The Epic Tragedy Part I: Do The Greek Plays Accurately Display What Greek Culture Was Like?

I am going to go through all three of the tragedies in Aeschylus’ Oresteia, to show that the plays and poetry of the Greek writers portrays the culture in which they lived. The lifestyles, thoughts, rituals, and traditions that are depicted in Greek epics were the same for the Greeks at that time. I’m going to focus on how the Greeks viewed and worshiped their gods, and this part of Greek culture can be clearly seen in the plays and poetry from poets like Aeschylus, Homer, and Sophocles. Although Plato would disagree with me because he believed the poets misrepresented the gods; he had an understanding of god that most Christians today have. But why focus on this topic? Because I believe it will give a better understanding of why so many Romans and Greeks, after the death and resurrection of Christ, flocked to Christianity and its views.

The first play in the Oresteia trilogy is Agamemnon, which deals with the return of Agamemnon from the Trojan War after ten years. I will give a small summary of the play here. It takes place after the ten year war between the Greeks and the Trojans, all for a woman named Helen, and is set in Argos the home of Agamemnon. The wife of Agamemnon is informed about his return by a chain of torches, which she set up, that moved across the land from Troy to Argos. We see the same imagery used in the film The Lord of The Rings: The Return of The King, which displays the burning of the “Beacons” from Gondor to Rohan. Ten years ago, the Old Men tell us in the play, Agamemnon sacrificed his daughter to calm the seas for their travel. Clytaemnestra never forgave him for this, and we don’t see her maliciousness until the end of the play. Agamemnon returns, with the Priam’s daughter the seer Cassandra, and the end catapults. The moment Clytaemnestra has waited for, for ten years, has finally come; her chance to get “justice.” (I put the word “justice” with quotations because we will see in the rest of the trilogy different forms of that word. For Clytaemnestra “justice” is, as we would say, “an eye for an eye, and a tooth for a tooth.” So a death for a death. We will find out in the later plays that justice will change. It is amazing to see that in Aeschylus’ trilogy the development of justice and the law formed into what it was during his era). Cassandra foretells of hers and Agamemnon’s death to the Old Men and the Leader. (The Old Men and the Leader are like what most clans and cultures had, the elders of the city, like a city council and they controlled the law and order in the city other then the king; and when the king wasn’t there). They don’t know whether to believe Cassandra or not, but the next scene when she goes into the palace they hear the cries of agony from Agamemnon and the future was revealed. When they finally go in to investigate they find both Agamemnon and Cassandra dead; just like Cassandra foretold. Clytaemnestra doesn’t even hide that it was her who murdered them, and she claims that she did it out of, what she declares as, “justice;” having blood for blood. But apparently she was not alone in her malicious plan, Aegisthus her lover and son of Thyestes, brother of Agamemnon’s father Atreus, was in on it with her. All because of what Atreus did to Thyestes' other son. In the end of the play the Leader of the Old Men challenges Aegisthus, but Clytaemnestra prevents them from more death and for now Aegisthus and Clytaemnestra rule the land of Argos.       

The first cultural comparison we can make between the Greek plays and Greek culture is the practice of prayer. Prayer was a ritual carried out in all homes and statuses in Greece; whether you were a priest or priestess, or just a simple house wife. This ritual is shown in many of the Greek’s writings and in Agamemnon the play begins with a prayer. There are many different types of prayers that are portrayed in this play, and I will give a few examples of this. The play starts out with a watchman who is fighting to stay awake. In the first line the gods are mentioned as the watchman prayers to them trying to keep his mind active (Aeschylus "Agamemnon", P.103-104. 1-42). This type of prayer to the gods would have been similar to the every day prayers that most Greeks of that time would’ve prayed. It is a pleading prayer, pleading for something to occur that would make the watchman’s life better, and what he asked for he received. The “Beacons” are lit and the Watchman’s pleading pray for the return of his king is answered; Troy is won and Agamemnon is returning to Argos. These types of prayers are seen in the Greek epics and are seen throughout the Oresteia. These pleading prayers are a cry out to the gods for intervention. Another type of prayer that is shown in Agamemnon is a prayer of thanks. A common phrase that is often used in the Greek epics is “Thank the gods,” which is a small prayer of thanks offered up kind of like when we would say “Thank God.” The Leader who asks Clytaemnestra about how she knew the Greeks won the war in Troy says: “We’ll thank the gods, my lady – first this story, let me lose myself in the wonder of it all!”[1] The last type of prayer I will show here is what Agamemnon does: a salutation to the gods for the conquering of Troy. “First, with justice I salute my Argos and my gods, my accomplices who brought me home and won my rights from Priam’s Troy – the just gods.”[2] These sorts of prayers are the basic prayers for any religion whether Dualistic or Monotheistic, So it probably wasn’t uncommon for those living during the time of Aeschylus to offer up these types of prayers.

Another cultural aspect that is shown in the Oresteia is the view the Greeks had about women. Where the prayers are a ritual aspect of Greek culture, this next comparison of the Greek epics to their culture deals with the thought-frame of the ancient Greeks. Unlike like most cultures where women were put down the Greeks educated their women until a certain age, and the Romans did as well. Even though women were still meant to be the overseer of the house they weren’t unlearned. Aeschylus shows us this with Clytaemnestra, on page 113 the Leader asks Clytaemnestra how she had news that the war in Troy was done and how she knew the Greeks won: “And who on earth could run the news so fast?”[3] She replies to his question by telling him about the beacons she set up from Troy to Argos: “The god of fire – rushing fire from Ida! And beacon to beacon rushed it to me, my couriers riding home the torch.”[4] Aeschylus shows that Clytaemnestra is quite intelligent for thinking up this plan, even though it’s also good for the plot, but by doing this he gives us insight into Greek thought. In Greek mythology there is equally tales about men and women, you have Hercules and then you have Psyche, heroes and heroines; with antagonists being both male and female. Also the gods were both male and female, you had gods and goddesses, and even the deity of wisdom is a goddess; Athena. Why would women be placed in such roles if the Greeks didn’t think highly of them? This goes to show that women had some sort of equality with men, and it was on the intellectual scale. We see Clytaemnestra’s intellect for setting up the “Beacons” from Troy to Argos, and we also see it in her plans to kill Agamemnon. The Romans gained this thought-frame from the Greeks; they borrowed a lot of their religion, thought, culture, and lifestyle from the Greeks. They even borrowed the Greek gods, although renaming them.

The final comparison I will make between Greek culture and the plays of the Oresteia is the ritual of worship. Why did the Greeks, and later the Romans, worship their gods? There were many different forms of religion in ancient cultures and many of people worshiped their gods for one reason alone; fear. This worship because of fear is seen quite a few times in Aeschylus’ Agamemnon, and this was the same type of worship for the Greek/Roman gods during the time Christianity came on the rise. In the end of this post I will show that because of this type of worship to the Greek/Roman gods many Romans flocked to Christianity because it is completely different from the religion they grew up believing. The first place in Agamemnon where we see this worship out of fear is when Clytaemnestra tells the Leader that she hopes for the safe return of Agamemnon. “The run for home and safety waits, the swerve at the post, the final lap of the grueling two-lap race. And even if the men come back with no offence to the gods, the avenging dead may never rest – Oh let no new disaster strike!”[5] She says this because she is afraid the gods that sided with the Trojans during the war, which this division of the gods can be seen in Homer’s Iliad, will avenge them and attack the victorious Greeks. The Old Men continue this type of reverence to the gods: “The reach for power can recoil, the bolt of god can strike you at a glance.”[6] The last scene where we see this type of worship is when Agamemnon returns and Clytaemnestra sets out, what you can say as, the “Red carpet” treatment for him. He refuses to walk upon the scarlet tapestries that she had set up for his arrival because he claims that it’s the kind of treatment a god should have, but not a man. “This – you treat me like a woman. Grovelling, gaping at me – What am I, some barbarian peacocking out of Asia? Never cross my path with robes and draw the lighting. Never – only the gods deserve the pomps of honour and the stiff brocades of fame. To walk on them…I am human, and it makes my pulse stir with dread. Give me the tributes of a man and not a god, a little earth to walk on, not this gorgeous work. There is no need to sound my reputation. I have a sense of right and wrong, what’s more – heaven’s proudest gift. Call no man blest until he ends his life in peace, fulfilled. If I can live by what I say, I have no fear.”[7] Clytaemnestra convinces him that it’s safe and he gives in, but not without first saying: “Hurry, and while I tread his splendours dyed red in the sea, may no god watch and strike me down with envy from o high.”[8] The ancient Greeks, and even the Romans, held the same view about the gods, that if you made any offence to the gods they would strike you down at their whim. They worshiped their gods out of fear but these deities they worshiped had humanistic characteristics and the humans would disagree with their actions, but they worshiped the deities anyways because of the fear. As the Old Men state: “First comes and the news is good, it races through the streets but is it true? Who knows?  Or just another lie from heaven?”[9] This shows that the deities of the Greeks, who had humanistic attributes, could do both virtue and vice. They can lie, steal, kill, and do any other vice that any human can do, so they were serving gods who had the same emotions, attributes, and characteristics as themselves, and the only reason they worshiped such gods is because they were afraid what would happen to them, their culture, and their entire civilization if they didn’t. These gods not only held vice and the ability, as we can say, to sin; but they were also unpredictable.

What makes the worship of these deities so different from the God of the Bible? How can we see that from this type of worship, which the Romans held to like the Greeks, why so many left these deities and turned to Christianity? Because the God of the Bible is completely different from the Greek gods. God is a loving god, and loved man so much that He sent His only son, Jesus Christ. Jesus was the manifestation of God’s love to man (1 John 4:9). Where the Greek gods would strike you down just for looking at them wrong. Who wouldn’t turn to the Christian God? Also God doesn’t have human vice, sin, like lying (Titus 1:2), and he can’t even sin at all (1 John 3:9), and lastly he’s not tempted like the Greek gods: “Let no man say when he is tempted, I am tempted of God: for God cannot be tempted with evil, neither tempteth he any man (James 1:13).” So we can clearly see the difference between the God of the Christians and the gods of the Greeks. With the Greek gods, god is made in man’s image instead of man being created in God’s image (Genesis 1:26).

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[1] Aeschylus Agamemnon, p.115. 319-20.

[2] Ibid, p.133. 794-97.

[3] Ibid, p.113. 280.

[4] Ibid, p.114. 281-83.

[5] Ibid, p.116. 346-51.

[6] Ibid, p.120. 461-62.

[7] Ibid, p.137-138. 911-26.

[8] Ibid, p.139. 942-45

[9] Ibid, p.120. 467-70.