Human choice and divine power in Greek tragedy

Are these characters choosing their own paths, or are the gods choosing for them? That is the question behind the scholarly debate. We are looking at interpretations of Greek tragedies, particularly those of Aeschylus, rather than being asked to settle whether real people have free will.

Snell sees personal autonomy at the center of these plays. A character encounters a situation so difficult that the usual rules for thinking and behaving no longer help. There are two alternatives, both with serious consequences. The character examines deeply held motives, struggles through the decision, and finally acts. For Snell, that internal process produces a genuinely free, personal choice.

I can see the appeal of that reading: the character has to decide, and the decision matters. But how free is a choice when someone else has determined the available options? Choosing between two terrible possibilities is not the same as controlling the situation that created them. Keep that question open as the other interpretations arrive.

Barbu builds on Snell's reading. He treats this portrayal of individual agency as evidence of an emerging way of understanding people in ancient Greek civilization. Notice the move from a claim about drama to a claim about the surrounding society. He must think the plays tell us something about how that society understood personal autonomy.

Rivier pushes back against Snell. The gods are not just setting the scene and then leaving a person free to decide. Their power is also experienced internally, as a compulsion. On this account, thinking through the alternatives does not generate a free choice; it makes the character recognize an impasse. Divine necessity dictates the path, leaving only one real option.

That changes what the internal debate means. Snell sees it as the process of choosing. Rivier sees it as the process of discovering that there is no genuine alternative. Both can acknowledge that the character deliberates, but they disagree about what that deliberation accomplishes. We should not reduce Rivier's position to the idea that characters never think.

Lesky rejects both of those accounts as complete explanations. His example is Agamemnon, who is told by Artemis that only sacrificing his daughter will bring the wind needed to carry his ships to battle. The gods impose a terrible condition. But Agamemnon also desperately wants military victory. My immediate reaction is: why not give up the battle rather than sacrifice his daughter? That question brings his own ambition into focus. The demand comes from the deity, but his intense desire for what the sacrifice will obtain belongs to him.

His quoted statement goes beyond wanting victory. He says that if the sacrifice will release the winds, it is permissible to desire the sacrifice fervently. He is treating the hoped-for result as a reason to embrace the terrible means. The sacrifice gets him a wind to reach battle; it does not itself guarantee that he will win.

For Lesky, then, divine pressure does not erase the character's own motives. Agamemnon takes the path the gods have arranged on the basis of desires that are his own and can be condemned as his own. Tragic action involves a continuing tension between the person and the superhuman forces acting on that person.

My first main-point thought might be that Greek tragedies explore human autonomy. That is the topic, but we need one further step: scholars disagree about how the plays portray it. Snell emphasizes free decision, Rivier emphasizes divine necessity, and Lesky emphasizes their interaction with the individual's desires. The writer explains those positions without selecting one as the winner. Our own reactions can help us understand the disagreement, but they should not become an endorsement we attribute to the writer.