ABSTRACT

This essay focuses on Aeschylus’ treatment of reality through his use of χρή (“necessary”). I will show that Aeschylus’ use of χρή reveals a conception of universal order, a reality that is acknowledged and accepted universally and associated with divinity. Clytemnestra is key to revealing the assumptions behind χρή as she masterfully manipulates and exploits the expectations associated with this word. I will also show that the use of χρή in the six plays traditionally ascribed to Aeschylus is so different from its use in the Prometheus Bound, where χρή is more specific and particular, that its analysis should be added to the evidence compiled in Mark Griffith’s landmark work The Authenticity of Prometheus Bound (1977).1 This suggests that Aeschylus conceives of a reality, a universal order, that is known to and accepted by all, and that the departure from this conception in the Prometheus Bound may reflect different, later authorship in keeping with a fifth-century intellectual shift away from the idea of a universal reality.