How we cite our quotes: (Line)
Quote #7
(Athena): "In this place the city's reverence and the fear which is its kin will keep them from wrong-doing, by day and night alike, if the citizens themselves make no innovation in the laws through evil infusions: if you pollute a clear spring with mud you will never find a drink." (690-695)
Now, here's an interesting idea. Athena has just made a huge change in the way business is done, by establishing a court of law to judge murder cases. But then she wants this change or "innovation" to be the last one. She instructs the citizens of the future to be absolutely devoted to what will be for them the past: the laws that she has just created. Cool, huh?
Quote #8
(Chorus of Furies) (to Apollo): But you concern yourself with matters of blood when they are not your province! The prophetic shrine you occupy will no longer be pure of taint."
(Apollo): Was father Zeus mistaken in his decision when Ixion supplicated him after the first blood-killing?
(Chorus of Furies): "You say not; but if I do not win the case, I shall be heavy company for this land in the future."
(Apollo): "But you are without honour among the gods both new and old; the victory will be mine.
(Chorus of Furies): "You acted like this in Pheres' house too; you persuaded the Fates to make men immortal."
(Apollo): "Was it not right to benefit a pious man, above all when he was actually in need?"
(Chorus of Furies): "You destroyed the age-old dispositions! You distracted the ancient goddesses with wine!"
The Furies' whole attitude is basically conservative: we should keep things as they are because that's how they've always been. End of story.
Quote #9
(Orestes): "Now I will go to my home, after I have sworn on oath to your land and people here, for the whole greatness of future time, that no helmsman of my country will come to bring war against it, well-armed and equipped. Though we shall ourselves be in our tomb by then, we shall bar the road with impossible disasters for those who transgress my oaths sworn now; we shall bring despair and ill omens to their passage, so that they repent of their effort; but if oaths are fully kept and if they always honour this city of Pallas with their army in alliance, we are to be more kind towards them." (762-774)
Here we see another reference to the alliance between Athens and Argos, which was in the (recent) past from the perspective of Aeschylus and his audience, but which is in the future from the perspective of the characters in The Eumenides. Orestes's words here, in which he tells the Athenians never to depart from the oaths they are about to make, basically boil down to: "I'm about to (or in the process of) making some serious changes. Once I've made them, though, you'd better not change my changes. You'd better be conservative for the rest of all time. Only I get to be the innovator." How do you like them apples?