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Funerary Rituals, Aeschylus’ Eumenides And Sophocles’ Antigone, Katerina Zacharia

Classics and Archaeology Faculty Works

The legislation of Dracon (c. 620 B.C.) and Solon (early sixth century) in Athens is the beginning of the long process by which the family or household, the oikos, was restrained and the polis (city-state) encroached on some of its former functions. The first stage was the restriction of the right to blood-vengeance. This is the background to the family revenge depicted in the Oresteia of Aeschylus. An analysis of the funerary legislation in Athens as transmitted by Plutarch, Demosthenes, and Cicero, points to an attempt by the state to curb excessive ostentation by the elite. I examine epigraphic …