The Oresteia: Agamemnon, the Libation-Bearers & the Furies

by Aeschylus

  I’ll make you dance, I’ll bring you all to heel.

  LEADER:

  You rule Argos? You who schemed his death

  but cringed to cut him down with your own hand?

  AEGISTHUS:

  The treachery was the woman’s work, clearly.

  I was a marked man, his enemy for ages.

  But I will use his riches, stop at nothing

  to civilize his people. All but the rebel:

  him I’ll yoke and break-

  no cornfed colt, running free in the traces.

  Hunger, ruthless mate of the dark torture-chamber,

  trains her eyes upon him till he drops!

  LEADER:

  Coward, why not kill the man yourself?

  Why did the woman, the corruption of Greece

  and the gods of Greece, have to bring him down?

  Orestes—

  If he still sees the light of day,

  bring him home, good Fates, home to kill

  this pair at last. Our champion in slaughter!

  AEGISTHUS:

  Bent on insolence? Well, you’ll learn, quickly.

  At them, men - you have your work at hand!

  His men draw swords; the old men take up their sticks.

  LEADER:

  At them, fist at the hilt, to the last man -

  AEGISTHUS:

  Fist at the hilt, I’m not afraid to die.

  LEADER:

  It’s death you want and death you’ll have -

  we’ll make that word your last.

  CLYTAEMNESTRA moves between them, restraining AEGISTHUS.

  CLYTAEMNESTRA:

  No more, my dearest,

  no more grief. We have too much to reap

  right here, our mighty harvest of despair.

  Our lives are based on pain. No bloodshed now.

  Fathers of Argos, turn for home before you act

  and suffer for it. What we did was destiny.

  If we could end the suffering, how we would rejoice.

  The spirit’s brutal hoof has struck our heart.

  And that is what a woman has to say.

  Can you accept the truth?

  CLYTAEMNESTRA turns to leave.

  AEGISTHUS:

  But these ... mouths

  that bloom in filth — spitting insults in my teeth.

  You tempt your fates, you insubordinate dogs-

  to hurl abuse at me, your master!

  LEADER:

  No Greek

  worth his salt would grovel at your feet.

  AEGISTHUS:

  I - I’ll stalk you all your days!

  LEADER:

  Not if the spirit brings Orestes home.

  AEGISTHUS:

  Exiles feed on hope - well I know.

  LEADER:

  More,

  gorge yourself to bursting - soil justice, while you can.

  AEGISTHUS:

  I promise you, you’ll pay, old fools - in good time, too!

  LEADER:

  Strut on your own dunghill, you cock beside your mate.

  CLYTAEMNESTRA:

  Let them howl - they’re impotent. You and I have power now.

  We will set the house in order once for all.

  They enter the palace; the great doors close behind them; the old men disband and wander off.

  THE LIBATION BEARERS

  FOR MY WIFE

  ... in my heart there was a kind of fighting

  That would not let me sleep. Methought I lay

  Worse than the mutines in the bilboes. Rashly -

  And prais’d be rashness for it; let us know,

  Our indiscretion sometime serves us well

  When our deep plots do pall; and that should learn us

  There’s a divinity that shapes our ends,

  Rough-hew them how we will -

  —SHAKESPEARE, Hamlet

  CHARACTERS

  ORESTES, son of Agamemnon and Clytaemnestra

  PYLADES, his companion

  ELECTRA, his sister

  CHORUS OF SLAVEWOMEN AND THEIR

  LEADER

  CLYTAEMNESTRA

  CILISSA, Orestes’ old nurse

  AEGISTHUS

  A Servant of Aegisthus

  Attendants of Orestes, bodyguard of Aegisthus

  TIME AND SCENE: Several years have passed since Agamemnon’s death. At Argos, before the tomb of the king and his fathers, stands an altar; behind it looms the house of Atreus. ORESTES and PYLADES enter, dressed as travellers. ORESTES kneels and prays.

  ORESTES:

  Hermes, lord of the dead, look down and guard

  the fathers’ power. Be my saviour, I beg you,

  be my comrade now.

  I have come home

  to my own soil, an exile home at last.

  Here at the mounded grave I call my father,

  Hear me - I am crying out to you . . .

  He cuts two locks of hair and lays them on the grave.

  There is a lock for Inachos who nursed me

  into manhood, there is one for death.

  I was not here to mourn you when you died,

  my father, never gave the last salute

  when they bore your corpse away.

  ELECTRA and a chorus of slavewomen enter in procession. They are dressed in black and bear libations, moving towards ORESTES at the grave.

  What’s this?

  Look, a company moving towards us. Women,

  robed in black . . . so clear in the early light.

  I wonder what they mean, what turn of fate? -

  some new wound to the house?

  Or perhaps they come to honour you, my father,

  bearing cups to soothe and still the dead.

  That’s right, it must be . . .

  Electra, I think I see her coming, there,

  my own sister, worn, radiant in her grief-

  Dear god, let me avenge my father’s murder-

  fight beside me now with all your might!

  Out of their way, Pylades. I must know

  what they mean, these women turning towards us,

  what their prayers call forth.

  They withdraw behind the tomb.

  CHORUS:

  Rushed from the house we come

  escorting cups for the dead,

  in step with the hands’ hard beat,

  our cheeks glistening,

  flushed where the nails have raked new furrows running blood;

  and life beats on, and

  we nurse our lives with tears,

  to the sound of ripping linen beat our robes in sorrow,

  close to the breast the beats throb

  and laughter’s gone and fortune throbs and throbs.

  Aie!- bristling Terror struck -

  the seer of the house,

  the nightmare ringing dear

  breathed its wrath in sleep,

  in the midnight watch a cry! - the voice of Terror

  deep in the house, bursting down

  on the women’s darkened chambers, yes,

  and the old ones, skilled at dreams, swore oaths to god

  and called,

  ‘The proud dead stir under earth,

  they rage against the ones who took their lives.’

  But the gifts, the empty gifts

  she hopes will ward them off-

  good Mother Earth! - that godless woman sends me here . . .

  I dread to say her prayer.

  What can redeem the blood that wets the soil?

  Oh for the hearthfire banked with grief,

  the rampart’s down, a fine house down-

  dark, dark, and the sun, the life is curst,

  and mist enshrouds the halls

  where the lords of war went down.

  And the ancient pride no war,

  no storm, no force could tame,

  ringing in all men’s ears, in all men’s hearts is gone.

  They are afraid. Success,

  they bow to s
uccess, more god than god himself.

  But Justice waits and turns the scales:

  a sudden blow for some at dawn,

  for some in the no man’s land of dusk

  her torments grow with time,

  and the lethal night takes others.

  And the blood that Mother Earth consumes

  clots hard, it won’t seep through, it breeds revenge

  and frenzy goes through the guilty,

  seething like infection, swarming through the brain.

  For the one who treads a virgin’s bed

  there is no cure. All the streams of the world,

  all channels run into one

  to cleanse a man’s red hands will swell the bloody tide.

  And I . . . Fate and the gods brought down their yoke,

  they ringed our city, out of our fathers’ halls

  they led us here as slaves.

  And the will breaks, we kneel at their command -

  our masters right or wrong!

  And we beat the tearing hatred down,

  behind our veils we weep for her,

  Turning to ELECTRA.

  her senseless fate.

  Sorrow turns the secret heart to ice.

  ELECTRA:

  Dear women,

  you keep the house in order, best you can;

  and now you’ve come to the grave to say a prayer

  with me, my escorts. I’ll need your help with this.

  What to say when I pour the cup of sorrow?

  Lifting her libation cup.

  What kindness, what prayer can touch my father?

  Shall I say I bring him love for love, a woman’s

  love for husband? My mother, love from her?

  I’ve no taste for that, no words to say

  as I run the honeyed oil on father’s tomb.

  Or try the salute we often use at graves?

  ‘A wreath for a wreath. Now bring the givers

  gifts to match’ . . . no, give them pain for pain.

  Or silent, dishonoured, just as father died,

  empty it out for the soil to drink and then

  retrace my steps, like a slave sent out with scourings

  left from the purging of the halls, and throw

  the cup behind me, looking straight ahead.

  Help me decide, my friends. Join me here.

  We nurse a common hatred in the house.

  Don’t hide your feelings - no, fear no one.

  Destiny waits us all,

  Looking towards the tomb.

  born free,

  or slaves who labour under another’s hand.

  Speak to me, please. Perhaps you’ve had

  a glimpse of something better.

  LEADER:

  I revere

  your father’s death-mound like an altar.

  I’ll say a word, now that you ask,

  that comes from deep within me.

  ELECTRA:

  Speak on,

  with everything you feel for father’s grave.

  LEADER:

  Say a blessing as you pour, for those who love you.

  ELECTRA:

  And of the loved ones, whom to call my friends?

  LEADER:

  First yourself, then all who hate Aegisthus.

  ELECTRA:

  I and you. I can say a prayer for us

  and then for -

  LEADER:

  You know, try to say it.

  ELECTRA:

  There is someone else to rally to our side?

  LEADER:

  Remember Orestes, even abroad and gone.

  ELECTRA:

  Well said, the best advice I’ve had.

  LEADER:

  Now for the murderers. Remember them and-

  ELECTRA:

  What?

  I’m so unseasoned, teach me what to say.

  LEADER:

  Let some god or man come down upon them.

  ELECTRA:

  Judge or avenger, which?

  LEADER:

  Just say ‘the one who murders in return!’

  ELECTRA:

  How can I ask the gods for that

  and keep my conscience clear?

  LEADER:

  How not,

  and pay the enemy back in kind?

  ELECTRA kneels at the grave in prayer.

  ELECTRA:

  - Herald king

  of the world above and the quiet world below,

  lord of the dead, my Hermes, help me now.

  Tell the spirits underground to hear my prayers,

  and the high watch hovering over father’s roofs,

  and have her listen too, the Earth herself

  who brings all things to life and makes them strong,

  then gathers in the rising tide once more.

  And I will tip libations to the dead.

  I call out to my father. Pity me,

  dear Orestes too.

  Rekindle the light that saves our house!

  We’re auctioned off, drift like vagrants now.

  Mother has pawned us for a husband, Aegisthus,

  her partner in her murdering.

  I go like a slave,

  and Orestes driven from his estates while they,

  they roll in the fruits of all your labours,

  magnificent and sleek. O bring Orestes home,

  with a happy twist of fate, my father. Hear me,

  make me far more self-possessed than mother,

  make this hand more pure.

  These prayers for us. For our enemies I say,

  Raise up your avenger, into the light, my father-

  kill the killers in return, with justice!

  So in the midst of prayers for good I place

  this curse for them.

  Bring up your blessings,

  up into the air, led by the gods and Earth

  and all the rights that bring us triumph.

  Pouring libations on the tomb and turning to the women.

  These are my prayers. Over them I pour libations.

  Yours to adorn them with laments, to make them bloom,

  so custom says - sing out and praise the dead.

  CHORUS:

  Let the tears fall, ring out and die,

  die with the warlord at this bank,

  this bulwark of the good, defence against the bad,

  the guilt, the curse we ward away

  with prayer and all we pour. Hear me, majesty, hear me,

  lord of glory, from the darkness of your heart.

  Ohhhhhh ! -

  Dear god, let him come! Some man

  with a strong spear, born to free the house,

  with the torsion bow of Scythia bent for slaughter,

  splattering shafts like a god of war - sword in fist

  for the slash-and-hack of battle!

  ELECTRA remains at the grave, staring at the ground.

  ELECTRA:

  Father,

  you have it now, the earth has drunk your wine.

  Wait, friends, here’s news. Come share it.

  LEADER:

  Speak on,

  my heart’s a dance of fear.

  ELECTRA:

  A lock of hair,

  here on the grave ...

  LEADER:

  Whose? A man’s?

  A growing girl’s?

  ELECTRA:

  And it has the marks,

  and anyone would think-

  LEADER:

  What? We’re old. You’re young, now you teach us.

  ELECTRA:

  No one could have cut this lock but I and-

  LEADER:

  Callous they are, the ones who ought to shear

  the hair and mourn.

  ELECTRA:

  Look at the texture, just like -

  LEADER:

  Whose? I want to know.

  ELECTRA:

  Like mine, identical,

  can’t you see?

  LEADER:

&
nbsp; Orestes . . . he brought a gift

  in secret?

  ELECTRA:

  It’s his— I can see his curls.

  LEADER:

  And how could he risk the journey here?

  ELECTRA:

  He sent it, true, a lock to honour father.

  LEADER:

  All the more cause for tears. You mean

  he’ll never set foot on native ground again.

  ELECTRA:

  Yes!

  It’s sweeping over me too - anguish like a breaker -

  a sword ripping through my heart!

  Tears come like the winter rains that flood the gates -

  can’t hold them back, when I see this lock of hair.

  How could I think another Greek could play

  the prince with this?

  She’d never cut it,

  the murderess, my mother. She insults the name,