There are plenty of candidates for moments when the course of history changed dramatically – the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria on 28 June 1914, precipitating the First World War, is an example. But sometimes historical moments are not as precise as that; it might be something that emerged during the course of a century that, from the long perspective of hindsight, emerges as a great divide between what went before and after. And sometimes there is a record of this more diffuse kind of event which captures it and its significance – not necessarily a direct record, as in a diary entry or minute book, but in a literary work. As a prime example I have in mind Aeschylus’ Eumenides, the third play in the Oresteia trilogy. He there portrays the swinging of history’s hinges in that what went before was archaic, what came after was the beginning of the history of Western civilisation.
The Oresteia tells of Agamemnon’s return from the Trojan war, his murder by his wife Clytemnestra and her lover Aegisthus, and what even more horribly followed, namely the avenging of his death by his son Orestes, who was duty bound to the task. But that meant Orestes had to kill his own mother, Clytemnestra; and the murder of a parent was so hideous a crime that it had to be avenged by the Furies (in Greek the Erinnyes), three underworld goddesses themselves born from the murder of a parent, having sprung from the blood of Ouranos when he was castrated by his son Kronos.
The Furies accordingly pursued Orestes with torments and agonies, driving him to near-suicide. The Eumenides tells how Orestes finally got to Delphi where he begged Apollo’s help, explaining how it had been his duty to avenge his father but alas the person upon whom vengeance had to be taken was his mother, et cetera; and now he was in great trouble with the Furies. Apollo, minded to be helpful, told Orestes to go to Athens to ask for Athena’s help, because she was so clever and would know what to do; meanwhile he, Apollo, temporarily put the Erinnyes to sleep so that Orestes could escape.
Athena agreed to help Orestes. Her scheme was to summon a jury of Athenian citizens to hear his case. Apollo volunteered to serve as Orestes’ defence attorney, and argued that Orestes had not murdered a parent because a mother is not a parent but merely a receptacle. This is an unpersuasive argument today, but it satisfied half the jury, who voted to acquit Orestes. Athena used her casting vote in his favour too, so after many painful bounds he was at last free.
At just that moment the Furies arrived in Athens, angrier even than usual because of having been tricked into sleep; and they saw what had happened. They were, as was their wont, furious. ‘You young gods,’ they say to Athena (in effect: this is not a translation of the text), ‘have usurped our role; it was our task to punish Orestes, but you have summoned a jury, talk talk talk, and have let him off.’ To which Athena replied (in effect: this is still not a translation), ‘Yes; for we live in a new world now; we do not follow the old way of revenge, an eye for an eye, but we gather together and discuss and decide what to do on the basis of that discussion.’ She then offered to host them in Athens in perpetuity if they would give up their vengeful ways and be renamed the ‘Eumenides’ or Kindly Ones. They agreed.
The moment thus captured is the shift from the old way of seeking justice to the new; a shift from vengeance to law, from the warrior virtues of endurance, courage, ferocity in battle, preparedness to die for the tribe or settlement, the use of force to settle disputes and right wrongs, to the civic virtues required by urban life, community, co-operation, government by agreement and laws, negotiation, institutions that regulate the relationships and interactions of society.
Of course, revenge and the warrior characteristics remain as both vices and virtues even in our day, useful as the latter in such circumstances as war; but the civic virtues are dominant, and have grown in significance since the classical period – grown unevenly, to be sure; and with setbacks; but now they are the distinctive and central feature of civilised life wherever civilised life flourishes.
It is interesting to reflect on Aeschylus’ portrayal of the moment when the Furies, as agencies of the old justice, yielded to the new. Note that it is the goddess of wisdom who subdues them into civility; that it is triumphant Periclean Athens which hosts these and so many other hinges of history in that brilliant period; that it is a particularly chilling and ghastly series of events that brings matters to a crisis, where reason trumps emotion at last in resolving them. The significances studding the story repay contemplation, but the central theme – that a new world had dawned: that ‘the young gods had usurped the old’ – is the key to it, and to our own world.