To Have a Democracy, We Must Learn How to Persuade Each Other

If you have any reverence for Persuasion
the majesty of Persuasion,
the spell of my voice that would appease your fury —
Oh please stay.
— Athena in Aeschulys’s The Eumenides

When the Goddess Athena speaks of the “majesty of persuasion,” she is trying to accomplish two different things. First, she is trying to resolve a difficult situation involving the last member of a royal, and royally screwed-up, family. Also, she is trying to create the world’s first democracy in Athens. And to do either of these things, she has to convince the vengeance-driven Furies to abandon their case against Orestes and become part of her city instead.

It all started when his father, Agamemnon, sacrificed his sister, Iphigenia, in order for the Greeks to have favorable winds in their epic journey to Troy. Fast forward ten years: when Agamemnon comes home after defeating the Trojans, his wife, Clytemnestra, kills him in his moment of triumph. Their son Orestes, then, has to choose between leaving his father’s murder unrevenged or killing his father’s killer, who happened to be his mother. When he kills his mother (as he must according to the rules of his society) the Furies torment him without mercy (as they are entitled to do with matricides). Orestes claims sanctuary with Athena at the exact moment that she is trying to create her…