Pieśń Erynii : język zemsty i jej figury w attyckich tragediach rodu Atrydów

Abstract

The tragedies of the house of Atreus (Aeschylus’ Oresteia, Sophocles’ Electra, Euripides’ Electra, Orestes, Iphigenia among the Taurians) are related to an episode of revenge in its most elemental and at the same time universal guise: blood‑revenge. A study of this subject must therefore be prefaced by an outline of the archeology of ancient Greek thought provided in the introductory chapter: how the ancient Athenians of the fifth century BCE conceptualized revenge; what was its place in the public discourse of their polis; what were the key notions which expressed the idea of revenge; what was, finally, the relationship between the discourses of Athenian society and its laws (from which vindictive violence had been effectively banished) and the discourse of tragedy (where it reaches the most gory extremes). The first (and the longest) chapter examines vengeance in the Atreid plays from the point of view of the legal discourse of classical Athens, its language, values and modes of argumentation: what vocabulary of revenge is used in the relevant plays, how is it represented in relation to legal practice and theory of classical Athens, how are the claims to justice (dikē) and law (nomos) of each side of the conflict constructed, argued and refuted. Particular attention is given to the differences between the dramatic treatments of revenge in each tragedy in this context. The second chapter attempts to see tragic revenge in the light of the discourse of ‘honour’ and ‘shame’, rooted in the Homeric epics, but also marking a strong presence in classical oratory. The emphasis lies on the relevant vocabulary with its key notions (aidōs, timē, aischron), and its working in the particular poetic contexts in the Atreid plays such as: ritual lament (e.g. the ‘great kommos’ of the Libation Bearers), epinician praise (‘Olympic’ metaphors) and the discourse of tyrannicide. As in the preceding chapter, the goal here is to unravel the particularities of each dramatization of the Atreid saga in this conceptual framework.