Metaphors of divine agency in Aeschylus

Drawing on research in cognitive linguistics, this chapter examines a number of passages in Aeschylus’ tragedies where metaphor is used to represent the interaction of human and divine causation in concrete, physical terms. The spatial and causal parameters of these metaphors, it is argued, convey quite specific nuances about the type of interaction in question. Such metaphors also tend to be characterised by strange or unusual properties, a feature that cognitive linguists would characterise as part of their ‘emergent structure’, and the effect is to draw attention to certain paradoxes associated with the interaction between divine and human agency. The chapter begins by introducing the topic of ‘double motivation’ in Aeschylean tragedy with the help of an overview of the main positions that have been taken on Aeschylus’ treatment of Agamemnon’s dilemma at Aulis from around the middle of the twentieth century onwards. After an outline of the relevant theoretical concepts from cognitive linguistics, case studies from Persians, Eumenides, Agamemnon and Seven against Thebes are used to illustrate the value of attending to the physical parameters and emergent properties of metaphors of divine agency.