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When the Greek soldiers at Aulis came to get Iphigenia where she was waiting for the summons to death, her mother beside her, she forbade Clytemnestra to go with her to the altar. So another ending was given to the story. Never would such a demand have been made by the lovely lady of the woodland and the forest, who was especially the protector of little helpless creatures. But to the later Greeks this was to slander Artemis. According to the old account, she was killed because one of the wild animals Artemis loved had been slain by the Greeks and the guilty hunters could win back the goddess’s favor only by the death of a young girl. Any deity who demanded them was thereby proved to be evil, and, as the poet Euripides said, “If gods do evil then they are not gods.” It was inevitable therefore that another story should grow up about the sacrifice of Iphigenia at Aulis. They thought about such sacrifices as we do. The Greeks, as has been said, did not like stories in which human beings were offered up, whether to appease angry gods or to make Mother Earth bear a good harvest or to bring about anything whatsoever.
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A possible reason for this lapse on the part of one of the greatest poets the world has known is that the Athenians, who were suffering greatly at the time from the war with Sparta, were eager for miracles and that Euripides chose to humor them. Athena’s appearance, in point of fact, harms a good plot. According to our ideas it is a weakness and certainly it is unnecessary in this case, where the same end could have been secured by merely omitting the head wind. The happy end brought about by a divinity, the deus ex machina, is a common device with Euripides alone of the three tragic poets. I have taken this story entirely from two plays of Euripides, the fifth-century tragic poet. The curse of the House of Atreus was ended. Neither he nor any descendant of his would ever again be driven into evil by the irresistible power of the past.
Who is pan in greek mythology by edith hamilton free#
Orestes went forth from Athena’s tribunal a free man. They acquitted Orestes, and with the words of acquittal the spirit of evil which had haunted his house for so long was banished. From the Furies of frightful aspect they became the Benignant Ones, the Eumenides, protectors of the suppliant. She persuaded the avenging goddesses also to accept it, and with this new law of mercy established they themselves were changed. The killers of that race had never suffered from their guilt and sought to be made clean. “I, not Apollo, was guilty of my mother’s murder,” he said, “but I have been cleansed of my guilt.” These were words never spoken before by any of the House of Atreus. “He killed at my command.” The dread forms of his pursuers, the Erinyes, the Furies, were arrayed against him, but Orestes listened calmly to their demand for vengeance. “It is I who am answerable for what he did,” he said. “I can speak to Athena with pure lips,” he said. He believed that by now it had faded away.
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Those who desire to be purified cannot be refused and the black stain of his guilt had grown fainter and fainter through his years of lonely wandering and pain.
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He had come to beg for help nevertheless, in his heart there was confidence. He traveled to Athens, sent there by Apollo to plead his case before Athena. He had learned that no crime was beyond atonement, that even he, defiled by a mother’s murder, could be made clean again. He was worn with suffering, but in his loss of everything men prize there was a gain too. He had been a wanderer in many lands, always pursued by the same terrible shapes. When next he came to his country, years had passed.