1. Key word: timē, pl. timai 'honor; honor paid to a otherworldly force by way of cult'.
A) Aeschylus Eumenides 856-869
[Athena is speaking:] And you, if you have a seat of timē [855] at the house of Erekhtheus, will be honored by a multitude of men and women and you will have more honor than you would ever have from other mortals. So do not set on my land whetstones that hone my peoples' desire for bloodshed, harmful to young hearts, crazed with passions not of wine; and do not make my people like fighting-cocks so that they kill each other in bold, internecine war. Let there be war from abroad, and without stint, wars that bring a fierce desire for good kleos; but I say there will be no bird-fights in my abode [oikos]. I make it possible for you to choose to do good and to be treated [paskhō] well and with good timē, to share in this land that is most philē to the gods.
1a. The Erinyes are being promised a timē that is analogous to the timē received by the dead in the cult of the dead ("ancestor worship") or in the cult of heroes. Those two kinds of cult are morphologically analogous. You can even say that the cult of heroes is a stylized form of the cult of the dead.
1b. In the passage we have just read, the analogy is made explicit with the mention of the hero-cult of Erekhtheus. Erekhtheus was the chief cult-hero of Athens, as we saw already when we read Iliad II 547.
B) Aeschylus Libation-Bearers 84-99
[Electra is speaking:] You handmaidens who set our house in order, [85] since you are here as my attendants in this rite of supplication, give me your counsel on this: what should I say while I pour these offerings of sorrow? How shall I find gracious words, how shall I entreat my father? Shall I say that I bring these offerings to a philos husband from a philē wife—from my own mother? I do not have the assurance for that, nor do I know what I should say as I pour this mixed offering onto my father's tomb. Or shall I speak the words that men are accustomed [nomos] to use: "To those who send these honors may he return benefits" - a gift, indeed, to match their evil?
Or, in silence and dishonor, even as my father perished, shall I pour them out for the earth to drink and then retrace my steps, like one who carries refuse away from a rite, hurling the vessel from me with averted eyes?
2a. Here Electra, daughter of Agamemnon and Clytemnestra, is attempting to perform a ritual in the context of the cult of the dead. She is performing the ritual in order to give timē to her father Agamemnon, but she is not sure about the rules of the ritual. She is morally correct but she has not yet learned to be ritually correct. She knows that her mother is not morally correct, because she had actually killed her husband, Electra's father. So evidently Clytemnestra does not "mean it" when she sends her daughter Electra to perform rituals of the cult of the dead.
2b. By implication, what is happening is a stylized hero-cult in the making.
C) Aeschylus Libation-Bearers 118-130
[Electra] What should I say? Instruct my inexperience, prescribe the form.
[Chorus] - Pray that some daimōn or some mortal may come to them—
[Electra] As judge or as avenger, do you mean?
[Chorus] - Say in plain speech, "One who will take life for life."
[Electra] And is it right for me to ask this of the gods?
[Chorus] - How could it not be right to repay an enemy with ills?
[Electra] Supreme herald [kērux] of the realm above and the realm below, O Hermes of the nether world, come to my aid, summon to me the daimones beneath the earth to hear my prayers, spirits that watch over my father's house, and Earth herself, who gives birth to all things, and having nurtured them receives their increase in turn. And meanwhile, as I pour these lustral offerings to the dead, I invoke my father.
3a. Electra is starting to "get the hang of it," as she prays to Hermes, mediator of relationships between the living and the dead. She performs the right kind of pouring of libations and the right kind of wording that goes with the libations.
D) Aeschylus Libation Bearers 399-404
[Electra] Hear, O Earth, and you powers below with your timē!
[Chorus] And it is the eternal law [nomos] that drops of blood spilled on the ground demand yet more blood. Murder cries out on the Fury [Erinys], which from those killed before brings one atē in the wake of another atē.
4a. Again we see the Erinys as the personification of the anger stored up by someone who died angry. The anger is "unfinished business" that has to get finished somehow. But the finishing never seems to happen: it is a chain of evil: 'one atē in the wake of another atē'.
E) Aeschylus Libation Bearers 575-578
[Orestes is speaking:] I will skewer him with my swift sword and lay him dead. The fury [Erinys] that has no fill of slaughter shall, for her third and crowning drink, drink unmixed blood!
5a. The killing of Aegisthus by Orestes is being imagined in advance. The shedding of the blood of Aegisthus is verbalized as a libation of blood, without any other liquid of libation mixed in. In the cult of the dead, the libation would be the a libation of the blood of a sacrificial animal. Here the blood is that of Aegisthus himself.
F) Aeschylus Eumenides 696-710
[Athena is speaking] I advise my citizens not to support and respect anarchy or tyrannical oppression, and not to drive all fear out of the city. For who among mortal men, if he fears nothing, behaves with dikē? [700] If you with dikē fear reverence, you will have a defense for your land and the salvation [sōtēria] of your polis, such as none of mankind has, either among the Scythians or in Pelops' realm. I establish this tribunal, and it will be untouched by desire for profit [kerdos], worthy of reverence, quick to anger, a guard of the land, awake on behalf of those who sleep. I have given you advice [par-ainesis], my citizens, at length about the future; but now you must rise, take a ballot, and make a decision [diagnōsis] about the case [dikē] under the sacred obligation of your oath. The word has been spoken.
6a. Athena, goddess of synthesis, has just made possible the first vote of the first jury in the first trial by jury. This moment inaugurates, in terms of the myth created by the drama, the beginning of the polis - which is imagined as the beginning of civilization as defined by the polis. Remember the formulation of Aristotle: a human being reaches his full potential as an organism of the polis.
G) Aeschylus Eumenides 794-807, 824-836
Be persuaded by me not to bear the decision with heavy grief. [795] For you are not defeated; the trial [dikē] resulted in an equal vote, which is in truth [alētheia] no blight on your timē, since clear testimony from Zeus was available, and the one who spoke the oracle gave evidence proving that Orestes should not suffer harm, despite his actions. Do not be angry, do not hurl your heavy rage on this land, do not make the land fruitless, letting loose your heart's poison with its fierce sharpness that eats away the seeds. For I do promise you with all dikē that you shall have sanctuaries and sacred hollows in this land of dikē, where you will sit on bright thrones at your hearths, worshipped with timē by the citizens here.
...
You are not without timē, goddesses, so do not be moved by your excessive rage [825] to make the land cursed for mortals. I also rely on Zeus - what need is there to mention that? - and I alone of the gods know the keys to the house where his thunderbolt is kept safe. But there is no need of it. So be obedient to me and do not make empty threats against the land; do not threaten that all things bearing fruit will not prosper. Calm the dark waves of your bitter passion, now that you are honored with reverence and abide [oikeō] together with me; when you have the first-fruits of this great land as burnt sacrifices on behalf of children and of conjugal rites [telos pl.], you will approve [ep-aineō] my words forever.
7a. Athena, goddess of synthesis, has synthesized the anger of the Erinyes into the social force that makes it possible to achieve justice under the rule of law. The angry spirits of the Erinyes, analogous to the spirits of cult heroes when they are angry at the unjust, are being accommodated under the umbrella of dikē 'justice' as established in the polis. The imagery of fertility and prosperity, as conferred by the cult hero upon the just, is here applied to the social institution of trial by jury, which replaces the "tribal" and "pre-polis" system of the vendetta.
H) Aeschylus Eumenides 903-915
Sing hymns that are not about evil victory, but hymns of the land and the waters of the sea [pontos] [905] and the heavens; and sing that the gusts of wind will blow over this land in the sun, and that the fruit of the earth and offspring of the beasts of the field will flourish abundantly for my citizens and will not fail in the course of time, and that there will be the salvation [sōtēria] of human seed. May you be ready to weed out those who do not worship well; for I, like a gardener, cherish the race [genos] of these dikaioi people, exempt as it is from sorrow [penthos]. These are your duties. I will not stand for it if this polis, which is victorious in well-known martial contests [agōnes], is not honored among mortals.
8a. In the image of Athena the 'gardener', the synthesis that is Athens, the notionally perfect society, becomes complete. This imagery is derived directly from the symbolic world of hero cult. As the goddess of synthesis, she teaches Athenians a hymn to synthesis. It is really a hymn to herself.