All about My Mother… Cilissa, Apollo and the Unity of the Oresteia
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RIS BIB ENDNOTEAll about My Mother… Cilissa, Apollo and the Unity of the Oresteia
Publication date: 29.12.2022
Studia Litteraria Universitatis Iagellonicae Cracoviensis, 2022, Volume 17, Issue 4, pp. 241 - 253
https://doi.org/10.4467/20843933ST.22.020.17186Authors
All about My Mother… Cilissa, Apollo and the Unity of the Oresteia
The aim of this article is to reveal the connection between Cilissa’s speech in the Choephoroi and the infamous speech made by Apollo in the Eumenides. The analysis shows that if these two passages are treated separately, the former would seem to be a comic interlude that has been randomly inserted into the text, while the latter would seem to be weird, convoluted and even downright outrageous. However, if they are juxtaposed and analysed together as two chapters of Aeschylus’ explanation of the nature of motherhood, they become one sensible statement about the fact that mother is much more than a parent in the technical sense of the term.
While the speeches of Cilissa and Apollo simply cast light on the issue of responsible motherhood and also on the harmful effects of ‘outsourcing’ the care of newborn children in ancient Greece, the fact that the link between these two speeches has been overlooked makes their interpretation very problematic, as do the failings of contemporary criticism, these being the anachronic approach and also the fact that translations are treated on a par with (or, sadly, given preference to) the original text, thus giving Aeschylus the undeserved reputation of being a ‘sexist’ or ‘misogynistic’ poet.
Primary sources and commentaries
Aeschylus. 1991. Aeschyli Agamemnon, ed. Martin L. West. Stuttgart: Teubner.
Aeschylus. 1991. Aeschyli Choephoroe, ed. Martin L. West. Stuttgart: Teubner.
Aeschylus. 1991. Aeschyli Eumenides, ed. Martin L. West. Stuttgart: Teubner.
Garvie, Alexander F. ed. 1986. Aeschylus, Choephori, Oxford‒New York: Clarendon Press.
Sommerstein, Alan H. ed. 1989. Aeschylus, Eumenides, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Ancillary texts:
Denniston, Johan Dewar. 1954. The Greek Particles (2nd ed.). Oxford: Clarendon Press.
Liddell, Henry George, Scott, Robert. 1996. A Greek-English Lexicon. Oxford: Clarendon Press.
Primary sources:
Marshall, C.W. ed. 2017. Aeschylus: The Libation Bearers, London‒New York: 2017.
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Information: Studia Litteraria Universitatis Iagellonicae Cracoviensis, 2022, Volume 17, Issue 4, pp. 241 - 253
Article type: Original article
Titles:
All about My Mother… Cilissa, Apollo and the Unity of the Oresteia
All about My Mother… Cilissa, Apollo and the Unity of the Oresteia
Biblioteka Jagiellońska, Kraków
Published at: 29.12.2022
Article status: Open
Licence: CC BY
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