The ancient Greeks didn't know what comes after death, nor do we. In the Oresteia, it is illuminating to see so many possibilities dramatically explored side-by-side, with no expectation of arriving at a final answer.
Some memorable quotes:
"In the Oresteia, Aeschylus focuses on cultural incongruities and linguistic ambiguities. ... [He] challenges the audience by taking contrasting meanings to extremes, soliciting ethical responses." p. 16
"The Elders raise the theme of afterlife punishment, only to let it fade among other possiblities, after which it returns even more powerfully, to the point at which it becomes part of the revelation of the ethical framwork of human life." p. 65
"... the specific afterlives mentioned have not received sufficient attention, and even less has been written about the paradoxes created by cramming these divergent perspecitves on the afterlife together." p. 91
"The dynamic ritual, the mélange of afterlife possiblities, and the deep uncertainty as to the outcome are the poetic underpinnings of the kommos." p. 109
"... it is clear that the characters lack sure knowledge of which, if any relationships to the dead are true." p. 110
"The legal terminology surrounding Hades' solitary judgments thus offers Athenian audience members a chance to reflect on whether justice is to entrusted to one entity, even a divinity." p. 200
"The depictions of diverse afterlives in Greek literature and religion substantiate anxieties over the aftereffects of one's own deeds, one's status at death, and the actions of one's survivors. ... Human existence beyond death is never given a single, dogmatic expression in the Oresteia. The trilogy dramatizes the full range of conceptions from oblivion to glorious praise, to ghostly returns, to pacific or agitated underworld existence, to divine punishment for ethical transgressions." p. 214
"... through its contradictions, the afterlife in the Oresteia connects poetics and ethics in two ways. First, it literarily draws attention to numerous. divergent outcomes for human beings. The possibilities of continuation provide leverage for characters to challenge their own ethical situations and those of others. The afterlife overturns what seems to be a final accounting. Thus what I have termed the poetics of the beyond gives characters and spectators another set of tools to question absolute claims about values and justice. Secondly, the trilogy extends ethical uncertainty even after divine revelation." p. 221.
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