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Table of Contents

Preface
Acknowledgments
IX
xxvn
PART ONE : ORIGINS AND CONSEQUENCES

I. The Greek Mother-Son Relationship: Origins
and Consequences
{{ :glory_of_hera_-_chapter_1_greek_mother_son.pdf |}}

"This seems to me to explain adequately the presence of ac
tive, aggressive women in Greek tragedy. Gomme points to
the great freedom of action that women have in drama, and
argues that women like Jocasta and Antigone must have been
modeled on contemporary women [1937, pp. 93, 96, 107].
Kitto makes the same point, observing that the women are
usually more enterprising than the men—that the tragic hero
ines are striking in their vigor, intelligence, vindictiveness,
and uncontrollability [i960, pp. 228-29]. But while one may
agree that these women had contemporary models, one need
not assume that such modeling extended beyond the narrow
range of the household. All that a playwright requires for
drama is a vivid memory for his own childhood and family—
especially Greek drama, which is most intensely concerned
with intrafamilial conflict. If this were not true, one would be
hard put to explain how so many of the great heterosexual
dramas of Greek, Elizabethan, and modern theater could have
been written by homosexual playwrights." (10)

My first hypothesis—one which assumes
a much earlier change point than that suggested by Feldman
—was that the constellation derived its impetus from the gradual
evolution of patriarchy [cf. Levy, n.d., p. 257], or a sudden
transition from matriarchy to patriarchy. The tradition of a
patriarchal conquest of a matriarchal society is an ancient one
in classical scholarship—based on the evidence of early
matrilineal, matrilocal, goddess-worshiping traditions being
supplanted by their patriarchal counterparts [Murray, n.d., p.
56; Kitto, i960, pp. 18-23; Briffault, 1959, pp. 84-90]. In
deed, some authors suggest an almost universal transition of
this kind for civilized societies, and there is much supporting
evidence [cf. Briffault, 1959; Campbell, 1959, pp. 315ff.; Neu
mann, 1955]. This is difficult to evaluate, however, since so
much is based on mythology and tradition, and the ontoge
netic experience of primeval matriarchy is universal, and may
provide the source of much of this tradition. For the Greeks,
at any rate, the evidence is real enough. Indeed, there seem
to have been several invasions at various periods by patriarchal
warriors, who, one can imagine, killed the indigenous males
and took the females to wife. Since in all cases the women
probably not only enjoyed a higher status in the older society,
but also partook of a more advanced and sophisticated culture,
one might expect to find here the ideal conditions for a brittle
patriarchy, an anxious and hostile relationship between the
sexes, and a transferring of libido by the wife from husband
to child. The repetition of this experience several times over
a millennium would gradually evolve the kind of cycle I have
described. (72)

II. Symbols, the Serpent, and the Oral-Narcissistic
Dilemma

PART TWO : MYTHICAL DEFENSES AGAINST
THE MATERNAL THREAT

III. Sexual Dominance: Zeus

IV. Masculine Antisepsis: Apollo

V. Matricide: Orestes
{{ :glory_of_hera-_chapter_5_matricide.pdf |}}

Orestes' matricide is the most fully elaborated. It has often
been pointed out [cf., e.g., Bunker, 1944, p. 198; Friedman
and Gassel, 1951, p. 424] that while Oedipus is the concern
of only three surviving Greek tragedies, Orestes is in seven,
and is treated by all three of the great dramatists. It could in
fact be said that the Orestes myth was the most popular sub
ject in Greek drama, and that the theme of matricide was
one with which the Greeks were peculiarly preoccupied.(162)

The immediate issue of this war between the sexes is whether Clytemnestra's murder of Agamemnon or her own
death at the hands of Orestes was the more heinous crime.
A modern jury would have had difficulty in convicting
Clytemnestra,3 but the Greeks were terrified of the statu
esque, passionate women they portrayed so effectively—
Medea, Clytemnestra, Hecuba, Alcmene—and this fear obliged
them to exaggerate and punish Clytemnestra's guilt. (164)

Why, then, is Medea spared and Clytemnestra murdered
for her crimes? Clytemnestra kills only her husband and his
concubine, and cannot bring herself to do away with her
dangerous offspring; while Medea, with far less provocation,
slaughters her brother, her children, two kings, and a princess,
and attempts the life of Athens' most famous hero. Does the
murder of one's husband, then, outweigh all of these crimes?
The answer is, of course, that it did. The marital bond was
the weakest point in the Greek family, and the murderous
hatred of a wife for her husband was felt to be the greatest
potential danger and had therefore to be guarded against with
the most rigid care and punished with the most compulsive
severity.
Confirmation of this idea may be found in the horror with which Greeks regarded the myth of the women of Lemnos,
who murdered all their husbands and ruled the island by
themselves. To modern readers this is an amusing fancy—one
which, after all, ends happily with the pleasant sojourn of the
Argonauts and subsequent repopulation of the island [Apol-
lonius Rhodius: Argonautica i. 606-909]. Certainly it cannot
compare in luridness with the cannibalistic and incestuous
doings of Atreus and Thyestes, with the hideous deaths of
Pentheus and Heracles, with the crimes and sufferings of
Procne and Philomela, of Oedipus, Cronus, and a dozen
others. But how the Greeks themselves felt about it may be
judged from the following passage:
But the summit and crown of all crimes is that which
in Lemnos befell;
A woe and a mourning it is, a shame and a spitting
to tell;
And he that in after time doth speak of his deadliest
thought,
Doth say, It is like to the deed that of old time in
Lemnos was wrought
[Aeschylus: The Choephori 631-34.
Morshead trans.]4 (164-165)

None of the modes of
response we are examining (with the possible exception of
Apollo's, with which it is closely allied) will be quite so
close to the classical Greek norm as this one; and there is no
character in Greek mythology who seems to epitomize the
fifth-century Athenian as fully as does the hero of Euripides'
Orestes. Whatever kind of run-of-the-mill swashbuckler he
may have been in earlier days, the dramatists molded Orestes
in their own image, and with his tribulations the Athenians
must have experienced an emotional empathy unmatched
even in so powerful a repertory.(192)


VI. Self-Emasculation: Hephaestus

VII. Identification with the Aggressor: Dionysus 1,
The Ritual

VIII. Identification with the Aggressor: Dionysus 11,
The Attack in the Womb

IX. Identification with the Aggressor: Dionysus 111,
The Attack on the Neonate

X. Identification with the Aggressor: Dionysus iv,
The Attack on the Mature God

XI. Maternal De-Sexualization: Perseus

XII. The Multiple Defenses of Heracles
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