One of the strange, yet non-negotiable principles upon which I base my life is that poetry actually matters. This bizarre quirk of mine got a big boost this week when Dr. Christopher P. Long came to Newman to talk about the liberal arts, and, specifically, Aeschylus’s great tragedy The Eumenidies—a presentation that, quite by coincidence, took place on the very day that the Supreme Court heard oral arguments in the first of two marriage-equality cases that it will consider this term. Strangely enough (and really quite wonderfully), I now find myself characterizing this week's debates in terms set out 2500 years ago by democracy’s first great poet.

So let’s do a whirlwind tour of the Oresteia, the cycle of plays of which The Eumenidies is the third and final part. It all starts when Agamemnon sacrifices his daughter, Iphigenia, to the gods in order to get good winds for the Greek voyage to Troy. Ten years later, when Agamemnon returns from Troy, his wife Clytemnestra kills him in revenge. Their son, Orestes, is bound by Greek law and custom (and instructed by Apollo) to kill his father’s murderer, who happens to be his mother. When he does, the Eumenides (we usually call them “Furies”) punish him savagely for his matricidal act.

Since they are gods too—albeit gods of an older generation than Apollo—the Furies are not bound by Apollo’s instructions. They have an ancient right to torment the hell out of people who do really bad things, and they intend to collect. So it comes down to a trial scene where everybody agrees to allow a jury, led by Athena, to determine Orestes’ fate. The jury deadlocks and Athena gets the final vote, which she casts for Orestes. And that’s when the fun really starts.

Athena must somehow persuade the Furies to go along with her decision. And Apollo is no help at all. His bright idea is to tell the Eumenides what stupid, old-fashioned troglodytes they are. Not only are Apollo’s actions immoral (Athena could care less about that, really), they are strategically unsound. Though the Furies are part of an older generation of gods, they are still very powerful, and they can make everybody’s life miserable for a very long time.

But civilization itself depends on Athena’s response. And as long as the community is mired in an “eye-for-an-eye” system of personal retribution, it can never become the center of art, wisdom, and democracy that Athena envisions for the city that bears her name. Athens needs a judicial system based on the rule of law, not a personal code of ever escalating revenge.

So, what does Athena do? Four things. Four really good things. And, as I look across America this week (as represented by my Facebook and blog feeds at least), I have become convinced that they are precisely the four things that proponents of marriage equality need to try too (feel free to skip over the actual lines, but I am going to include them because, darn it, poetry matters):

1. She reminds them that the decision was the result of a deliberative process that they accepted, even if they did not like the outcome. In this way she privileges the rule of law over any particular result of that law:

Listen to me. I would not have you be so grieved.
For you have not been beaten. This was the result
of a fair ballot which was even. You were not
dishonored, but the luminous evidence of Zeus
was there. (793-97)

2. She assures them that they will have an honored place in the new social order that will result, thus easing their fears that they will simply be cast aside when a new order, with a different value system, emerges:

In complete honesty I promise you a place
of your own, deep hidden under ground that is yours by right
where you shall sit on shining chairs beside the hearth
to accept devotions offered by your citizens. (804-07)

3. She offers them respect for their experience, and she values their perspective the same time that she asserts the superiority of her own:

I will bear your angers. You are elder born than I
and in that you are wiser far than I. Yet still
Zeus gave me too intelligence not to be despised
If you go away into some land of foreigners,
I warn you, you will come to love this country. Time
in his forward flood shall ever grow more dignified
for the people of the city. And you, in your place
of eminence beside Erechtheus in his house
shall win from female and from make processionals
more than all lands of men beside could ever give. (848-858)

4. She subtly reminds them of her coercive power without being a jerk about it.

No, not dishonored. You are goddesses. Do not

in too much anger make this place of mortal men

uninhabitable. I have Zeus behind me. Do

we need to speak of that? I am the only god

who know the keys to where his thunderbolts are locked.

We do not need such, do we? (824-28)



The social upheaval that Aeschylus characterizes in The Eumenides—the transition from a society based on personal codes of retribution to one based on the rule of law—was as profound as any transition the world has ever seen. The older set of values (personal retribution) had been in place for a long time, and they seemed wholly in accord with the laws of nature. If somebody kills your father, of course you are supposed to kill him back. Duh!

Democracy and the rule of law, on the other hand, were completely untested ways to govern a society. And that made many people legitimately scared. Apollo cannot recognize this at all, so he spends his time insulting, sneering at, and feeling superior to, those who represent the older value system. This makes him feel good, to be sure, much like the perfect snarky zinger on Facebook makes me feel like, well, a Greek god. But it does not actually persuade anybody of anything.

Athena, however, does not have the luxury of throwing feel-good rhetorical grenades. If she fails to persuade her immortal opponents to accept her judgment, Orestes, and Athens, will suffer tremendously. All of the good that she plans to do rests on her ability coax cooperation where it can only be imperfectly compelled. She has a moral duty to be persuasive.

That we live in a civilized society today is proof that Athena knew what she was doing. And big social changes regarding the definition of marriage are on their way. All of the entrails point that way, and even Nate Silver, our very own Delphic oracle, agrees. Big social movement means that, whatever the decision of the Supreme Court this term, the coercive power of the state—laws, court decisions, etc.—will be increasingly on the side of those favoring marriage equality.

And, though much has changed from the earliest days of recorded time, persuasion is still a better strategy than invective, for the Euminides are destined to be with us always. Large blocks of voters, even if in the minority, retain (and should retain) a great deal of power to hamper even the most inevitable social changes. And all those who think themselves right about important issues have the same moral duty that Athena had: to be persuasive.