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This chapter considers some manifestations of inherited guilt, curses, and Erinyes in Sophocles, paying particular attention to his three Theban plays and his one Pelopid play, the Electra. Sophocles is treated separately because he is a special case in the relevant respects. Aeschylus and Euripides, for all their differences, seem in interesting ways to stand rather closer to one another than either does to Sophocles. It is argued that Sophocles does not share the Aeschylean preoccupation with doubly motivated action and its bearing on mortal decisions. At the same time, he is no less concerned than his two counterparts with familial dysfunction and with supernatural causation. It is simply that his concern with these concepts is handled differently

This chapter focuses on the literary depictions of the Erinyes as personifications of revenge in order to draw conclusions about the gendering of revenge in ancient Greek thought. It asks why the Greeks envisaged the supernatural agents of punishment as female, when acts of blood revenge were typically enacted by men against other men to preserve their honour and attack their enemies. Demonstrating how Erinyes’ gender derives from a variety of sources, including their association with chthonic, thanatological and maternal forces and their links to other mythological figures (such as the Gorgons and Harpies), the chapter argues that the furies should in fact be regarded as ‘transgender’.

This chapter considers the extent to which the tragic dead are capable of harming the living by examining both the autonomous actions of the dead and the agentive relationships they form with the gods, the Erinyes and the living in pursuit of revenge in the world of the living. This chapter is constructed around case studies, the two most important being the agentive relationships between dead Agamemnon and his son Orestes in Aeschylus’ Choephori, and between dead Achilles and the Greek army in Euripides’ Hecuba. This chapter emphasises the active role of the dead in the pursuit of revenge and their ultimate inability to enact such revenge autonomously or to retain control over its unfolding in cases of agentive action.

A look at information concerning what happened to the souls of those who died too young, who died violently, or whose bodies were left unburied; how they might suffer in the afterlife and consequently avenge themselves against the living who were responsible for their plight. Also treated is information about how the living might protect themselves against these dangerous ghosts, especially when they were embarking on initiation into mystery cults, and the role of ritual experts in such protection. Included is discussion of the Derveni Papyrus, the mysterious demon named Empousa, further discussion of Hecate and a first discussion of the Erinyes. Maschalismos—dismemberment of a corpse in order to hamper its ghost—is also treated.

The first part of this chapter begins with a review of Hecate’s appearances in texts and archaeological finds, treating the goddess Enodia—who was often identified with Hecate—as well. It argues that from the start, these goddesses were both boundary protectors, worshipped at the door or gate in order to keep ills such as demons and sickness out of houses or cities, and goddesses expected to help during birth. Hecate and Enodia were also concerned with the transitions of girls into successful female adulthood. The second part of the chapter reviews a number of rituals and myths connected with female maturation, in which unsuccessful females die and become demonic entities who persecute other girls during their transition to adulthood. A myth about Iphigenia turning into Hecate after her early death is one articulation of this pattern, as are stories connected with Helen and some lesser-known heroines. The connection between Hecate and Artemis (who was also a goddess charged with protecting girls until maturity) is examined in this light as well.

This chapter looks closely at the Erinyes and two related groups of goddesses, the Eumenides and the Semnai Theai, and at the relationship between the goddess Erinys and Demeter. The Erinyes acted on behalf of dead souls who were angry at the living, especially blood kin who had mistreated those souls, and also punished souls who deserved it after death. The role that the ritual practitioner Epimenides played in simultaneously quieting the restless dead after the Cylonian affair and establishing cult to the Semnai Theai is examined in this light. The chapter ends with a close reading of the end of Aeschylus’ Eumenides, arguing that it offers a new myth about the origin of the Athenian court system on the Areopagus, in which Athena plays the role of a goês, quieting the Erinyes who are angry on behalf of Clytemnestra’s ghost, and thus reiterating the new importance, in the fifth century, of maintaining good relationships between the living and the dead.

Chapter 7 considers the general associations of drakontes with the earth, the underworld and underworld powers, notably Hecate and the Erinyes. Of particular interest is the propensity of the returning heroic dead to turn into the drakontes that move from beneath the earth to the surface and make themselves anew. Attica, ever proud of the autochthonous origins of its population, boasted a suite of foundational and protective anguiform heroes in Cecrops, Ericthonius, Cychreus and, as we contend, the lawgiver Drakōn. The following pair of chapters turns to the group of kindly anguiform deities that seemingly rises to prominence, at any rate qua anguiforms, and seemingly as a phalanx, in the late fifth century BC.

This chapter examines the thematic role of oaths in Aeschylus's Oresteia and how oaths were related to the Erinyes (also known as Curses, and midwives to the oath-god Horkos). It also considers how a series of flawed or failed oaths punctuates the action of the trilogy, eventually resulting in the establishment of the sworn tribunal of the Areopagus and giving rise to the sworn pledge of alliance offered by its first defendant, Orestes, to the Athenians of the future. The chapter discusses the recurrence of horkos throughout Oresteia, and also traces how the interconnection and evolution of oaths give meaning to the tragic events of the house of Atreus.

Chapter 2 examines plays that turn to Greek tragedy in response to collective predicament and catastrophe in the contemporary world. The discussion focuses on Steven Berkoff’s Greek, after Oedipus the King, Hélène Cixous’s La Ville parjure, ou le réveil des Erinyes (The Perjured City, or the Awakening of the Furies), and Martin Crimp’s Cruel and Tender, an adaptation of Sophocles’ The Women of Trachis. While in the first two examples the adaptation of tragic themes and patterns involves a critique of tragedy and its histories of reception, Crimp’s play challenges Western perceptions of tragedy in a more overt manner, resisting the polarizing discourses of tragedy reproduced by the mainstream media in the aftermath of 9/11. The rewriting of the Greek tragic texts in these plays provides a frame that challenges established definitions of tragedy and, at the same time, proposes a renewed more egalitarian understanding of tragedy.

After briefly describing the nature and provenance of the Derveni Papyrus (fourth century bc), this chapter introduces in the first section the Derveni author himself and his discussion of a ritual in the first seven columns of the papyrus. The second section presents the Orphic poem that is the subject of the Derveni author’s commentary, through a detailed analysis of the poem and the attempts of modern scholars to reconstruct it. The third section argues that the central event of this poem’s narrative is Zeus and the act of swallowing, which has significant parallels in other Greek and Near Eastern myths. Whether Zeus swallows the phallus of Ouranos or the entire body of Phanes, this act of swallowing is the means by which he secures his position as king of the gods.