POLYPHONY TO SILENCE: THE JURORS OF THE ORESTEIA JUDITH FLETCHER The Oresteia ends with the trial of Orestes for matricide, a foundation myth of the first homicide court in Athens. The court of the Areopagus replaces a form of justice that consisted of individual reprisals, a blood feud constantly renewed but never resolved. Although there are intimations of some archaic remedies for homicide, such as exile and public curses, the text gives virtually nothing to suggest that any institutionalized legal system existed before Athena selected the jury for Orestes' trial. Justice predates law in Aeschylus' legal imagination. Justice is a concern for every character in the trilogy, but law is born in Athens as the product of divine intervention and human deliberation. The defining moment in its creation occurs when Athena selects dikastai or citizen jurors, who appear silently in the acting space to cast their ballots. My concern in this paper is with the silence of those dikastai, which is both a dramaturgical necessity in the original production (because Aeschylus was limited to three speaking actors) and a symbol for the integrity and sacrosanct nature of the new court. The citizen jurors do not make a unanimous decision; at least half vote for condemnation. The goddess presides over the court but she also participates with a vote for acquittal. After Athena casts her ballot she announces that if the votes are equal, Orestes will go free (Eum. 734-35); when the votes are tallied Athena declares that Orestes has been acquitted. The Furies, who act as prosecuting family members on behalf of Clytemnestra, are appeased with cultic honors that absorb them into the polis, and the institutionalized process of the homicide court replaces the cycle of intra-familial murders that have been the climax of the first two plays of the trilogy. This essay will explore how the Oresteia negotiates two elements of Athenian law that finally come together in this trial scene: divine authority and human COLLEGE LITERATURE: A JOURNAL OF CRITICAL LITERARY STUDIES 41.2 Spring 2014 Print ISSN 0093-3139 E-ISSN 1542-4286 © West Chester University 2014