Letters from Tomis

For my classics reading group, we recently read the play Orestes. Written by the playwright Euripides in the late Fifth Century BCE and debuted in Athens in the year 408. As with most Ancient Greek plays, it is highly alienating for contemporary audiences. What did the themes mean to the Attic audiences when it was first performed is long since lost. The characters often act in a strange ways to the media over-saturated eyes of our current bourgeois capitalist audiences and readers.

Euripides’s Orestes can, though, be critically analyzed through the lens of Marxist philosophy, revealing the underlying class struggles and societal dynamics within the play. Set in the aftermath of Orestes’ matricide, the play explores the protagonist’s alienation and moral crisis, which can be interpreted as a reflection of the contradictions inherent in hierarchical and patriarchal societies.

The aristocratic lineage of Orestes and Electra highlights the dynamics of power and privilege in a stratified slave society. Their fall from grace, brought on by their violent actions driven by a warrior honor culture, underscores the fragility and moral corruption of the master ruling class. Euripides portrays the elite as consumed by internal conflicts and self-serving agendas, suggesting that the ruling order is neither just nor stable.

Furthermore, the play critiques the complicity of societal institutions, such as the assembly of Argos, which fails to deliver justice or moral guidance. This can be seen as a reflection of how state apparatuses, in a Marxist sense, serve to perpetuate the interests of the ruling class rather than uphold collective welfare. The fickle and self-interested nature of the citizens mirrors the alienation of the working class in a system where they have no true agency or power.

The play also explores the commodification of human relationships. Helen’s role as a figure of beauty and status underscores how women, particularly within aristocratic structures, are objectified and reduced to symbols of wealth and power. Similarly, the plight of Orestes and Electra reflects how individuals are dehumanized and expendable in the preservation of social order.

Euripides’s blending of tragedy with satire further disrupts the traditional heroic narrative, exposing the absurdities and hypocrisies of the elite. In doing so, he prefigures a Marxist critique of ideology, challenging the audience to question the moral and political frameworks that sustain their society.

In conclusion, Orestes serves as a poignant critique of all class dynamics, power structures, and institutional complicity. Through the struggles of its characters, Euripides implicitly questions the legitimacy of the ruling elite and the societal norms that perpetuate inequality, making the play a compelling and relevant study for us as we face our own ruling elites and the crises they will inevitably produce.