The real red shoes

The real red shoes

Σάββατο 19 Ιουλίου 2014

Oresteia: Choephoroi- Eumenides

The ongoing 18th International Festival of Ancient Greek Drama has brought to Cyprus many noteworthy artists.

To me the most striking performance so far was the one of Choephoroi and Eumenides by La Fondazione Instituto Nazionale Del Dramma Antico-INDA from Italy.


The gruesome story of Orestes came to life in front of us in a strikingly perfect way.

The production was aware of new trends in criticism about the play and they were not afraid to show how they understood Aeschylus as modern people.

For most of us the story of Orestes is quite simple: a young man is ordered by a god to murder his mother to avenge his father’s murder. The story aims to show how the Areopagus council was formed and how it is supposed to be interlinked with the history of Athens.

Indeed, Athena in Eumenides founds the court of Areopagus which became responsible for serious cases of homicide.


However, matricide is not any case of homicide.



That is what the Furies say. That is what we all think.

At the core of the story lies a much deeper narrative. The Oresteia is all about the replacement of the older matrilineal system of property by a new patriarchal system of ownership of goods and women.

Apollo and Athena, the representatives of the Olympians, side with the father claiming that the mother is unimportant. 

Apollo clearly states that the mother is merely a vessel for the father’s seed, an opinion expressed by Pythagoras.

Aeschylus merges the scientific knowledge of his time with the old myth of Athena being born from her father’s head to explain female subordination.


According to scholarly research,[1] the first inhabitants of Europe had different gender dynamics from modern societies but were not matriarchal. They were peaceful people who worshiped the mother- fertility and opted for creating life instead of destroying it without any gender imposing itself upon the other.

The Indo-Europeans, the new settlers, brought with them male gods, male superiority and a warlike aggressive political life.

As it usually happens, the Oresteia is the story told by the victors.

The Furies, the representatives of this older pantheon, are described as monsters with serpentine hair: crazy, destructive women.

The snake as the symbol of the feminine traces its origins back to the worship of the mother as a symbol of knowledge and divination.

That is why there was a snake at Delphi, Python. Apollo conquered Delphi when he slew Python.

This conflict between the sexes and different religious and societal systems lies at the heart of the trilogy.
The deeper meaning of the text was beautifully addressed by the performance.

I really enjoyed the ending. In Aeschylus’s text the Furies are persuaded by Athena to become benevolent, Eumenides. Some scholars suggest that Athena bribes them with honours to prevent the destruction their wrath would bring upon Athens.

It could be assumed that Athena indeed bribes them. And their last victorious speech could be ironic. They had lost because they were disrespected and offended on many occasions.

So, the reading of INDA coincides with this assumption. The Furies are still offended, they are not persuaded.

I loved how they did not wear the red robes the Athenians offered them and how they leapt forward towards the audience. It was also very striking when the central image of the mother and fertility collapsed as they ignored the call of Athena.




INDA interpreted Aeschylus in a sensitive and careful way and managed to emphasize the basic conflict of the play in a clear and profound way.




It is our turn now to think how we will recreate our world and undo the evil of this disturbing gender dynamics. 

Eisler, the writer of the Chalice and the Blade believes that the world before male domination was a utopia, the world of the chalice of life. She even suggests that we could regress to that world and keep our technology and centuries of advancement. 

What do you think?



[1] Merlin Stone, When God Was a Woman (New York: Harvest) 1976; Riane Eisler, The Chalice and the Blade (San Francisco: Harper Collins) 1988.

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