Abstract
Christopher S. Morrissey
Department of Humanities
Simon Fraser University
Oresteia: the oikos writ large?
The polis, as Aristotle argues in the Politics, is not the oikos writ large. Similarly, Aeschylus' Oresteia commemorates the separation of office from person, the political innovation par excellence for establishing national unity. This achievement establishes territorial jurisdiction for the rule of human law, rather than of unlimited divine will. The legal reasoning behind Orestes' acquittal is executive privilege. The nomophylakes of the Areopagus are the Athenian regime's guardians of national security, likewise operating in a sphere of executive privilege. The trilogy's statecraft resolves the quarrel of oligarchs and democrats through the classical exercise of executive power. Thus the trilogy aesthetically records a move to a patriotic politics of territorial jurisdiction. Although he does not fully treat this political dimension in the Oresteia, René Girard's mimetic theory nevertheless prepares the way for a full appreciation of the Oresteia's statement on the gap between oikos and polis.
Return to CACW 2006 "Household and Society in the Ancient World" Program