Iphigenia is alive !

Do you remember the youngest daughter of king Agamemnon, Iphigenia, who was sacrificed at Aulis in order to appease the anger of Artemis and let the Greek fleet sail to Troy? We were framed! She is not resting in the kingdom of Hades; all this time she´s been living in Tauris as a priestess to the Goddess.

Iphigenia is saved from her own sacrifice by the Goddess Artemis

According to Euripides´ award winning "Iphigenia in Tauris", Artemis abducted the princess before being burnt at the pyre and dropped her in that faraway citadel to become her servant. No one ever noticed the body-replacement of Iphigenia for that of a deer: the blood that gushed out of the flames was no human.

Long ago a sacred statue with the image of Artemis fell from heaven and appeared in the coast of Tauris, a city ruled by notorious King Thoas. Since that episode, the Taurian society devoted their life to the worshipping of the Goddess, sacrificing every foreigner that appeared in their land. Iphigenia, once rescued from the pyre, was commanded to lead this killing of outlanders.

The many, many stories of Agamemnon´s offsprings now finally get connected:

- Iphigenia is sacrificed in Aulis ("Iphigenia in Aulis" by Euripides)

- Agamemnon, after having conquered Troy, sails back home ("The Iliad" by Homer)

- Agamemnon arrives at Mycenae and is killed by his wife Clytemnestra, who avenges the prior killing of her daughter Iphigenia ("Agamemnon" by Aeschylus)

- Son and daughter, Orestes and Iphigenia, avenge their dad Agamemnon by killing their mother Clytemnestra ("The Libation Bearers" by Aeschylus)

- Orestes escapes the Erinyes after having comited matricide ("The Eumenides" by Aeschylus)

- Orestes is commanded by the God Apollo to sail to Tauris and rescue the sacred statue of Artemis (Euripides´ Iphigenia in Tauris)

Orestes now lands in Tauris together with his companion Pylades. Unaware of the true identity of the foreigners, Thoas´ people capture them both and readies their bodies for the sacrifice. In the exact moment when they are to be killed, brother and sister recognize each other.

Orestes and Iphigenia steal the sacred figure of Artemis and escape back home.

Lysistrata - by Aristophanes

In order to put an end to war Lysistrata hits on a startling way of forcing husbands to stay home and become pacifists: deny them sex !

I hit on a way to stop the war: forgo sex !

Society in classical Greek times is known to have been patriarchal and misogynistic (hatred of women), segregating females from public life and confinig them to soldier-raising and housework tasks. Nonetheless, Aristophanes comes again with a satirical and absurd masterpiece that reconciles women, making them intelligent schemers of a worldwide plot to bring war to an end.

Just to gain a little comprehension of the time and setting needed to fully understand the poem I must point out that this play was written in 411 BC, which situates it in the center of The Peloponessian War (431 BC to 404 BC) with Athens and Sparta fighting for supremacy in the Greek mainland.

The story

While men are away in battle, Lysistrata - an average Athenian wife - gathers women from all over the Peloponnese to share her stratagem against male and their endless desire to battle.

- The salvation of our State rests with us (...)

- If all us women united en masse - Beotians, Spartans, and us - we all together could save Greece (...)

And here comes the brilliantly unexpected slant, funny enough to make the reader think:

- Precisely that's what we're going to need to save Greece: a seductive wardrobe, our rouge, our negligees (...) to stop every living man (...) from ever lifting a shield or (...) springing a dagger (...)

- What we are going to have to forgo is ... penis (...)

- (...) Imagine it: us lolling around all tarted up, our pussies' sweet little triangles neatly plucked, and we float past them in our see-throughs, and our men get stiff as rods and want to screw, but we elude them and hold ourselves aloof - why, they'll sue for peace real quick. That you can bet.

Women realize they can gain total control of men through sex; or in this case ... through the absence of it. Now take a look at the sexual, entertaining and hysterical oath women do:

- No man whatsoever, whether husband or lover shall (...) come near me with a rampant cock. (...) I'll live at home in continence unrutting (...) all tarted up in my saffron frock (...) so that my husband is bursting to erupt (...) while I stay aloof and adamant (...).

- Set him on fire with pangs of desire. Tantalize him to the hilt (...) Promise him his every want except what on the wine cup we swore we wouldn't.

By now you might have guessed the end of the story: because of the boycott of sex by the women of both Athens and Sparta men start to show signs of priapism (painful and persistent erection of the penis). They have no way out but to submit to women's will and sign peace with each other.

- Now that everything's worked out so well its time you Spartans got back your wives, and you Athenians yours. So, my dears, let each husband stand beside his woman while each wife stands beside her husband. And let us celebrate this happy bond and thank the gods with dance. And let us swear never to make the same mistakes again and be so dense (...).

The Persians - by Aeschylus

Eight years after the defeat of Xerxes in The Battle of Salamis (480 BC), Aeschylus writes this tragedy, a masterpiece produced to celebrate the most important Greek victory in the Persian Wars.

After defeating the legendary 300 Spartans in the Battle of Thermopylae, the Persians headed south of the Peloponnese and were ready to take the whole Hellenic world: the Greek civilization was sentenced to slavery. Although heavily outnumbered, the Greek Allies brought the Persian fleet to battle again in the Straits of Salamis, which ended in Xerxes's defeat, and his returning home empty-handed.

One year later, Persia completely withdrew his army from Greek land and sea, together with its perished desire to conquer them.

A number of historians believe that a Persian victory would have stilted the development of Ancient Greece, and by extension 'western civilization' per se, and has led them to claim that Salamis is one of the most significant battles in human history.

Aeschylus's "The Persians" is the Athenians' exultation in the recent ruin of their enemies; Greeks are to delight in the ruin of the Persian empire, and to exult in their anguish.

The Story

It's 480 BC. The news of Xerxes's victorious military campaign in the northern Peloponnese have already reached the Persians' ears. The final battle is taking place (Battle of Salamis) and the Queen of Persia is confidently awaiting the Herald to bring the news of the destruction of the Greeks.

The Herald now appears, but his news are not what she had expected. The announcement leaves the Queen wide-mouth-opened, not able to pronounce a single word: Xerxes, son of great Darius and holy leader of the Persians, was defeated.

My top ranked passages

- (...) What the gods permit is clearly what they command. To suppose otherwise it to hate heaven and therefore deserve death's rough correction (...)

- (...) What Darius made, Xerxes enlarges. (...) The world will be Persian, and all the better for it (...)

The Herald addressing the Queen

- (...) "Persia, cities of Asia, hear me ! My dreadful duty is bringing the news all at once. It is bitter indeed, for the battle is lost. We are defeated" (...)

- (...) "It pains me to say but ours was the stronger force. The Greeks had three hundred ten vessels to Xerxes's' thousand or more. Such an imbalance ought to have made us the victors, but gods or the fates, or the mere whims of the winds redressed the odds and held us off. They counter-attacked and whipped us soundly" (...)

- (...) " They were waiting for us, there at the narrow mouth of the bay, on both our flanks, and when signal trumpets blared, their armada converged on us like dogs on a doe" (...)

Words coming from the Prologue

- (...) "Xerxes at Salamis could have won and would have, if he had only been patient. The Greeks, cut off, would indeed have run in a matter of days. The attack was absurd, a risk that the Persians need never have taken (...) The Persians either way, are losers. The Greeks, by their valor or merely luck, have won. As their prize, they get to pick or even invent what version they like" (...)

- (...) "Asia's moment is over, The world is now Greek (...) We were lords of the world, and now we are slaves !" (...)

Clouds - by Aristophanes

Aristophanes, a conservative young man of only 23 or so, doesn't have a very high opinion of the "New Thought" going around, expressed and promoted by the Sophists and especially by Socrates, whom Aristophanes rather unfairly lumps together with them. Clouds is a lively spoof of the new ideas about the education of the youth. Aristophanes sets out to have fun damning them and reducing the new techniques to absurdity

The story

Strepsiades is in despair because of the debts his horse-loving son - Phidippides - has landed him in. He has heard of Socrates and the Thinkpot, where for a fee one can learn to prove that wrong is right, and he decides to send his son there to be taught how to prove that a debt is not a debt; in other words: to learn how to cheat and deceive.

Sometimes later, Socrates presents Phidippides to his father as a perfect sophist.

Creditors appear one after the other clamoring for payment and Strepsiades, using the little he learned, is able to confound them each in turn. Both father and son start having disagreements, which ends in Phidippides trying to punish his father. When the former says he is going to beat his mother too, Strepsiades, horror-stricken at the reversal of values, runs to the Thinkpot and burns it down.

Best passages

The way Aristophanes describes Socrates and the Sophists

- (...) I don't exactly know but they are deep-ruminating cerebrationalists nice beautiful people

- (...) Boy, are they poison ! You are talking of a bunch of frauds: that barefoot dough-faced lot like that pitiful Socrates

- (...) Stinking liar (...) chattering charlatan, a fox, piss hole, slimy talker, a fraud

- (...) you wonderful old fraud !

Sophist's non-sense parody, in a dialogue between Strepsiades and one of his creditors

Creditor: And I'm inclined to think you're getting a writ served on you if you don't pay up.

Strepsiades: And are you inclined to think that Zeus rains freshwater every time it rains, or does te sun suck up the water that's already there ?

Creditor: I don't know and I don't care

Strepsiades: Then how can you possibly ask for money when you're so meteorogically illiterate ? (...)

Strepsiades: But do you think the sea is fuller now than it used to be ?

Creditor: Of course not, it's the same. To be fuller would be against nature.

Strepsiades: Really, you poor nit! So if the sea never gets fuller even if rivers pour into it, how can you possibly expect your money to get fuller?

The reversal of values, when Phidippides is trying to convince his father that he really deserves to be punished by him.

Phidippides: (...) did you ever spank me as a boy ?

Strepsiades: Naturally, I did, for your good because I cared.

Phidippides:Tell me then, shouldn't I now show, if spanking is evidence of caring, that I do care by giving you a spanking ? And is it fair that your carcass be spank-proof but not mine ? (...)

Strepsiades: Nowhere is there a law to treat a father in that way.

Phidippides: (...) can't I have a turn, too, at making a law to fit tomorrow's sons: one that lets them beat their fathers in return ?

Note: Adapted from Paul Roche's translation.

The Acharnians - by Aristophanes

A highly satirical play that appeals for the end of The Peloponnesian War. From phallic speeches to a woman trying to sell her daughters off as pigs, the story provides an imaginative and absurd humour that entertain from start to finish. A must read !

Short plot

Dicaeopolis, an Athenian citizen living during the Peloponnesian War with Sparta, publicly denounces the absurdity and sheer stupidity of war. Sarcastic and critical towards the 'demagogic' politicians and the military, Aristophanes puts in the main character's mouth the wanting for the simple liberties and happiness that come with peace. The author's piercing and crude attacks mainly aim at Cleon, head of the democratic state, who is accused by Aristophanes of plunging Athens into continuous and senseless armed campaigns that lead his city to defeat and decline.

In an absurd twist of the play, an ordinary Greek farmer succeeds where all the politicians could not: he personally travels to Sparta and signs a private peace treaty with the enemy.

Written and performed in 425 BC, The Acharninas won first place at the Lenaia Festival, probably the most famous play-contest of ancient Greece.

A detailed setting of the play

The long struggle (25+ years) between Athens and Sparta - best known as 'The Peloponnesian War' - broke out early in 431 B.C. Athens kept for a considerable time the command of the sea, but was unable to resist in the field the overwhelming forces of Sparta and her allies. Early in the first year of  the war, Archidamus, one of the kings of Sparta, entered the Athenian territory at the head of an army of eighty thousand men. Pericles, who was then the leading statesman of Athens, had persuaded his countrymen to dismantle their country-houses and farms, and bring all their movable property within the walls of the fortressed city. Still the sight of the ravages of the invading host, which, of course, could be plainly seen from the walls, roused the people almost to madness. The Athenians, though excelling in maritime pursuits, were passionately fond of a country life, and it was almost more than they could bear to see their farms and orchards and olive-yards wasted with fire. Inferior as they were in numbers, they loudly demanded to be led out against the invaders, and it was as much as Pericles could do to keep them within the walls.

The inhabitants of Acharnia, a town in the north of Athens,  were prominent among the malcontents. The area was one of the richest and most populous of the townships of Attica, well known for his charcoal-burning; no place was more interested in the question of peace and war, as it was here that the Spartan king pitched his camp.

The invasion was repeated year after year, though on some few occasions various things happened to prevent it. Not only did Athenians lose greatly by the desolation of their country, but they suffered much by being cooped up within the walls of the city. And it was but a small satisfaction to retaliate by ravaging the coasts of the Peloponnesians, and by annually invading the territory of Megara, a city which had concluded an alliance with Sparta.

There had always been a peace party in the state, and when Pericles died, early in the third year of the war, this party became more powerful. At the same time the war party conducted affairs less prudently. The cautious policy of Pericles was discarded for remote expeditions and out-of-the-way schemes.

Aristophanes sets forth the views of the advocates of peace. He expresses the feeling of distress caused by the desolation of the country, and also the dislike felt by prudent politicians for the extravagant ideas of the war party.

Note: this is my simplified and revised version of an introduction made by Alfred Church for "The Baldwin Project".

The Oresteia - by Aeschylus

I've just finished re-reading Aeschylus' tragedy "The Oresteia", the story of the cursed royal family of Mycenae: blood that cries for more blood.

William Adolphe Bouguereau - The remorse of Orestes (1862)
Orestes is tormented and haunted by the Furies after having murdered Clytemnestra

The Cast

Agamemnon: king of Mycenae, leader of the Greek armada against Troy.
Clytemnestra: wife of Agamemnon.
Orestes, Iphigenia, Electra: children of Agamemnon and Clytemnestra.
Aeghistus: Clytemnestra's lover, cousin of Agamemnon.
Cassandra: daughter of Priam (king of Troy), Agamemnon's lover and captive.
The Furies: the three female deities of vengeance, persecutors of mortals who killed members of their own family.

Note: I would suggest you start reading "The anger of Achilles"

The story

Divided into three "acts" (Agamemnon, The Libation Bearers, The Eumenides) the trilogy goes around the numerous family-bloody-homicides in the house of Atreus: "life for life, eye for eye, tooth for tooth, hand for hand" seem to be the essence of each murderous act. Along the play we come across filicide (the killing of one's children), mariticide (the killing of one's husband) and matricide (the killing of one's mother) in a chronological order subject to a pay-back desire. Mother and siblings join their partners side by side and enjoy the butchering of each other.

- Agamemnon kills his daughter Iphigenia
At the start of the Trojan expedition Agamemnon has to take the unwanted decision of sacrificing his daughter Iphigenia in order to appease the goddess Artemis and gain favourable winds to sail to Troy. Clytemnestra, his wife, will never forgive him.

"Tragedy is not a struggle between good and evil, but a contest between two mutually exclusive goods" (David R. Slavitt)

- Clytemnestra avenges her daughter by killing Agamemnon
The victorious leader of the Achaean army returns from Troy with her captive Cassandra. As soon as they steps inside his house, his wife and her lover (Aeghistus) stab them to death in a bloody bath rejoiced by bothe killers.

Clytemnestra: "I killed him, struck him down (...) I'm proud. I threw his robe around him (...) and he couldn't see, or fight or escape, and I stabbed him. Twice ! (...) He bled like a pig! It spurted out and splashed me, and I was delighted. A farmer, wet in the rain of the spring that will give him his crops, could not be more happy and grateful than I was then! I bloomed like a whole garden of flowers in that downpour of Agamemnon's blood. (...) "

Aeschylus (The Oresteia) / Euripides (Oedipus Rex): "Call no man's life happy until it has come to its end".

Agamemnon thought he had everything (honor, esteem, respect, power ... ) in order to find out he was sentenced to die in the hands of his own wife.

- Orestes and Electra kill their mother Clytemnestra
Back from exile, Orestes joins his sister Electra and plot the murder of Aeghistus and Clytemnestra to avenge the killing of their father Agamemnon.

Apart from the numerous homicides of the royal family, the Furies gain a significant role in the play as the persecutors of our main character Orestes. The son of Agamemnon has to run away and seek for the help of Apollo,  god and principal promoter of Orestes' matricide. To escape the avenging deities the mortal agrees to put his fate in the hands of Athena, who acts as judge of the first-ever court trial held. Orestes is acquitted of murder and after a long and hard negotiating period with the Erinyes (another name for "The Fates"), the latter  join Athena in the process of glorifying the city of Athens.

Seen form a different angle and taking to account that Aeschylus wrote the play in Pericles' time, the story unveils the beginning of the democratic system in Athens.

The Divine Comedy

Written in the early stages of the 14th century by the Italian Dante Alighieri, The Divine Comedy is an imaginative and allegorical vision of the Christian afterlife. With mathematical and passioned precision, the artist describes the three states of life after death: Hell, Purgatory and Paradise.

Though not a greco-roman story, the many relations this epic poem has with classical mythology (characters, places, stories ... ) make it an entertaining must-read for all of us.

The Plot

- Inferno / Hell
Guided by the great Virgil (author of 'The Aeneid'), Dante begins his journey to the underworld. They both descend the nine concentric circles of Hell, each of them representing a gradual increase in the wickedness of sins, and culminating at the center of the Earth, place where Satan is held. Along the endeavor they come across with a variety of "evil" characters, each one assigned to a special place in Hell according to their earthly sins. All pagans (those born in time of pre-christian religions) and sinners who didn't seek for God while alive belong to Hell.

- Purgatory
Book 2 starts with these pilgrims ascending Mount Purgatory, and meeting Saint Peter. Once again, along their ascent they'll meet different people who are now in the state of purging their souls. They are busy working on their spiritual enlightenment from the stain of sin and getting in condition to be allowed to Paradise. At the top of the mountain, we can find the Garden of Eden.

- Paradise
Dante is no longer accompanied by Virgil, who leaves him to reside once more in Limbo, a place in Hell meant for those who did no god nor wrong, and for the virtuous (like him) who were born before the time of God's revelation and have thus fallen short for their lack of faith. His beloved Beatrice, now guides him through the spheres / planets of Heaven in his continuous search for God.

While the structures of the Inferno and Purgatorio were based around different classifications of sin, the structure of the Paradiso is based on the four cardinal virtues and the three theological virtues.

What I liked less of the book

- The book of Paradise. The more the story advances, the more christian-specific and less allegorical-epic it becomes.
- The tremendous need to delve into the political and social context surrounding Dante and his medieval time in order to get a full comprehension of the book.
- From time to time, Dante seems to overuse The Divine Comedy as a way to place his friends in Paradise and his enemies in Hell. All of them are found somewhere in the book, leaving the allegorical richness of the book sometimes behind.

What I liked best

- Dante's notion and treatment of free will: we must abandon any idea that we are slaves of chance; we can consciously exercise choice, and this choice is decisive to all eternity. We have to make the choice between accepting or rejecting God, and discover what we've chosen after life. (I suggest you read this posting)
- The entire book of the Inferno, far the most entertaining and "mythical" of the three.