The “aetiology” of tragedy in the Oresteia 1

‘The modes of music are never disturbed without disturbance of the most fundamental political and social nomoi ’. This dictum of the influential fifth-century musical theorist Damon, friend and adviser of Perikles, reflects the deep-seated relation that was felt to exist between the modes of music and the fundamental conventions governing social and political life in ancient Greece. This relation deserves much further exploration. Our present thesis is that elaborate linguistic and semantic play between the registers of the musical and the social order is to be found in the Oresteia far more than in any other surviving work. It is, perhaps, not surprising that in this trilogy, where the claims of conflicting nomoi are powerfully dramatised, the musical order is also exploited in complex and subtle ways to reflect upon the social and political order; and that disruptions or distortions in the social order find their counterpart in the musical order. Though some have noted the operation of this interpenetration of registers, it has not been studied in the depth it deserves.