A furious prophecy: Cassandra’s rites (Lycophron, Alexandra 1126–73) and Aeschylus’ Eumenides

Abstract

Lycophron’s extensive debt to Aeschylus is exemplified by his engagement with the Agamemnon and the Choephori in Cassandra’s prediction of her own death and that of Agamemnon and in the brief ensuing synopsis of Orestes’ vengeance on Clytemnestra. This paper argues that the next stage of Cassandra’s prophecy, in which she discusses two rites instituted in the aftermath of her death, continues the reworking of the Oresteia by exploiting themes prominent in the Eumenides, including supplication, retributive violence, the enactment of democratic law. The paired accounts of Daunian and Locrian cults are examples of the poet’s use of mythological substitution, by which avoids explicit reference to an event where it would naturally occur in the chronology of Cassandra’s prophecy and replaces it with a different, thematically connected narrative. Lycophron’s engagement with the Eumenides is triggered by a reference to the Erinyes in the story of the Daunian maidens and is more extensively exploited in the story of the Locrian maidens, in which Lycophron represents a melding of personal vengeance and the democratic legal system. The fusion of personal vengeance and the law resonates meaningfully against the new civic legal system described in the Eumenides, where the new homicide courts at Athens are meant to replace the process of retribution that plays out earlier in the trilogy.

Keywords

• Lycophron
• Cassandra
• Daunian maidens
• Erinyes
• Locrian maidens
• retribution