The Eumenides Themes

This may very well be every lawyer's favorite Greek play. The Eumenides is all about justice and judgment getting the upper hand over the bloody cycles of revenge that dominated the action of Agame...

Quentin Tarantino fans, eat your heart out. Revenge is the flavor of the month in The Eumenides… at least until the last scene when judgment triumphs. The eye-for-an-eye idea that the Furies advo...

If there's one thing The Eumenides tells you, it's that honoring the gods pays off. Even though Orestes did probably the most horrible thing you can think of—killing his own mommy—the fact that...

We're not talking about the kind of "Guilty!" proclamation that is accompanied by a strike of the gavel. We're talking about the feeling of guilt that someone has after doing an evil deed and the s...

Times were tough in ancient Greece. It wasn't just a question of do or do not—it was a question of do, do not, carry out orders from the gods, worry about whether you tick off other gods by carry...

Okay, Shmoopers, we're going to get deep. Two levels deep. There are two levels of "memory and the past" involved in this play. There is a) what is in the past from the perspective of the character...

Be afraid. Be very afraid. We tend to think that fear is bad news bears, and that it should be kept out of public life. Not so for the Ancient Greeks. All sorts of different characters in The Eumen...

This play is, to put it gently, really crazy freaking misogynist. The verdict in Orestes's trial ultimately ends up hinging on two gender-related issues. The first issue is whether or not he is rel...

You might have to watch something family-positive (Parenthood? Modern Family?) after reading The Eumenides. The trial of Orestes hinges on an argument—put forth by Apollo—that mothers are just...