Family matter, political crisis, astronomic discovery: Atreus and the Sun’s orbit in Euripides

The story of Atreus causing the sun’s path to change direction, so as to prove that he, not his usurper-brother Thyestes, was the rightful king of Argos/Mycenae, appears multiple times in what remains of Euripides’ production. At 'Electra' 727-744 , the chorus refers the tale according to which Zeus reversed the sun’s path in order to express his disapproval for Thyestes’ adultery with Atreus’ wife . Interestingly, the chorus states that “these things are said, but meagre is the credit they hold with me”: they cannot believe that the king of the gods would radically change the laws of nature for something they see not as a matter of justice and political stability, but merely as a “controversy between mortals” (742). A similar perspective is adopted by the character of Electra at 'Orestes' 1001-1006 : she ascribes the turn of the sun’s winged car to the goddess Eris, as part of the chain of evil that afflicts Tantalus’ descendants. In both these cases, as well as in two short passages from 'Iphigenia among the Taurians' (193-196, 811-817), Euripides seems to consider the inversion as a private, rather than political, affair. Nevertheless, one Euripidean fragment (F 397b Kn. ), usually ascribed to his 'Thyestes', has Atreus declare: “by showing the opposite path of the stars, I saved the house and sat on the sovereign’s throne”. Here, the political perspective appears predominant: the triumph of private justice within the royal family causes the restoration of order to the city’s government. Furthermore, Atreus is no longer responsible for an extraordinary event, he is rather the discoverer of a pre-existing phenomenon: according to Achilles Tatius’ 'Isagoge in Arati Phaenomena', the source of this fragment, he revealed that planets and fixed stars move in opposite directions. This discovery is probably connected to the thought of the philosopher Oenopides of Chius, who was active in Athens during part of Euripides' lifetime. The idea that an astronomical discovery justified Atreus’ power, making him the interpreter of the gods’ will as expressed through natural events, deserves close attention for the purpose of deepening our knowledge of the links between politics, science and religion in Euripides’ thought.