A New Sublime by Piero Boitani

Author:Piero Boitani
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Europa Editions
Published: 2020-01-07T00:00:00+00:00

These words I have unreeled are for my citizens,

advice into the future. All must stand upright

now, take each man his ballot in his hand, think on

his oath, and make his judgment. For my word is said.

Here in the place where, centuries later, the Apostle Paul preached, and all but a few of his listeners abandoned him, the last part of the Oresteia takes place. It’s an actual trial: Orestes is charged with matricide, the Furies are the accusers, Apollo the witness. The debate ranges widely, taking in the murder of Agamemnon and therefore all the action of the play. At the end, Athena invites the judges to vote. The result is a tie between those favorable to Orestes and those opposed. Then Athena, who, as supreme judge and president of the court, has rights of her own, takes advantage of this and votes for Orestes: who is absolved. Athena also finds a new home and new tasks for the Furies: given a new name, the Eumenides, they will be honored in Athens and become its protectors.

Thus the Oresteia sanctions the moment in which the Law replaces the justice of retaliation and revenge, dominated by Moira and Athys: a trial in court, where a human tribunal, made up of real jurors, listens to the accused, the charge, the witnesses, and votes according to its own convictions—a fundamental advance in civilization. This certainly won’t prevent tragedies of blood, but it will govern their outcomes, eliminating, at least in intention, the obligation to violence.

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