¹ J.J. Peradotto, in an illuminating note not directly linked to his main argument, refers to the ‘assimilation’ of man to beast and its connection to the development of δί κη in Oresteia; ‘The omen of the eagles and the ΗΘΟΣ of Agamemnon’, Phoenix 23 (1969) 246Google Scholar n.32. My paper is in several ways an amplification of that suggestion. Also similar in approach is Rosenmeyer, T.G., The Art of Aeschylus (Berkeley 1982) 138–41,Google Scholar who sees animals as representatives of the repulsive world which exists prior to the advent of civilization. A detailed study of this imagery and the theme of violence is Moreau, A.M., Eschyle: la violence et le chaos (Paris 1985)Google Scholar esp. 61–99, 267–91. The introductory chapters of Segal's, C.Tragedy and Civilization: An Interpretation of Sophocles (Cambridge, MA 1981)Google Scholar on the man/beast and man/god polarities in Greek are still a good starting place for these issues, although Aeschylus does not maintain the ‘in-betweenness’ to the end and thus defies most structuralist approaches. Segal himself in a later study seems to note that Aeschylus must be treated differently; ‘Greek tragedy and society’, in Euben, J.P. (ed.), Greek Tragedy and Political Theory (Berkeley 1986) 60;Google Scholarcf. Vidal-Naquet, P., ‘Hunting and sacrifice in Aeschylus' Oresteia’, in Vernant, J.-P. and Vidal-Naquet, P., Tragedy and Myth in Ancient Greece (tr. J. Lloyd, Atlantic Highlands, New Jersey 1981) 150–74Google Scholar. Aeschylus’ style and structure result not merely in a tension between polarities but a mingling that can and must be—and (is—brought to a end by the conclusion of the trilogy. The polis itself is in some ways the heroic figure in the Oresteia. The term polis in this study refers to the mature polis, the functioning, democratic institutions that a contemporary of Aeschylus would associate with Athens. The word itself is used in the Oresteia to describe Troy (25x), Argos (19x), a city in general (9x), and finally Athens (30x). Troy is a polis that becomes ἄπολις 457) at its destruction. Argos is a dysfunctional polis, with Delphi as the transitional point to Athens, which is referred to 21 times as a polis in the final 300 verses of the trilogy. Here alone can the beast be co-opted into civilization.

I would like to thank Nora Chapman, Mark Edwards, Helen Moritz, and the anonymous readers for many helpful comments on this paper.

² Interestingly, the animal/human dichotomy does not make it onto the list of 26 antitheses compiled by Zeitlin, F.I., ‘The dynamics of misogyny: myth and mythmaking in the Oresteia’, Arethusa 11 (1978) 171–2Google Scholar. It does appear in the shorter list of Greek (not necessarily Aeschylean) polarities of Buxton, R.G.A., Persuasion in Greek Tragedy (Cambridge 1982) 62Google Scholar. Of course, one scholar's ‘primary’ metaphor may be another critic's derivative. B.H. Fowler suggests that the animal imagery derives from other figures of compulsion, an issue which itself is primarily related to gender; ‘Aeschylus' imagery’, C&M 28 (1969) 39Google Scholar. Rosenmeyer (n.l) 130 considers eating as the primary metaphor of which animals are a subset. An especially thorough treatment of imagery is Petrounias', E.Funktion und Thematik der Bilder bei Aischylos (Göttingen 1976) 129 f.CrossRefGoogle Scholar, who divides his chapters into a ‘Leitmotiv’—usually animals—and secondary images. Less analytical but similarly arranged is Dumortier's, J.Les Images dans la Poésie d'Eschyle (Paris 1975)Google Scholar. We often take for granted that animal imagery is pervasive throughout the entire Aeschylean corpus. F.R. Earp's catalogue is revealing: there are more animal metaphors in the Agamemnon (33) than in the Libation Bearers (18) and Eumenides (13) together, more than in the other four plays combined. But even the Eumenides contains more than any Aeschylean play outside the trilogy. Earp counts only obvious metaphors, not all the allusions and twists of language; The Style of Aeschylus (Cambridge 1948) 104Google Scholar.

³ Nicely phrased by W.B. Stanford and R. Fagles in the introduction to Fagles' Penguin translation (1979) 49.

⁴ The text is that of Page's OCT unless otherwise noted.

⁵ On 59. B. Daube maintains that the cry of the Atreidae is a combination of lament (γόος) and call to war (βοή); Zu den Rechtsproblemen in Aischylos' Agamemnon (Zurich/Leipzig 1939) 99Google Scholar.

⁶ Almost alone among recent scholars in rejecting any symbolism for the vultures in the simile is van Erp Taalman Kip, A.M., ‘The unity of the Oresteia’, in Silk, M.S. (ed.), Tragedy and the Tragic: Greek Theatre and Beyond (Oxford 1996) 122–3 and 136Google Scholar n. 11. Many of the following observations are standard in the critical literature; I have added a few which I think strengthen the argument, especially for the identification of the birds with Clytemnestra and Iphigenia.

⁷ This translation uses an interpretation of ἑκπατίοις proposed by Goldhill, S., ‘The sense of ἑκπάτιος at Aeschylus Agamemnon 49’, Eranos 87 (1989) 65–69;Google Scholar see discussion below. I have nothing new to add to the debate over the meaning of ὔπατοι and simply repeat the standard translation.

⁸ Goldhill, S., Language, Sexuality, Narrative: the Oresteia (Cambridge 1984) 14CrossRefGoogle Scholar n.11, for example, believes that in Lévi-Straussian terms such substitutions can be made, noting that Helen as the παῖδες can also be child, both child and not child.

⁹ Clytemnestra had earlier (1392) rejoiced in the shower of Agamemnon's blood no less than a crop ‘during the birth-pangs’ (ἐν λοχεύμασιν) of the buds. Although there is no careful separation of the terms τέκνον and παῖς in the Oresteia, it is interesting that Clytemnestra uses only παῖς of her daughter (cf. Ag. 1432). She calls Orestes both τέκνον (Ch. 896, 910, 912, 920, 922; cf. 829) and παῖς (Ch. 896). At Ag. 877 she refers to Orestes as παῖς, but in a context that at first could easily, and with painful irony, refer to Iphigenia. Agamemnon, according to the chorus, called his daughter τέκνον (208). Clytemnestra resented being treated like a παῖς (277), no doubt at least in part because she had witnessed how lightly a woman's life and speech could be valued. Rabel, R.J., ‘Apollo in the vulture simile of the Oresteia’, Mnemosyne 35 (1982) 325CrossRefGoogle Scholar notes the frequent use of παῖδες for the children, but places these references in the context of Apollo's role as protector of young.

¹⁰ R.J. Rabel, for example, suggests that the παῖδες here become the 'Ατρέως παῖδας in v. 60 and are to be numbered among the ‘lost children’ of the trilogy; ‘The lost children of the Oresteia’, Eranos 82 (1984) 211–13Google Scholar. B.H. Fowler's detailed study of the Furies finds them in the vultures—indeed, in most of the animals and characters in the three plays—but for reasons discussed later, I remain skeptical; ‘The creatures and the blood’, ICS 16 (1991) 85–100Google Scholar.

¹¹ B.H. Fowler's 1969 article (n.2) and Lebeck's, A.The Oresteia: A Study in Language and Structure (Washington 1971)Google Scholar formed the basis for this kind of reading of images and they touch on most categories of symbolism. A nice summary of the Aeschylean progression from ambiguity to clarity can be found in Herington, J., Aeschylus (New Haven 1986) 67Google Scholar.

¹² See the discussion of Macleod, C.W., ‘Politics and the Oresteia’, JHS 102 (1982) 135CrossRefGoogle Scholar. He compares Plato's Laws 937el, where the law itself is said to civilize or tame (ἡμέρωκε) all human life. We will see this image again at the beginning of the Eumenides.

¹³ See Fraenkel ad loc.; cf. στρατιῶτιν ἀρωγήν, 47.

¹⁴ The term is less likely here to allude to the vehicle pulled by a pair of animals. Thomson ad loc. remarks that the image ‘anticipates the image of the eagles which follows’ in that it could be used of a pair of birds.

¹⁵ Vultures, cranes, a heron and an eagle, as well as various warriors, are subjects of the verbal idea in Homer; the root also modifies the screech of dogs, arrows, and the wind. At Scutum 442, Ares himself shouts. Aeschylus uses the word elsewhere six times of persons, once of bells and once of axles on a chariot. For κλάζω of men and animals in other early Greek authors, see Silk, M.S., Interaction in Poetic Imagery (Cambridge 1974) 18CrossRefGoogle Scholar n.2.

¹⁶ The parallels between the Homeric and Aeschylean passages, as M.L. West observes, do not demand Page's change from μεγάλ to the Homeric μεγάλ'; ‘The parodos of the Agamemnon’, CQ 29(1979) 1CrossRefGoogle Scholar n.l; so also Bollack and Judet de La Combe ad loc.

¹⁷ Cf. ll. 17.755–9, for the repetition of κεκλήγοντες; with each pair. As Segal (n.l, 1981) 7 asserts, in the Homeric epic the limits between human and bestial, though threatened, are relatively stable. See K.C. King, Achilles: Paradigms of the War Hero from Homer through the Middle Ages (Berkeley 1987) 17–24 on the slippage of Achilles into the bestial in the lion simile at ll. 20. 164 f. I find in the Homeric language of the Aeschylean passage little of what M. Ewans calls ‘epic confidence’; ‘Agamemnon at Aulis: a study in the Oresteia’, Ramus 4 (1975) 19Google Scholar. See Edwards, M.W., The Iliad: A Commentary. Volume V: books 17–20 (Cambridge 1991) 24–41CrossRefGoogle Scholar for an excellent summary of the different forms and functions of the Homeric simile.

¹⁸ (n.7); see his complete review of the history of this issue.

¹⁹ The main verb of which the vultures are the subject is also a hapax, στροϕοδινοῦνται (51). We have no way of being certain that the verb was unknown at the time, but its filling up the entire verse—as δεμνιοτήρη, another word unique to Aeschylean verse (used twice, as we have seen) will shortly do (53)—suggests poetic pride. Fraenkel dryly reminds us of Aristophanes’ ῥῆμα βόειον. Perhaps an astute listener would have heard Homer's στρεϕεδ ί νηθεν (Il. 16.792), the subject of which are Patroclus’ eyes after his Apolline slap on the back; see Bollack and Judet de La Combe on 51. If so, the tragic and very human context of fated loss and suffering might also bring the vulture's pain into the human arena.

²⁰ On παῖδες in Archilochus as a probable reference to animals, see West (n.16). Bollack and Judet de La Combe ad loc. compare the use of ί νιν at Ag. 717–18 of the lion cub and think παίδων gives the passage an allegorical rather than Homeric twist. Whallon, W., ‘Why is Artemis angry?’ AJP 82 (1961) 82,Google Scholar concludes that ‘the vocabulary in which the symbolism is couched conveys the lack of distinction between human and bestial lives’, but he does not follow up on this insight.

²¹ He uses the adjective λεχαί ων to modify the τέκνων of a dove at Sept. 291–2; cf. Sophocles' Ant. 422–5.

²² So Denniston-Page and Fraenkel take στίβοι ϕιλάνορες, although some other commentators read it as a reference to the tracks left on the bed by Helen and Paris.

²³ In Homer and the Homeric Hymns, for example, λέχος is used of the bed of Zeus and Hera, Aphrodite and Anchises, Helen and Paris, Nestor and his wife, Alcinous and Arete, Hephaestus and Aphrodite, Odysseus and Penelope, Hades and Persephone, Dawn and Tithonus, Aeolus' sons and daughters, and Circe and Odysseus. Perhaps most interestingly, Agamemnon refers to his λέχος at home in Mycenae (Il. 1.31), where he imagines a captive slave girl, ‘whom I prefer to Clytemnestra’, tending his needs. Cassandra has taken Chryseis' place. Fraenkel is a bit squeamish about such matters. He believes, for example, that Clytemnestra's reference to her bed at 1447 is unqueenly and out of character, and so sides with critics who believe εὐνῆς to be corrupt.

²⁴ The verb πατέω is applied with similar double-sidedness to Atreus' marriage bed, Paris' abduction of Helen, and the slaying of Agamemnon by Clytemnestra and Aegisthus; see Rehm, R., Marriage to Death: The Conflation of Wedding and Funeral Rituals in Greek Tragedy (Princeton 1994) 48Google Scholar.

²⁵ Od. 5.65; it is used especially of a deer's lair: Il. 11.115, 15.580, 22.190; also a pig-pen (Od. 14.14); cf. Od. 4.438, where the places for ambush of Menelaus and his men disguised as seals are called εὑνάς.

²⁶ ‘The Lion in the House (Agamemnon 717–36)’, CP 47 (1952) 17–25Google Scholar.

²⁷ See Schnapp-Gourbeillon, A., Lions, Héros, Masques: Les Représentations de l'Animal chez Homère (Paris 1981) 38–63Google Scholar.

²⁸ (n.l) 138, 140.

²⁹ The adjective ἄναλκις is exactly the right word for Aegisthus, as Fraenkel concedes. Homer had already used it to describe Aegisthus ἀναάλκιδος Α ί γί σθοιο, Od. 3.310; cf. 3.263–75). The suitors are also described as ἀνάλκιδες, wishing to be in the bed (ἐν εὐνῆι) of Odysseus, another Trojan hero not yet back from the war (Od. 4.333–40). All twenty appearances of the adjective in Homer refer to those who avoid, flee from, or are unfamiliar with war. The suitors, of course, did not fight, but stayed home like Aegisthus. See Edwards (n.17) 33 for a discussion of this passage, including an interesting suggestion that Homer employs a pun on the word for bed in his use of ξυλόχωι at Od. 4.335.

³⁰ Rosenbloom, D., ‘Myth, history, and hegemony’, in Goff, B. (ed.), History, Tragedy, Theory. Dialogues on Athenian Drama (Austin 1995) 106–107,Google Scholar suggests that Aeschylus emphasizes the maritime nature of the Atreidae's leadership as part of his growing concern over Athens' naval hegemony and imperial dreams. For the reversal here of the typical imagery (a boat has wings rather than birds have oars), see Van Nes, D., Die maritime Bildersprache des Aeschylos (Groningen 1963) 109–110Google Scholar. Goldhill (n.8) 14 observes that there is a ‘slide between subject and object as the structure of the simile (x is like y) becomes self-referential (x is like y in that y is like x)—and thus subverted away from the function of generating new meaning’. But my argument is that this slide itself does carry meaning and does not merely represent the slipperiness and unreliability of language.

³¹ Zeitlin, F.I., “The motif of the corrupted sacrifice in Aeschylus' Oresteia’, TAPA 96 (1965) 482–3Google Scholar compares this to the lion parable, arguing that the animals ‘transcend’ their immediate context, moving from victim to avenger to murderous impulse.

³² Smith, O., ‘Some observations on the structure of imagery in Aeschylus’, C&M 26 (1965 )52–65Google Scholar calls it fusion when parts of a simile coalesce and the poet does not distinguish strictly between the ‘illustrans’ and the ‘illustrandum’, terms invented by Johansen, H. Friis, General Reflection in Tragic Rhesis (Copenhagen 1959)Google Scholar. Oddly, Johansen (17–18) himself concludes that the vulture simile is purely ornamental or descriptive, not argumentative or reflective, and that it adds ‘clearness’ to the description of the action. Silk (n.15) 138 f. labels this intrusion. He comments, for example, on the ‘faint and slightly surreal “proleptic” evocation of Iphigenia’ and concludes that ‘there is certainly a remarkable amount of intrusion of one sort or another in the play’ (146–47), but does not link this directly with the themes of the Oresteia. Rosenmeyer (n.l) 121 f. calls it a transference from the ‘vehicle’ to the ‘tenor’. I think he goes too far in suggesting that Helen and Troy are forgotten, replaced by thoughts of Iphigenia (125–27). The referents are fully integrated—one does not exist without the other—and it is this integration that is of importance. Long ago W. Headlam put it simply, ‘no one has his [Aeschylus’] habitual practice of pursuing a similitude, of carrying a figure through’; ‘Metaphor, with a Note on Transference of Epithets’, CR 16 (1902) 436Google Scholar.

³³ W. Whallon has made the imaginative proposal that the confusion between the simile (and the later omen) and the events themselves is the result of the chorus’ incipient senility: they ‘truly think like old men’; “The Herm at Agamemnon 55–56: stocks and stones of the Oresteia’, Hermes 121 (1993) 496Google Scholar. In a similar if less extreme vein, E.T. Owen states that the old men's ‘words turn against them and defeat their purpose’; The Harmony of Aeschylus (Toronto 1952) 65–66Google Scholar. I agree rather with the majority of critics who see the chorus as speaking under severe conditions, cryptically and cautiously, and occasionally saying more than it knows. As R.P. Winnington-Ingram puts it, the Oresteia reveals a ‘polysemous circle of reference [that] shows Aeschylus’ brilliance in the art of suggestion: by the disposition of parallels and analogies he indicates connections we could never have dreamt of, opens up perspectives which give added meaning to each other’; Studies in Aeschylus (Cambridge 1983) 363Google Scholar.

³⁴ Reviews of the standard interpretations of the imagery can be found in Lawrence, S.E., ‘Artemis in the Agamemnon’, AJP 97 (1976) 97–110Google Scholar and Conacher, D.J., Aeschylus' Oresteia: A Literary Commentary (Toronto 1987) 76–83CrossRefGoogle Scholar. For bibliography, see B.H. Fowler (n.10) 87 n.ll. Conacher disapproves of Lebeck's understanding of the omen because she sees in it both the sack of Troy and the sacrifice of Iphigenia. Similarly, Lloyd-Jones, H., ‘Artemis and Iphigenia’, JHS 103 (1983) 87–88CrossRefGoogle Scholar disagrees with the Page/Conington interpretation that Artemis is angry with the eagles themselves and not what they symbolize, because this ‘confuses’ the world of the portent with reality. As is clear by now, I think it is exactly this confusion that is significant. Clinton, K., ‘Artemis and the sacrifice of Iphigenia in Aeschylus' Agamemnon’, in Pucci, P. (ed.), Language and the Tragic Hero (Atlanta 1988) 11Google Scholar answers Lloyd-Jones, but only by separating Artemis' reaction to the event (unsymbolic) from the other characters' response to the symbolism. But to us, the audience, it is the combination of event and symbolism that is so striking—Artemis is just another one of the characters.

³⁵ Cf. πόλιν νεαίρετον, 1065, juxtaposed with Cassandra as a θηρὸς νεαιρέτου, 1063. There is perhaps some inter-species confusion built into the scene. The vultures have become eagles—is there a suggestion here that these eagles are the exact same birds who lost their young and so wreak vengeance by destroying the unborn? Have they, like the sons of Atreus, become their own Furies? This may seem far-fetched, since the first pair of birds exists only in the imaginations of the chorus, and besides, they were αἰγυπιοί and the second pair are αίετοί (137). But in fact the two names were often confused in antiquity—they were considered by many to refer to the same bird; see the passages cited by Thompson, D.W., Glossary of Greek Birds (London 1936)Google Scholar in articles under both names: ‘The vultures were, and are, frequently confused under the name ἀετός' and he suggests that this passage is one of the confused references (5). Zeitlin (n.31) 481, Thomson 1, 21, and Finley, J.H. Jr., Pindar and Aeschylus (Cambridge, MA 1955) 9–10CrossRefGoogle Scholar consider both sets of birds to be eagles. English-only readers of Lattimore's translation (Chicago 1953) would scarcely come to any other conclusion. D.R. Slavitt's recent version (Philadelphia 1998) labels the first pair of birds ‘eagles’ and does not specify the species of the second pair at all. Interestingly, vultures had a reputation in antiquity for inordinate affection for their young—and the young of other species; see Pollard, J.R.T., ‘Birds in Aeschylus’, G&R 17 (1948) 116–17,Google Scholar and Petrounias (n.2) 130 with n.496.

³⁶ Stanford, W.B., Ambiguity in Greek Literature (Oxford 1939) 143–4,Google Scholar citing Lawson's 1932 edition on Agamemnon 137.

³⁷ Fraenkel, citing Wilamowitiz, sees the hounds as servants. That is, the Atreids (human) are eagles (animal) who are dogs (animal) who are servants (human). Birds and dogs dominate the zoology of the Agamemnon, combined here in the canine eagles.

³⁸ The word δαίς is used of animal meals at Il. 24.43, δεῖπνον at Il. 2.383, Hes. Op. 209, and Arch 179 W; see Pelliccia, H., Mind, Body, and Speech in Homer and Pindar (Göttingen 1995) 79CrossRefGoogle Scholar n.130.

³⁹ The deconstructionist leanings of the 1980s reached their nadir in such nihilistic readings as that of Elata-Alster, G., ‘The King's double bind: paradoxical communication in the parodos of Aeschylus'; Agamemnon’, Arethusa 18 (1985) 27,Google Scholar who faulted critics for sharing the (apparently nutty) ‘presupposition that Calchas is making some sort of statement’. GoldhiU's (n.8) 20–23 insistence that the ‘unbounded metaphoricity’ and ‘literalization of metaphor’—terms that I can agree with—‘challenges that process of production of meaning by challenging the produced level of referentiality’ (69) goes too far in this direction, I think. R. Seaford rightly warns of the ‘fetishization’ of ambiguity and the fuzziness of the critical terminology; ‘Historicizing tragic ambivalence: the vote of Athena’, in Goff (n.30) 202–204.

⁴⁰ My colleague Helen Moritz has pointed out to me that the choice of the word χίμαιρα, instead of one of the other more common words for goat, must have evoked images of the mythological creature as well as the domestic animal sacrificed before battle. Iphigenia is not merely confused with an animal, but is described as a mixed-species creature to be killed by a grotesquely mock-epic Bellerophon.

⁴¹ See the gender reversal implied by the chorus' use of δαμέντος (1451) and δαμείς (1495 = 1519) of Agamemnon's slaughter by his wife. Enger inserts δάμαρτος into 1495, a suggestion Fraenkel finds attractive.

⁴² Tarkow, T.A., “Thematic implications of costuming in the Oresteia’, Maia 32 (1981) 156Google Scholar proposes that the shedding of clothing, especially by Iphigenia and Cassandra, reduces them to the level of animals by separating them from an aspect of culture that distinguishes humans. Even more intriguing is C. Sourvinou's suggestion that the arktoi of the Brauronia festival shed the krokotos during the ritual as a mark of their successful fulfilment of a ‘bear's’ career; ‘Aristophanes, Lysistrata, 641–647’, CQ 21 (1971) 339–42CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Thus the description of Iphigenia's final actions may have conjured up this crucial moment from the ceremony for the Athenian audience and so produced complex associations of animal and beast: Iphigenia is presented as a ‘bear’ who is becoming human just as she is sacrificed, a near inversion of the myth in which she is replaced at the last moment by a deer or even a bear (Schol Ar. Lys. 645, cited in Sourvinou 340 n.5).

⁴³ The conflation of dogs and birds, as seen in Zeus' eagles, may help make some sense of a passage that has caused problems. Clytemnestra tells her husband that she fell asleep each night watching for the beacons, sleeping so fitfully that she could be awakened from her dreams by the light flight (ῥιπαῑσι) of a θωύσσοντος κώνωπος (892–3). What exactly is the noise made by this gnat? LSJ, under both θωύσσω and ῤιπή, define it as the ‘buzz of a gnat's wing’. Fraenkel argues that this translation cannot be right because θωύσσειν always indicates a loud shout, cry, etc. He suggests ‘trumpeting’, seeing in it Clytemnestra's supposed agony at such moments, and accepts Barrett's argument for something like a loud rush through the room (Addenda III, 830). But might not the participle conjure up a bark (cf. Horn. Fr. 25), so the gnat keeps Clytemnestra awake like a dog barking next door? This would be in keeping with the conflation of winged creatures and dogs.

⁴⁴ Saayman, F., ‘Dogs and lions in the Oresteia’, Akroterion 38 (1993) 11–18,Google Scholar esp. 11 notes the shifting of positive to unfavourable meaning of the dog images, arguing that they are positive when associated with war against Troy, but perverted when functioning in the context of the family. Goldhill (n.8) 204–205 again feels the difficulty in limiting the inter-references of the dog image is a challenge to meaning itself; cf. his similar discussion of serpent imagery, 201–202.

⁴⁵ While the ‘demonization’ of Clytemnestra may grow stronger over the course of time, her characterization is consistently bestial, and until the very end of the trilogy, no beast is a good beast. For the gradual devolvement of Clytemnestra, see Goheen, R.F., ‘Aspects of dramatic symbolism: three studies in the Oresteia’, AJP 76 (1955) 130,Google Scholar and Betensky, A., ‘Aeschylus' Oresteia: the power of Clytemnestra’, Ramus 7 (1978) 11–25CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

⁴⁶ Excellent on the violence inherent in the confusion between man and beast is Moreau (n.1) 71.

⁴⁷ Electra repeats the image by referring to herself and Orestes as νεοσσοί sitting by the tomb (Ch. 501). E. Belfiore traces the death of the hare back to the destruction of Troy by the Trojan horse (ἵππου νεοσσύς, Ag. 825) through the imagery of inverted parent/child relationships; ‘The eagles' feast and the Trojan horse: corrupted fertility in the Agamemnon’, Maia 35 (1983) 3–12Google Scholar. See also Janko, R., ‘Aeschylus' Oresteia and Archilochus’, CQ 30 (1980) 291–3CrossRefGoogle Scholar for the reversal of the vulture image. On the traditional enmity between eagles and snakes, see references in Garvie on Ch. 247–9. Perhaps we are also asked to look back at the initial simile in a new light. What happened to the vulture chicks? Did a snake take them? Has there been a serpent lurking in the trilogy from the beginning? It was well known that eagles ate snakes—see Il. 12.200–207, Arist. H.A. 609a 4–5, and the fable of the eagle and the snake eventually transformed into the eagle and the fox (Adrados, F.R., ‘El Tema del Aguila, de la Epica Acadia a Esquilo’, Emerita 32 (1964) 267–82Google Scholar—but snakes were also known for stealing into birds' nests and devouring both eggs and fledglings; see Nicander Ther. 451–2 and especially Il. 2.308–19 for the famous omen of the serpent and the sparrows at Aulis. If Aeschylus modelled much of the parodos on this Homeric passage, as I argue in a forthcoming article in Classical Quarterly, then we are indeed warranted in wondering about the unmentioned fate of the missing chicks. If we are to imagine that they may have been eaten by a hungry serpent, then the serpentine Erinyes are sent to avenge the eagles in a further ironic—and ominous—conflation of species.

⁴⁸ See Moreau (n.l) 93.

⁴⁹ Rabinowitz, N.S., ‘From force to persuasion: Aeschylus' Oresteia as cosmogonic myth’, Ramus 10 (1981) 159–91CrossRefGoogle Scholar has much to say about Clytemnestra's serpentine characteristics, seeing her in the ‘mythic role of dragoness’. Although Rabinowitz seems to me to make too much out of the mythic parallels, her comments on the cosmogonic movement from mixed and undifferentiated matter to an ordered world fit in well with my argument. It is not a battle merely with a dragon but with all similar images as well. See also Zeitlin (n.2) 164. On the snake in the trilogy, see Whallon, W., ‘The serpent at the breast’, TAPA 89 (1958) 271–5,Google Scholar Petrounias (n.2) 162–73, and Dumortier (n.2) 88–100.

⁵⁰ The best statement and first steps towards demonstrating this are found in Lebeck (n.ll) 131 f. Roberts, D.H., ‘Orestes as Fulfillment, Teraskopos, and Teras in the Oresteia’, AJP 106 (1985) 291Google Scholar n.18, astutely avers that Aeschylean images move easily from metaphor or simile to verbal description to actual representation on stage. For the reconciliation of images in the Oresteia through the transformation of the Furies, see Moreau (n.l) 267–91.

⁵¹ Sourvinou-Inwood, C., ‘Myth as history: the previous owners of the Delphic Oracle’, in Bremmer, J. (ed.), Interpretations of Greek Mythology (Totowa, NJ 1986) 215–41Google Scholar demonstrates how the myth is structured to express this progression, homologous to Zeus' own succession myth and reign of justice. See also Vidal-Naquet (n.l) 162.

⁵² See the explanation of Ephorus (FGrHist 70 F 31b), cited in Sommerstein on 10. A scholion adds that when a sacred delegation was sent to Delphi, it was led by men with axes as if they would ‘tame the land’.

⁵³ On parallels between the opening and close of the play, see Roth, P., ‘The theme of corrupted xenia in Aeschylus' Oresteia’, Mnemosyne 46 (1993) 16CrossRefGoogle Scholar and Said, S., ‘Concorde et Civilisation dans les Euménides’, in Théâtre et Spectacles dans l'Antiquité (Leiden 1983) 99–104Google Scholar. On the significance of Delphi, see Bowie, A.M., ‘Religion and politics in Aeschylus' Oresteia’, CQ 43 (1993) 14–16CrossRefGoogle Scholar. F.I. Zeitlin establishes the centrality of Athens as an image in Greek tragedy, with Thebes as the ‘anti-Athens’, in “Thebes: theater of self and society in Athenian drama’, in Winkler, J.J. and Zeitlin, F.I. (eds.), Nothing to Do with Dionysos? (Princeton 1990) 130–67Google Scholar.

⁵⁴ Taplin, O., The Stagecraft of Aeschylus (Oxford 1977) 363Google Scholar contrasts the Pythia's humbling posture with her previous ‘quiet dignity’ and compares Euripides’ Polymestor (Hec. 1056 f.) who similarly enters on all fours and is explicitly compared to a four-footed mountain beast.

⁵⁵ See the discussion in Sommerstein's commentary, 2–12.

⁵⁶ Euripides Rh. 785; cf. μύζοιτ', 118, the sound of sleepers but also used of dolphins, fish, and wounded men and dogs. Rose on 53 compares Scutum 267, where Achlys has a running nose and blood drips from her cheeks; I think, rather, that Aeschylus' point is the bestial sound, not the swollen sinuses.

⁵⁷ At 106 Clytemnestra tells the Furies that they have lapped up (ἑλείξατε) many of her sacrifices. The verb is used of a flesh-eating lion at Ag. 828 who feasts on the blood of Trojan kings, though it could describe the drinking of any number of animals.

⁵⁸ Compare the λαβὲ λαβὲ λαβὲ λαβὲ in 130 shouted by the Furies in their sleep. Are these the shouts of hunters to their dogs or the ‘vocalization of hounds on the trail’ as Sommerstein suggests ad loc.?

⁵⁹ (n.3) 19.

⁶⁰ Cf. 250–51, where the Furies have just arrived in Athens across the water ἀπτέροις ποτήμασιν / ἡλθον. Sommerstein (on 51) points out that they do have wings in later tragedies (e.g. Eur. IT 289, Or. 317) and some post-Oresteia vase paintings. At 424 Athena asks them if they ἐπιρροιζεῖν Orestes into flight. It is not clear to what kind of inarticulate noise this refers. Podiecki ad loc. notes that it is used by Theophrastus of a croaking raven; LSJ cite the Aeschylus passage and translate ‘shriek flight at him’. But Sommerstein senses the rushing noise of a pack of hounds in full cry, and Thomson hears the cries or whistles of the hunters urging on the pack, comparing Eur. H.F. 860. In no other place does Aeschylus use bird imagery of the Erinyes, which in my mind greatly weakens the central thesis of Fowler's (n.10) detailed examination of the animal imagery associated with the Furies.

⁶¹ Sommerstein on 644 notes that nowhere else in tragedy are humans, let alone deities, addressed as beasts. Aeschylus uses κνωδάλων at Ch. 587 to refer to beasts of the sea and contrasts them at 601 with mortal men.

⁶² See Brown, A.L., ‘The Erinyes in the Oresteia: real life, the supernatural, and the stage’, JHS 103 (1983) 26CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

⁶³ They are, perhaps, the tragic equivalent of the comic satyrs as composites of bestial and divine used to explore the boundaries of human life; see F. Lissarrague, ‘Why Satyrs are good to represent’, in Winkler and Zeitlin (n.53) 228–36.

⁶⁴ (n.2) 178; see also Rosenmeyer (n.l) 141.

⁶⁵ See Moreau (n.l) 276–78 with bibliography.

⁶⁶ This may help to explain her seemingly unnecessary and odd statement on arrival in Athens that she came ‘without wings’ (πτερῶν ἄτερ, 404). She is suggesting to the Furies that she does in fact share something with these strange creatures who also came to Athens άπτέροις ποτήμασιν, 250. If this is her motivation, then this supplies further argument for retaining 404 and excising 405; Sommerstein ad loc. summarizes the issues.

⁶⁷ Most of the references to gods in the play are either to individual deities (especially Apollo and Athena) or to the Olympians in general, with whom the Furies are consistently contrasted, even in the speech of the Furies themselves. At 411, Athena blurts out that they are not among goddesses seen by the Olympian gods, if we follow the manuscript and read ὁρωμέναις. Page emends to ὁρωμέναις, which would then suggest even more strongly that the Furies were not seen as goddesses by the gods.

⁶⁸ For classical references (beginning with Od. 19. 109 f. and Hes Op. 220 f.), see Segal, C.P., ‘Nature and the world of man in Greek literature’, Arion 2 (1963) 29 fGoogle Scholar. Vidal-Naquet notes the shift in vocabulary from the hunt to agriculture and husbandry (n.l) 164. Peradotto, J.J., ‘Some patterns of nature imagery in the Oresteia’, AJP 85 (1964) 378–93,Google Scholar esp. 379–83, examines the development of nature and vegetation metaphors in the trilogy and finds a resounding harmony at the end. I think that the order established with the close of the Eumenides can always fall back into chaos; see below.

⁶⁹ On the cock as a symbol of civil war and tyranny (cf. the chorus' jibe at Aegisthus, discussed below) and the Erinyes' association with stasis, see Saïd (n.53) 109–11.

⁷⁰ Petrounias (n.2) 179–83 traces the images of shepherd, watchdog, and protector.

⁷¹ This interpretation requires πρόσθε τά rather than Page's πρόσθετα. Lloyd-Jones, H., ‘Three notes on Aeschylus' Agamemnon’, RhM 103 (1960) 77–8Google Scholar gives the best explanation for this reading, that in oracular language humans are referred to by animals. But even this is unnecessarily limited—the mixture of animal and human extends far beyond prophetic topoi..

⁷² Knox (n.26) 18, 20. Nappa, C., ‘Agamemnon 717–36: the parable of the lion cub’, Mnemosyne 47 (1994) 82–87CrossRefGoogle Scholar replaces Helen with Paris as the primary referent. μῆλον also surfaces in several sacrificial contexts discussed below.

⁷³ Thus Sommerstein's remark (on 1016) that the ‘unity of the Athenian πόλις transcends the gulf between mortals and immortals’ is only partially correct, for the larger issue is that each section of the polis is in its rightful place—animals exist as a means to establish communication between men and the divine (not really ‘transcendence’) and so are now excluded from the list. There is no pathetic fallacy here, no farewell to birds, sheep, fields or trees that are part of the wild, not of the polis.

⁷⁴ The ‘development’ of deities within a work is still a controversial claim, but clearly at least what the gods stand for has been altered; see Sommerstein 19–25. Athena, ironically, evolves into the parental figure that Agamemnon and Clytemnestra fail so wretchedly to become. The polis becomes Athena's ‘family’. The virgin goddess is many things to Odysseus and his royal house in Homer's epic—and she even seems to transform herself into a bird to watch his final act of vengeance—but it is hard to imagine the hero tucked metaphorically under her wings.

⁷⁵ On the Furies as metics, and on the associations with the Panathenaia, see Headlam, W., ‘The last scene of the Eumenides’, JHS 26 (1906) 268–77CrossRefGoogle Scholar with Bowie's detailed discussion and bibliography (n.53) 27–30. On the technical status of the Furies as metics with a review of the issue, see Vidal-Naquet, P., ‘The place and status of foreigners in Athenian tragedy’, in Pelling, C. (ed.), Greek Tragedy and the Historian (Oxford 1997) 111Google Scholar. Whitehead, D., The Ideology of the Athenian Metic (Cambridge 1977) 38Google Scholar sees this reference as outside the semantic norm in Aeschylus because of its apparent positive associations. But this may be Athena's greatest trick, to keep the Furies as an essential part of the polis without overwhelming it in some destructive fashion. As Whitehead concludes (38 f.), there is a duality about the metoikia: to have metics in the city was advantageous; to be a metic was not. Athena manages to play up the positive aspects of this situation by manipulating the Furies into looking at the role from the outside. Perhaps it should not be forgotten that a central rite of the Panathenaic Festival was giving Athena a veil/robe illustrating the battle of the Olympians with the giants. The procession itself marks the successful suppression of the hybrid creature that is so dangerous.

⁷⁶ The adjective σεμνὄς is applied by Clytemnestra to the feast of the Furies (Eu. 108), thus ironically anticipating the metamorphosis of the deities (see Henrichs, A., ‘Anonymity and polarity: unknown Gods and nameless altars in the Areopagos’, ICS 19 (1994) 44)Google Scholar and also by the Furies to themselves (383), but it is only at the very end of the play (1041) that they are officially recognized as Semnai Theai, as most commentators now accept Hartung's supplement Θεαί.

⁷⁷ (n.76) 27–58; see also Lloyd-Jones, H., ‘Erinyes, Semnai Theai, Eumenides’, in Craik, E.M. (ed.), ‘Owls to Athens’: Essays in Classical Subjects Presented to Sir Kenneth Dover (Oxford 1990)Google Scholar esp. 208–11.

⁷⁸ Taplin (n.54) 412 observes that the text even implies that sacrifices were carried out on stage. Henrichs (n.76) 47 and n.98 reminds us that σϕάχια can refer to both slaughtered animals and victims still in the process of being sacrificed.

⁷⁹ Even when mentioned earlier in the context of sacrifice, animals rarely remained simply animals. Clytemnestra angrily insists that there were many flocks (μῆλα) available when Iphigenia was slaughtered like a beast (Ag. 1415–17). Clytemnestra grows impatient with Cassandra, declaring that the flocks (μῆλα) stand ready for sacrifice (Ag. 1057). Cassandra comments on her father's useless sacrifices (Ag. 1169). A transition is made at Eu. 450 and 452 where Orestes claims he was purified by the animal sacrifice (βοτουῦ/βοτοῑσι). This is the beginning of the change in imagery. Good on the role of sacrifice in tragedy in general is Segal (n.l 1986) 50 f.

⁸⁰ Burkert, W., ‘Greek tragedy and sacrificial ritual’, GRBS 7 (1966) 87–121Google Scholar.

⁸¹ Fr. 94; see the discussion of Henrichs (n.76) 27 n.4. For δίκη in the larger sense of order and balance, and a discussion of all its various meanings in the trilogy, see Gagarin, M., Aeschylean Drama (Berkeley 1976) 66–68Google Scholar and Thalman, W.G., ‘Speech and silence in the Oresteia’, Phoenix 39 (1985) 104–105CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Brown (n.62) 27 reminds us that the Furies had been associated with the justice of Zeus in the first two plays, and thus the closure in the Eumenides represents a return to the former harmony under a new dispensation.

⁸² Knox (n.26) 20, for example, welcomes Headlam's guess that it must be a lion as the badge of the dynasty of Pelops; see also Garvie ad loc.

⁸³ My use here of ‘politics’ is much less specific than that found in the flood of recent work that attempts to place Greek tragedy into its political context. The trilogy is no longer merely mined for contemporary allusions to Argos or the reforms of the Areopagus, but for information on the tensions within the democracy. A good review can be found in Sommerstein, A.H., Aeschylean Tragedy (Bari 1996) 288–95Google Scholar. No matter which side of the liberal/conservative debate scholars come down on, there is general agreement on my central assumption that ‘the polis is always implied here as being part of the route from chaos to order’, Meier, C., The Political Art of Greek Tragedy (tr. Webber, A., Cambridge 1993) 131–2;Google Scholar see also Zak, W.F., The Polis and the Divine Order (Lewisburg 1995),Google ScholarGriffith, M., ‘Brilliant dynasts: power and politics in the Oresteia’, CA 14 (1995) 62–114,Google Scholar and Rocco, C., Tragedy and Enlightenment (Berkeley 1997)Google Scholar. Griffith (64) concludes that ‘by any account the ending of the Eumenides represents a ringing endorsement of Athens and its political system. Such, I take it, is the prevailing view of Aeschylus' masterpiece’. This does not mean, of course, that most critics find a simplistic, comfortable closure to the trilogy—many issues remain unresolved. Goldhill (n.8) 280, 283 in particular sees a ‘profound ambiguity in the reconciliation… achieved through language, peitho’, and so the ‘telos of closure is resisted in the continuing play of difference’. But even he agrees that the city's order, the polis itself, is never seriously questioned as the necessary basis of civilization; ‘The great Dionysia and civic ideology’, in Winkler and Zeitlin (n.53) 114. Since he sees the ‘difference’ as a matter inherent in the nature of language, there can be no avoidance of ‘slipping’. My approach is less sophisticated, suggesting difference is species-bound, and the slippage between species, or between genders or age groups, etc. can be and is stopped through divine guidance. Language can be used by humans to organize and reflect upon reasonably sensible lives within a community.

⁸⁴ See Moreau (n.l ) 271. A convenient survey of the Gigantes and Athena can be found in Gantz, T., Early Greek Myth: A Guide to Literary and Artistic Sources (Baltimore 1993) 445–54Google Scholar.

⁸⁵ See Sommerstein ad loc. for references.

⁸⁶ Especially good on the ‘politically redemptive role’ of persuasion in the Oresteia is Kane, F.I., ‘Peitho and the Polis’, Ph&Rh 19 (1986) 99–124Google Scholar. Edwards, M.W., ‘Agamemnon's decision: freedom and folly in Aeschylus’, CSCA 10 (1977)Google Scholar esp. 25 f. examines the close link between persuasion, temptation, and infatuation. Peitho is not always a matter of logical persuasion; cf. Gagarin (n.81) 85 f., Buxton (n.2) 105–114, and the bibliography in Rabinowitz (n.49) n.80. On the place of rhetoric in Aeschylus' world, see S. Halliwell, ‘Between public and private: tragedy and the Athenian experience of rhetoric’, in Pelling (n.75) 121–41.

⁸⁷ The bT-scholia: ἑπίσκοποι γάρ είσιτῶν παρὰ ϕύσιν For the role of the Furies at Iliad 19.404 f., see Heath, J., ‘The legacy of Peleus: death and divine gifts in the Iliad’, Hermes 120 (1992) 397–99Google Scholar with bibliography, though cf. Edwards (n.17) ad loc. For a discussion of speech as the special property of humans, with primary references, see Buxton (n.2) 49–62, Dierauer, U., Tier und Mensch im Denken der Antike (Amsterdam 1977) 32–35,Google ScholarSorabji, R., Animal Minds and Human Morals (Ithaca 1993) 80–86,Google Scholar and Pelliccia (n.38) 25–6, 105–8. Harriott, R.M., “The Argive Elders, the discerning shepherd and the fawning dog: misleading communication in the Agamemnon’, CQ 32 (1982) 13CrossRefGoogle Scholar makes some provocative comments in passing on the significance of animals' inability to speak.

⁸⁸ See Segal (n.l 1981) 52–58 for the disruption of logos in tragedy. Thalman (n.81) 225 makes the important argument that the effective use or a failure to master speech and silence can represent the workings of dike and is finally one with the moral issues, and discovers a concern with speech and silence pervading the entire trilogy. He concentrates on the inner psychic entities that make up human activity as central to the major themes, whereas I am here more interested in the external, political links; for a thorough discussion of logos as a psychic/intellectual activity in Aeschylus, see Sansone, D., Aeschylean Metaphors for Intellectual Activity (Wiesbaden 1975) 79–92Google Scholar. One of the most illuminating discussions of speech and silence in Greek tragedy remains Knox, B.M.W., ‘The Hippolytus of Euripides’, YCS 13 (1952) 3–31Google Scholar.

⁸⁹ Cf. Hes. Op. 216–17: ὀδὸς δ' ἑτέρηϕι παρελθε ῖν / κρείσσων ἑς τὰ δίκαια.

⁹⁰ Peitho is connected by Athena with the γλώσης ἐμῆς μείλιγια καἰ θελκτήριον (886). There is no doubt that words can cast spells, and this ‘magical’ aspect of language has become the subject of much discussion; see most recently, McClure, L., ‘Clytemnestra's binding spell (Agamemnon 958–74)’, CJ 92 (1997) 123–40Google Scholar.

⁹¹ The old men also say to Aegisthus, ‘Go ahead, fatten up, staining justice’ (πρᾱσσε, πιαίνου, μιαίνων τὴν δίκην, 1669). This is usually taken as a response to Aegisthus' threat to starve them (1621, 1642). But the verb is also the word used of fattening animals, so the chorus may well be encouraging Aegisthus to prepare himself to become a sacrifice, since they have just thought of Orestes’ return (1667).

⁹² S.L. Schein aptly observes that Cassandra is a victim like Iphigenia, the vultures robbed of the nest, the unborn in the hare's womb—and also a Fury like Helen and Clytemnestra; ‘The Cassandra scene in Aeschylus' Agamemnon’, G&R 29 (1982) 15Google Scholar.

⁹³ On the connection between ϕρήν and speech, see Sullivan, S.D., Aeschylus' Use of Psychological Terminology: Traditional and New (Montreal 1997) 30–32Google Scholar and Sansone (n.88). Animals do not have ϕρένες in Aeschylus, making it impossible for them to have or understand speech. Clytemnestra may be hinting that if Cassandra does not understand, she really is no different than a swallow.

⁹⁴ D.E. McCoskey briefly examines Cassandra's ‘justification’ of her slaughter of Cassandra by emphasizing this aspect of ‘otherness’ and notes that Clytemnestra is similarly endowed with a certain ‘foreigness’ of expression; ‘“I, whom she detested so bitterly”: slavery and the violent division of women in Aeschylus' Oresteia’, in Murnaghan, S. and Joshel, S.R. (eds.), Women and Slaves in Greco-Roman Culture (London/New York 1998) 44–6Google Scholar. The two women may also be linked by their initial long silence on stage. Cassandra is certainly mute for many minutes after entering. The moment of Clytemnestra's first entrance is still debated. If she does appear at 83, as many scholars suggest, even if she departs again at 103 her prolonged speechlessness makes her a sister in silence to Cassandra; see both Taplin (n.54) 280–5 who argues strongly against an early entrance, and the attempted rebuttal by Pool, E.H., ‘Clytemnestra's first entrance in Aeschylus' Agamemnon: analysis of a controversy’, Mnemosyne 36 (1983) 71–116CrossRefGoogle Scholar. The jury is still out: see March, J.R., The Creative Poet (BICS Supplement 49, London 1987) 81–2Google Scholar with n.7, for example, for agreement with Pool, , and Ewans, M., ed. and trs., Aischylos: The Oresteia (London 1995) 132Google Scholar n.17 for agreement with Taplin on the basis of the pragmatics of a modern production.

⁹⁵ See Bacon, H.H., Barbarians in Greek Tragedy (New Haven 1961) 6–17,Google ScholarBaldry, H.C., The Unity of Mankind in Greek Thought (Cambridge 1965) 9–23,CrossRefGoogle Scholar and especially Hall, E., Inventing the Barbarian (Oxford 1989) 2–20Google Scholar.

⁹⁶ Being unheard is the equivalent of being outside of moral consideration. The gods do not hear the wicked man (Ag. 396; cf. Eu. 558–9). The herald's appearance is contrasted with Clytemnestra's womanly faith in torch signals—he is οἔτ' ἅναυδος (496; cf. Iphigenia at 238: βίαι χαλινῶν τ' ἁναύδωι μένει). Clytemnestra prays that Agamemnon's speech in Hades not be loud (Ag. 1528–9)—he cannot be too dead.

⁹⁷ Swallows in particular; see Herodotus 2.54–57, Aristoph. Birds 1681, Frogs 93, 678 f.

⁹⁸ Sheppard, J.T., ‘The Prelude of the Agamemnon”, CR 36 (1922) 5–11Google Scholar compares Clytemnestra's shriek with that of the vultures: ‘it was a mother's cry for vengeance’; cf. Moreau (n.1) 95.

⁹⁹ Zeitlin (n.31) 507 observes the restoration of the ololygmos to its proper function. She also notes the contrast between the previous blasphemy of spilled blood and the truce (that is, poured offerings, σπονδαί, 1044).

¹⁰⁰ Perhaps we should also recall that the Athenian Semnai Theai were strongly and unusually associated with silence, worshipped in complete silence in a cult presided over by the Athenian genos of Hesychidae, named after Hesychus, ‘the silent one’—that is, there remains something different, something beastly about them even in their most sympathetic guise; see Henrichs (n.76) 43A and Henrichs, A., ‘Namenlosigkeit und Euphemismus: Zur Ambivalenz der chthonischen Mächte im attischen Drama’, in Harder, A. and Hofmann, H. (eds.), Fragmenta Dramatica (Göttingen 1991) 162–9Google Scholar.