Erinyes/Eumenides/Furies

Uno studio su i limiti e le possibilità di traduzione della tragedia greca, attraverso una lettura critica dell'operazione pasoliniana nel contesto della realizzazione dell'Orestiade di Eschilo (1960) e delle accese critiche che ne derivarono.
In particolar modo, la monografia propone nel capitolo centrale un'analisi testuale della traduzione pasoliniana del momento culminante della trilogia, le Eumenidi, di taglio comparatistico rispetto al testo greco e ad altre versioni: francese (Mazon) e italiane (Valgimigli, Untersteiner, Pattoni).
Superando la sterile dicotomia fedeltà-infedeltà, si mettono in luce gli aspetti di un "incontro trasformazionale" tra due importanti autori distanti nel tempo, Eschilo e Pasolini.

Bellona, blood-frenzied goddess of war, played an integral role in Roman Republican warfare. Her temple became the de facto meeting place of the Senate for nearly all matters concerning war; treaties, triumphs, engagements, meetings with ambassadors, even its ritualized declaration. Despite Bellona’s dominion over warfare, there has yet to be a single monograph dedicated to her study. Our understanding of Roman military history—not only the more ideological aspects as the
study of any deity reveals, but even the concrete practicalities like how war was actualized from start to finish—cannot be complete without at least a basic understanding of Bellona’s role.

Because the topic of Bellona has remained largely unexplored in current scholarship, this project will necessarily be preliminary. This thesis will paint a large, yet as detailed as possible, image of Bellona’s life at Rome. The approach is diachronic. We begin as far back as our evidence allows, to somewhere before the 3rd century BC, and move forward into the 3rd century AD. We trace Bellona’s evolution from an Italian, Sabine goddess of war and victory, to one closely linked to the Senate, to a goddess who would descend into madness, becoming an exoticized Eastern divinity in the company of Cybele, Attis and Isis. We will see that individual families—the Claudians, Cornelians, and Julians—will play vital roles in her transition. Naturally, not every aspect of Bellona can possibly be detailed in the following, and it must be reiterated that this thesis
serves as the necessary first step, the much needed foundation, for further study.

Broadly speaking, this is a work on Roman religion. However, as has almost become a maxim among scholars of ancient religion, we cannot extricate religion from politics, society, the arts and daily life more generally. The following inevitably touches upon topics like Roman
military history, gens based politics in the Roman Republic, topography and the politics of space, collective and individual memory, ancestral worship, civic religion, and the importation of Eastern
cults.

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Bellona, déesse de la guerre, animée d'une frénésie sanglante, a joué un rôle intégral dans les combats de la République Romaine. Son temple est devenu, de fait, le lieu de congrès du sénat pour presque toutes les affaires concernant la guerre—traités, triomphes, engagements, l'accueil des ambassadeurs, et même sa déclaration ritualisée. Or, malgré la domination de Bellona dans le cadre de la guerre, il reste qu'aucune oeuvre a été consacrée a son étude. Notre connaissance de l'histoire militaire de Rome -- tant les aspects plutôt idéologiques, que révèle l'étude de n'importe quel dieu, tant les réalités matérielles, voire comment une guerre s'est manifestée de son début jusqu'à sa fin—ne peut s'achever sans une connaissance au moins rudimentaire du rôle de Bellona.

A mesure que le sujet de Bellona est resté pour la plupart ignoré, ce projet sera nécessairement préliminaire. Cette recherche vise a peindre à grands traits, mais comprenant autant de détail que possible, une image de la vie de Bellona chez les Romains. La programme sera diachronique: on commencera d'un point de départ aussi reculé que nous permettent nos témoignages—c'est a dire d'un temps antérieur au troisième siècle av. J. C—et on avancera jusqu'en plein troisième siècle de notre ère. On suivra le fil de l'évolution de Bellona, de ses origines comme déesse sabine à sa place privilégiée auprès du sénat, et ensuite à son caractère d'une déesse qui s'abime dans la folie, devenant une figure orientale et exotisée en compagnie de Cybele, Attis, et Isis. On vera que des familles particulières—les Claudiens, les Corneliens, et les Juliens—vont jouer des rôles cruciaux dans sa transformation. Bien entendu, ce ne sera pas possible de préciser tous les aspects de Bellona, et il faut encore souligner que cette recherche sert comme premier pas, la base nécessaire de futures études.

En gros, ceci est une enquête sur la religion Romaine. Cependant, nous constatons, avec les autres spécialistes de la religion antique, qui en ont fait presqu'une maxime, que nous ne pouvons dégager la religion de la politique, de la société, de l'art, et, plus généralement, de la vie quotidienne de la communauté. Inévitablement, ce qui suit va porter sur d'autres thèmes, à savoir l'histoire militaire de Rome, la politique de la gens chez la République, la topographie et la politique de l'éspace, les mémoires collectifs et individuels, le culte des ancêtres, la religion civique, et l'appropriation des cultes orientaux.

This paper identifies and analyzes several related, thematically significant tragedic resonances in Aristophanes’ Assemblywomen as exemplifying his shift from outright paratragedy to appropriation. His treatment of politicized gender and sexual tensions owes much both to Orestes-plays (Praxagora emerges as a comic Clytemnestra; the three old women as Erinyes) and to Sophocles’ Oedipus at Colonus. The abduction scene in Aristophanes is modeled on abduction of Oedipus, which elucidates the comedian’s attitude towards Sophocles.

Regress threatens throughout Lyotard's Differend, especially where the argument appears to make normative ethical or political claims. How a term, a case or an example "links onto" a phrase serves as a way of examining how instituting can be non-regressively grounded, and with what consequences for abstract political subjectivity. The essay offers an alternative to liberal philosophical (Arendt, Nussbaum) and jurisprudential (Marbury v. Madison) schemata of political institution.

The object of this research is the role played by the Erinyes in the Greek literature on Theban myth from the Odyssey to Sophocles’ Oedipus Rex. These goddesses or daimones, who originally played an important role as punishers of blood crimes inside the family, extended greatly their prerogatives in the time: they intervene
whenever they observe a violation in the natural order. In this way they are connected with malediction (ἀρά) and pollution (μίασμα). In the Theban myth, which presents family crimes in successive generations (Laius, Oedipus, Eteocles and Polyneikes), the Erinyes have to perform a great work. In this research texts as the Nekyia (Epikaste’s Erinys), the Thebais, Pherekydes, Pindar’s Ol. 2, Aeschylus’s Seven against Thebes and other ones are reexamined from this perspective. The comparison
with the myth of Orestes (Aeschylus’ Oresteia, Euripides’ Orestes) will help to explain the ways of their intervention in Greek tragedy. Sophocles’ Oedipus Rex has some references to the Erinyes, but they don’t play an important role in this tragedy. Really Oedipus Rex is not focused on the history of the family and its crimes but on the character of the protagonist.

open access under: https://textsandstudies.skeneproject.it/index.php/TS/catalog/series/Studies-1
chapter 7
https://textsandstudies.skeneproject.it/index.php/TS/catalog/view/67/13/424-1

ABSTRACT
Sophocles bases his posthumous Oedipus at Colonus on the famous treatment of the transformation of the Furies to the Kindly Ones in Eumenides, the last play of Aeschylus’ Oresteia that has gained the status of a master-play. Accordingly Sophocles shapes the plot and its main character on a cultic reality and on the ritual concept of chthonic heroes and gods. The Erinyes/Eumenides, to whose grove Oedipus arrives, function as the model for Sophocles’ most questionable hero. Their quintessential polarity between the dreadful dimension of death and euphemistic names to veil it, between mythic scenarios of anger, curse, hate as well as cultic blessing and plenty is the basic pattern of a play that stages Oedipus as a chthonic hero in the making. He acts right from the beginning as the hero he is going to become. Sophocles makes Oedipus oscillate between staging a real mystic miracle and a problematic manipulation of religious facts in order to take revenge on his Theban homeland by finding support from his new city of Athens. This open perspective involves the audience in thinking about what really happened and reflecting about the relation between ritual, religion, politics, and their manipulations by men for their own purposes. In this way it comes quite close to Euripides’ Bacchae written about the same time. OC is thus in many respects like a metatheatrical exploration of the constitutive gap of signifier and signified to be gradually closed by the blind director who gathers, like the blind and unwitting audience, the piecemeal information divulged as the play progresses.


KEYWORDS: Oedipus; Sophocles; Erinyes; Eumenides; Oresteia; chthonic polarity; heroization; cultic hero in the making; Kolonos as tumulus; metatheatre; oracles; manipulation; curse; blessing; military support; indeterminacy; narratological strategy; mimesis; politics; mystery; religious and metatheatrical exploration

Death and what happens to the soul when our bodies fail has enthralled humanity across the ages. No less so for the Etruscans. Vanth, a female daimon who acts as a psychopomp, is one of the most commonly represented chthonic figures in Etruscan funerary art. However, despite this proliferation, she is only named by inscription seven times. Complicating things further is the wide variety of her iconography amongst these seven examples. A close iconographic analysis of the seven epigraphic Vanths proved little cohesion in Vanth's iconography if only this small sample is considered. It also revealed that relying solely on the epigraphic Vanths for frequency analysis leads to unusual attributes such a nude Vanths being weighed far more heavily than they should when compared to a larger sample. In this study, a corpus of 100 Vanth samples drawn from open access online collections were compiled into a database and examined using exploratory data analysis. The results showed distinct trends in Vanth's iconography over the 5th to 2nd centuries BCE. They also showed a lack of trends along a north-south axis of the geographical locations of the seven Etruscan cities studied, implying that the expansion of the Roman Republic during the same period had little effect on changes in Vanth's iconography. There are, however, localized phenomena that occur and have been documented in this study. Examining the trends by object type revealed minor variations in her iconography and peculiarities specific to certain object types. A secondary result of this thesis was the discovery of an element of Hellenic bias, with Vanth sometimes being misidentified in online museum collections as figures such as Lasa or the Greek Erinyes. She might also be given insipid descriptive labels or simply referred to as a 'winged demon'. This incorrect or obscure attribution creates a vicious circle whereby scholars searching for Vanth cannot find her because she is inaccurately labelled in the extant metadata of these collections. The Vanth database created to facilitate this study is open access and will serve as a resource by which scholars and museum curators can secure a more reliable identification of Vanth in the future.

Estudio del simbolismo de la serpiente en cinco mitos griegos que presentan un mismo leit-motiv: el combate que un dios o un hombre excepcional mantienen contra un monstruo de clara filiación terrestre. No obstante, en cada uno de los casos, cada mito supone un avance gradual, que va un paso más allá que el anterior y nos proporciona nuevas e interesantes lecturas de estos enfrentamientos permitiéndonos profundizar en el complejo simbolismo de la serpiente en el arte y la literatura griega.

This contribution concerns gruesome tales of cruelty and the intersection of fact and fiction. The case study is the image of some dangerous mythological women: Lilith, Lamia, Alecto, and the
Morrígain. Late-antique and early-medieval authors have clustered (some of) them by identifying them with each other. This contribution tries to explain the etymological association of Furies in general or
Alecto in particular as being ‘unstoppable/incessant’ within a narrative context. While the characteristic of ‘unstoppable’ appeared to make sense for Lilith/Lamia/Alecto, the Morrígain suddenly seemed to fall
outside the equation. She is not a strangler of babies and we have no textual witnesses of her lacerating a male partner after sex. In order to understand Eriugena’s equation of the Morrígain with Lilith/Lamia, we
need to read the whole chapter of the Book of Isaiah to which he added his glosses. This contribution ends with the intersection of human and superhuman when discussing the fifth/sixth-century rule to exclude
from the Christian community those who accused their fellow human beings of being such a destructive supernatural female.

The objective of the present work is to keep track of the Erinyes in the Western tradition, starting with Aeschylus´ Eumenides. We are taking into account the intertextuality and intermodality, as it is typical of the studies on the Classical Tradition. We are also paying attention to disciplines as varied as literature, ceramics, painting, cinema… with the aim of reflecting the evolution undergone by these characters over time. Thus, we will observe that the specific circumstances surrounding each recreation or reinterpretation implies that the author/artist judges them in a specific way. Along this paper, we will realize that the Aeschylus’ Eumenides has few similarities with Sartre’s work.

This chapter argues that the ‘chthonic’ category of Greek religion may be understood from a combined theological, philosophical and cosmological perspective, which concerns the relationship of humans to the soil, nature and the generative powers. It demonstrates that Aeschylus’ Oresteia provides previously unappreciated evidence that the chthonic captures a certain consciousness related to natural generation and production, the use and abuse of resources and the human relationship to the cosmic order as determined by these. By exploring how earth and the chthonic inform the role of the Erinyes and by demonstrating that their function goes well beyond that of deities of revenge and their antithesis with the Olympian gods, the chapter will demonstrate that their theology, in fact, approximates an eco-theology. It also explores how this category of the chthonic relates to bigger cultural questions, including the relationship of humans to the cosmic order, which is a key question at the heart of the Oresteia.

La performance de la Orestía de Esquilo en el 458 a.C. generó algunos momentos significativos atesorados en la memoria colectiva. Muchos de los espectadores encargaron a los productores de vasos la representación de escenas fundamentales y una de las predilectas fue el tema de ‘Orestes y las Erinias’. El impacto del teatro resultó definitorio en la elaboración de la iconografía. Gradualmente se fue impulsando un proceso pictórico que imaginó fórmulas aptas para transmitir las intensas emociones dramáticas. El vestuario, las máscaras, la coreografía suministraron parte del material figurativo pero también los artistas se basaron en métodos de representación ya probados, con una historia plástica de varios siglos y los complementaron con aportes originales de cada ceramógrafo. La iconografía de ‘Orestes y las Erinias’ surgió en Atenas casi en simultáneo con la performance de Euménides y tan sólo unas décadas después se difundió por la Magna Grecia.

Far from being a recent invention, depth psychological thinking already features extensively in Greek mythology, more specifically in the stage plays of the great Athenian tragedians of the fifth century BCE. In this pivotal century, large parts of Greek civilization had embarked on a process of rapid modernization, and the tragedians seem to have felt the need to give their artistic comments on these developments. Their (implicit) analysis of the human mind is depth psychological in all but name. The paper focuses on the Pre-Socratic world view in general, and on the tragic notion of hybris in particular. Finally it aims to show the underlying depth psychological structure of Aeschylus' Oresteia.

Η σαρκοφάγος στην οποία θα αναφερθούμε, δημοσιεύτηκε το 1948 στο Bulletin du Musee de Beyrouth, από τον Ernest Will. Ο E. Will πραγματεύεται μία σαρκοφάγο ρωμαϊκής περιόδου, που βρέθηκε κατά τη διάρκεια του Β΄ παγκοσμίου πολέμου, κοντά στην πόλη της Τύρου, στον Λίβανο. Το εύρημα μεταφέρθηκε στο Εθνικό Μουσείο της Βηρυτού και έκτοτε εκτίθεται μαζί με τα υπόλοιπα ταφικά μνημεία του μουσείου. Η σαρκοφάγος, ανήκει στον τύπο της κλίνης, καθώς το κάλυμμα της είναι κλινόμορφο. Πάνω στην κλίνη του καλύμματος, βρίσκεται ανακεκλιμένη η μορφή μίας γυναίκας. Είναι αξιοπρόσεκτο επίσης ότι το έργο κοσμείται και στις τέσσερις πλευρές του με ανάγλυφο διάκοσμο.

The use of Classical Greek and Roman materials in medieval Irish texts is not unusual; however, what has been under-appreciated is how sometimes the polytheistic past of medieval Irish culture has been interpreted through classical materials.  This represents an "interpretation Hibernica," in contrast to the "interpretation Romana" so familia from classical tradition of connecting non-Roman deities to classical gods and goddesses, in which the medieval Irish self-understanding based on classical parallels heightens the respectability of Irish tradition, and often represents a subtle but keen comparative eye that may genuinely reveal something about Irish native tradition.  Examples dealt with in this short examination include the Morrígan as both lamia and Allecto, and the possible appearance of the Egyptian god Osiris alongside Mars, Jove, and Apollo in part of a late Ulster Cycle text.  This methodology may have wider applications than these limited examples can demonstrate.

This paper focuses on Tisiphone’s first appearance in Silius Italicus’ Punica (2.526-52) and considers the depiction of the infernal deity. It inserts Silius in his productive period and, by analysing the text in hand, traces the way Tisiphone’s followers, the geographical alterations caused by her presence and her doings serve as characterising instruments in those lines, besides examining her description presented both in the poet’s words and Juno’s. Finally, this paper investigates the relation between the Fury and her Olympian sender, Juno, and argues that Silius’ Tisiphone is the result of a dialogue with Virgil’s Juno in the Aeneid.

A gendered analysis of social and religious values in 5th century BCE illuminates the Athenian
decline from democracy to bully empire, through pursuit of a faux virility. Using a feminist
hermeneutics of suspicion, the study contrasts two playwrights bookending the empire:
Aeschylus, who elevated the sky pantheon Olympians and demoted both actual Athenian
women and the Furies—deities linked to maternal ties and nature, and Sophocles, who granted
Oedipus, his maternal incest purified, an apotheosis in the Furies’ grove. The latter work,
presented at the Athenian tragic festival some 50 years after the first, advocated restoration
of respect for female flesh and deity. This redemptive narrative placed the life of Athens—
democracy and empire—in the wider context of Nature. Present-day parallels are drawn.

ἦ δεινὰ λέξαι, δεινὰ δ’ ὀφθαλμοῖς δρακεῖν, / […] / ὡς μήτε σωκεῖν μήτε μ’ ἀκταίνειν στάσιν· (Aesch. Eum. vv. 34-6). Questi versi, apparentemente, non contengono alcun significato politico, ma introducono un concetto che a una prima analisi della tragedia eschilea appartiene alla sfera emotiva, mentre nel prosieguo acquisterà una valenza etica e morale positiva per la prevenzione dell’ingiustizia: si tratta della paura. I versi pronunciati dalla Pizia appena uscita dal tempio e mortificata dalla visione delle Erinni, manifestano tutto il terrore che caratterizza la vicenda tragica narrata nell’Orestea. Infatti la paura è a tutti gli effetti il Leitmotiv della tragedia ed interessa sia il campo religioso, sia il campo etico, sia il campo politico.
Si vedrà come Eschilo volesse dire di più, andando oltre la situazione di Oreste, il suo matricidio e la maledizione degli Atridi: i versi preparano il pubblico ad una rappresentazione spaventosa, avvertendolo delle misere condizioni dell’eroe e dell’aspetto terrificante delle Erinni (“non donne, ma Gorgoni”!). Ma il termine στάσις, inteso come “sedizione”, designa una paura che pervade tutta la narrazione e che riguarda il campo politico. L’occorrenza del termine accanto a contesti che riguardano il sangue, la vendetta e gli omicidi (vv. 464, 542, 647-8, 981-2), indica la paura espressa ora dalle Erinni per il cambiamento del sistema giudiziario vendicativo, ora da Atena perché la sua città non cada in rovina a causa dei nuovi rivolgimenti. Si tratta di una paura che forse rifletteva l’angoscia del popolo ateniese di quegli stessi anni per le riforme giudiziarie di Efialte, l’omicidio di quest’ultimo e l’instaurazione di un nuovo ordine politico radicale che si poneva in netta contrapposizione con la classe aristocratica, suscitando forti tensioni interne.
Il timore che la paura diventasse un mezzo di governo superava i confini del palcoscenico e toccava anche la situazione reale contemporanea.

The Construction of a Political Identity between Deities: Furies and discordia in the narration of civil conflict in Rome.

The work deals with the main theme of discordia in latin literature, by stressing the political  meaning of the lexeme and the consequences of its imagery on public life. After a short recall of the meaning of discordia and how it becomes more and more a synonime of bellum civile (following the path of a chapter in Fantham's Roman Reading), the analysis focuses on the Furies as they are an example of the objectification of the political meaning of discordia. Comparing the latin Furies with their greek analogues (Erinys/Eumenides) and with an overlook on iconography, and, mostly, analysing those figures in latin epic (Vergil, Ovid, Lucan and Statius above all) – how they look, how they are chracterized visually and functionally-, I'd like to underline the fully negative connotation of Furies. Eventually, I'll show how I think that the imagery has been employed incostructing the consensus of the subordinate classes to the politics of the upper class and in sedating the discordiae inside the civitas, by marginalizing them.

Western psychoanalytic theory has at its center an analysis of
the passions of Oedipus, his lust for his mother and his
murderous rivalry with his father. But it offers no discussion of
his healing. I propose first to return to Freud's source, Oedipus
the King, by the 5th century Greek playwright, Sophocles, and
offer a new perspective on the King's ills. This will be a Self-inRelation
view of him drawn from Kohut's Self Psychology and
from Object Relations Theory. Then I will examine Oedipus at
Colonus,written about a weathered Oedipus on the last day of
his life, by a 90 year-old Sophocles. It is only through the
revised understanding of what ailed Oedipus that the steps in
his healing can be discerned.

Most of the scholars studying the problem of Aeschylus’ political sympathies on the basis of his tragedy “Eumenides” proceed from the speeches of the heroes of the drama. The author of this article proceeds from the difference between Aeschylus’ treatment and the traditional mythical pattern of the subject itself. The poet obviously glorified the Council of Areopagus which was deprived of its rights by the democrats some years before the tragedy was staged. So the widely-spread opinion that Aeschylus sympathized with the democratic reformers is hardly true. Вопрос о политических симпатиях Эсхила обсуждался издавна и породил почти необозримое количество исследований. Занимаясь этой проблемой, учёные обращаются прежде всего к трилогии «Орестея», особо выделяя её заключительную часть – трагедию «Эвмениды» И доказательства демократических симпатий Эсхила, и доводы в пользу его политического консерватизма основываются, главным образом, на интерпретации речей действующих лиц. А это допускает различные оценки и порождает неутихающие споры – проблема остаётся. Значит, к ней нужен иной подход. Следует обратить внимание на то, что допускает возможность более объективной оценки – не на речи персонажей, а на особенности трактовки Эсхилом мифологического сюжета. Можно отметить несколько расхождений Эсхила с распространёнными вариантами мифов об Ареопаге. Разрабатывавшаяся Эсхилом художественная трактовка хорошо известных афинянам мифов прославляла Совет Ареопага. Такое возвеличивание спустя несколько лет после расколовшей общество на враждующие группировки демократической реформы Эфиальта следует оценивать как проявление политического консерватизма.

A great deal of scholarship since as early as the 1930s has shown the deep interconnections between 5th century Athenian tragedy and the making of Hippocratic medicine, as regards the vocabulary and the imagery used to describe the diseases. While a number of studies insist on the influence of Aeschylus on medical literature, the technical references in Euripides’ play have been mostly exclusively read as the result of the impact of Hippocratic naturalism on the poet’s rationalism. The famous scene from the Orestes, in which the protagonist sees the Erinyes when no one except for Electra is present on stage, for instance, is usually considered as a mise-en-scène of the Hippocratic treatise On the Sacred Disease, which deals with epileptic syndromes ruling out any supernatural origin. Through an innovative analysis of the Hippocratic passages dealing with sensory impairment, I challenge this widespread interpretation, arguing instead for partial independence of this scene from contemporary medical depictions of sensory disorders. I suggest, in fact, quite the contrary: the first representations of the Orestes might have inspired the accurate depiction of a clinical case in the Hippocratic ‘Internal Affections’.

https://classiques-garnier.com/la-poesie-dramatique-comme-discours-de-savoir-crise-de-la-mantique-et-pathologie-de-la-perception-dans-l-oreste-d-euripide.html

"This book is about the many part-human mythological hybrids in late first century Roman culture. Virgil's Aeneid and Ovid's Metamorphoses are the central texts. The first chapter discusses 'monster studies' and attitudes towards monstrous forms, both then and now; the second discusses abnormal bodies outside myth (distant races, religious prodigies, deformed humans); the next two address female monsters and the last two male ones.
Contents:
1: Monster Theory
2: Real Monsters
3: Feminine Exteriors
4: Feminine Interiors
5: Beast-Men
6: Hyperbolic Monsters"