From the Erinyes to the Eumenides: how vengeful goddesses still bark like dogs at a past that does not pass

Abstract

The initiative to turn off the past and allow the march of time forward is often attributed to the Greeks, because of the composition of the tragedies. Artistically, Eumenides, who composed the Oresteia trilogy of Aeschylus, represents the invention of justice and of law itself: in the narrative, a court was first institutionalized to judge blood crimes based on a rational discourse, putting an end to the vindictive system known as the Curse of the Atreidai. Would it be correct to say that Orestes’s distant judgment is still representative of the end of the cycle of revenge, or even that the contemporary systems of law continue to reflect those primitive systems, as if the three drops of Uranus’ blood, which gave birth to the Erinyes, still dyed the Earth, preventing the past from happening? The objective of this article, while recognizing the contribution of the Hellenes, is to demonstrate that, on the plane of reality, the conversion of the Erinyes into Eumenides did not complete its cycle: there is a past that does not disconnect from the present and the long memories of the avenging goddesses still cry out for revenge, hindered by Orestes’ trial, but it is difficult to deny that the State, by punishing, in a given perspective, does not continue to reproduce feelings and practices of revenge, similarly to the curse of the Atreidai.