The Ancient Greek Story of Clytemestra

I don’t know why the central character in this Ancient Greek image is smiling: she is getting stabbed. Maybe because the artist was taking sides with the playwright Aeschylus, who thought Clytemestra deserved to die? Athens in the 5th c BCE was a civilization whose male citizens prided themselves on having a democracy with a sophisticated justice system, all the while oppressing women and treating non-citizens as lesser people.

The story of Clytemestra really shows this. In _The Oresteia_, a three-part Greek tradedy, Aeschylus tells of how Orestes kills his mother and gets away with the murder. In a grand trial, Orestes has to face divine judgement because of his matricide. Clytemestra had killed his father, so Orestes was out for revenge. But the backstory is important — Clytemestra herself killed because her husband had murdered their daughter as a sacrifice to the Gods. Jerkface!.

In the trial, the God Apollo defends his client Orestes, saying that matricide wasn’t all that big a deal, because mothers in general weren’t that big a deal. Apollo’s explanation synergizes with modern science-deniers. He claims that it is the father’s sperm that really provides the essence of a child — the mother just provides a temporary shelter until the father’s creation is ready for birth. “Not the true parent is the woman’s womb that bears the child,” he pronounces, “She doth nurse the seed, new-sown. The male is parent. She for him — as stranger for a stranger — just hoards the germ of life.”.

Aeschylus wasn’t alone in his ideas about justice and women’s place in society. The tragedy had a positive ending for Athenian male citizens — Orestes was not punished. Nor was he alone in his idea that mothers’ contributions to their children were slight. The Athenians who thought their society was best might have made the loudest noises, but we know that story only represents the most powerful voices.