I finished reading The Eumenides, the third and final part of the Oresteia by Aeschylus. The term Eumenides is a name given to the Furies of Greek mythology. Both the Furies and some of the gods, principally Athens and Apollo, are major characters in this play. The gods play a more immediate and central role as characters in this work than in most other ancient Greek drama I’ve read. The gods do make appearances in other works, but in The Eumenides much of the dialogue is actually between gods and the Furies.

Not only does Orestes’ fate lie in the balance, to be judged by Athena, but the trajectory of the curse on the house of Atreus is at stake.

“And the brutal strife,
the civil war devouring men, I pray
that it never rages through our city, no
that the good Greek soil never drinks the blood of Greeks,
shed in an orgy of reprisal life for life –
that Fury like a beast will never
rampage through the land.”