ABSTRACT
This chapter argues that the Athena of Aeschylus’s play, The Eumenides, is as vital to detective fiction as the famous detective-murderer, Oedipus, of Sophocles’ Oedipus Rex. The unfortunate Oedipus is the first sleuth who proves also to be, terrifyingly, the very killer he seeks. In The Eumenides, Athena performs two momentous and related tasks in the interests of enabling a human community to survive the deliberate killing of a member. As James Hillman argues, Athena who brings the arts of weaving and pottery, the bridle, the yoke, and mathematics is the mind as a container of those passions and rages that might otherwise let loose unlimited destruction. While some female authored detectives actively take on the Athena role mandated by her as judge, such as Deborah Knott in the work of Margaret Maron, more indigenous is the sleuth function of combining reason and necessity to contain the Furies.
