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

by Aeschylus

  316 First in the laps and last, etc. Applied to the Torch Race this is almost a platitude. But perhaps Clytaemnestra has in mind another race still to be run - a race in which she hopes herself to be the final runner see 346ff.

  339 Off guard at last: Clytaemnestra’s adjective can mean ‘unprotected’, even ‘indefensible’, as well as ‘released from standing guard’, and so prepares us for her warnings that follow.

  350 The avenging dead: her rhetorical plural may refer equally to the dead at Troy and to her daughter.

  351 Clytaemnestra’s ironies here may be prophetic not only of Agamemnon but of herself - driven to kill her husband yet somehow reluctant - but her personal torment will not emerge until she meets him at the gates; see Introduction, p. 31.

  378ff The passage is corrupt in Greek, but the general sense is that the gods repay the fathers’ crimes by visiting them upon their children’s heads. Such inherited guilt will bring down Agamemnon as well as Paris. Indeed the same forces overwhelm both men. ‘Atê is Harm or Ruin,’ as George Thomson explains, ‘or the blind infatuation . . . that leads man to commit some rash act which causes ruin. . . . When Atê is minded to destroy a man, she lays temptation [Peitho, Persuasion, Allurement] in his path to induce him to commit some definite and overt act of hubris - to play in fact the part of an agent provocateur.’ There is a strange equivalence between Iphigeneia and Helen as such agents (see the metaphor for their glances, 238f, 737f.), as if the sacrifice of his daughter were as irresistible to Agamemnon as the abduction of Helen was to Paris (see 220ff., 387ff). He and Agamemnon become equal targets of the gods, while the king’s offence - violating the sheer innocence of Iphigeneia - becomes that much worse.

  Peitho recurs throughout the Oresteia in a range of personifications: the persuasive power of the chorus (n. 113), Helen’s and Clytaemnestra’s power to seduce and ruin, Orestes’ power to deceive his enemies and avenge his father in LB, and finally Athena’s power to reconcile the Furies in E. As a moral concept Peitho gradually evolves from a destructive to a constructive force; see Introduction, pp. 24, 33, 39, 63, 84; LB n. 714, E n. 893.

  408ff Prophets of the house, etc. In describing Helen they recall the Trojan elders in the Iliad (Book III, 146ff.), but are they at the gates as she arrives in Troy, or are they Argives watching what she leaves behind, the harried preparations for the war? Both, perhaps, and Helen’s victims either way.

  436 The balance: contrast the balance scales of justice, in which the elders have placed their hopes (250ff.); see 165, 567; LB n. 61, E n. 539.

  474f Just like a woman, etc. A refrain that increases the shock of the queen’s defiance later; see 587f.

  479-92 Here we follow the majority of modem editors, against the ms. tradition, by giving these lines to the leader of the chorus.

  483ff A herald running, etc. Aeschylus places time at the service of dramatic time; he telescopes the action to make the climax swifter.

  500ff No more arrows, etc. Perhaps a specific allusion to the plague which Apollo visited on the Greeks when Agamemnon refused to release the daughter of Apollo’s priest (Iliad, Book I, 43ff.).

  505 Hermes: invoked as the patron of heralds, who carries messages and in particular the word of Zeus. Some hint of his chthonic power as the Escort of the Dead, specified in LB, may also be implicit; see LB, notes 1, 126, 803; E n. 93.

  516 Zeus who brings revenge: Zeus Dikêphoros, who brings vengeance to completion.

  517 Dug Troy down, etc. Images of agriculture, like those of husbandry, have a destructive force in A. The breaking of Trojan soil will yield to the harvest of Agamemnon’s house (1688f.), inexhaustible (959f.) and a perversion of the earth (1413ff.); see 197f., 491f., 658f., 967ff., 1043f.; LB n. 205, E n. 494.

  518 The shrines of her gods, etc. Some editors would delete the line, which resembles a line in Aeschylus’ Persians (811) spoken by Darius when he condemns the Persians for their desecration of the Greek shrines. The present line, to any members of the audience who remembered its earlier context, would have stressed the brutality of Agamemnon, while fulfilling Clytaemnestra’s warning (342) and preparing for the king’s demise.

  528 Pay the price twice over: while Paris pays doubly with the loss of Helen and his home, the destruction is so complete that Troy pays double damages, the penalty for theft according to ancient Greek law. For the theme of ‘doubleness’, see Introduction, pp. 49f., 68f., 90; A 820, 871, 1497ff.; LB notes 61, 373; E n. 4.

  580 I can taste the riches: according to custom, the bearer of good tidings was rewarded; cf. LB 685ff.

  598 Open wide the gates: which Cassandra will identify with the Gates of Hell (1314).

  600 The people’s darling: an erotic word in Greek and offensive when applied to the returning commander-in-chief.

  606 Our seal: perhaps a reference to the royal treasures sealed up during the king’s absence; but an erotic symbolism may also be implied - a denial of adultery with Aegisthus, which the chorus knows to be a fact; see 1660.

  608 Dyeing bronze, etc. See 960, and Introduction, p. 29.

  609 That is my boast: in distinction to the herald’s (568ff.).

  613 She only says what’s right: an intentional irony (the queen’s words are appropriate but false), yet a modest one compared to hers.

  620 He’s lost: for Menelaus’ subsequent adventures, see Introduction, p. 94; LB n. 1041.

  632ff The herald’s incoherence reflects his anguish and may indicate the confusion between the public purpose of the war and its heavy private toll.

  648 Fire and water: lightning and the sea. The elemental opposites may also serve, though this is doubtful, as symbols for Athena (entrusted with Zeus’s lightning-bolt) and Poseidon, who fought on behalf of the victorious Greeks throughout the war and now unite against them.

  688ff Helen . . . hell: see Introduction, p. 29. The Greek exemplifies the ‘etymological figure of speech’ by which two similar words (one of them often a proper name) were taken to be similar in meaning. This belief was sanctioned by the superstition that a proper name could contain an omen of its owner’s destiny (the nomen-omen principle, this Latin phrase itself being a nomen-omen): so in other Greek tragedies Ai-as (= Ajax) is compelled by fate to cry out ai! ai! in agony, and Pentheus is reduced to tragic grief (penthos). The belief is critically scrutinized by Plato in his Cratylus.

  Here as elsewhere there is an implicit comparison between Clytaemnestra and Helen and, less obviously, Penelope. They form a curious pattern of contrasting and combining qualities: Helen abandoned her home and husband but returned in the end to live affectionately with him, as described in the Odyssey; Penelope was left at home by her husband and remained faithful to him through many trials; Clytaemnestra also was left at home but finally betrayed him. So Penelope and Clytaemnestra stand at the two extremes of loyalty and disloyalty, while Helen shares the qualities of both.

  723ff It was the custom for children when they reached maturity to make a thank offering to their parents.

  744ff An ancient saying, etc. Wealth and its dangers recur (4571f., 525, 804ff., 943ff.), until E 543ff., where the positive effects of legitimate prosperity are praised.

  769ff How to salute you, etc. The chorus is apparently (the text is very uncertain in places) hinting to Agamemnon that he must be on his guard against hypocritical expressions of loyalty, primarily of course from Clytaemnestra. Many commentators have looked on Agamemnon as an admirable, though somewhat limited character - courteous, magnanimous, majestic, all in all a good man done to death by an evil woman. But others have questioned this, more persuaded by Agamemnon’s background and his presentation here. He may be a brave man in the Iliad but not a man of self-control; he is a reckless monarch who vacillates between professions of piety and self-aggrandizement, a general who risks defeat by refusing sound advice; see Introduction, pp.25, 30.

  779ff The good shepherd: a trope, traditional since the time of Homer, for a defender of the people, but as applied to Agamemnon it may recall his
husbandry as well - he sacrificed his daughter as he would a yearling kid (232) or lamb (1441f.).

  796 My accomplices, etc. Metaitioi; see Introduction, p. 30; LB n. 100, E n. 102. Clytaemnestra is sunaitia, responsible for Agamemnon’s murder (118); Zeus is Panaitios, responsible for all the violence in the play (1514).

  799 Their lots: in the Athenian law courts each voter, having been given his voting-pebble, placed one hand over each of two urns (one to receive votes of acquittal, the other, condemnation). In this case the urn for acquittal, personified as a sentient being, is disappointed at not receiving the voting-pebble from the hand placed over it; see n. 45.

  810 The wild mare: an allusion to the Greek warriors in the Trojan horse. Animal imagery, like that of husbandry, illustrates the brutalization of a victim and occasionally of the victimizer too; see 54ff., 604, 1063, 1127ff., 1237ff., 1500ff., 1694, and n. 49; LB n. 252, E n. 94.

  827 I dragged that man to the wars: Odysseus tried to evade conscription for the Trojan War - out of prudence, more likely, than from any cowardice. Agamemnon is priding himself on his own prudence; society holds out a flattering mirror to the proud, but he knows a hypocrite when he sees one. The one loyal man he saw at Troy was Odysseus, and Agamemnon sings his praises - but as anyone in Athens would have known, Odysseus was an arch-deceiver.

  828 Trace-horse: stronger and better fed than the yoked horses at the centre of the team, the trace-horse was depended on for effort in a crisis, as when the chariot would swerve round the post; see 1673.

  838 Right hand: the customary gesture of worship.

  859 Geryon: the tenth labour of Heracles was to fetch the cattle of Geryon, a mythical giant who, because he had three bodies, had to be killed three times before he died. As described in an Aeschylean fragment (37 [74]): ‘he brandished three spears in his [right] hands, and, holding out three shields in his left and shaking his three crests, came on like Ares in his power.’

  869ff Our loyal brother-in-arms will take good care of him: Clytaemnestra has sent Orestes away to give herself and Aegisthus freer rein, but she may also have wished to ensure the safety of her son. Her agent ‘Strophios’ (the name perhaps implies ‘a man of turns’) lives in the deme of Delphi, and his words are Delphic indeed. As Clytaemnestra repeats his ambiguous warning here, his subject ‘you’ may apply to herself and Aegisthus or to herself and Agamemnon; her hint of treason may also stir with lingering loyalty to her husband: see Introduction, p. 31; LB n. 661f.

  902 Let the red stream flow: as Robert Goheen reports, ‘For the performance of the Agamemnon at Syracuse shortly after World War I, Ettore Romagnoli as director sought the effect by having the carpet represent blood almost as literally as possible. The colour was attained by dyeing material in the blood of an ox, producing a dark reddish brown. Instead of running the carpet straight back to the palace door, it was unrolled to form a sinuous track “like a vein running down a muscular arm.”’ (‘Aspects of Dramatic Symbolism: Three Studies in the Oresteia,’ American Journal of Philology, lxxvi [1955], 116n.)

  903 The home he never hoped to see: his father’s house, which is the house of death.

  908 Leda: Agamemnon’s association of Leda with her daughter Clytaemnestra may remind us of Leda’s legendary surrender to Zeus.

  957ff With this speech Clytaemnestra not only avoids a sinister silence in which Agamemnon might reconsider his choice; she empowers him to ‘pursue it’; see Introduction, pp. 34f., and notes following.

  964 I would have sworn to tread, etc. In contrast to him (928f.).

  966 To bring that dear life back! A strong encouragement if the life is Agamemnon’s, a death sentence if it is Iphigeneia’s.

  967ff He is like the root of a tree returned to leaf, shading the house against the Dog Star’s heat, but he is actually the root of crime that re-invigorates the bloodlust in the race.

  972 The bitter virgin grape: a reference to the blood of Iphigeneia, the unripe virgin girl, that may also imply a reversal of the natural order of things; see 1410ff.

  995 Not fit for the lyre: morbid, not associated with festive songs inspired by the lyre-god Apollo; see n. 1077.

  1004ff Even exultant health, etc. According to the doctrine of the Golden Mean, the ancient Greeks believed that excess and deficiency should be avoided (see 748ff.), even in matters of health (i.e., too much health was dangerous, or in terms of Shakespeare’s pun: ‘goodness, growing to a plurisy,/Dies in his own too-much’). One should reduce such excess, as the wise sea-captain (in the following lines) jettisons some of his excessive freight. Behind the passage may lie the metaphor of the ship of state (see 185ff., 786ff.), but Agamemnon’s role as captain is undermined by his association with another metaphor, the storm; see n. 185ff.; LB n. 203, E n. 250.

  1017ff A man’s life-blood, etc. A recurrent theme that stresses not only the fragility of life but the futility of vengeance as a way of life. It will contrast with the rejuvenation that men enjoy under the new dispensation of Athenian justice; see LB 66ff., E 655ff.

  1021 The master-healer: Asclepios acquired such skill as a physician that he restored a dead man to life, and was consequently struck dead by Zeus with a thunderbolt because his action disturbed the natural order, personified as Moira, Fate, who dominates the remainder of this chorus. The notion of a kind of settled ‘departmentalization’ of the functions of gods and men is a logically necessary element in polytheism. Asclepios trespassed on ‘the department’ of Thanatos, god of death (as his father, Apollo, does in Euripides’ Alcestis), and being mortal, is sacrificed to Thanatos for his transgression. Similarly (in the following lines) it is not within the ‘departmental’ powers of the human heart to speak out for itself; the principle of Moira forbids it.

  1036f The god who guards our dearest treasures: apparently a reference to Zeus Ktêsios, who protects the house and its possessions. Later, as Clytaemnestra’s intentions become clearer, the god will yield his domestic authority to the ancestral spirit of revenge.

  1038 Heracles, etc. Heracles was sold in bondage by Hermes to Omphale, queen of Lydia. Gourmandizer that he was, he accepted his slave’s rations and served his mistress well by ridding her kingdom of the dangers that beset it.

  1056 Clytaemnestra’s hearthstone rivals Apollo’s Navelstone at Delphi.

  1066 The cutting bridle: a sharp-edged bit used in the breaking-in of high-spirited horses.

  1077 Who wants no part of grief: Apollo required songs of joy, not mourning and the dirge.

  1079 Apollon = apollon (‘destroying’); an example of nomen-omen; see n. 688ff.

  1085 Where have you led me now? Apollo Aguiatês, Guardian of the Highways, has led her to her death.

  1105 Rescue’s far away: probably a reference to Orestes; see 1679ff.

  1115ff No no, look there! etc. Cassandra’s broken utterances draw the chorus into her train of thought, forcing them to supplement her fragmentary vision; see Introduction, pp. 36ff., and the comparable power of Ophelia’s broken utterances in Hamlet (IV.v.7-13):

  ‘Her speech is nothing,

  Yet the unshapèd use of it doth move

  The hearers to collection; they aim at it,

  And botch the words up fit to their own thoughts,

  Which, as her winks and nods and gestures yield them,

  Indeed would make one think there might be thought,

  Though nothing sure, yet much unhappily.’

  1120 Stone them dead: a death reserved for the most infamous criminals, since it denoted an expiation of their crime by the entire community; see 1648f.

  1145 Her son: Itys, son of Philomela (or in another version, Procne). Philomela was turned into a nightingale after she had inadvertently tricked her husband, Tereus, into eating his son’s flesh. The allusion reinforces the earlier allusion to Thyestes’ feast, but it also distinguishes Philomela from Cassandra, and she insists upon the difference. Philomela was saved by the gods from internecine strife and made immortal with her song - in Keat’s words, ‘thou wast n
ot born for death, immortal Bird!/No hungry generations tread thee down.’ But Cassandra is condemned to the house of Atreus, her god will abandon her and make her sing in hell.

  1182f Clear and sharp, etc. As the wind drives a wave towards the rising sun, so Cassandra’s prophetic powers bring catastrophe to light. Lampros can mean ‘keen’ for wind and ‘clear’ for oracles.

  1196 The frenzy that began it all: see 222, 387f., 808f., Introduction, pp. 37f., and D. H. Lawrence’s observation to Lady Ottoline Morrell, I March (?), 1915 (Collected Letters, ed. Harry T. Moore [New York: The Viking Press, 1962], I, 326): ‘Do you know Cassandra in Aeschylus and Homer? She is one of the world’s great figures, and what the Greeks and Agamemnon aid to her is symbolic of what mankind has done to her since raped and despoiled and mocked her, to their own ruin. It is not your brain you must trust to, nor your will - but to that fundamental pathetic faculty for receiving the hidden waves that come from the depths of life, and for transferring them to the un receptive world. It is something which happens below the consciousness, and below the range of the will - it is something which is unrecognized and frustrated and destroyed.’

  1218 Once I betrayed him I could never be believed: possibly too (but this is only a conjecture) Apollo then added the cruel condition that if anyone did say he believed her, it would be a sign that she was about to suffer a violent death: this would explain her outburst of woe when the chorus accepts the truth of her divinations shortly afterwards.

  1232 A lion, etc. Aegisthus.

  1237ff That detestable hellhound: like Cerberus (Theogony 769-74), the warder of Hell, but Cerberus could be drugged and so eluded; no one returns from Clytaemnestra’s ‘Gates of Death’ (1314).

  1243 Viper, etc. The amphisbaina, a terrifying mythical snake with a head at both ends of its body. Its name means ‘going backwards or forwards’, and it has been seen as a symbol of inconstancy and adultery.

  1244 Scylla: a female monster with six ravenous dog-like heads and twelve feet, lurking in a cave above a narrow strait of the sea, as described in the Odyssey (Book XII, lines 85-100). Aeschylus relocates the outlandish, superhuman dangers of the Odyssey within the confines of Agamemnon’s hearth and personifies them in his wife; see n. 1391ff.