Death and its consequences pervade Aeschylus’ Oresteia. Iphigenia’s sacrifice sets the expedition to Troy in motion; Clytemnestra’s ghost, articulate and implacable, rouses the Furies for vengeance. Shilo’s first monograph systematically analyses the Oresteia’s depictions of the afterlife. The word “Beyond” in the title is important. Shilo’s concern is not with depictions of death itself: the choral song depicting Iphigenia’s sacrifice is not analysed in depth. Rather, this book focuses on how characters imagine and engage with the afterlife, from Cassandra’s predictions of the underworld to the invocations at Agamemnon’s grave. A book-length treatment of this topic is overdue: Shilo’s well-researched, sensitive, and powerfully argued book gives it the attention it deserves. This book demonstrates that the Oresteia’s depictions of the afterlife pose complex questions in their own right, but also prompt us to reconsider some of the thorniest problems in the Oresteia.
This topic demands multiple frames of reference: uncertainty about what comes after death is a religious, ethical, existential, political, linguistic, and poetic problem, both within and outside tragedy. The inconsistencies and ambiguities between different approaches, though, are a feature of Shilo’s book, not a drawback: the “poetics of multiplicity” (p112) are central to his approach. Archaic and Classical imaginations of the afterlife (outlined pp4-14) are manifold and inconsistent; this plurality, Shilo argues, is reflected in the kaleidoscope of ideas which characters in the Oresteia articulate, some of which are mutually exclusive. These polyphonic ideas, in turn, are central to the Oresteia’s ethical questions (What kind of afterlife can Agamemnon expect? Why is Clytemnestra tormented in the underworld?) and its politics (What is the Argives’ response to the death toll at Troy? How does Athena’s justice differ from that of Hades?). Shilo’s thorough and precise introduction anchors this book’s theoretical background, demonstrating how he draws on ethics, politics, and religious beliefs concerning the underworld. Poetic analysis, moreover, is a strong suit in this book: every section spotlights rich, sensitive analysis which embraces the vibrant complexity of the Oresteia’s language.
Compromises are inevitable, and not every relevant theoretical approach is represented. One might expect a mention of necropolitics or a reference to Achille Mbembe’s work,[1] for example. Shilo principally sources comparanda from Homeric epic and other Aeschylus works (p16), which will strike some as unnecessarily cautious: the discussion of Clytemnestra’s ghost (pp157-8) would benefit from comparison with Polydorus in Euripides’ Hecuba, for example. But no book can represent every approach, and to do so would imperil this book’s clean, well-organised argument. As it is, this book is wide-ranging (the footnotes are extremely thorough, and often describe rather than simply citing), yet tightly argued. More advanced undergraduates will find in this book a thought-provoking and perfectly accessible read; researchers will find it thoroughly enriching. The book rewards detailed knowledge of the trilogy, but readers who have only studied the Agamemnon (for example) will find plenty to engage them.
Shilo’s arguments are often constructed in iterative, recursive fashion: moving back and forth between core passages and wider surveys of characters or motifs, he demonstrates how the Oresteia constructs, interrogates, and compares different conceptions of the afterlife. Later chapters frequently build on material from previous chapters, making the scope of later chapters much more ambitious. Though this book often focuses closely on specific passages, that does not mean excerpts are taken out of context: rather, Shilo’s precise handling of context strengthens his analysis. This is important, for the questions and challenges Shilo analyses are often implicit: no character explicitly asks whether Agamemnon can expect eternal punishment for the slaughter at Troy (p130), for example. Shilo’s arguments are often pleasingly ambitious, but rarely tenuous, and never enough to imperil his overall thesis.
The first three chapters focus on Agamemnon. Chapter 1 (“The Herald of the Agamemnon”) discusses the Herald’s imagination of his future death in Argos, and his portrayal of the Trojan War’s consequences. He strikingly denies lament to those who died at Troy, demonstrating a focus on the world of the living (which, paradoxically and tortuously, he almost seems to eulogise) and seemingly offering “a subtle repudiation of glorious death in combat” (p36). Chapter 2 (“The Chorus of the Agamemnon”) argues that the Chorus’ perspective on the Trojan War dead differs provocatively from the Herald’s; furthermore, their range of meditations on death is multivalent to the point of being self-contradictory. The title of Chapter 3 (“Prophecy on the Banks of the Acheron”) summarises its central concern: Cassandra’s expectation that she will soon sing her prophecies in Hades (Ag. 1160-61). Shilo argues that this is more than just a metaphor for death: he asks whether this claim constitutes a prophecy or a deduction, and explores the possibilities (from kleos to an eternity of Apollo’s curse) which are raised for Cassandra’s afterlife. In demonstrating how these characters highlight the afterlife’s multivalent possibilities, both for others and for themselves, Shilo’s interpretation is richly detailed: readers will find themselves studying the Herald, Chorus, and Cassandra with fresh eyes.
Chapter 4 (“Afterlives at the Tomb of Agamemnon”) moves to the kommos of Choephoroi, at Agamemnon’s grave. Shilo outlines how the mourners (Orestes, Electra, the Chorus of enslaved women) conceptualise Agamemnon’s afterlife, attempting to connect with and even raise Agamemnon from the dead. When Orestes learns of Clytemnestra’s dream, he prays again to his father’s tomb and interprets himself as the dream’s referent (Cho. 540-50); Shilo does not do enough, in my view, to justify arguing that “The suggestion (never enunciated) is that the prayers to Agamemnon worked” (p109). However, Shilo is right to emphasise different characters’ divergent perceptions of Agamemnon’s afterlife; he posits (p111) that Agamemnon’s silence (in contrast to Darius’ ghost in Persians, for example) enables these perceptions to coexist in tension, rather than providing resolution.
This idea is developed further in Chapter 5 (“Heroes in the Oresteia”), which interprets Agamemnon’s and Orestes’s posthumous power using the lens of hero-cult. Whereas Agamemnon highlights Agamemnon’s political role, the invocations in Choephoroi emphasise his family role: this enables his reputation to be reinterpreted and contested, with Clytemnestra undermining his glory and Electra sanitising his killing of Iphigenia. The last part of the chapter highlights Orestes’ portrayal of his own death: he eventually declares himself the focus of an Athenian and Argive hero-cult (Eum. 762-77), which also voids consequences for his own killing of Clytemnestra. This is a compellingly argued chapter; Shilo’s contention that “Once Orestes becomes a hero, his acts and words are impossible to interpret psychologically” (p144) is thought-provoking, and deserves more explanation.
Chapter 6 (“The Ghost of Clytemnestra”) moves to Eumenides to discuss the ghost’s power and relationship with Clytemnestra’s living self. She is, in Shilo’s words, “a mere dream of demons” (p164), and her language obfuscates and complicates our understanding of how visible she is, especially her rhetorical use of her own wounds (Eum. 103). Clytemnestra’s description of the underworld emphasises her personal suffering, rather than divinely ordained ethical punishment: what to others might be punishment is to Clytemnestra an imbalance which demands murderous vengeance, whereas other ghosts (in Homer and Aeschylus) demand only ritual honour. Shilo concludes provocatively, yet convincingly, by arguing that Clytemnestra’s ghost—though she warps the afterlife for her own ends—offers powerful ethical appeals despite her evident guilt.
All three plays contain a choral passage discussing the underworld’s ethical judgement system. This culminates in the Erinyes’ description (Eum. 267-75), which forms the focal point of Chapter 7 (“The Tablet-Writing Mind of Hades”). Shilo outlines the interplay between this exposition and other choruses’ outlines of structured divine punishment (Ag. 461-8, Cho. 59-65). He argues that Hades’ strictly schematised ethical concerns prioritise the individual above the political, and that this judgement system is systematically undercut across the trilogy long before its exposition. This chapter ends with the section “Contrasting Athena’s and Hades’ Justice”, a complex and fascinating comparison which reinterprets Athena’s embrace of external militarism and statements of divine consensus and finality. My only complaint is that this final section deserves its own chapter: as it is, it further complicates a chapter which is already the longest in the book. The absence of a straightforwardly summative section (which helped all the other chapters to feel cohesive and accessible) was palpable here.
This is a well-produced book: I did not find a single linguistic or typographical error. The author provides his own translations, which are almost entirely unimpeachable (although p120: “in a nontyrannical way” is an awkward rendering of τρόποισιν οὐ τυραννικοῖς, whose point is “in a way unsuitable for a ruler”). Textual variants and corruptions are handled deftly and clearly. Shilo’s prose style is poetic in a way that feels deliberate, but never contrived. This makes the book a real pleasure to read, and only rarely misfires or obscures comprehension. All in all, I have no hesitation in recommending this book to students and scholars of tragedy, as well as those researching perceptions of death in the ancient world.
Notes
[1] Mbembe, A. (2003) ‘Necropolitics’ Public Culture 15: 11-40.