# Loeb and standard modern accounts present the Eumenides as a civic founding myth of the Areopagus court

Date: 1922

## The fact

Smyth’s Loeb and later standard accounts print the Eumenides as the play in which Athena founds a homicide court and turns the Furies into metics of Athens. The dated public instrument is that modern edition-and-commentary presentation of a civic-justice myth, not a 458 decree file.

## Context

A tragedy can argue for a court. It can also close a blood-feud by a goddess’s casting vote. The improving path here is the public civic-court myth as later readers meet it in Loeb. Gender of that vote is a worsening row.

[Aeschylus](/people/aeschylus) is not the sole author of every later object, law, or museum label that uses the name. Shared work with courts, excavators, printers, spouses, officials, and later states does not erase a documented role, and it does not make an ancient person the signer of a twentieth-century statute.

## Evidence and sources

Official library, festival, encyclopedia, or edition pages and an independent publisher independently describe this instrument.

Official or archival record: Perseus — Aeschylus, Agamemnon (Smyth) (https://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text?doc=Perseus:text:1999.01.0003; Perseus Digital Library / Tufts). (Smyth): Athena founds the court on the Hill of Ares (https://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text?doc=Perseus:text:1999.01.0006:card=681; Perseus Digital Library / Tufts).

## Significance

A printed Eumenides is not a constitution. Do not write that Aeschylus legislated the Areopagus.

A printed Eumenides is not a constitution. Do not write that Aeschylus legislated the Areopagus.

## What is established and what is not

Established as a dated public record of this instrument.

What would change the picture: a contradictory original with a different date or name, or a measured series that can be argued, with lag and alternatives, as a consequence of this instrument rather than of later institutions.

The date is the date of this instrument, not a licence to back-date every later harm or benefit.
Later competitions, monuments, translations, UNESCO listings, and museums are not converted into extra lifetime acts. The attached driver is [democratic-resilience](/drivers/democratic-resilience). The welfare reading used in this dossier is improving. That reading is an impact-path choice, not a property stored on the Fact itself. Confidence is stated on the impact path. A later English edition is not a recovered autograph. If a number is not in the two records named above, it is not supplied here.

## People

- Aeschylus: https://factrail.ai/people/aeschylus

## Drivers

- Democratic Resilience: https://factrail.ai/drivers/democratic-resilience

## Sources

- https://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text?doc=Perseus:text:1999.01.0006:card=681
- https://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text?doc=Perseus:text:1999.01.0003

## Methodology

https://factrail.ai/methodology

Canonical: https://factrail.ai/facts/ae-eumenides-areopagus-as-loeb