ABSTRACT
Herodotus tends to see the motivation in historical events as stemming largely from personal desires and intentions on the part of individuals, rather than from the social, demographic or more broadly political influences on events which constitute modern historians' explanations of the world. The social and political valuation of sporting success seems surprisingly familiar. The play becomes a celebration of the Athenian legal and political system. The Eumenides represents a beginningstory, an aetion, not only for the Athenian legal system, but also for Athenian patriarchy. The play ends with a procession in the manner of the great Athenian religious celebrations, as the Eumenides are escorted to their place of worship. There is a long list of Egyptian 'opposite' practices, which show not only the Greek and Herodotean tendency to see the world as structured by polarities, but also the construction of the distant barbarian as an inversion which defines the normality of its opposite.
