The word Eὐμεν⋯δες occurs six times in our texts of Greek tragedy (four times in Eur.Or., twice in Soph.O.C.) and once as a play title (Aesch.Eum.). This may make ‘Eumenides in Greek tragedy’ sound like a restricted subject, but it is one that has seldom been discussed as a whole, and scholars have tended to consider each of the three plays in question in the light of unargued assumptions about the other two, and about the nature and affinities of Eumenides (...) in general. I shall begin with some introductory remarks on cults, since not all the information is readily available in reference books, and then discuss the three plays in turn, starting for convenience with theOrestes. (shrink)

In 1968 E.K. Borthwick, with a brilliant conjecture, cleared up a passage from Aristophanes’Peacethat had been considered ‘nonsense’ since antiquity. ‘Bell goldfinch’ (κώδων ἀκαλανθίς) the line seemed to be saying: a jumbled idea at best, gibberish at worst (1078). The scholium reads ad loc.: ταῦτα δὲ πάντα ἐπίτηδες ἀδιανοήτως ἔφρασεν, ‘all this is said as deliberate nonsense’, and later scholars generally follow suit (W.W. Merry, for example, in his 1900 edition ofPeacerefers to the line as ‘magnificent nonsense’). But Borthwick showed (...) that this was not the case: ‘even nonsense expressions in Aristophanes’, he writes, ‘are not haphazard collocations of incongruous words signifying nothing’. What, then, to do with the ancient scholar (and those later ones) who failed to understand the passage, claiming it instead to be ‘nonsense’? (shrink)

Our understanding of the world is not static; it can both expand and contract, and it can also stagnate. In history the expansion of the known universe has come about from various causes, from scientific advance, the slow processes of trade and exploration, from, colonization, and especially from conquest. Periods of expansion produce often a re-evaluation of the external world, both that which was already known and that which was previously unknown, or on the fringes of the known. But no (...) one is wholly capable of a direct response toreality: reality as soon as it is experienced is perceived, organized: ‘Die Welt ist die Gesamtheit der Tatsachen nicht der Dinge’. (shrink)

The word Eμενδες occurs six times in our texts of Greek tragedy and once as a play title . This may make ‘Eumenides in Greek tragedy’ sound like a restricted subject, but it is one that has seldom been discussed as a whole, and scholars have tended to consider each of the three plays in question in the light of unargued assumptions about the other two, and about the nature and affinities of Eumenides in general. I shall begin with some (...) introductory remarks on cults, since not all the information is readily available in reference books, and then discuss the three plays in turn, starting for convenience with the Orestes. (shrink)