Eumenides

The interplay of light and darkness is a central motif throughout the play. The Furies in particular are represented as dark beings, while their rival Apollo represents the light (indeed, one of Apollo’s most important epithets—and the first name used to refer to the god in the beginning of the play—is Phoebus, which means “bright” or “shining” in Greek). This interplay of light and dark in the play thus builds on some of the play’s larger themes, especially the conflict between the Old Versus New Gods.

The play can be seen as a movement from darkness to light. When the audience or reader first encounters Orestes, he is in the unlit space of Apollo’s temple at Delphi, where he is surrounded by the grim Furies, creatures who “hold the evil darkness of the Put below” (71). The Furies symbolically keep Orestes out of the light. Their own mother is Night, and their home is “underneath the ground / And in no sunlight and in darkness” (395-96).

When Orestes escapes the darkness of the Furies’ punishment, he manages to escape into “the light” (746). But the Furies also move toward the light, at least to some degree, when they accept Athena’s offer for new cult honors at Athens. For though they are still worshiped in dark caves—in the “primeval dark of earth-hollows” (1036)—they adopt a different version of justice, exchanging their black robes for brighter “purple-stained robes” (1028), and even invoking the bright sun in their prayer for the prosperity of their new home:

I sing this prayer for them

That the sun’s bright magnificence shall break out wave

On wave of all the happiness

Life can give, across their land (922-26).