Journal for the Study of the Old Testament 28 (2003): 73-88 1 Violent Grace Tragedy and Transformation in the Oresteia and the Deuteronomistic History L. Daniel Hawk Ashland Theological Seminary 910 Center St., Ashland, OH 44805 The influence of the Oresteia on the literature and culture of Athens cannot be underestimated. Simon Goldhill writes, for instance, that for the Greeks the Oresteia was the most influential play ever written. 1 Aside from its exceptional literary merits, its enduring impact in Greek society may be explained in terms of its power in creating a myth of origins for Athenian democracy. Following the conventions of Athenian tragedy, Aeschylus reworked traditional material familiar to his audience, but in a striking departure from established practice, he brought the action of the story to Athens and set the climactic scene on the Areopagus. 2 The playwright created a foundation narrative for the Athenian polis by reshaping the legendary story of the House of Atreus into an elaborate drama that portrayed the superiority of the mediating institutions of democracy over the kinship-based society that preceded it. 3 He did so by demonstrating that social justice provided a measure of social equilibrium that the retaliatory justice of the family could not. In the Oresteia blood ties unravel with shocking rapidity as the House of Atreus finds itself powerless to stop a 1 For an assessment of the trilogy’s impact, see Simon Goldhill, Aeschylus: The Oresteia (Landmarks of World Literature; Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992), ix-x. The drama won for Aeschylus his eighteenth and final first prize at the dramatic competition held during the Great Dionysiac, the most important of the many festivals of Athens, and remains the only tragic trilogy from classical Athens to survive intact to the present day. 2 Classical tragedy typically concerned people and places with no direct connection to Athens, enabling the playwright to explore complex social and theological issues at a safe distance. The Oresteia is the only known tragic work with a setting in Athens. The Great Dionysiac, during which the trilogy was first produced in 458 B.C.E., blended civic and religious celebration. The tragic competition presented during the second day constituted a vital component of the festival and stimulated the public discourse considered essential fro the development and maintenance of democratic society. For discussions of the connection between Greek tragedy, the Great Dionysiac, and the life of the polis see Simon Goldhill, ―The Great Dionysia,‖ in Nothing to Do With Dionysos: Athenian Drama in Its Social Contex (ed. John J. Winkler and Froma I. Zeitlin; Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1990), 97-129; Rainer Friedrich, ―Everything to Do with Dionysos?‖ in Tragedy and the Tragic: Greek Theatre and Beyond (ed. M. S. Silk; Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1996), 257-283; ―Something to Do with Dionysos—Tragedy and the Dionysiac: Response to Friedrich,‖ in Tragedy and the Tragic, 284-94. 3 The tragedians’ manipulation of legendary material is elaborated in Peter Burian, ―Myth into Muthos: The Shaping of Tragic Plot,‖ The Cambridge Companion to Greek Tragedy: 178-208 and Charles Segal, ―Greek