How we cite our quotes: (Line)
Quote #7
(Chorus of Furies): "Zeus, do you say, granted your telling Orestes this oracle, that in vengeance for his father's killing he was to hold his mother's prerogatives of no account?"
(Apollo): "Yes, for it is not the same that a man of noble birth, magnified in honour by the sceptre which is Zeus' gift, should die, and that by a woman's hand, not from any furious strike of an arrow like an Amazon's, but in the way any furious strike of an arrow like an Amazon's, but in the way you are about to hear, Pallas, together with those sitting to decide by vote upon this matter. Because—when he came from the campaign, his trafficking done mostly for the better, she welcomed him with loyal [a line missing] when he was completing his bath, and at the vessel's edge she threw a cloak over him like a tent; she fettered her husband in cunning, endless robing and cut him down. This is the man' death now told to you, a man absolute in his majesty, the commander of the fleet; it is the ending of my speech, to sting to anger the people appointed to determine this case." (622-639)
From the general gist of his speech, it almost sounds like Apollo is less angry at the fact that Agamemnon was killed than at the fact that he was killed by a woman. Do you think that Orestes has the same attitude? For most of the trilogy, we've been assuming that it was especially painful to kill Clytemnestra because she was his own mother—but is it possible Orestes could have been extra motivated to kill her out of outrage at what she had done? Just food for thought.
Quote #8
(Apollo): "I have this to say as well, and you are to understand that what I shall say is right. The so-called mother is no parent of a child, but nurturer of a newly seeded embryo; the parent is the one who mounts her, while she conserves the child like a stranger for a stranger, for those fathers not thwarted by god. I will show you proof of this argument: there can be a father without a mother; a witness is close at hand, the daughter of Olympian Zeus [a line missing] nor nurtured in the darkness of a womb, but the kind of child no goddess could give birth to." (657-666)
Well, there you have it. Only fathers are parents, not mothers. The more you know. Ugh. Idiots.
In any case, before you get in a big huff about how sexist the ancient Greeks were, just think: if Aeschylus thought everybody in his audience already thought this, would he really have made it the climactic moment of the play—make that trilogy—for somebody to argue it? Is that what he'd really have been going for: the climax of the Oresteia comes around and everyone's like, "Yeah, yeah, we know, the mother's not a parent, whatever."
We find that a little hard to believe—and so do some of the other characters of stage (the Furies, hint-hint). So, it seems pretty clear that even Aeschylus knows this is a wacky idea. So why does Apollo make the argument? Is he just improvising, making up something on the spot to get Orestes off the hook? Maybe. But what would the consequences be if people in Athens started widely believing in it?
Quote #9
(Athena): "Now hear my ordinance, people of Athens, who are judging the pleas in the first trial for shed blood. For the future too this council of jurors shall always exist for Aegeus' people; it shall have its seat on this hill, the Amazons' position and camp when they came in an army against Theseus, and at that time fortified here a new and high-walled city over against the acropolis, and made sacrifices to Ares, from which it is named Ares' rocky hill." (681-690)
Okay, so at first glance, this doesn't look like it's got much to do with gender. But let's take a second glance. We notice that this hill marks the point where Theseus, the first king of Athens fought a war against the Amazons, a tribe of warrior women. Wait a minute… men fighting against women… doesn't that sound a bit like a lot of other stuff in this section? We sure think it might. What does it say about the New Athenian Order established at the end of this play that its major law-court is on the site of a battle between the sexes?