as they have to Menelaus’ house.” 126 Aeschylus’s depiction of Helen stands in stark juxtaposition to that which she leaves behind in Greece: a much-enduring grief which no home escapes. 274 This juxtaposition serves to emphasize, I think, the difference between what a “good” wife does and what a “bad” wife does, especially if one accepts my suggestion in Chapter 2 that mourning, and ritual performance more broadly, is a main telos of female life in Athens. In the absence of Helen there is “the silences of those forsaken, silences without honor, without reviling, without belief.” It is undeniable that the use of atimous here (if it is indeed in the text at all) articulates what we might conventionally translate as “dishonor” to a husband through adultery, of which Helen is paradigmatic. It is in a similar context that the additional two instances of timê for Helen occur, at 703 and 705, 275 situated as they are within the second stasimon which in its first half takes as its theme Helen and the destruction she effects. The Chorus intones: Ἰλίωι δὲ κῆδος ὀρ- θώνυμον τελεσσίφρων Μῆνις ἤλασεν, τραπέζας ἀτί- μωσιν ὑστέρωι χρόνωι καὶ ξυνεστίου Διὸς πρασσομένα τὸ νυμφότι- μον μέλος ἐκφάτως τίοντας, ὑμέναιον ὃς τότ᾽ ἐπέρ- ρεπε γαμβροῖσιν ἀείδειν. And for Iliam there was a wedding morning true to its name, mourning indeed, 274 τὸ πᾶν δ᾽ ἀφ᾽ Ἕλλανος αἴας συνορμένοιψι πέν-/θεια τλησικάρδιος/δόμωι ᾽ν ἑκάστου πρέπει, 429-31. I found τλησικάρδιος particularly difficult to render; the LSJ suggests both “hard-hearted” (LSJ A) and “enduring” (LSJ A.II). The use of tlêsis- provides a clear echo – and antithesis? – to Helen’s own daring at 408, where she is ἄτλητα τλᾶσα. There are problems with the text here, as well; pentheia is not otherwise attested and “is not a Greek word at all” (Fraenkel ad loc), nevertheless it is accepted by Page and Sommerstein, who translates the word as “a mourning woman.” 275 We might note that there is a fourth possible occurrence of timê in this same ode (second stasimon), ἁβροτίμων at 690, which is the reading of FTr that has been retained by Page, but which was discarded by Fraenkel in favor of ἁβροπήνων, suggested by Salmasius. I would agree with Fraenkel that it is “questionable” how the compound habrotimos could be applied in any sensible manner to prokalummata, although for the former the LSG offers “delicate and costly” which is perhaps an acceptable-enough rendering. If we wanted to retain ἁβροτίμων and press its reading, I suppose I might suggest that it conveys something of the sense of Helen’s worth (in that timê has often if not always to do with “value”), which, in the context of the ode I would probably still be tempted to read as belonging within the framework of marriage and exchange, as is the case with the timê-occurrences at 703 and 705. 127 brought to pass by Wrath, exacting delayed requital for the dishonouring of the host’s table and of Zeus god of hearth-sharing, against those who loudly celebrated the bridal song, the hymn which there fell to her new kin to sing. 276 (699-708) This passage situates timê within the Greek institution of xenia in the first instance, and within the context of marriage in the second. Interestingly, although there is a relationship between the institutions of xenia and marriage, the imagined scenes for the two occasions – only two lines apart – are different: presumably, the “dishonoring of the host’s table” (703) 277 takes place in Sparta, at the home of Menelaus and Helen (which is now, like Menelaus, “deserted” and “silent,” as in the passage discussed above), while the song offered in honor of the bride, tiontas, 707, takes place in Troy. Although there are problems with the text, as I have noted, nevertheless it is still interesting that in five (short) lines we see three honor words – atimôsin, numphotimon, tiontas. These uses speak to the complicated relationship between xenia and marriage (a type of exchange, criticized loudly from a feminist perspective by Gayle Rubin), 278 although I think it is too much to suggest that we read them as a criticism of such. It is interesting however that an act that would typically solidify social relationships through the exchange of timê is here depicted in its inverse; there is something suggestive – almost vulgar – in the way the bridal song is sung: it is ekphatôs, an adverb which occurs nowhere else and thus is difficult to render accurately. 279 Shakespeare’s “the lady doth protest too much” is perhaps a useful analogy. 280 The insistence at Troy on singing Helen’s 276 The translation is by Sommerstein (as elsewhere) except for 707-8, which I have amended. 277 F and Tr offer variations on ἀτίμωσιν but the sense is generally the same, and I am happy to accept the reading of Page here. 278 Rubin (1975); see also Lyons (2012), Wohl (1999), Ormand (1999), Rabinowitz (1993). 279 Headlam as quoted in Fraenkel ad loc.: “if ἐκφάτως is sound, it means “outspokenly”, in loud and bold avowal.” 280 The context of this line is also apt, spoken as it is by Gertrude. 128 numphotimon melos in a loud and boisterous manner is perhaps a response to the atimia that took place in Sparta, an attempt to replace a negative form of timê with a positive form, although in the end such an attempt falls short and ruination is brought to Trojan shores. The use of tiô here is interesting – what does it mean to “honor” or “value” (LSJ A.II) a bridal song, to numphotimon melos? We might note that Sommerstein has skirted the issue, perhaps, by translating tiontas as “celebrating”; I would suggest that we read to numphotimon melos as metonymic for the marriage of Paris and Helen and thus tiontas is a validating action, a way perhaps for Troy’s royal family to vigorously bring Helen into their fold. The use of gambros at 708 emphasizes Helen’s position among a (new) kin group. In thinking about timê/atimia as it operates relative to Helen, I would suggest that it is useful to think about Helen’s departure from the specific vantage point of loyalty, or, to be more exact, disloyalty. After all, isn’t that the heart of the problem? It seems nearly impossible to think of Helen’s act of leaving Sparta (and Menelaus)/choosing Paris in any unbiased manner; the thing that turns “leaving” into the more loaded “adultery” is the lack of faithfulness that such a choice displays. Indeed, Douglas Cairns has identified this lack of sexual faithfulness to one’s husband as equivalent to a lack of female aidôs, which he understands to be a critical component of female honor, such as it is in his view. 281 And, as Cairns observes, disloyalty is a significant point of contact between Helen and Clytemnestra and the primary point of divergence between the two sisters and Penelope. 282 Another way to understand the disloyalty of Clytemnestra and Helen is as 281 On a shyness of the opposite sex and loyalty to one’s husband as important manifestations of aidôs – which is related to timê – see Cairns (1993), 123-5 and 186, where he notes that “A respectable woman’s aidôs should protect her own honour, but this honour is, in all normal circumstances, bound up with that of a man; we have seen already how Clytemnestra’s adultery with Aegisthus was a source of dishonour for Agamemnon.” 282 Cairns (1993), 125. Penelope interestingly does not appear at all as a figure for comparison in the Oresteia, although Penelope and Clytemnestra are established as clear antitheses in Odyssey 11. I have to think this is intentional. For the use of Clytemnestra to bring some element of doubt to the established fidelity of Penelope, see, e.g., Murnaghan (1986b). 129 an exercise of choice, which lends an interesting and perhaps less weighted dimension to their actions. 283 Although timê is not used for Clytemnestra in the same way as for Helen (which is very specific), the presence of Helen throughout the play encourages a connection between the two women, and specifically one that has to do with their lack of loyalty to their husbands, which is understood to effect broader repercussions for the communities of Argos, Sparta, and – in the case of Helen – Greece as a whole. Although the motivations of Clytemnestra are complicated – intentionally so, I would think – many scholars accept that, in part, her actions in this play are driven by her adulterous relationship with Aegisthus, as well as her desire for revenge (which I have discussed above) and the foundational context of internecine violence that so plagued the House of Atreus. 284 However, I would perhaps draw a fine line between Clytemnestra’s motivations as perceived by the normative attitudes embodied by an Athenian audience and Aeschylus’s characterization of Clytemnestra herself. It is not insignificant, I think, that Clytemnestra’s relationship with Aegisthus is only made explicit later in the play; for most of the narrative, the nature of their affair is only alluded to by, e.g., the Chorus and Cassandra. In part, the reticence of the Chorus can be attributed to the position of power that Clytemnestra holds in her husband’s absence. In this sense, the Chorus then uses the narrative of Helen to color our perception of Clytemnestra; they make the disloyalty of the former explicit while allowing some 283 Jamison (2001), 313-14 has explored the etymology of Helen’s name in the context of svayaṃvara, a kind of marriage known from the Rig Veda that emphasizes an element of choice on the part of the woman to be married, if I am understanding correctly. Jamison proposes that the name Helen comes from a root meaning “to choose” and gives several examples of how Helen embodies “choice.” The etymology of Helen’s name seems relevant since it is a focal point of the second stasimon; although the Chorus doesn’t offer anything relating to “choice” as a possible etymology for “Helen” it is not impossible that a Greek audience would have been aware of such connotations. If so, it is really interesting that a woman whose name, perhaps, indicates choice becomes paradigmatic of the destruction that enacting such choice can engender. 284 It is worth noting that the adultery of Thyestes and the wife of Atreus stands in the background here, as well, although it was not the origin of the family’s curse, which goes back to Tantalus. 130 room for interpretation in the case of the latter. Although the sexual nature of Clytemnestra’s relationship with Aegisthus is never really in doubt, I would suggest that by allowing this room for interpretation Aeschylus creates a space for Clytemnestra’s interiority, and, like her motivation, her understanding of timê – which is perhaps akin to that of an epic hero – is perhaps not the same as that of the Chorus, audience, or reader, which, for the latter two entities, at least, may in part be shaped by the way timê is used for Helen. The use of timê specifically in relationship to marriage is carried over into the Eumenides, again in terms of atimia, when, in his first confrontation with the Erinyes, Apollo asserts that, in their pursuit of Orestes on behalf of the slain Clytemnestra – which is, explicitly, their timê, 209- 10 – the Erinyes hold the pledges of Hera and Zeus (the former in her valence as goddess of marriage) “in utter contempt,” kart’ atima, Eum. 213, and treat Aphrodite as “dishonoured,” atimos, 215. Although Apollo never says explicitly that there is a timê that exists between wife and husband, I wonder if we can imply that the marital relationship is deserving of some timê, whether it comes from someone internal or external to the pair. Uses of timê in connection with Helen seem to have a particularly epic resonance, even beyond the Iliadic context that any narrative of Helen would automatically confer. It is worth mentioning that the crisis at the center of the Iliad – the taking of Briseis by Agamemnon (analogous in some respects to Menelaus’ loss of Helen) 285 – is articulated in Iliad 1 precisely in terms of timê, 286 and the dishonor done to Achilles by Agamemnon is really only resolved when, after the death of Patroclus, Agamemnon and Achilles reconcile and Agamemnon returns Briseis to Achilles “untouched,” aprotimastos, Il. 19.263. Although to some extent Briseis is largely 285 Reckford (1964). 286 Iliad 1.170-1: οὐδέ σ᾽ ὀίω ἐνθάδ᾽ ἄτιμος ἐὼν ἄφενος καὶ πλοῦτον ἀφύξειν, Achilles to Agamemnon. The initial conflict of the Iliad – that Agamemnon refuses to return Chryseis – is articulated twice as atimia (ἠτίμασεν, 11; ἠτίμησ᾽, 94). 131 symbolic, I still think it is interesting that Agamemnon insists in some detail (258-65, he even swears by Zeus) that he has not engaged in any sexual acts with her, and so in that regard she is being returned in the same state as she was taken, and thus her fidelity to Achilles is not an issue. The social norms and values imposed upon women which are suggested by such an insistence are difficult to escape, and its force is felt in Aeschylus’s representation of Helen in the Agamemnon, and indeed within the milieu of Athens in the 5 th and 4 th centuries. 287 The events detailed in Lysias 1 reveal the kind of slippage that exists between the timê of the lawcourts and a more personal kind of timê, and shows perhaps the acknowledgement of the state on its own limits with regard to timê. 288 However, it is important to note that the type of timê detailed by Aeschylus for Helen, familiar perhaps from the Iliad and still relevant in 5 th -century Athens, is only one manifestation of timê, and as I have tried to show already in Chapters 1 and 2, women do demonstrate, bestow, and even receive timê in other important ways. Additionally, I would also like to note that, from a feminist perspective, this manifestation of timê – that is, one which operates within and supports systems of marriage, exchange, and reciprocity which depend on the objectification of women and the restriction of their autonomy – is intensely problematic. It is equally problematic, to my mind, that it is timê in this particular manifestation that seems to hold the greatest influence both in scholarship on honor and in modern cultural conversations, 289 to the nearly-complete exclusion of other aspects of timê that were accessible to women in Athens, such as timê as “status-role,” to use again the phrase of C. W. MacLeod, where timê could be attained and preserved, for women as well as men, through the performance of certain duties, which were understood also to be a 287 For “honor” as a pole of Athenian society and the idealization of the chaste woman see Cohen (1991). 288 Many thanks to Greg Thalmann for pointing this out to me in private correspondence. 289 Most problematically, Bowman (2006); against which, see Cairns (2011). 132 privilege. Indeed, perhaps we might read Clytemnestra herself as resisting this formulation – where female agency leads to atimia – when she beseeches the Chorus not to blame Helen for the current situation in Argos (1462-7). The repeated emphasis on Helen in this play has another effect as well, which is that it serves to emphasize the drama’s heroic and even epic contextualization, portraying as it does events immediately following the fall of Troy, which occurs in that conflict’s tenth year. On the one hand, this contextualization is not necessarily of note; nearly all our extant Attic tragedies took heroic legends as their subject-matter and indeed doing so seems to have been a commonplace of the genre, at least from the time when Phrynichus was fined for taking the sack of Miletus in 494 BCE as his theme and thus “reminding the citizens of their own misfortunes.” 290 On the other hand, however, given the clearly Athenian context of the Eumenides, it seems at least possible that we might interpret with further nuance Aeschylus’ choice to take as the subject of the first play a heroic saga. 291 If such a shift from heroic Argos to democratic Athens was intentional, then this adds an interesting dimension to our reading of this play, and to our understanding of its representation in particular timê. I suggested above in my discussion of the timê received by basileis from Zeus that Aeschylus may be providing a subtle critique of such, and that he perhaps positions such status privilege in tension with the (idealized) egalitarian values of fifth century Athens. That basileis like Agamemnon and Menelaus are intentionally emphasized as belonging to a heroic tradition emphasizes as well the non-Athenian nature of their timê. 290 Herodotus 6.29. 291 It is worth noting that the second play is also set in Argos, i.e., not Athens, and in a kind of heroic landscape. 133 The unwritten laws: familial timê The third of the unwritten laws enjoins respect for parents, and it is this that I would like to address in the final section of this chapter. Like others before me, I take this third law to refer to the importance of familial loyalty more broadly, although to be sure in each of its Aeschylean articulations “parents” is very clearly stated. 292 We might see the timê that Iphigenia offers to Agamemnon, in a passage that I am about to discuss, as evidence perhaps of the timê that a child is bound to offer to a parent. 293 Before concluding this chapter, I would like to turn our attention briefly to one final female figure, Iphigenia, whose specter, like that of Helen, hovers always just at the edge of the mind’s eye – albeit more subtly and we might even say sweetly. While Helen dominates the second stasimon, Iphigenia commands the parodos. So vivid is she that one translator imagines they can hear her voice, 294 and at the end of this choral song Iphigenia is depicted with startling clarity: although no actor holds her space on stage, she “stands out as if in a picture,” πρέπουσα τὼς ἐν γραφαῖς (242-3) and spectators and readers alike can envisage the girl’s body forcibly lifted over an altar with saffron-yellow robes trailing (232-5, 239), her comely lips bound and eyes blazing (235-6, 238, 240-1). Not only can we very nearly see the movement and shape of her body, but her voice is there as well on the edge of our imagination, despite the efforts of the attendants to 292 So, tekontôn at Supp. 707, tokeas philous at Eum. 271, and tokeôn at Eum. 545. For the third law as referring to familial or kindred loyalty rather than only respect to parents, see, for example, Sommerstein (1977), 75-6 and Bacon (2001), 49. 293 Thinking about familial timê more broadly, I would suggest the reticence the chorus shows with respect to the relationship between Clytemnestra and Aegisthus – in that, while it is likely an open secret, nevertheless they make no explicit mention of it until late in the play, as I have noted – can be attributed to the timê she enjoys vis-à-vis her spousal relationship with Agamemnon, which too is related to her current level of power in Argos. Strictly speaking, this is not an example of timê that is given from one member of a family to another, although I suppose we might consider the act of marriage as an implicit granting of such. 294 Sommerstein’s Iphigenia calls out, piteously, “father!” (2008), ad. 228. 134 quiet her (235-7). 295 Alan Sommerstein’s translation allows Iphigenia a single word – “father!” (228) – and Aeschylus encourages us to imagine her voice on occasions when πατρὸς κατ’ ἀνδρῶνας εὐτραπέζους ἔμελψεν, ἁγνᾶι δ’ ἀταύρωτος αὐδᾶι πατρὸς φίλου τριτόσπονδον εὔποτμον παι- ῶνα φίλως ἐτίμα. at the rich banquets in her father’s dining-chambers she had sung, a pure virgin with pure voice, duly and lovingly performing her father’s paean for good fortune to accompany the third libation. 296 (244-7) The postponement of the verb etima is striking and seems positioned for emphasis. It is rare that we have seen timê used in specifically this way before; more typically Aeschylus uses this type of formation (positive, in the form of a verb) to describe the actions of men before gods, not interpersonal relationships between mortals. 297 However, in the passage above Iphigenia gives timê to Agamemnon via the paean; the relationship is between daughter and father. The use of timaô is made tricky here by its taking of the accusative paiôna, rather than Agamemnon himself; 298 the LSJ notes that timaô can be used of things to mean “hold in honour or esteem, value, prize,” (LSJ A.II) although I must confess that I don’t find this definition terribly helpful. More helpful perhaps is the suggestion that timaô can be used in this way to mean “to award or give as an honour” (LSJ A.II.3), as in Pindar’s fourth Pythian: ἐσσὶ δ᾽ἰατὴρ ἐπικαιρότατος, Παιάν τέ σοι τιμᾶι φάος, “But 295 For an affective reading of the sacrifice of Iphigenia, see Angelopolou (2017), 105-6, 114-5, who is also currently at work on a book-length project on the body and senses in Greek tragedy. Anecdotally, since giving birth to my daughter, I have found the Iphigenia passages difficult to digest, so vivid are they, and when possible I skim over them only lightly; the position of all involved is incomprehensible. 296 These lines recall and stand in contrast to 146-54, where the sacrifice Agamemnon is asked to perform is described as “without music and without feasting,” anomon, adaiton; we might also note that in these earlier lines Calchas calls upon Paeon Apollo, which is then recalled by paiôna at 246. 297 With the clear exception of the funerary context, where timê is offered by the living to the dead, as discussed in Chapter 2. 298 It should be noted that paiôna is the generally accepted emendation of Hartung for the (unmetrical) aiôna of the manuscript tradition. 135 you are a most opportune healer, and Apollo Paean celebrates your light.” 299 In any case, I interpret these lines to mean that Iphigenia contributes to her father’s timê, even if peripherally so. The timê then that Agamemnon receives is both a mark of his high status amidst a peer group and an indication of their familial bond, and signifies as well the role Iphigenia plays within both – through the performance of song, which speaks to the outward-facing nature of timê that is demonstrated as well by the performance of funeral rites, as I have discussed in Chapter 2. Here, the timê Iphigenia extends is received two-fold: by Agamemnon himself, and by the other Greek leaders who are present, which creates a setting that is simultaneously intimate and public. Moreover, Aeschylus shares that she has made this performance “many times,” pollakis (244), which accentuates an atmosphere of familiarity. Her song is not a one-off occasion; she has often seen and been seen by these men. This familiarity slips into the scene of her sacrifice – as her body rests on the altar Iphigenia longs to address, prosennepein, those “war-loving men” by name (242- 3). 300 Iphigenia exists in complicated relationship to the typical reciprocities that structured the Greek world, especially those in which women were involved. As Victoria Wohl has convincingly argued, the imagery and language of marriage and the ritual of initiation overlay this scene of sacrifice, and the offering of Iphigenia can be interpreted as a kind of “perverted marriage;” 301 in a society like the imagined Argos where bonds between men are solidified through institutions such as – and even primarily – marriage exchange (i.e., the objectification of women), then a failure 299 Trans. based on that of Svarlien (1990). 300 Prosennepô is also used by Cassandra before she goes to her death (1291); perhaps there is a sense of confrontation and even accusation from both women. 301 Wohl (1998), 73. Rabinowitz (1993) also explores the figure of Iphigenia and the function of her sacrifice for the Greek audience, suggesting that the sacrifice of women is a form of gift-exchange with the gods and that depictions of sacrifice in Euripides identify male anxieties and work to stabilize masculine identity. Both Wohl and Rabinowitz find useful the concept of fetishization (although the former from a Marxist perspective and the latter via Freud) and the notion of the “third position.” 136 to exchange Iphigenia can be interpreted as “an antidemocratic hoarding of resources.” 302 In addition, her sacrifice has the additional effect of preserving Iphigenia in a virginal and desirable state, immortalizing her as an agalma. 303 For Wohl, the value of women within the marriage transaction is their sexuality, both as erotic beings and for their ability to reproduce. This interpretation maps neatly alongside the prevailing view on honor and women, where likewise it is a woman’s sexuality that holds the most value. I agree with her reading, although I am also interested in the ways Iphigenia is granted some subjectivity as well as being positioned as an object. There is no reason to read her as either/or. As Iphigenia lies across the altar she is not completely passive. There is the worry that she might speak out against the sacrifice and show herself unwilling – thus the restraint on her lips – and, though she is stopped from speaking no such binding fetters her gaze and thus she is able “[to strike] her sacrificers one-by-one with pity-arousing darts from her eyes,” ἔβαλλ᾽ ἕκαστον θυτήων ἀπ᾽ ὄμματος βέλει φιλοίκτωι (240-1). 304 And though she is unable to speak in the immediate moment, the audience is reminded that in the past her voice flowed freely; recollection of her song fills the space her forced silence has created. Not only did she sing, emelpsen, but she also gave honor, etima, two indicative verbs which are positioned as a pair, neatly bracketing lines 245-7. 305 This scene offers another layer to our understanding of timê in the 5 th century BCE, one which shows how women might participate in a system of timê in different ways. Engaging with the Agamemnon through a Marxist lens, Wohl has articulated very clearly and convincingly the ways in which gift exchange and the concept of the fetishized commodity are productive in reading 302 Wohl (1998), 82. This seems to be a theme for Aeschylus; Wohl does not make this connection but we might apply a similar interpretation to Danaus in Aeschylus’ Suppliants, whose daughters do not die but he in a similar fashion is invested in preventing their marriage. 303 On the agalmatization of Iphigenia, see ibid., 67-81. 304 Both eyes and lips are instruments of touch, see also my comments on Supplices in Chapter 4. 305 The three indicative verbs given to Iphigenia in this stanza are striking: eballe, emelpsen, etima. It is perhaps interesting that eballe and etima are in the imperfect tense, although I suspect this is for metrical reasons. 137 Iphigenia as an object/agalma; the active nature of etima (247) lends a new valence to her interpretation. Τhrough looking at a figure like Iphigenia we might see how women were granted points of access to a spectrum of timê through different types of performance – in the case of Iphigenia, participating in a communal, perhaps sympotic, context as a means of paying honor to her father; to my mind, the fact that she is presented as actively conferring timê is a critical point of difference with the passive nature usually associated in the femaleàmale honor complex. 306 In addition, as I have noted at the start of this chapter, we might understand the sacrifice of Iphigenia as a kind of timê paid to the gods, in which case she is positioned again as object; however, the threat of her voice and the violence of her eyes reveal the perceived fragility of the systems that bind her, which depend to some extent on her willing acquiescence, as Nancy Rabinowitz has suggested. 307 Iphigenia and others like her demonstrate that women are the linchpin that hold structures of exchange, honor, and gender hierarchies together, and from a 21 st century feminist perspective I would say that is a powerful position indeed. 308 Given the seemingly reciprocal nature of timê in ancient Greece, it does not seem unreasonable to suggest that Iphigenia, in bestowing timê on her father and his companions, is thus placed in a reciprocal relationship with those figures. Furthermore, she occupies the position of one who is owed, at least according to the typical mechanisms of exchange. As Iphigenia assaults those men present at her sacrifice with her eyes, we might imagine that she is imploring them to 306 Although the sacrifice scene is overlaid with erotic elements of the erotic and a sense of force, which is impossible to separate from the scene illustrated in this stanza. This is something for me to think about more. 307 Rabinowitz (1993). 308 “The most common way people give up their power is by thinking they don’t have any,” as Alice Walker wrote in The Color Purple. My assertion above is not very different from the conclusions that Pitt-Rivers (1977) offers, although I would say that our respective emphases are on opposite ends of the spectrum – where I see an opportunity to recover or imagine power, Pitt-Rivers sees rather, to borrow a sentiment from Lévi-Strauss, woman as both sign and signifier, without acknowledging well enough the problematics of that understanding; for a feminist critique of Lévi-Strauss, see Rubin (1975). 138 pay their due. However, owed to Iphigenia is a debt which the men (including her father) fail to fulfill, or at least that seems to be the understanding of Clytemnestra as she justifies Agamemnon’s murder at 1412ff., when she asserts that he had failed to show proper timê to Iphigenia. Clytemnestra takes into her own hands the responsibility of collecting the timê owed to her daughter, by exacting vengeance (timoria) as she sees fit; again, as I have discussed above, we might read Clytemnestra within the motif of divine retribution that pervades the play. Although Clytemnestra does not explicitly give timê to Iphigenia, I wonder if we might read their relationship within that context, which might allow us to envision exchange between women, a type of reciprocity which is not often emphasized or even allowed. As Luce Irigaray has argued, the type of exchange that structures male homosocial relationships depends on the separation of women from other women; 309 I am suggesting that Clytemnestra resists this separation and endeavors to fulfill the obligations that the men in Iphigenia’s community have left outstanding. Although this is an argument that can be drawn only lightly, given the explicitly feminist aims of my project, I think it is one worth making. 310 309 Irigaray (1985), 85: “In our social order, women are "products" used and exchanged by men. [...] The use, consumption, and circulation of their sexualized bodies underwrite the organization and the reproduction of the social order, in which they have never taken part as "subjects." Women are thus in a situation of specific exploitation with respect to exchange operations: sexual exchanges, but also economic, social, and cultural exchanges in general. A woman ‘enters into’ these exchanges only as the object of a transaction, unless she agrees to renounce the specificity of her sex, whose ‘identity’ is imposed on her according to models that remain foreign to her. Women's social inferiority is reinforced and complicated by the fact that woman does not have access to language, except through recourse to "masculine" systems of representation which disappropriate her from her relation to herself and to other women. The "feminine" is never identified except by and for the masculine, the reciprocal proposition not being ‘true.’” 310 It would be interesting to compare the representation of Clytemnestra in Euripides’ Iphigenia at Aulis with her representation here, especially given that the later production emphasizes Clytemnestra’s motherliness and her relationship with Iphigenia. 139 Conclusion In conclusion, I have tried to show in this chapter how timê in the Agamemnon operates in a way which is specific to the dramatic context of the play, and thus belongs to and constructs an heroic or even epic setting, where “epic” does not always intentionally recall the Iliad and Odyssey but is more loosely akin to in the past and specifically non-Athenian. In particular, it is within this context that I interpret the many instances of timê used to articulate the relationship between men and gods, and in particular between gods and those of a certain ruling class. I have also examined the ways that the motif of divine retribution shapes the narrative, and suggested that one primary objective of the Oresteia as a whole is to reject a form of retribution that is associated specifically with Clytemnestra and the Erinyes, thus paving the way for a renegotiation of timê and timoria in the civic sphere. Within the epic context of the play, I see Clytemnestra as a skewed articulation of the epic hero who positions her understanding of value and timê against that of the (civic) collective in order to take the law into her own hands, although interestingly Clytemnestra lacks the drive for kleos which so characterizes the hero, leading to a certain recklessness of action and a willingness on her part to act outrageously. Clytemnestra’s disdain for the order of the polis and her claim that it has fallen short in administering justice for Iphigenia (1412-25) indicate perhaps that there is an institutionalized form of justice in Argos but one which is not encoded firmly and fully, and in any case one to which it may be more difficult to bind Clytemnestra by dint of her elevated class status and her political power. 311 In addition, I have also explored the figure of Helen in the play, suggesting that, on the one hand, the narrative of Helen supports the epic context of the Agamemnon; on the other hand, it operates as well on another level, positioning Helen as a foil to 311 Which, importantly, she retains still at the end of the play; interestingly, timê is present in her final lines – which are also the final lines of the Agamemnon – she says to Aegisthus: “Don’t take any notice (μὴ προτιμήσῃς) of these empty barkings. You and I, controlling the house, will set all this in order” (1672-3). 140 Clytemnestra and reinforcing social norms around marital fidelity and choice for women. Within the text itself we might find a moment of resistance in Clytemnestra, who attempts to absolve Helen from blame. Lastly, I have explored the complicated presentation of Iphigenia, who is both passive and active, subject and object, immortalized in her sacrifice, arguing that Iphigenia can be used as a figure through which to think the complicated entanglements of exchange, timê, and gendered power dynamics, all of which shaped the Greek world. I would not say that any one of these figures is strongly associated with a sense of timê; that is, that their representation is not defined by any form of timê that they hold, bestow, or receive, with the exception, perhaps, of Helen, who is indeed defined to a large extent by the atimia her actions impart to Menelaus. Rather, I have attempted to bring light to the small and nuanced ways these women perform timê and participate in its construction as a social value. It is a regular and entirely commonplace violence of contemporary patriarchal culture that marginalized figures need to be exceptional in order for their stories to be told. And indeed, these women are exceptional, in many ways. But they are also, at times, ordinary, as found in the image of Iphigenia, singing a song for her father with a girl’s voice. Conclusion to Part I: the Oresteia In these initial three chapters I have endeavored to show that, in Aeschylus’s Oresteia, timê is deployed by the playwright in complicated and distinct ways in each of the trilogy’s plays, and that the trajectory of timê from Argos to Athens mirrors, to some extent, the broader movement from conflict to reconciliation that others have noticed. Although it is difficult articulate precisely, the nature of timê in the Agamemnon is fairly general, in the ways that I have focused on in this chapter. This generality is only made clear by the specificity that so strongly characterizes timê in the trilogy’s final play, the Eumenides. Between those plays we see the timê of the Choephoroi, 141 which very strongly responds to that play’s context and setting, and which asks the viewer/reader to meditate on the relationship of timê, mourning, and vengeance. Interestingly, the use of timê explicitly in the funerary context may be a particularly Attic phenomenon, as I discussed in Chapter 2. By the time the final curtain closes, timê is used very strongly to articulate the boundaries of a community which is specifically political, where the “polis” at the root of the political is Athens, and identifies appropriate actions for members of that civic community. 142 PART II: THE DANAID TRILOGY CHAPTER 4: SUPPLICES For the final two chapters of this project I shift my attention from the Oresteia trilogy to Aeschylus’s Supplices. In contrast to the former, which is the only extant Attic trilogy, and which moreover can be securely dated and embedded within a clear social and historical context, the Supplices and the trilogy to which it belongs lack such clarifying details, and both the context of production and the structure and plot of the Danaid trilogy as a whole are quite uncertain. 312 Even the position of the Supplices in the trilogy is only conjecture, although more than likely it was either the first play or the second. Furthermore, the text of this play is decidedly corrupt and depends solely on a single manuscript; every edition is riddled with obeloi and emendations. 313 314 When I first began my examination of the Danaids and Aeschylus’s Supplices in the context of timê, my expectation was that I would need primarily to think about the Danaids in their 312 Or perhaps more accurately, the Danaid tetralogy, if we are to include the satyr-play which would have accompanied the three tragedies, and which could have been related in content and theme; J. G. Droysen in 1832 asserted that the Amymônê was the satyr-play associated with the Danaid trilogy, in which case there is quite a close synchronicity between all four plays, as the former tells the tale of Amymone, a daughter of Danaus who coupled with Poseidon. For a summary of the current state of the debates on the dating of the Danaid tetralogy, the order of the plays, the other plays of the trilogy (usually but not always accepted as the Egyptians and Danaids), the trajectory of the trilogy’s plot overall, interpretation of the trilogy and its outcomes, and transmission of the text, see Sommerstein (2010), 100-8 and Sommerstein (2019), 10-19, 40-8. The dating of the play is pertinent to my consideration of the Danaids and Aeschylus’s use of metoikia, and I discuss it below; for now it will suffice to say that its production took place between 470 and 459 BCE, thus, before the production of the Oresteia – and not too long before – and so it is very interesting to read them together since they seem to show similar themes and concerns. For the order of the plays in the Danaid series, see Sommerstein (2010), 100-7; I would favor the placing of Supplices in the second position, with Egyptians first and Danaids third. 313 While these lacunae can be frustrating, they can also be exhilarating, providing as they do a space for exploration and imagination. 314 I have relied primarily on the commentary of Whittle and Johansen (1980). There is a more recent commentary by Alan Sommerstein (2019) which, due to the circumstances introduced by the Covid-19 pandemic (which limited access to resources in ways previously unseen – for example, libraries ceased operating for months at a time and there were prolonged periods where, in New Zealand, we were not permitted to purchase anything but “essential items,” as defined by the government), I was unable to obtain until late in the project. I have made use of it as I have been able. 143 role as young and nubile unmarried women, and that my exploration of timê in this play would thus be confined in large part to a consideration of its gender dynamics, which are undeniably insistent. This type of reading could easily have been placed in conversation with previous scholarship on honor and gender in Greek literature, which, as discussed, has for the most part insisted on the dichotomy of masculine honor and female chastity. I expected the Supplices to be situated securely within this model, although to be clear I was still hopeful that there would be room for interrogation and expansion, even if only slightly, of the predominant scholarly view on the relationship of women to timê in Attic tragedy. However, when I began to trace the movement of timê throughout the play, while I did encounter certain moments where there seemed to be a particularly strong resonance between timê, female sexuality, and masculine valor, 315 on the whole, occurrences of timê in Aeschylus’s Supplices demonstrate a marked concern over civic identity and the question of who does and does not belong in the polis community, and to what extent – this final consideration being particularly relevant when we think about the position of women in Athens. In this regard, I circle back to some of the ideas explored in Chapter 1, namely that, in Athens, timê can be a strong marker of civic inclusion and participation. Furthermore, in this play as in the Eumenides I have found that Aeschylus qualifies this inclusion through the particular deployment of metoikia as a metaphor for the experience of women in Athens, a way to mark their in-betweenness. There is another element of timê that I would like to introduce in this final chapter. I have noticed that timê in the Supplices manifests itself particularly clearly as outward-facing, in two distinct ways. 316 Its outward-facing nature is evident in the way that typically timê is a value 315 Particularly at 643-5 and 1013, both of which I examine below. 316 Others have noticed that honor is associated in different cultures with the face and eyes; we might only think of respect, from Lat. respicere, “to look back at;” see also Appiah (2010), Welsh (2008). This is one way that “honor” is outward-facing, by which I mean that it is directed from one individual to another. 144 offered from one individual (or group) to another (and thus it is remarkable when timê operates otherwise, as I discuss below). Secondly, this quality of timê is represented by the imagined physical movement of bodies turning to and from one another, in particular the head and eyes. The emphasis in this play on timê as a value that is externally facing works well with my argument that this play demonstrates a concern about the question of civic identity which is mediated by means of timê. By which I mean that timê in the Supplices seems, as in other places, to be a demarcating strategy for inclusion and exclusion, and is one way – perhaps, following Aristotle, the primary way – to identify who does and doesn’t belong within a group. 317 Timê creates a peer group; the relationships between members of the groups vis-à-vis timê are perhaps articulated via the metaphor of the physical (eyes, mouth, face). Danaids in the polis Illustrative of the relationship between timê and the civic is the second stasimon, which shows seven occurrences of timê in the space of its 84 lines (timas, 628, atimôsantes , 644, philotimos, 658, timas/timia, 698, 318 tioien, 705, 319 timais, 706, megistotimou, 709). The Supplices shows a total of 18 occurrences of timê etc., so to find over a third of those occurrences in a single ode 317 Arist. Pol. 1278a35-1278a39, which opens Chapter 1. 318 The MS offers φυλάσσοι τ᾽ ἀτιμίας τιμάς at 698 (M), where ἀτιμίας does not scan and is additionally suspect for its proximity and similarity to timas, and its difficulty to parse in meaning. In the margins asphalias is glossed, a possible variant for atimias but one which does not solve the problem of meter. Whittle and Johansen have included but obelized atimias; Page offers atremaia, the emendation of Butler. Sommerstein in the Loeb accepts the emendation of Headlam, which for 698 reads: φυλάσσοι τ᾽ εὖ τὰ τίμι᾽ ἀστοῖς. I find this final option most appealing, in part because it contributes to my argument that timê can and should be read in a strongly civic setting. However, that nuance is there regardless by virtue of 609 below, τὸ δάμιον, τὸ πτόλιν κρατύνει, where the resonance of the Athenian polis is strong. And of course it would be remiss of me not to mention that this line, along with 604, represents the earliest evidence for the existence of the term demokratia. In any case clearly there is something to do with timê in 698, and I am tempted to follow the reading of Headlam, which encourages the sense of timê as a citizen value. I would also understand the τίμας of the MS (accepted by Page and the edition of Whittle and Johansen) to indicate the privileges and status of a member of the polis. For a thorough discussion of the MS and its readings, see Whittle and Johansen ad 698. 319 Which I include for the sense it offers, even though it is not technically a form of timê. 145 seems significant enough to merit discussion. 320 In addition to forms of timê the ode is ripe with language of respect (aidōs) 321 and reverence (sebas), 322 and embedded as well is the institution of xenia; 323 together these ideas create a network in which to understand the resonance of timê in this play. The chorus of Danaids devote this stasimon to the offering of prayers on behalf of Argos and its citizens (called astoi, 698), 324 whose decision to extend asylum to the young women has just been conveyed by their father (605-24). With their words, the women straightaway insert themselves as participants in a reciprocal relationship with the city and its inhabitants, identifying their prayers as “recompense,” poinas, 625 (below), for the benevolence extended by the Argives. 325 In so doing, I would suggest that the Danaids demonstrate their understanding of the code of reciprocity by which the Greek world was structured, 326 to which, it might be noted, the system of timê is resolutely connected, indeed, perhaps paradigmatic of; their performance of reciprocity then acts to validate their presence in Argos (in the same way that Pelasgus suspects their Greekness through their positioning as suppliants, which he says is “in accordance with custom,” kata nomous, 241, thus demonstrating their awareness of that institution). The Danaids 320 Another possible occurrence of timê stand in the text, timioteran at 990, which is accepted by Whittle and Johansen, but obelized by Page (and Sommerstein (2008) includes another timioteran at 988, an emendation posited by West). As indicated at the start of this chapter, the text of Supplices is notoriously difficult; I will make note of any important textual matters as they arise in the context of my discussion but for a summary of the tradition and problems of the text see the edition and commentary of Whittle and Johansen. 321 Aidountai, 641. 322 Sebontôn, 671. 323 Zeus[…] Xenios, 627, xeniou/ stomatos, 627-8. 324 Following the reading of Headlam, see above. 325 For poinas as recompense for a benefit rather than a harm, Sommerstein ad loc. notes the parallel of Cho. 792-3; also Pindar Pyth. 1.59, Nem 1.70. 326 On reciprocity in ancient Greece, see especially Hermann (1987), Seaford (1994), and Gill, Postlethwaite, and Seaford (1998). For reciprocity in the field of anthropology, Sahlins (1974) can useful; also Bourdieu (1977) on reciprocity and honor. 146 use their knowledge of the customs of Argos to prove that they belong. In addition, the Danaids specifically identify their prayers as a form of timê: 327 ἄγε δή, λέξομεν ἐπ᾽ Ἀργείοις εὐχὰς ἀγαθάς, άγαθῶν ποινάς· Ζεὺς δ᾽ ἐφορεύοι Χένιος ξενίου στόματος τιμὰς ἐπ᾽ ἀλητείας τέρμονι †ἀμέμπτων πρὸς ἅπαντα†. 328 Come now, let us utter prayers of blessing for the Argives, in return for their good deed; and may Zeus god of strangers watch over the words of our foreign lips as we honour them for putting an end to our wandering <so that we speak in a manner no one will censure>. (625-9) The Danaids here position both prayers and words as an act of reciprocity, the latter of which they explicitly call timas, 329 demonstrating once again their ability to perform Argive custom and thus their understanding thereof, which serves to mark them as part of the group. At the same time, the Danaids call attention to their own strangeness, noting that they are themselves strangers – their mouths are “foreign,” xeniou stomatos, 627-8 330 – and invoking Zeus Xenios. 331 And yet from these same mouths comes a benediction which is philotimos (658), a compound rare enough at the time of Aeschylus to merit attention. In fact, like timoria (which I have discussed in the context of the Oresteia), its earliest certain attestations are to be found in Aeschylus (cf. Eum. 1032), a phenomenon that leads me to wonder whether philotimos is an inherently Attic idea in its 327 I am drawn to the image of the Danaids holding timê in their mouths; as noted below, there is something in this play to do with the mouth, the eyes (as vehicle of the gaze), and the hands. 328 For 628-9 I have adopted the text of Sommerstein (2018), which follows West (1990): 149, reflected as well in Sommerstein’s translation of these lines, above. 329 Sommerstein has translated timas in this tricky line as “words […] as we honor,” but there is no equivalent of “words,” e.g., logous, vel sim., in the Greek. 330 There is something going on with the mouth/lips here, an idea which I am interested in exploring further in a separate project on touch in the Supplices. 331 On the many manifestations of Zeus in this play, see below. 147 inception. 332 If so, it seems telling that Aeschylus gives its delivery here to the Danaids, who straddle the boundary between outsider/insider but ultimately are accepted into the Argive community, which is also the position of the Erinyes-now-Eumenides in the passage that I have just mentioned. It is interesting that the foreign nature of the Danaids is juxtaposed with their performance of Greek customs and their use of specifically Greek language. I see this juxtaposition as evidence of the way timê articulates and mediates the boundary between inclusion and exclusion, as well as drawing our attention to the blurred edges of that boundary, which are constantly shifting. The Danaids then are strongly characterized by their ambiguous state, by the way they are both inside and outside, foreign and Greek. The Danaids are, of course, ultimately Greek, but their liminality is nevertheless underlined by Aeschylus here and furthered later in the play through his use of the metaphor of metoikia. 333 Elsewhere in this ode timê operates in similar fashion; that is, it articulates the boundaries of group identity (especially via participation in the customs and rituals of the collective), and it is used in a specifically civic context. There is a particularly strong element of civic participation in the conception of communal identity offered in this play, a community which is delineated at 704- 9: θεοὺς δ’ οἳ γᾶν ἔχουσιν ἀεὶ τίοιεν ἐγχωρίοις πατρώιαις δαφνηφόροις βουθύτοισι τιμαῖς· τὸ γὰρ τεκόντων σέβας τρίτον τόδ’ ἐν θεσμίοις Δίκας γέγραπται μεγιστοτίμου. And may those who dwell in the land 332 For use of philotimos and its history, see Whittle and Johansen ad loc. 333 We might also note that the sons of Aegyptus as well are “Greek” through the same genealogical link to Io, and their foreignness too is emphasized late in the play, in the exchange that takes place between Pelasgus and the Herald at 911-51 – Pelasgus calls him a karbanos, 914, and a xenos, 917, and the Herald marks his own outsider status by asserting allegiance to the gods of Egypt rather than Greece, 922. In this regard, they are also insider/outsider/liminal – however, it is perhaps significant that by this point in the drama the Danaids have been accepted formally into Argos, and the sons of Aegyptus have not (and will not be). 148 always honour its native gods with ancestral rites, carrying laurel boughs and sacrificing oxen; for the honouring of parents is written third in the statutes of Justice the highly-honoured. Included in this community are the gods (705-6), citizens (698), Dikē (709), parents/family (707), also, explicitly, women (644), and, now, the Danaids themselves, both via their own actions, that is, through their utilization of honor-language and their perceptive modelling of Greek custom – they perhaps remind both internal and external audience of the latter through their evocation of the laurel-boughs here, recalling, I think, their own suppliant-branches (remarked upon by Pelasgus at 241, 354, 506) – and by virtue of the Argives’ acceptance of their continued presence in the polis (605-24). 334 Timê and the divine The inclusion of the gods generally and Dikē specifically is not surprising in the least and warrants only a brief set of comments. With Zeus as an exception, the presence of the gods is not strongly felt in this play, at least not in the form of specific and insistent interventions (we might contrast, e.g., Athena and Apollo in the Eumenides). Instead, the gods occupy the hazier space of the “divine” – beings who are at times benevolent and at times vengeful or merely indifferent, to whom propitiation is expected and quotidian. They are an important force in the world of the play, to be sure, but the Danaids’ and Argives’ main concern with respect to the divine is adherence to divine law and the proper and continued performance of customary rites which here are explicitly expressed as timai (patroiais timais, 705-6), including those customs relating to the play’s central 334 I imagine the Danaids plotting out these points of timê – that is who receives it, who is giving it – charting them almost as if points on a map; in this regard, there is perhaps a parallel between the Danaids tracing the shape and geography of a community here and Pelasgus’s outlining of the boundaries of Argos in 254-9. 149 motif, supplication, and the pollution that can arise in the human world when the suppliant’s appeals are wrongfully denied. In a similar fashion to the model of Athena-Erinyes-Athenians in the Eumenides which I have discussed in Chapter 1, through the process of supplication a kind of circular reciprocity is created, in which timê is given from suppliant to god, god to suppliant, and an external human agent (here, Pelasgus and the Argives) to suppliant and thus to the god(s) to whom the suppliant has appealed. In this equation the human respondent to the suppliant does not necessarily receive timê themselves (although they can), 335 but I would say they do secure and maintain their position within this circular system through their positive treatment of the suppliant, and their participation is not voluntary if they wish to preserve a reciprocal flow of timê with the gods. Douglas Cairns has explored the relationship between supplication and honor in his important study on aidôs, and has proposed a model where the suppliant simultaneously occupies a position of both honor and dishonor, which is perhaps useful for thinking about the Danaids in this model; the dual nature of their relationship to timê vis-à-vis their position as suppliants could be understood as another marker of their ambiguous status. 336 That the Danaids end their song with Dikē megistotimos (“highly-honored”) is not uninteresting, especially as, to my mind, it evokes the heavy presence of dikē in Aeschylus’s Eumenides and recalls the important relationship in that play between timê and dikê. 337 Indeed, the presence of timê in this second stasimon 338 resembles Aeschylus’s heavy use of its vocabulary in Eumenides 778-891, an exchange between the Erinyes and Athena which shows 17 occurrences 335 As William G. Thalmann has noted to me, Athens felt pride in the fact that it always took in suppliants, as in, e.g., Euripides’ Suppliants and Herakleidai, and in their self-evaluative pride may also have understood the incurrence of timê, an area which certainly I could explore further in a monograph. 336 Cairns (1993), esp. 114-19, and 183-93 on the relationship between aidōs and supplication in the Supplices specifically. I wonder if it is significant that the two plays which center supplication, this one and Euripides’ Supplices, do so through representations of women as suppliants. 337 On dike in the Oresteia, see Goldhill (1984); on dikē in Aeschylus, Gagarin (1976), 66-79. For the relationship between dikē and honor, see Cairns (1993), 152-6. 338 Whittle and Johansen identify timê as a “subsidiary motif” of this ode. 150 of timê language (out of 48 in the play); although Supplices clearly is not as fixated on the issue of timê as Eumenides, nevertheless, through its use in this ode Aeschylus marks it as a significant theme in the play. Its significance is further emphasized by the positioning of the ode at a crucial moment in the narrative, coming as it does directly after Danaus’s announcement about the Argives’ decision to allow and defend the presence of the Danaids, and just before the ship of the sons of Aegyptus is spotted on the horizon. There is a parallel between the positioning of this ode and the positioning of the Eumenides episode, which occurs immediately following the acquittal of Orestes, likewise a critical juncture in the narrative, 339 and it seems significant that these meditations on timê occur at points in the plays that represent the tension between inclusion and exclusion in the polis. It is also worth mentioning that the principles established by the Danaids at the end of the second stasimon – that honor must be given to the gods and parents – bears strong resemblance to similar formulations in Eumenides, as noted by previous commentators. 340 Clearly, there is a strong relationship between the Danaid trilogy and the Oresteia, with many shared motifs, although it is difficult to say how strong that relationship is when most of the former has been lost. I wish to consider one further matter pertaining to the gods before turning my attention to the human community of the polis: the representation of Zeus. 341 As elsewhere in the play, Zeus 339 The remainder of Supplices does not, of course, carry with it the same sense of finality and culmination as do the corresponding scenes in Eumenides; this is to be expected considering that the Eumenides is the final play of its trilogy, whereas Supplices is either first or second. 340 Sommerstein ad 707-9, who notes also that this triad of laws is not only Aeschylean but can be found as well in, e.g., Euripides, Lysias, Xenophon; see also Whittle and Johansen ad loc. 341 For the nature of Zeus in the Supplices, see Golden (1962). I find it very interesting that Zeus is referred to so many times and in so many forms in this play. As noted by Whittle and Johansen, “Zeus dominates the play from beginning to end,” (ad 1); his name is the first word of the play and he is named 55 times (and referred to more times than that). The sheer variety of his invocations and descriptors is astounding; he is called aphiktor (1), hikesios (347, 616), hikētor (497, with aideisthai), xenios (627, 672), aidoios (192), ephaptor (313, 535), gennētor (206), patēr (592, 812, 884), anax (592, 616, 1062), sotēr (26), ouranonikos (165), klarios (360), heterorrepēs (403), ktēsios (445), olbios (526), phusizoos (584), hagnos (652), megas (593, 671, 1052), gaiaochus pankratēs (815), as well as the extended 151 is omnipresent in this ode, which is structured by an opposition between Zeus and Ares. 342 Zeus is named 6 times, primarily in his roles as protector of strangers and suppliants. Twice-called Zeus Xenios in this ode (626, 672), he is also the god “who guides destiny aright according to age-old law,” ὃς πολιῷ νόμῳ αἶσαν ὀρθοῖ, (673); it is through their keen consciousness of their own position as suppliants of Zeus that the Danaids understand their acceptance by the Argive people (641-2, 651-3). Interestingly, in the second stasimon the Danaids do not mention their ancestral tie to Zeus (although they do in other places in the play), and when the language of kinship is used it refers to the relationship between Danaids and Argives (genei, 632, homaimous, 651). Instead, the Danaids underline their relationship with Zeus as xenoi themselves and hiketai, which creates an interesting tension with their insistence that they are kin of the people of Argos, their claim since early in the play (15-16) that has now been formalized by decision of the people. The Danaids recognize that their position, while formally approved by vote, remains tenuous. And yet I would say that the overall sense of their song suggests that they are more on the inside than outside. While the Danaids do not emphasize their illustrious lineage in this particular passage, elsewhere in the play they make clear their relationship to Zeus, whose illicit activities with Io led to the birth of Epaphus, great-grandfather of their father Danaus. That the sons of Aegyptus, Danaus’s brother, descend from the same line carries no weight with the women, and for the most part goes unemphasized in this play. The Danaids use knowledge of their family history as descriptions of him at 592-94, 673, and 1048; he is also named in conflation with Hades on more than one occasion (156, 231). Such a breadth of domain is indicative of the omnipotence of Zeus; in addition, I am tempted to see in this play a resonance with a Homeric Zeus who is distributor of timê (where timê carries with it the connotation of privilege/function) as in, e.g., the Homeric Hymn to Hermes (516). So, for example, we find the sense at least of distribution at 402-6, although without explicit use of timê: ἀμφοτέροις ὁμαίμων τάδ᾽ ἐπισκοπεῖ Ζεὺς ἑτερορρεπής, νέμων εἰκότως ἄδικα μὲν κακοῖς, ὅσια δ᾽ ἐννόμοις× τί τῶνδ᾽ ἐξ ἴσου ῥεπομένων μεταλφὲς τὸ δίκαιον ἔρξαι; 342 Whittle and Johansen ad 630-709. 152 evidence that they are Argive by race, although ultimately it seems to be the threat of pollution that impels Pelasgus to take their request to the Argive people. With the Danaids at its center, Aeschylus sketches out a delicate web which interconnects familial descent, relationship with and reverence for the divine, supplication, xenia, and timê; this final element is made explicitly present in their relationship with Zeus with the intimation that Zeus will incur blame if he does not respond favorably to their plea, which they make earlier in the play at the conclusion of their lengthy entrance song. The Danaids identify such an undesirable response specifically as a form of atimia: 343 καὶ τότ᾽ αὖ δικαίοις Ζεὺς ἐνέξεται ψόγοις, τὸν τᾶς βοὸς παῖδ᾽ ἀτιμάσας, τὸν αὐ- τός ποτ᾽ ἔκτισεν γόνῳ, νῦν ἔχων παλίντροπον ὄψιν ἐν λιταῖσιν× ὑψοθεν δ᾽ εὖ κλύοι καλούμενος× And then will not Zeus be liable to merited censure for dishonouring the child of the cow, whom he himself once begot and caused to be, by now turning his face away when we pray to him? May he hear us with favour from on high when we call! (168-75) Note here the movement of the face of Zeus; I have suggested that timê is inherently outward- facing, meant to affirm and reinforce the values that are shared between two or more parties (versus one’s individual value system, which might be in agreement or at odds with community/social/familial values), and with these lines we see that externality imagined in the 343 Sommerstein (2018), ad 170-1 asserts a parallel here between the Danaids’ use of atimasas and the Erinyes in Eumenides, which supports comparisons that I have been drawing between the two groups, and between the Supplices and Eumenides more generally. 153 movement of the face of Zeus. In turning away from their prayers he refuses to validate a relationship with the Danaids, one which is familial but articulated in terms of timê; the Danaids imagine as a result of this action that a kind of negative reciprocity is established: in dishonoring the women by failing to free them from their plight, Zeus, according to the obligations of reciprocity, would not fulfill the terms of their pact and thus would incur reproach. The language of this passage (168-75) seems to bear certain specific similarities to elements of the second stasimon, which I have discussed above, and which I will return to below. I see an echo of atimasas, (171) in the atimosantes of 644: οὐδὲ μετ᾽ ἀρσένων/ ψῆφον ἔθεντ᾽ ἀτιμώσαντες ἔριν γυναικῶν, (643-5), “nor did they cast their vote/ with the males, and so spurn/ the struggle of the women¾.” In the latter instance, we can see that timê is used to indicate the inclusion of the Danaids within a community, specifically, the community of the Argive polis. Thus, it seems reasonable to say that timê has a specifically (although not exclusively) civic connotation, a connotation which is reinforced by the use of psēphon at 644 and 640. On the use of timê-verbs in these lines, Whittle and Johansen suggest in their commentary on both locations that we should not understand the legal connotation atimia, used in Athens to indicate disenfranchisement. 344 However, given the historical context of the play, produced as it was during a time when clearly there is an anxiety over citizenship in Athens (also reflected strongly in the Eumenides in 458 BCE, and addressed in part at least by Pericles’ Citizenship Law of 451/50), and given the context of the ode and the specific technical vocabulary nearby, I think it makes sense to understand an undertone of the civic meaning of the word in these lines, and indeed in the play as a whole. For 644-5, Whittle and Johansen suggest that atimoun merely conveys a sense of 344 ad 171: “nor is association of ἀτιμάσας with the legal meanings of ἄτιμος, ἀτιμία at all likely, since these words, when used in their technical sense, indicate the deprivation of civic rights and not (e.g.) disinheritance.” ad 644: “ἀτιμοῦν […] is in Attic prose the technical term for ‘punish with ἀτιμία’; the act. is attested only here in the non- technical sense. 154 disrespect towards the Danaids’ suit; however, I read atimoun as referring to the deprivation of status that the Danaids would experience had the Argives not approved their petition in addition to any disrespect the Danaids might have felt. The two meanings are not mutually exclusive. Later in the play the Danaids will demand that Zeus turn his face towards them, as they anxiously await the onslaught of Aegyptii: […] ἔπιδε, πάτερ, βίαια μὴ φίλ᾽ εἰσορῶν ὄμμασιν ἐκδίκοις× σεβίζου δ᾽ ἱκέτας σέθεν, γαιάοχε παγκρατὲς Ζεῦ× < > Look on us, Father, viewing violence with unfriendly eyes, as is right: respect your suppliants, almighty Zeus, possessor of the earth! (811-16) The action of looking occurs three times, as underlined above, and again there is an association between face-to-face interaction and honor, which is here articulated as sebas. 345 Gendered timê in the civic space The best defense for the predominant view on honor in the ancient world, which binds honor to masculine valor and demands restraint (especially sexual) from women, can be found near the end of Aeschylus’ Supplices, when Danaus prevails upon his daughters to “Only keep in mind these precepts of your father’s, and value your chastity more than life itself,” μόνον φύλαξαι τάσδ᾽ ἐπιστολὰς πατρός, τὸ σωφρονεῖν τιμῶσα τοῦ βίου πλέον, (1012-13). When considered in conjunction with Pelasgus’ initial reaction to the Egyptian herald (911-15, quoted above) – it is indeed appealing to find in the play a general insistence on the importance of these gendered ideals, 345 As at 707 above; timê and sebas belong to the same semantic range, as discussed in Cairns (1993), 206-14, and in this play are particularly close 155 where men are made for war and women are most suitably shown in a virginal and tenderly blushing state, in need of male saviors. And yet, these moments also highlight the problems inherent in this attitude. In particular, as other scholars have noted, Danaus’ desire for his daughters to remain in their virginal (read: unmarried) state, a desire expressed clearly in terms of timê, “honor,” and self-control, sophrosyne, would not necessarily have been palatable for an Athenian audience, for whom, it has been argued, the telos of feminine life could be found in marriage and the production of (Athenian) children. 346 So it is possible to see how the relationship between timê and chastity, idealized in the modern scholarship, is problematic even in these early texts that seem to support such a notion. Throughout the Supplices gender is presented in binary terms, and Aeschylus often seems to assert a dichotomous gendered dynamic, as in, for example, the second stasimon at antistrophe A: 347 οὐδὲ μετ᾽ ἀρσένων ψῆφον ἔθεντ᾽ ἀτιμώ- σαντες ἔριν γυναικῶν Δῖον ἐπιδόμενοι πράκτορ’ ἐπίσκοπον δυσπολέμητον, ὃν τίς ἂν δόμος ἔχων ἐπ’ ὀρόφων ἰαίνοιτο; βαρὺς δ’ ἐφίζει. ἅζονται γὰρ ὁμαίμους Ζηνὸς ἵκτορας ἁγνοῦ· τοιγάρ τοι καθαροῖσι βω- μοῖς θεοὺς ἀρέσονται. nor did they cast their vote with the males, and so spurn the struggle of the women they heeded Zeus’s avenger, ever on the watch, hard to combat; what house would be pleased to have him on its roof? where he perches, he brings grievous doom for they revere their kinsfolk 346 As asserted by Vernant (1980), 24 and followed and complicated by Zeitlin (1990, 1992). See also the alternative telos for women (the performance of ritual, especially funerary) that I propose in Chapter 2. 347 On the gendered dynamics of the play, see Zeitlin (1990) and (1992), reprinted in Zeitlin (1996), 123-71. 156 who were suppliants of holy Zeus; therefore they will be propiating the gods at pure altars. (643-55) At 643-5 male and female are depicted as opposing sides; here as elsewhere, this conflict is articulately explicitly with timê – if the Argives had sided with the males, they would have dishonored the women. As I have noted already above, oude […] atimosantes seems to respond to the atimasas spoken by the Danaids at 170. The latter passage (168-75, above) implies the question will Zeus dishonor us; the action of the Argives proves that he won’t. This connection is strengthened by the mention of the avenger of Zeus at 646, 348 and by repeated emphasis on the position of the Danaids as suppliants of Zeus (641, 652). Clearly the men identified in 644 are the sons of Aegyptus, although elsewhere the play offers a more generalized sense of a gendered power imbalance. This imbalance is made particularly evident in the response of Pelasgus when faced with the Egyptian herald: οὗτος τί ποιεῖς; ἐκ ποίου φρονήματος ἀνδρῶν Πελασγῶν τήνδ᾽ ἀτιμάζεις χθόνα; ἀλλ᾽ ἦ γυναικῶν ἐς πόλιν δοκεῖς μολεῖν; κάρβανος ὢν Ἕλλησιν ἐγχλίεις αγαν καὶ πόλλ᾽ ἁμαρτὼν οὐδὲν ὤρθωσας φρένα. Here, you, what are you doing? What’s your idea in insulting this land of Pelasgian men? Do you really think you’ve come to a city of women? For a barbarian you are showing an unduly arrogant attitude towards Greeks; you have made a great mistake, and your mind has gone far astray. (911-15) 349 This passage plainly both reflects an attitude that enmeshes men and masculinity with the specific type of valor found in martial conflict, and identifies women as the weaker sex, which aligns with the Danaids’ statement that “a woman on her own is nothing: there is no fight [(Ares)] in her,” 348 Episkopon, at 646, is noteworthy in light of our discussion of the “face-to-face” aspect of timê. 349 For a detailed analysis of the textual questions of this passage see the commentary of Whittle and Johansen ad loc. 157 γυνὴ μονωθεῖσ’ οὐδέν· οὐκ ἔνεστ’ Ἄρης, (749). 350 Such ideas resonate throughout the play, and yet they carry with them a certain level of irony when we remember the action the Danaids will take against their husbands. Aeschylus complicates relentlessly the performance of gender; indeed, I find gender representation in this play infinitely more complex than in, say, the Eumenides. What seems clear is that we cannot accept at face value such tropes as masculine strength and female modesty, and when Aeschylus uses the language of timê at moments such as in the passage above, where on the surface the dishonor extended by the sons of Aegyptus is framed within a gender binary, a careful reader might understand that such language is working on multiple levels. In addition to the gendered aspect of these lines, atimazeis draws a line between “us” and “them” along racial or ethnic lines, which is emphasized by the juxtaposition of karbanos and Hellēsin at 914. 351 Here, Aeschylus deploys gender as a metaphor for division; elsewhere, men and women are integrated into the same space (at times, physically, e.g., when Pelasgus offers the Danaids residence within the walls of Argos, 955-63). Here, timê operates in a fashion that accords with what I have been arguing, which is to say that it articulates the boundaries of a community. As I have suggested at the start of this section, the primary sense of timê in the second stasimon seems to be one of civic inclusion (where an individual has an accepted status within a community and the right to participate in that community; Josine Blok has argued that belonging and participation are *the* two crucial elements of Athenian citizenship) 352 ; additionally, I have argued that the position of this ode in the play encourages a reading where notions of community are of paramount concern. Aeschylus uses timê in this (civic) sense at other moments in the 350 See Whittle and Johansen ad 913 for examples from other plays where an affront to one’s manhood is conflated with an attack on the polis. 351 karbanos is also used by Clytemnestra of Cassandra at Ag. 1061. Karbanos is a fairly rare term; the LSJ offers as its equivalent barbaros, and its etymology is unclear. 352 Blok (2017). 158 Supplices as well. One place where we find this clearly is in the case of the dilemma that Pelasgus articulates at 397-401: οὐκ εὔκριτον τὸ κρῖμα× μή μ᾽ αἱροῦ κριτήν. εἶπον δὲ καὶ πρίν, οὐκ ἄνευ δήμου τάδε πράξαιμ᾽ ἄν, οὐδέ περ κράτων, μὴ καί ποτε εἴπῃ λεώς, εἴ πού τι μὴ τοῖον τύχοι, “ἐπήλυδας τιμῶν ἀπώλεσας πόλιν.” The judgement is not easy to judge: don’t choose me to judge it. I have already said I am not prepared to do this without the people’s approval, even though I have the power, lest if something not too good should happen the people may end by saying “By giving privileges to foreigners you destroyed our city”. We might read these lines alongside a similar dilemma articulated by Pelasgus earlier in this passage, which also positions the choice Pelasgus must make as one of timê: ἄγος μὲν εἴη τοῖς ἐμοῖς παλιγκότοις, ὑμῖν δ᾽ ἀρήγειν οὐκ ἔχω βλάβης ἄτερ× οὐδ᾽ αὖ τόδ᾽ εὖφρον, τάσδ᾽ ἀτιμάσαι λιτάς. ἀμηχανῶ δὲ καὶ φόβος μ᾽ ἔχει φρένας δρᾶσαί τε μὴ δρᾶσαι τε καὶ τύχην ἑλεῖν. As for pollution, may it befall my enemies! But I cannot aid you without causing harm; yet it is also not wise to disregard these prayers. I am at a loss ¾ fear grips my mind ¾ whether to act, or not to act and to take my chances. (376-80) In these two passages we find that giving atimia is to exclude and risk pollution, while bestowing timê is to include and risk the wrath of the people and any attendant danger that comes with allowing in the Danaids (here, posed in the form of conflict with the sons of Aegyptus). This suggests that the practice and process of timê as a means/factor of group formation is one of mediation, where advantages and disadvantages to expanding the boundaries of a community are always being weighed in balance. Ultimately the Argives opt to extend asylum to the Danaids and thus to include them – to an extent – in their community. In examining the words of Danaus at 605-24, in which the Argives’ 159 decision is announced, there seem to me to be two main points to make, which are related to exactly these issues of “inclusion” and “extent.” How are the Danaids to be allowed to stay in Argos, i.e., in what manner will they be treated? Well, according to Danaus they will be allowed to live in Argos as free persons and no one will be able to assault them, (609-11). 353 Additionally, they can expect that if they are assaulted, they will receive protection from the Argives, and any Argives who fail to offer that protection will themselves be expelled from the group, (611-14). 354 Here, without a doubt, Aeschylus uses timê in its technical sense. 355 To my mind, timê draws a line (even if one that is shaky and shifting) between those who are within the group and those who are without, and it creates a reciprocal relationship between those who are in. It seems an obvious point to make, but Aeschylus’ Supplices offers an example (even if only a representation) where women are “in” and engaged (to some extent) in that reciprocity. Because the women exist in a system of reciprocity (as – perhaps? – participants), failure to protect their rights would result in a loss of citizen status for others in the community. 356 What I am suggesting looks very similar to the prevailing view on honor, where action against women (usually in a sexual sense, which, it must be acknowledged, is exactly what the Danaids protest) leads to dishonor (here, expressed as atimon) for men. But that is only part of the significance of timê here. The rights of the Danaids are more broad than simple protection from unwanted sexual advances (unwanted is also key here, as often in honor paradigms it is women 353 ἡμᾶς μετοικεῖν τῆσδε γῆς ἐλευθέρους κἀρρυσιάστου ξύν τ᾽ ἀσυλίαι βροτῶν, καὶ μήτ᾽ ἐνοίκων μητ᾽ ἐπηλύδων τινὰ ἄγειν× 354 ἐὰν δὲ προστιθῇ τὸ καρτερόν, τὸν μὴ βοηθήσαντα τῶνδε γαμόρων ἄτιμον εἶναι ξὺν φυγῇ δημηλάτῳ. 355 Whittle and Johansen ad loc., where they also note that it is more typical in Attic tragedy to see timê/atimia used in the more general sense of “honor” (rather than as a legal term). However, again, I would argue that it is more productive to allow the multivalence of the term. 356 I use the term “rights” in this section, although I am wary of its anachronistic nature. 160 who want it who experience shame and dishonor), as they also receive assurances that they can reside in Argos, and can expect not to be enslaved. The Danaids show how fine a line there is between protection and control. 357 Do the women themselves have timê? I don’t know. 358 This is a question within which I am living. They do engage in the performance of ritual (itself understood to be a way to perform timê), which is validated by the positive response of the Argives and, presumably, the gods. They hold the position of suppliants, which, as Douglas Cairns has noted, inhabits the space of honor/dishonor simultaneously. They demand not to be dishonored (does fulfilment of the demand result in honor for them?), they demand sebas, and aidōs (as we have seen above), both of which exist in network with timê, they gain a certain level of status within the Argive community. They are able to speak the language of honor and seem to understand the power of those systems that encompass its use. 359 The use of metoikia I noted above that we should also consider to what extent the Danaids are included in the Argive community. Danaus notes explicitly that they will be allowed to reside, metoikein (609), in Argos. The language here is important, as Aeschylus almost certainly alludes to the institution of metoikia 357 Control, that is, exerted by those who have offered to protect. It is by now a commonplace, I think, that the control of women is often articulated as being necessary for their own protection. 358 As a counter to my uncertainty, William Thalmann has commented, in his response to this chapter that: “Even on the usual view, they do. The dichotomy isn’t, as you say, between masculine honor and female chastity, but on the ways men and women gain and preserve honor (and women do so through chastity). If that view is incomplete, isn’t your argument that women can gain honor in public ways as well, and actively rather than passively? Chastity would still be involved, but in ways that go beyond being centered on the family. Would the Danaids be an example of this?” 359 Interestingly, as the Danaids call on Zeus and speak their suffering in the play’s parodos, they make the following claim: ζῶσα γόοις με τιμῶ, “I honor myself with dirges while still Ι live,” (116). I am not entirely sure what to make of this line – what does it mean to honor oneself with dirges while alive? – but I think it is perhaps another demonstration of the Danaids deep understanding of the nuances of timê. 161 in Athens. This merits consideration, especially given the presence of metoikia in Eumenides as well, which I have discussed in the first chapter of this project. Geoffrey Bakewell has argued recently that we should read the Danaids as metoikoi; in addition, books by Rebecca Futo Kennedy and Sara Wijma have examined the figure of the metic and attempted to fill in some of the blanks of their lives in Athens. 360 Particularly relevant to my interests is Wijma’s study, which argues for an expanded understanding of the position of metics through participation in certain religious rituals and festivals, in which she argues they play a critical role. In this way she follows Josine Blok, who argues in her book on Athenian citizenship for the importance of religious participation in citizen identity, which has far-reaching implications for our understanding of the role of women in Athens. 361 And Rebecca Futo Kennedy’s careful tracing of the lives of metic women, while performed with a light touch, provides a compelling argument for reimagining the reality of women’s lives, on which scholarship has long insisted a relentlessly narrow view. 362 In the second chapter of her book she examines Aeschylus’ Supplices and Eumenides, suggesting that both show an anxiety over the presence of foreign women in Athens, which she argues is solved in Aeschylean drama, which was produced and performed before the passing of Pericles’ Citizenship Law, by the incorporation of the women into the polis through the institution of marriage. 363 360 Bakewell (2013), Kennedy (2014), Wijma (2014); for the still-definitive work on metoikia in Athens, see Whitehead (1977), and, in political theory, recently Kasimis (2018). 361 Blok (2017), published after Wijma’s study; we might note though that Josine Blok was Sara Wijma’s doctoral thesis advisor. 362 Kennedy (2014); see esp. Chapter Three on the meaning and inflection of hetaira, and Chapter Five on female occupation. 363 In contrast, Kennedy uses Euripides’ Hippolytus as evidence for the fact that such integration was less palatable in a post-PCL atmosphere. 162 I would agree that both plays exist as part of a conversation about immigration, 364 and, more broadly, community makeup and identity. Cynthia Patterson has shown that there was a dramatic increase in population in Athens at the beginning of the fifth century, 365 and certainly Aeschylus seems to respond to such a phenomenon through his explorations into the nature of group dynamics, as well as his constant ruminations on who counts in a community and how best to function within one (although these concerns must also be due to the Greco-Persian wars which took place at the start of the century). 366 Although Supplices cannot be specifically dated with any accuracy, it is pretty well agreed that its production must have taken place between 470 and 459, and the Oresteia trilogy was produced in 458. In any case, both the Danaid tetralogy and the Oresteia were composed in the atmosphere leading up to the passing of Pericles’ Citizenship Law of 451/450; additionally, it must be noted that scholars have yet to date securely the formal institutionalization of metoikia in Athens. 367 That it existed at the beginning of the fifth century is certain, but it is difficult to say with certainty what exactly it meant to be a metic living in Athens at the time of Aeschylus’s writing. 368 With this uncertainty in mind, I wonder how to read the language of metoikia in these plays, especially with regard to questions of community identity and the boundaries of a group, which are perhaps more indistinct and porous than may be appealing to a 21 st century audience, used as we are to strong conceptions of borders (geographic as well as 364 I recognize the issues with issuing such a modern term as “immigration” here but, for the purposes of this conversation, I think it will do. It is a common enough translation for metoikia; see, e.g., Kennedy (2014), Watson (2010). 365 Patterson (1986). 366 The matter is of course made more difficult by the fact that Aeschylus is our only literary evidence composed within this period in Athens. 367 Bakewell (2013). 368 Kennedy (2014) argues that PCL provided a critical juncture for the status of metic women; on metoikos as formal status following PCL, see Watson (2010). 163 intellectual, this has only increased in the wake of the Covid-19 pandemic), 369 and our own culture’s at best, wary acceptance, and at worst, staunch hostility to bodies that are foreign, or worse, foreign and undocumented. 370 I suppose, to some extent, the uncertainty of metoikia in Athens, especially at the time when these plays were produced, allows for multiple readings, and furthermore, interpretation that leans towards the imaginative. More recently, Demetra Kasimis has theorized the figure of the metoikos as one which is symbolically generative and not only, in the author’s words, “simply [empirical].” 371 Although my project is literary and Kasimis’ is one of political theory, I am interested in a similar approach, and think there are several points of contact between Kasimis’ work and my own. I would suggest that, through the metaphor of metoikia, Aeschylus qualifies the inclusion of women in the polis, allowing the validity of their presence and participation but only to a certain extent. I see another point of contact between our projects as well. Kasimis (2018), 7 suggests that “When Athenian texts draw on metic characters, spaces, and activities, they are exploring the meanings and effects of these strategies of inclusion and exclusion.” In my view timê in Aeschylus is precisely such a demarcating strategy, in all the ways I have been trying to show. 372 Conclusion In conclusion, in this chapter I have turned my attention towards another play by Aeschylus that, like the Eumenides, seems to meditate strongly on questions of civic identity and inclusion, which, 369 Geographic borders: natural borders as established by, e.g., bodies of water – currently living as I am in New Zealand I am acutely away of their uncrossable nature, imagined but no less strongly-imposed borders of state, imagined borders made literal, as was the desire of Donald Trump with his “wall”; intellectual borders: genre, discipline, identity. 370 Here I speak from my position as a United States citizen, an “American,” and a mixed-race (Brown) woman. 371 Kasimis (2018), 4; she notes that metoikia is typically addressed in its status as an object of historical inquiry. 372 While Kasimis does not explicitly focus on gender as a category of analysis, she does use gender theory to read the metic as a porous and complex identity, one which is discursively and culturally produced; I am proposing, I think, to do the opposite. 164 for Aeschylus, is often articulated by means of timê. In the next chapter, in which the Supplices is, again, my focus, I will turn, explicitly, to the question of “honor,” suggesting that there is a mode of reading Aeschylus’s representation of the Danaids that allows the modern reader to resist still- insistent discourses on honor, shame, and the body. By reading the Danaids through the lens of Audre Lorde’s “erotic,” 373 I hope to recuperate for the Danaids an intuitive erotic curiosity which refuses the boundaries of contemporary 19 th and 20 th century conceptions of honor. 373 In “Uses of the Erotic: The Erotic as Power,” Lorde (2007), originally published in 1984. 165 CHAPTER 5: DESIRING DANAIDS The Danaids and Audre Lorde’s erotic In this final chapter of the dissertation, I return to the Danaids, and turn towards the eroticism that I see threaded through the Supplices. Scholars remain divided over Aeschylus’ portrayal of the daughters and their position vis-à-vis marriage. Are they opposed to marriage with the sons of Aegyptus or marriage in general? Do they detest men categorically and spurn the pleasures of Aphrodite? There are some who see in the Danaids a complete rejection of men and sexual relationships with men, while for others there is a grey area to be found in the actions and motivations of the young women. 374 I myself side with those who see in the Danaids a certain level of erotic energy. For Geoffrey Bakewell, the sexualization of the suppliants is anchored to their status as foreigners; he argues that thus they demonstrate the danger of marrying loose foreign women. 375 Froma Zeitlin suggests that their eroticism in the Supplices reflects a desire for Zeus specifically, 376 while Giulia Sissa sees in representations of the Danaids desire incarnate, observing they are always in a state of want. 377 To these interpretations I add my own, which is that the Danaids display an erotic curiosity suited to their status as adolescent girls, of marriageable age and yet perhaps not quite cognizant of all that relationship entails. 378 This kind of intuitive sensuality and a naturally curious attitude towards sex would undoubtedly have been deeply 374 For the former view, see, e.g., Sommerstein (2010), 102: “there is also ample evidence of a general detestation of men, sex, and marriage.” 375 Bakewell (2013). 376 Zeitlin (1992). 377 Sissa (1990), 152: “What these damned souls dramatize is far more serious: the anguish of desire, initially desire for food but ultimately desire in general”; for a psychoanalytic approach to the Supplices that positions the Danaids in an oedipal relationship to Danaus, see Caldwell (1974), an interpretation which I would put in tension with my own, in that, while I do see the Danaids as erotic, I don’t read the same oedipal undertones that Caldwell does, but this is likely largely in part due to my own disinterest in psychonalysis as a hermeneutic tool. 378 e.g., I would argue that whether they understand the mechanics of penetrative sex is unclear. Certainly there is an innocence to their understanding of marriage, as evidenced by their exchange with Pelasgus on their reasons for rejecting the Aegyptioi, discussed below. On adolescent female sexuality see Bay-Cheng (2011), Lamb and Peterson (2011). I am still parsing through recent work on adolescent sexuality in the fields of, e.g., sociology, social work, and psychology, but I think it could add an interesting element to this project in the future. 166 troubling to an Athenian male audience, and, although I am not at present particularly invested in examining these male anxieties, I am nevertheless convinced that they are an integral part of the conversation in which Aeschylus participates. 379 Rather than centering the masculine perspective by exploring male anxieties (even if such anxieties do tell us, as Amy Richlin has commented, about “what women had to put up with”), 380 I prefer in this section to focus on the Danaids themselves, and my own less-traditional interpretation of their representation. 381 Such an interpretation moves away from my focus on the semantic range of timê and instead faces head-on the scholarly tradition on honor, which, as I have discussed in the Introduction, is one of my primary objectives. 382 In allowing the Danaids the erotic curiosity for which I argue, I endeavor to create a space of pleasure where typically we might find only shame. 383 In doing this work, I embrace the feminist principles laid out by Audre Lorde in her essay “Uses of the Erotic: the Erotic as Power,” in which she considers the ways that the erotic 379 Indeed, he creates a certain amount of tension around the institution of marriage and the relationship of women to their natal vs nuclear families; the stance of Danaus with respect to the chastity of his daughters is one example of the anxiety I discuss above taken to an extreme, and to the detriment of the community. For women as source and mirror of male anxiety in Attic tragedy, Rabinowitz (1993), (who attempts to find a “third position” between passivity and agency”), Lyons (2012). In this regard, as I have noted already in Chapter 4, there is a more extensive conversation to be had about marriage in this play and in the Danaid trilogy as a whole, the tension that Aeschylus reflects and what that means for an understanding of female sexuality in the ancient world. I am not prepared at this point to engage in such a conversation, which is indeed important and relevant, although in future iterations of this project I would very much like to do so. For a literary reading of marriage in this play, see, e.g., Zeitlin (1990) and (1992). 380 Richlin (1990), 181. 381 In the same way as I am not invested in male anxiety, I am also not invested here in exploring or commenting on the problematics of the “sexualization” of the Danaids. There is a critical difference between sexualization and sexuality, and I would say that scholarly focus tends towards the former. To be clear, I am not arguing that the Danaids are not “sexualized,” either in Aeschylus or in the scholarly tradition (they are). But it is not my work here to contribute to, extend, or even interrogate that particular conversation. For sexualization of the Danaids see, e.g., Bakewell (2013), with bibliography. I feel certain that there is some scholarly literature on the related and important issue of consent in the Supplices, but at time of writing I am unable to locate definitive examples of such. If such scholarship is still lacking, it would be an excellent area for further exploration. 382 Seee also the introduction for my efforts to untangle Gk. timê from a modern conception of honor; while the two are often used interchangeably (and at times I slip into this mode myself) they are not strictly equivalent. 383 Carson (2009), 80, on aidõs (relevant to any discussion on timê), has written, with insight, “Whenever passion seems within reach, aidōs falls like a veil between them. This aidōs is the archaic ethic of ‘shamefastness’ reinterpreted now in the narrow sense of chastity.” 167 has been used against and denied to women and argues that embodying the erotic as a practice can be performed in all areas of life (relationships, work, daily ritual, etc…) in order to create empowerment, fullness, and community. 384 She says: We have been taught to suspect this resource, vilified, abused, and devalued within western society. On the one hand, the superficially erotic has been encouraged as a sign of female inferiority; on the other hand, women have been made to suffer and to feel both contemptible and suspect by virtue of its existence. 385 […] The erotic is a measure between the beginnings of our sense of self and the chaos of our strongest feelings. 386 It is an internal sense of satisfaction to which, once we have experienced it, we know we can aspire. For having experienced the fullness of this depth of feeling and recognizing its power, in honor and self-respect we can require no less of ourselves. 387 “The beginnings of our sense of self and the chaos of our strongest feelings”: in particular, to my mind, these words resonate deeply with the characterization of the Danaids in the Supplices, whose youthfulness is emphasized in the text and whose emotions and intentions vacillate wildly throughout the play. 388 In Aeschylus’s Supplices we see young women who are on the edge of maturation (on which side, it seems impossible to say), who are just starting to feel out their desires and their understanding of their own position in the world. This sense of curiosity is especially strong in the ode that begins at 524, in which the Danaids sing the song of Zeus and Io (introduced at 40-56, a passage which bears examination, as well); additionally, there are other specific 384 Lorde (2007 [1984]). You can also find a recording of Audre Lorde reading the paper herself at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aWmq9gw4Rq0&t=0s (accessed on June 14, 2021). For pleasure as activism see most recently Brown (2019). 385 Lorde (2007): 53. 386 Elsewhere in this essay, Lorde notes that the erotic, eros, is born from Chaos. For her then the erotic “personif[ies] creative power and harmony” (among other things). While this is a misunderstanding on Lorde’s part of the meaning and nature of Chaos in, e.g., Hesiod, it is nevertheless a powerful suggestion. 387 Lorde (2007): 54. 388 On their youthfulness see, e.g., Danaus at 996-9; other scholars have also remarked on the Danaids’ erratic nature as a mark of their adolescence. 168 moments throughout the play that reveal a certain romantic attitude on the part of the Danaids in the way they describe Zeus and conceptualize their relationship. There is an undeniable emphasis on touch born throughout the play, appearing repeatedly in the prologue, again in the initial exchange of the Danaids with Pelasgus, and with an especially strong presence in the choral ode beginning at 524; throughout the play, the touch that I describe seems to my mind explicitly erotic and procreative. 389 When the Danaids first describe their plight on stage and their reasons for fleeing to Argos, they claim that it is “from whence originates our race, which claims to derive from the touch and breath of Zeus on the gadfly-driven heifer,” ὅθεν δὴ/ γένος ἡμέτερον τῆς οἰστροδόνου/ βοὸς ἐξ ἐπαφῆς κἀξ ἐπιπνοίας/ Διὸς εὐχόμενον τετέλεσται, (15-18). Again, at 40-7, the daughters use similar language while revealing more of the tale: νῦν δ᾽ ἐπικεκλομένα Δῖον πόρτιν, ὑπερπόντιον τιμάορ᾽ , ἶνίν γ᾽ ἀνθονομούσας προγόνου βοὸς ἐξ ἐπιπνοίας Ζηνός× ἔφαψιν ἐπωνυμίαν δ᾽ ἐπεκραίνετο μόρσιμος αἰὼν εὐλόχως, Ἔπαφον δ᾽ ἐγέννασεν× Now let me invoke the calf of Zeus, the vindicator from beyond the sea, the child of our ancestress the flower-browsing cow, conceived by a breath 389 Ellis (2021) examines the motif of touch in this play within the framework of trauma and memory. I find his reading very interesting, but, while I do not see my work on the Supplices as attempting to negate his arguments, nor do I see it in close conversation with them. I would like to engage in a more careful and extended consideration of the role of touch in this play, specifically within the framework of affect theory and the haptic, perhaps at the stage of revision or in a separate piece, but this is not an area with which I am intimately familiar, so I will need to spend some time on it. I have noticed that there is also some sort of sensory relationship between the eyes, lips/mouth, and hand in this play, all three of which we might consider to be instruments of touch. For the eyes as instruments of touch we might think, as an example, of the moment of anakalupteria at a wedding ceremony, when the eyes of the betrothed first meet and this meeting is conceptualized as a kind of penetration. A visual representation might be the vase by Exekias which depicts Achilles slaying Penthesilea (held at the British Museum, no. 1836,0224.127); here, again, we see the eyes “touching” as a kind of penetration, mirrored by the spear that Achilles holds, which pierces the body of Penthesilea. Regarding the mouth, it has been suggested by Luce Irigaray as the organ of touch for women, and she has as well meditated at length on the labia, which are lips of a sort. The mouth/lips appear repeatedly in the second stasimon, referring each time to the Danaids’ own mouths; I find particularly evocative the verbal cheousas, 632, which the Danaids use to describe their act of prayer. On touch in the ancient world see, most recently, the volume edited by Purves (2018). 169 the fruit of Zeus’ touch ¾and the destined time appropriately fulfilled the name derived from that touch, and she gave birth to Epaphus; (40-7) The language in this second passage is more erotically charged; whereas at 17 the Danaids only allude to the relationship between Zeus and Io, here they make more explicit its sexual nature as they understand it, by showing that the act between Zeus and Io results in the birth of a child. 390 Touch appears three times in this short passage, first as the breath, secondly as the touch of a hand (? – although this is not made explicit), and thirdly in the name of their ancestor Epaphus. This quick repetition insists on the importance of touch as a motif in the play. In addition, the setting here is distinctly romantic – Io, yet unnamed, is depicted as “grazing in the flowers,” anthonomousas, 43, a descriptor to which the following strophe immediately responds and echoes with poionomois… topois, “grazing grounds,” 50-1. Together, these details are evocative of a locus amoenus, calling to mind perhaps, for example, the plain from which Persephone is abducted as she was ἄνθεα […] αἰνυμένην, “plucking flowers” (Hymn to Demeter, 6). The Danaids illustrate a similar scene at 538-40: παλαιὸν δ᾽ εἰς ἴχνος μετέσταν, ματέρος ἀνθονόμους ἐπωπάς, λειμῶνα βουχιλον […] I have come and halted on the old tracks, the place where my mother was watched as she browsed on the flowers, the cattle-pasture meadow, from whence Io […] These lines repeat the anthonomousas of 43 with anthonomous at 539, and boukhilon at 540 seems to respond to boos at 45. In addition, the Danaids name the place as a leimôn (whereas earlier they 390 There seems to be a connection for the Danaids between sex and procreation, although it is not clear to me how much the Danaids are meant to understand what sex is. There are parallels, literary and otherwise, where young women (and boys), while having a rudimentary understanding of what sex is and what it leads to (children), might not fully understand the mechanics of penetrative sex. Furthermore, knowledge of and experience in sex is not synonymous with sexual longing – children might naturally and intuitively display the latter far before they comprehend the physical act of sex and the cultural systems in which it is constructed. Indeed, Dean-Jones (1992), 60 has argued that “women have a physiological appetite for intercourse before they even know what it is.” 170 had identified it more generally with topos, 51), which again could recall the Hymn to Demeter. 391 It is clear that lines 538-40 resonate with 40-7; although these passages refer, in fact, to settings located in different geographical locations (44-7 illustrates the conception of Epaphus, which takes place in Egypt; 538-40 shows the guarding of Io by Argus, which takes place in the eponymous polis), the Danaids portray a near-identical scene in both, collapsing the distance between Io’s pleasure and their retelling. It is also worth noting that the Danaids are physically located in a grove, alsos, (508 and 509, by both Pelasgus and the Danaids), and that this is the same term that is used for the place whither Io arrives following her flight from Argos, 392 the same place where Zeus eased her suffering and where Io released her shame, δακρύων δ᾽ ἀπο-/στάζει πένθιμον αἰδῶ, 578-9, and received the weight of Zeus, λαβοῦσα δ᾽ ἕρμα Δῖον, 580. The Danaids’ bodies are positioned in the place, and perhaps, in place, of their ancestor Io. 393 The passage quoted above, 538-40, belongs to the Danaids’ extended invocation of Zeus, at 524-99, during which ode the motif of touch is explicit, erotic, and, as I am arguing, demonstrative of an erotic curiosity on the part of the young women. Zeus is named as ephaptor Ious, “toucher of Io,” 535 (reminiscent of Zēnos ephapsin at 45, for Epaphus), and the Danaids also describe in detail the care of Zeus for Io at 574-81, where the touch is rendered as breath (epipnoia, 577). The passage is worth looking at in full: < δι’ > αἰῶνος κρέων ἀπαύστου < > βίαi δ’ ἀπημάντoσθένει καὶ θείαις ἐπιπνοίαις παύεται, δακρύων δ’ ἀπο- στάζει πένθιμον αἰδῶ· 391 Persephone is in “a lovely meadow,” καλὰ λειμών, Hymn to Demeter 6-7. 392 556-9: ἱκνεῖται δ’ †εἰσιχνουμένου† βέλει βουκόλου πτερόεντος Δῖον πάμβοτον ἄλσος, λειμῶνα χιονόβοσκον 393 methistêmi (538) can have the sense of substitution or exchange. 171 λαβοῦσα δ’ ἕρμα Δῖον ἀψευδεῖ λόγωι γείνατο παῖδ’ ἀμεμφῆ 394 It was he who rules for his eternal lifetime, <Zeus, who restrained her with his hand>. By the force of his painless strength and by his divine breath she was stopped, and in tears she wept away the grief of her shame. And, receiving what can truly be called a Zeus-given burden, she bore a perfect child. The divine breath of Zeus, theiais epipnoiais, recalls the conception of Epaphus which is ex epipnoias, “from a breath,” 44. Although editors have posited a lacuna at line 575, there has been a desire to see that space filled with a reference to a hand; so, for example, Canter proposed Ζεύς νιν χειρὶ κατέσχεν, “Zeus restrained her with his hand,” although, as Whittle and Johansen have noted, the mention of the hand or touch in some other form is only a possibility. 395 In addition, at the end of the ode the Danaids invoke Zeus as the one who “with his own hand, was my engenderer,” phutourgos autokheir, 595; although the Danaids speak of Zeus using the language of genealogy, given the emphasis on touch in this passage and elsewhere it is nevertheless appealing to read this line with an erotic connotation (and again there is, I note, the image of the hand, kheir). 396 There is also a heavy emphasis on fertility and abundance in this passage: Zeus is identified as olbios, rich, (526), the land of the Pamphylians is described with “ever-flowing rivers” and “deep rich soil,” (553, 554), the land of Aphrodite is wheat-abundant (555), and the plain of Zeus is rich in pasture, (558). The entire ode is redolent with the language of desire, fulfillment, fecundity. 394 There is a problem with the text here; a verse is missing at 575, where it seems very likely that Zeus was named. I have used the text of Sommerstein (2018). 395 Whittle and Johansen ad 576. 396 Cf. Archilochus’s Cologne episode, where we find χερσὶν ἠπίως ἐφηψάμην, where there is a similar erotics at play, albeit from a masculine perspective. 172 Moreover, thelgo, found at 571 where it suggests, on the surface level, soothing or healing, also has an erotic undercurrent; so, for example, both Circe and the Sirens are said to thelgein their victims, 397 and the Chorus claims in Euripides’ Hippolytus that “winged Eros with his golden gleam enchants the one whose maddened mind he assaults,” θέλγει δ᾽ Ἔρως ᾧ μαινομέναι κραδίαι / πτανὸς ἐφορμάσηι χρυσοφαής, (Eur. Hipp. 1274-5). 398 We might note that in this final example there is a link between enchantment, thelgô, and assault, ephormazô; there is something similar occurring in the Supplices lines as well, albeit with a less violent resonance: Io is stopped, pauetai, not only by the breath of Zeus but also by “the force of his painless strength,” biai d’ apēmantôsthenei. 399 There is a parallel here with a statement made later in the play, when, in their final appeal to Zeus, the Danaids identify him as the one who “made force kindly,” eumenē bian ktisas, 1067. In addition to the element of force, there is a certain emphasis on the gentleness of Zeus’s procreative touch which is intriguing; combined they might indicate a latent fear of sex on the part of the Danaids which is not necessarily mutually exclusive of the curiosity and desire I have been exploring. In this regard, I have also wondered if such a fear is reflected in the Danaids’ depiction of Io’s flight, which seems to have an erotic intonation: ἱκνεῖται δ’ εἰσικνουμένου βέλει 400 βουκόλου πτερόεντος Δῖον πάμβοτον ἄλσος, λειμῶνα χιονόβοσκον ὅντ’ ἐπέρχεται Τυφῶ μένος ὕδωρ τε Νείλου νόσοις ἄθικτον, μαινομένα πόνοις ἀτί- 397 For Circe, Od. 10.291, for the Sirens, ibid. 12.40. 398 Additionally, thelgo on occasion is explicitly accompanied by himeros or eros, as at [Aesch.] Pr. 865 and Soph. Tr. 355. 399 Noting, again, the problems of the text, on which see above. 400 Page gives 556 as ἱκνεῖται δ’ †εἰσιχνουμένου† βέλει, the reading of two later (14 th cent.) MSS, Parisinus gr. 2785 and 2787. Sommerstein accepts the text of our main source for the plays of Aeschylus, the tenth-century Mediceus that is now in the Laurentian library in Florence, which has εἰσικνουμένου rather than εἰσιχνουμένου; on the former, Whittle and Johansen have commented that the repetition it provides when combined with ἱκνεῖται is “pointless […] and stylistically offensive,” however, like Sommerstein, given its presence in the Mediceus Laurentianus I am willing to accept it. Additionally, εἰσικνουμένου supports my interpretation if this passage, discussed above. 173 μοις ὀδύναις τε κεντροδα- λήτισι θυιὰς Ἥρας· And she arrived, while the winged cowherd was still piercing her with its sting, in the plain of Zeus, rich in all kinds of pasture, the snow-fed meads over which flows the might of the Nile and the water untouched by undeserved sufferings and agonies inflicted by the hurtful sting, a maenad of Hera. (556-64) As I have noted already above, the topos, is, despite Io’s currently uncomfortable conditions, reminiscent of a locus amoenus; while she is now being tormented by the gadfly’s sting, her suffering will soon be eased. The language here is suggestive. If we accept the reading of the Mediceus Laurentianus MS, as Alan Sommerstein does, then eisiknoumenou belei, “piercing her with its shaft” (LSJ II) is not difficult to read with a sexual connotation; we might also note that belos can be used for weapons of love (LSJ 4) and that eisikneomai is found also at Hdt. 3.108.3 to describe the way that a lion cub tears at the uterus of its mother when it is born, not uninteresting in the present context as both show a kind of penetration of female flesh. The description of Io as mainomena at 562 might also be read suggestively; as Chiara Thumiger has recently asserted while exploring the relationship of eros and mania in Attic tragedy, madness and love (as typified especially by eros) is so conventional a combination as to be almost cliché. 401 Lastly, I note that the kentron, “horse-goad,” articulated at 563 (kentrodalêtisi), is used not atypically as a metaphor with desire, as at Eur. Hipp. 39 and Soph. Phil. 1039. The mixing in this passage of the erotic and the experience of suffering and physical pain stands in useful tension to the gentle eroticism of touch and breath emphasized elsewhere in the ode, and supports a reading that this play illustrates 401 Thumiger (2013), 27; the author explicates only briefly on “eroticized madness” (her term) in the Supplices and does not comment on this passage explicitly, although she does note, usefully, that the perspective of the Danaids is foregrounded in the play of Aeschylus (ibid., 31). 174 a certain level of apprehension (or even, misapprehension) experienced by the Danaids about the mechanics of sexual encounters. 402 To return briefly to 574ff., given the focus of this project it would be remiss of me not to mention the occurrence of aidôs at 579, where Zeus’s gentle touch releases Io not only from physical torment but also from shame, as the term is conventionally translated. Although aidôs is as semantically complex as timê – perhaps even more so – and thus impossible to address adequately in only a few sentences, the two are related and its presence here merits comment. 403 Aidôs here operates on two levels. On the one hand, we might note that aidôs, situated as it is, its release the direct result of Zeus’s “painless strength” and breath, is not represented as exclusive of the erotic and its connotations of sexual activity that thrum throughout this passage. On the other hand, we should observe that it is linked also to Io’s delivery of Epaphos (580-1) and thus is positioned within the framework of social norms for women, where sex and the erotic are acceptable (if not emphasized) when procreative and within the boundaries of institutionalized marriage. These two interpretations of aidôs are not in conflict but rather demonstrate the ways in which Aeschylus both introduces a source of tension and almost simultaneously works to soothe it away. As a feminist reader of the past I am more interested in exploring that tension than its reconciliation. It is not only the motif of touch and the eroticized setting that I take as evidence for my interpretation, but also the way that the Danaids imagine and articulate their relationship both to Zeus and Io. As I have argued above, the Danaids construct a space for themselves which is 402 It may also be useful to recall that this aspect of marriage, i.e., the imagined violence of consummation, is present in a fragment from one of the lost plays of the trilogy (quite possibly the third), where Aphrodite proclaims, “The holy Heaven passionately desires to penetrate the Earth, and passionate desire takes hold of Earth for union with Heaven.” 403 The definitive book on aidôs is Cairns (1993). One way to think of aidôs in relationship to timê is that the former is an emotional articulation of the latter. 175 paralleled to that of Io; in doing so they position their bodies as a corollary to hers. While they explicitly articulate their relationship with Io as one of ancestry (as, e.g., at lines 44, 313-25, 533), they seem to go further than necessary in imagining themselves as a new Io, asking Zeus to “renew the tale told long ago,” palaiphaton […] neôson […] ainon, (532, 34). In addition, the Danaids may see in the image of Io a reflection of their own internalized Otherness; I would suggest that the way Io is made to seem unambiguously Other when she arrives in Egypt is meant to recall the Danaids’ own strange appearance, noted insistently by Pelasgus at their initial encounter. 404 When the Danaids beg Zeus to renew their tale (above), they identify his relationship with Io as one of philia: “renew the tale told long ago/ of your kindness to the woman you loved,/ the ancestress of our race,” παλαίφατον ἁμετέρου/ γένους φιλίας προγόνου γυναικὸς/ νέωσον εὔφρον᾽ αἶνον×, (532-4). Philia is an interesting choice; to my mind, the Danaids’ use of it here reflects their understanding of an idealized union between a man and woman, as show shown when explaining to Pelasgus their reluctance to marry the sons of Aegyptus. 405 Pelasgus asks whether they do not want to marry the men “because of hatred or some [other] wrong,” πότερα κατ’ ἔχθραν ἢ τὸ μὴ θέμις λέγεις;, 336, and the Danaids reply, “Who would love someone whom she was buying as an owner?,” τίς δ’ ἂν φίλους ὄνοιτο τοὺς κεκτημένους;, 337. 406 While Pelasgus has a more circumspect view on marriage and its motivations, suggesting that marriages are made as means of establishing social relationship, σθένος μὲν οὕτως μεῖζον αὔξεται βροτοῖς, “This is how 404 Io is ὄψιν ἀήθη (567), βροτὸν […] μειξόμβροτον (568), a τέρας (570), with features of both a woman and a cow (569-70). There is something outlandish about the Danaids, as well; Pelasgus compares them, somewhat fantastically – see notes of Whittle and Johansen ad loc. – to the Amazons (287). 405 “The word philia is used of the devoted love of a wife for her husband,” Davidson (2008), 32; see ibid. pp. 32-4 for the differences between philia and eros. 406 Here I follow the reading of X; for the textual variations and their implications see Whittle and Johansen ad loc. 176 people increase their strength,” 338, in contrast the Danaids’ words disclose their own romanticized perceptions, 407 for which they use the coupling between Io and Zeus as paradigmatic. The Danaids close the play with one final appeal to Zeus, in which, again, the specter of marriage proves ambivalent yet provocative: Ζεὺς ἄναξ ἀποστεροί- η γάμον δυσάνορα δάιον, ὅσπερ Ἰὼ πημονᾶς ἐλυσατ᾽ εὖ χειρὶ παιωνίαι κατασχεθών, εύμενῆ βίαν κτίσας May Lord Zeus deprive us of a hateful marriage to men who are our foes ¾ he who gave Io a good release from her sufferings, restraining her with his healing hand, making force kindly ¾ (1062-7) As elsewhere, the Danaids take an anti-marriage stance, although here that position is qualified by dusanora daïon; they are specifically opposed to marriage which is “hateful” and to men who would make bad husbands. 408 The Danaids believe that a bad marriage is no better than slavery, 409 and that their pursuit by the sons of Aegyptus is no less than hubris. 410 And yet they have opened up a space where some force is acceptable or, at least, not unexpected, as is evident in the lines above; Zeus is both restraining and forceful. As I have asserted above, this particular combination of force and the gentle hand revels perhaps a latent fear on the part of the Danaids of penetrative sex, which is not incompatible with their burgeoning sexual curiosity; in this context, 407 At this moment. At other times they roundly reject marriage, but I see the rapid fluctuations of their sentiments as characteristic/symptomatic of their age group. 408 On these qualifications Whittle and Johansen note that they are “not (except to [the Danaids]) of central importance” but I would disagree. I think it is precisely this position, that the Danaids are open to a marriage that they deem acceptable – perhaps one where philia is shared – that makes possible my reading of the Danaids’ nascent sexuality. 409 cf. Supp. 337; for a similar sentiment, Medea at Eur. Med. 232-4. Lorde: “Use without consent of the used is abuse,” (2007 [1984]), 58. 410 lines 177 I would suggest ktizô at 1067 is a euphemism for sex, which would bring this passage into even closer conversation with 574-81, discussed above. 411 In Io and Zeus, the daughters of Danaus have created an idealized (yet, still, imperfect?) image of a romantic coupling, one which reflects and exposes their own nascent sexual desire and innate sensuality. Conclusion It is my opinion that the text supports a reading that emphasizes elements of the erotic in the Supplices, and I hope to have shown these elements clearly in my discussion. I have also made the choice to see this eroticism as something that extends out from the Danaids, rather than something that is directed towards them. 412 In this way I have read the Danaids as sexual and curious about their sexuality; I have read them as desiring. Such desire would have, I think, been a source of anxiety for a (largely) male audience in Athens, one which Aeschylus perhaps attempted to reconcile at the trilogy’s conclusion, where the institution of marriage was once again affirmed. 413 However, rather than explore this anxiety (in which we might root the obsession with control and chastity that is prevalent in the narrative on honor), I have chosen consciously to read against the tradition and center the eroticism of the Danaids themselves. In taking this position, I have endeavored to create a space which allows the erotic as power and pleasure, in line with Audre 411 Ktizô encompasses such ideas as: building or, more violently, founding a city (LSJ A.2); perpetrating a deed (LSJ A.6); production and (pro)creation (LSJ A.4), as at Supp. 171, about Epaphus: τὸν αὐτὸς ποτ᾽ ἔκτισεν γόνωι, “whom he himself once begot and caused to be”; and, agriculture/planting. For agriculture as metaphor for the “cultivation” i.e., subjugation, of women, see du Boise (1988), esp. pp. 39ff. 412 In this way, I have tried to resist privileging “the male gaze.” 413 On the question of the composition of the Athenian audience, see Haigh (1898), 324-9, Pickard-Cambridge (1968), 264-5; for a feminist perspective which allows the possibility of women in the audience, Rabinowitz (1993), 2. On the possible plot and outcomes of the Danaid trilogy see Sommerstein (2010), (2019). 178 Lorde’s powerful manifesto. Recovering the erotic from the space of shame on which the scholarly tradition on honor has insisted is, in my view, an act of feminist reclamation. 414 In addition to my interrogation of and resistance to the prevailing view on honor, which I have identified as an integral objective of this project, I have also engaged in my primary mode of semantic research, exploring the ways in which timê operates in Aeschylus’ Supplices. I have argued that, while at times timê is used in a way that is consistent with previous examinations on honor (where timê is closely connected to masculine valor and feminine modesty – and when timê has occurred in this way I have attempted to treat it with nuance and care), more often timê in the Supplices is used in a civic sense, often in network with ideas of reverence, supplication, and xenia, articulating the porous yet discernible boundaries of a polis community. Ultimately I see the Danaids as an accepted part of this community, although their presence is, perhaps, still precarious, in a way that the position of women in many places and times is, all too often, precarious. 415 414 I refer to “shame” and “honor” as they are centered in the modern discussion. In other words, I see my efforts here as a means of resisting contemporary 20 th and 21 st century narratives on female sexual agency. I am not suggesting, necessarily, that there is an adolescent eroticism of the 5 th century that needs rescuing; as William Thalmann has noted to me, eros for women is not necessarily incompatible with aidōs as long as it exists within the boundaries of social norms. However, to continue this conversation further, I might suggest that the figure of the adolescent girl, sexually curious and not yet bound in marriage, is precisely a figure whose socially imposed boundaries might be perceived as especially penetrable; might we think of the period between marriageable and marriage as an extended stage of transition which by nature resists constraint? 415 A more extensive treatment of the Danaids would benefit, I think, from engagement with recent theoretical material on precarity and vulnerability, as the terms are used in Butler (2009a) and (2009b). Lape (2021) explicitly applies theories of precariousness and vulnerability to Greek antiquity, with additional bibliography. 179 EPILOGUE Even if it’s a man who sets a woman on a journey, for the duration of the journey, she’s kinetic and unfettered and alone. 416 The lines above encapsulate, to some extent, how I imagine those woman who have been placed on the page – or the stage – by the men (nearly always men) whose names have been preserved in our histories, they who have chosen and preserved our stories. 417 Kinetic and unfettered and alone. For some brief suspension of time I can choose to see those woman, not the men who put them there. And in seeing them, I can imagine the bodies and lives of the women, real women, who moved behind, before, to the side of those architectured spaces and scenes. How much can we really say about the lives of women in the past when what we can know has been so heavily, violently mediated? Can men, or a man (here, Aeschylus), really write about topics like: the grief of a woman forced to mourn alone; the rage of a mother forced to endure the brutal loss of a child; the tension that exists, at times, between desire and force when you have been conditioned to believe that force is your due? And when a man writes about those topics, can they be used to think about women’s lives, roles, values, pleasures, and wants? Well, first of all, yes. People of all genders can write about any manner of things, and convincingly, with care, tenderness, empathy, and depth as well as with, at times, a complete misapprehension about that which they are writing. 418 But can we use those representations to know anything about the actual lives of people who exist or existed beyond them? And to that I would say, well, we have to. There are times when we have no other choice. In doing so, in 416 Kushner (2021), 4. 417 On the importance of storytelling and its use as a destructive tool of European colonization, see Naithani (2010). See also Padilla Peralta (2020), on epistemicide in a Roman context. 418 Toni Morrison, in a 2014 interview with NEA Arts Magazine: “Think of somebody you don’t know. What about a Mexican waitress in the Rio Grande who can barely speak English? Or what about a Grande Madame in Paris? Things way outside their camp. Imagine it, create it.” 180 choosing to imagine the moments of a lived experience when there is no evidence to concretize any such thing, we are doing what Saidiya Hartman has called “critical fabulation,” on which she writes: By playing with and rearranging the basic elements of the story, by re-presenting the sequence of events in divergent stories and from contested points of view, I have attempted to jeopardize the status of the event, to displace the received or authorized account, and to imagine what might have happened or might have been said or might have been done. By throwing into crisis “what happened when” and by exploiting the “transparency of the sources” as fictions of history, I wanted to make visible the production of disposable lives (in the Atlantic slave trade and, as well, in the discipline of history), to describe “the resistance of the object,” if only by first imagining it, and to listen for the mutters and oaths and cries of the commodity. By flattening the levels of narrative discourse and confusing narrator and speakers, I hoped to illuminate the contested character of history, narrative, event, and fact, to topple the hierarchy of discourse, and to engulf authorized speech in the clash of voices. 419 Our sources, as Hartman notes, are always “fictions of history.” And thus, even if, for example, it is easier to accept that a man like Aeschylus – in a certain social position with a certain personal history, a positionality and politics that can be, perhaps, easily or at least uncontroversially identified – is able to offer certain kinds of details and stories that are more historically convincing (e.g., the experience of a naval battle, as in his Persae), well, this too is a fiction of history. Am I suggesting that Aeschylus, in the Supplices, intentionally explores the nascent desire of the Danaids? No, not at all. But I am asserting that we can read that desire, that erotic curiosity, in his representation of those women. We can add their voice to the others that are already there, we can “listen for [their] mutters and oaths and cries,” their adolescent perceptions and misperceptions of the surrounding world. This is what I have been trying to do with women’s timê as well. It has been my effort in this project to use the information that we have in order to think about what timê for women did 419 Hartman (2008), 11-12. 181 and might have looked like in the early 5 th century BCE, when Aeschylus’s plays were produced and performed. In doing so I have also consciously attempted to interrogate and resist certain dominant strands of scholarship on timê’s long-time counterpart, honor, which is usually, still, the purview of men, whatever view they take. As a woman wanting to write beyond and alongside of male perspectives I find this aspect of the status-quo frustrating. With this in mind, then, I want to close this project by engaging, for a moment, with two pieces of writing by women on honor. The first is an essay by Adrienne Rich, entitled “Women and Honor: Some Notes on Lying”; the second is more recent, a brief but incisive exploration of honor by Elaine Castillo in an essay from her 2022 collection, How to Read Now. 420 In Adrienne Rich’s essay, first published in 1977, the author takes as her topic the very thing which Luce Irigaray asserted normative, patriarchal structures have denied us: relationships between women. 421 For Rich too, 20 th century ideas of honor created a narrative that is by now familiar: that “male honor [is] something to be avenged”; “women’s honor, something else entirely: virginity, chastity, fidelity to a husband.” 422 These narratives, for Rich, created a condition where women were forced to create – or perhaps, more accurately, participate in – a kind of façade, a constructed life, wherein the truthfulness of their experience is unimportant. Wherein, again, still, it was men who preserved our histories, men whose words preserved our stories. For Rich, there is an intimate connection between honor and honesty, as befits the word’s etymology. Commenting on women’s honor she writes that “women have been expected to lie”; that “we have had the truth of our bodies withheld from us or distorted”; that “our instincts have been punished: cliterodectomies for ‘lustful’ nuns or for ‘difficult wives’.” 423 For Rich then, too, there is a clear 420 Rich (2002), 30-40; Castillo (2022), 75-118. 421 I have pointed towards this assertion from Irigaray already, in Chapter 3. 422 Rich (2002), 31. 423 ibid., 33-4. 182 connection between masculine ideas of honor and the control of women’s bodies, the suppression of their erotic desires, pleasures, and power. Rich considers the question of how it’s possible to resist or even to break free from such control when the ideas it both depends on and promotes are so pervasive and so longstanding that they have become internalized. She suggests, with her characteristic unflinching curiosity, that for women to discover their honor they need to come back to the honest experience of their lives. This conception of honor leads not to any system of perpetual indebtedness, as in zero-sum models, but rather proposes to create a space where relationships, between women especially, are nourished. A space where “the possibility of truth,” “the possibility of life between us” emerges. 424 For Elaine Castillo, I would say too that the concept of honor should articulate this same “possibility of life between us.” But for Castillo, that “us” is not women, or at least, not only women, but rather the many people who have been subject to, are still subject to, the European settler-state and all its violences. In her essay, “Honor the Treaty,” which takes as its starting point Te Tiriti O Waitangi, the document upon which Aotearoa New Zealand’s modern-day constitution is built, Castillo writes, commenting on the life and work of Mâori filmmaker and activist Merata Mita, The decolonial point here is not to give voice to the voiceless, but to recognize the voices that have always been there – to recognize them, and to honor them. For what is it to honor something – not to exploit it as a resource (either geographically, with a pipeline; or intellectually, with a novel one treats as prettied-up ethnographic data), not to deface it, not to hide its unsavory past, not to throw a black cloth over it or nudge a fern over it, not to raze it, not to let its hard-won promises molder under an injunction of secrecy – unratified, unrealized? What does the daily shape of that honor take in a world; in a life; in a life’s work? 425 424 ibid., 40. 425 Castillo (2022), 113-14. 183 Castillo leaves open a question on the shape and meaning of honor, on, I think, the myriad meaningful ways we engage with the world around us, the world that not only surrounds and at times constrains us but that world with which we are intimately and always a part of, that we are or can be in a symbiotic relationship with. Not only the world of people, but the earth and its waters, with, I suppose we might say, the divine. There is for me, too, still a question about the exact nature and shape of timê, and women’s timê specifically. But that question is an opening, a possibility. I cannot say, still, that timê for an Athenian woman in the 5 th century BCE was exactly this (“mourning”) or this (“fidelity”) or this (“civic participation”). 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Abstract (if available)

Abstract This dissertation explores the intersection of honor and gender in 5th century BCE Athenian tragedy, with a particular interest in female participation in and performance of Greek timê, a term which is regularly translated as “honor,” but one which, when understood more capaciously, signifies a complex network of values that encompasses ideas of status, duty, privilege, and respect between both human and divine agents. Using four plays of Aeschylus as case studies (Agamemnon, Choephoroi, Eumenides, and Supplices) the project aims to make more legible the contours of the system of timê in Athens, and to situate the roles and lives of women within it and alongside. In addition, it aims to interrogate and complicate previous views on female honor which emphasize the importance of chastity from an androcentric perspective, thus providing a more nuanced understanding of women’s honor which moves beyond sexual fidelity to include cosmic and civic functions such as participation in funerary ritual, interpersonal relationships both within and without the oikos, and membership in a civic body. The work I present here takes a lexical approach as its foundation – tracing as it does the movement of a term and thus idea through a constrained body of work – while also endeavoring to move beyond disciplinary boundaries by engaging with a diverse range of voices in both scholarly and cultural spheres, integrating feminist work by, for example, bell hooks, Audre Lorde, Luce Irigaray and Saba Mahmood, the decolonizing praxis of Linda Tuhiwai Smith, Eve Tuck, K. Wayne Yang and others, and contemporary philosophical explorations on honor as well as psychological studies on grief and trauma. Rather than seeking to reify timê on behalf of women past and present, this project leaves the question of female timê open, concluding that, in Athens, timê was a demarcating strategy – one of many – for civic inclusion and exclusion, and that, at a fundamental level, both timê and honor can be understood as a measure of the value a person holds in their community/ies.

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Asset Metadata

Creator Nash, Elke Michele (author)

Core Title The monopoly on value: thinking women and honor in and through Aeschylean tragedy

School College of Letters, Arts and Sciences

Degree Doctor of Philosophy

Degree Program Classics

Degree Conferral Date 2022-12

Publication Date 09/23/2022

Defense Date 09/02/2022

Publisher University of Southern California (original), University of Southern California. Libraries (digital)

Tag Aeschylus,attic tragedy,Danaids,gender,Greek literature,honor,OAI-PMH Harvest,Oresteia,Women

Format application/pdf (imt)

Language English

Contributor Electronically uploaded by the author (provenance)

Advisor Thalmann, William G. (committee chair), Kuhn, Virginia (committee member), Lape, Susan (committee member)

Creator Email elkenash@gmail.com,enash@usc.edu

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