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

by Aeschylus

  1261 The Healer: presumably Apollo. Agamemnon is now apportioned to Thanatos, Death.

  1266 I don’t see who, etc. The leader is reluctant, perhaps obtuse, but Agamemnon may seem well defended, and his only male opponent, Aegisthus, is inept.

  1279 Trappings: over Cassandra’s body she might have worn the agrênon, the net-like woollen robe worn by soothsayers; its resemblance to a hunting-net would reinforce her image as a victim (n. 129).

  1297 Not to serve at my father’s altar: Cassandra, the daughter of Agamemnon’s enemy, resembles his own daughter, Iphigeneia: both are his victims; both are brides of death and prophets in effect, but Cassandra’s impact on the future is more constructive.

  1299 The first blood drawn: the prosphagma, the blood-offering to the dead which was preliminary to a hero’s funeral, or the victim itself.

  1302ff There will come another, etc. On the relationship between suffering and regeneration in Cassandra’s vision, see Introduction, pp. 39ff. Agamemnon’s body will be huptiasma, ‘laid low’ in death and ‘upturned’ like hands in supplication, calling forth his son.

  1337ff I cried out, not from fear, etc. According to Attic custom, ‘only if . . . the cry of distress has been raised, can evidence of the deed of violence be later laid before a court of law’ (Fraenkel).

  1391ff Clytaemnestra’s speech is a phantasmagoria of Homeric images, distorted as in a witch’s mirror that turns the queen from a triumphant warrioress in the Iliad to a hostess more sinister than any in the Odyssey. Agamemnon resembles both Greek and Trojan warriors in their agonies (Diomedes, Iliad, Book V, line 113; Hippodamas, Book XX, line 403f.) - as if he were vulnerable to friend and foe alike. Vaunting over his body Clytaemnestra travesties the delight of Menelaus (the brother Agamemnon needs) when he receives a prize at Patroclus’ funeral games: ‘his anger/was softened, as with dew the ears of corn are softened/in the standing corn growth of a shuddering field’ (Book XXIII, lines 597-9, trs. Lattimore), an image of fresh and unsophisticated joy. As Clytaemnestra revels in Agamemnon’s blood she recalls the rains of blood that Zeus hurls down when Hector is about to rout the Greeks (Book XI, lines 52ff.). And each stage in her rites of welcome, her bathing and cloaking of her guest, perverts the rituals of the Odyssey. Her ‘feasting’ in revenge is a violation of an Odyssean code that prohibits boasting over one’s fallen enemy. Perhaps her greatest perversion overturns the ‘marvellous simile’ which celebrates Odysseus’ reunion with his wife, ‘his dear wife, clear and faithful, in his arms,/longed for/as the sunwarmed earth is longed for by a swimmer/spent in rough waters where his ship went down/ under Poseidon’s blows, gale winds and tons of sea’ (Book XXIII, lines 232-5, trs. Fitzgerald). Her cup of welcome, customarily sacred to the gods, is a vessel of the curse (1420ff.); see 1275f., and n. 71f.; LB n. 17, E n. 110ff.

  1431f What poison, etc. Madness was often attributed in antiquity to the eating of some noxious plant or mineral.

  1456 Loved ones: probably her friends and allies in general.

  1467 The golden girls, etc. Clytaemnestra’s sarcastic plural enlarges on Chryseis, whose name derives from the word for gold, the daughter of Apollo’s priest. Agamemnon appropriated her and incurred Apollo’s anger at the outset of the Iliad.

  1472 The swan: the bird of Apollo, reputed to sing only when about to die.

  1497 The twinborn sons of Tantalus: here Agamemnon and Menelaus.

  1517ff Oh my king, etc. Repeated 1542ff.; the second line may echo the elders’ greeting of the king (769). In these closing scenes they display the more admirable side of Agamemnon (1575ff.) to dramatize their resistance to Clytaemnestra and their former dependence on the king (1479f), and perhaps to provide the rites of burial he requires. They are his only hope since, as Rose explains, his successor is an enemy, his son a child and an exile, and his widow his assassin, who will deny him rites and mutilate his body; see LB 428ff.

  1539 Black war: the elders return to the themes of the opening chorus. Here the god of war (53) is internecine, not international, and even harder to appease.

  1582ff Our daughter, etc. Clytaemnestra’s omission of the fact that Agamemnon murdered Iphigeneia only heightens her irony; the dead were thought to find an affectionate welcome in the underworld from the loved ones who had gone before them.

  1585 The ferry: Charon’s ferry across the river Styx.

  1588 Charge meets counter-charge: the chorus’ charge that Clytaemnestra murdered Agamemnon has been met by her charge that he murdered Iphigeneia.

  1592 The one who acts must suffer: the maxim, a commonplace since Hesiod, summarizes the lex talionis, the law of retaliation. In A it has a retaliatory force indeed, striking both at Agamemnon’s enemies and at himself; see 523f., 1555ff., 1691f.; LB n. 320, E n. 877.

  1603 Purged, etc. Perhaps an allusion to the purgations of the Mysteries. Agamemnon may be seen as a savage parody of these rites. The queen supplants the king of death, the sacred marriage weds her to the curse, the sacred birth revives her daughter’s ghost at the Styx, and men and gods unite in mutual destruction; see A n. 1, LB n. 950, E n. 494.

  1610ff The Furies’ tangling robes: For the interweaving of the Furies and the justice of the gods, see Introduction, pp. 21ff., 30, 40, 43, 51, 59, 65, 70, 78. It is a paradoxical relationship, and Aegisthus, ironically, is one of the first to introduce it; as he boasts he wove the fatal plot together, he shuttles from ‘the Furies’ tangling robes’ to ‘the nets of Justice’.

  1612ff Atreus, this man’s father, etc. Despite Aegisthus’ claims to clarity and precision, his antecedents blur and his ironies are so indiscriminate that one may wonder where his loyalties actually lie - with Thyestes who suffered outrage, or with Atreus who committed it. See Introduction, pp. 44ff.

  1614 Atreus’ brother challenged him, etc. Thyestes, after seducing Atreus’ wife, Aëropê, stole the golden lamb which was the warrant of Atreus’ title to the throne.

  1623 A feast for gods: the precedent for Thyestes’ feast was the cannibalistic feast that Tantalus presented to the gods.

  1634 Pleisthenes: since the name of this unidentified ancestral figure means ‘having the most strength’, it may have been a title of Atreus himself or a dynastic title for the sons of Pelops.

  1662ff Orpheus, through the power of his song, could enchant the animals and rocks and trees, and they would follow in his footsteps. The irony Aegisthus trains on the chorus is well summarized by Denniston-Page: ‘Orpheus led on all that heard him, you will be led off to execution; he delighted with the charm of his voice, you infuriate me with your barking.’

  1690 Our lives are based on pain: see 961.

  1695 A muted echo of her former exultation (352).

  1706 Cock: the type of swaggerer that fights with his own kind, a figure of licentiousness and strife; see E 870ff.

  1708 Set the house in order, etc. An echo, perhaps, of the certitude with which the queen invited Agamemnon to his doom (906).

  THE LIBATION BEARERS

  TIME: SEVERAL YEARS, etc. Ancient commentators took Orestes to be about eighteen or twenty, and Electra to be some years older.

  1 ‘Underground Hermes,’ the Escort of Souls, controls the spirits of the dead; but Hermes will mediate between the dead and the living and assume his more Olympian aspects as the god of messengers, stratagems and battle - his brother Apollo’s agent, hence the comrade of Orestes. Perhaps a ‘herm’ (a statue dedicated to him) was visible on-scene; see notes 126, 803; A n. 505, E n. 93.

  2 The fathers’ power: ambiguous; a reference both to Father Zeus and to the domains of Orestes’ father, Agamemnon.

  7 Inachos: the chief river of Argos. Young men in ancient Greece customarily on reaching manhood dedicated a lock of their long, youthful hair to the local river-god. Here Orestes combines this ceremony with another rite of offering a lock to a dearly loved dead person.

  11ff What’s this? etc. The one manuscript in which this play has survived begins here. The previous lines are restored from scattered
quotations preserved in the works of other Greek writers. The full speech may have been much longer (like the prologue to E).

  17 Bearing cups: libations will turn from rites of aversion to rites of invocation; see 86ff., 159ff. and n., 347f., 525f., 565 and n.; A n. 1391ff., E n. 110. In LB earlier images renew their destructive power, while (as if influenced by Cassandra) they gain a new potential. They are transitional in the Oresteia - humanized, often psychologized with an intimacy that carries pain and promise both, before they can be harmonized in the final play.

  23 Pylades: son of Strophios, prince of Phokis, where Orestes had been in exile since before his father’s death. In the legends Pylades plays a variety of roles, from Orestes’ host to the future husband of Electra, but here he appears as the spokesman of Apollo, as the austerity of his single utterance (887ff.) will suggest.

  28ff The tearing of the cheeks with one’s fingernails, the beating of the breast, and the ripping of clothes were signs of violent mourning in the ancient world; see n. 413ff.

  42 Clytaemnestra’s chambers, perhaps the depths of her conscience, are likened to a prophet’s cell; for the ‘interiorization’, the personalization of themes from A, see Introduction, pp. 66ff. In LB omens are replaced by dreams, and dreams will increase the nightmares of reality, but they will also empower characters to pursue their separate destinies; see 510ff., 915ff., 1053; A n. 91, E n. 42.

  61 Justice . . . turns the scales: the supreme principle of the Oresteia here is reinforced by the theme of light-in-darkness (see n. 137), and the motif of the ‘triad’ (here dawn, dusk and night). In LB the ‘triad’ will suggest a totality of retaliation, adding a lethal third blow to Orestes’ ‘double onslaught’ of revenge (321, 1064ff., see n. 373). But while ‘triads’ pervert the harmonizing effects of the third libation poured to Saving Zeus, they may also imply a promise of that harmony, which will be fulfilled in the third, final play; see notes 312ff., 565; A n. 245, E n. 4. Similarly the metaphor of the scales of justice stresses the counterweight, the revenge dealt by Orestes, then felt by him in turn, while it may reflect the rightful balance of opposing claims that he acknowledges (448); see A n. 436, E n. 539.

  69ff Like infection . . . no cure: the familiar imagery from A, but now the sickness will extend to madness, the cure to matricide. Suffering may be homeopathic, however; Apollo may become a healer; see 285ff., 458ff., 526, 1059f.; A n. 107, E n. 65f.

  70ff Violation of virginity is also an example of an irreparable act of aggression. The chorus women are beginning to think of their own suffering as slaves captured in war. They are not born slaves, since born slaves had no fathers (see 75), but gentlewomen, hence their ease and equality with Electra.

  74 Yoke: the image will suggest not only the oppressions of fate (785) but also conjugal joy (584) and the liberation of society (951), though Orestes must be yoked to further torment at the end; see A n. 49, E n. 116.

  86 I pour, etc A ritual mixture of meal, honey and oil offered to the gods and to the dead.

  95ff The avoidance of looking back suggests the ritual casting away of the refuse after a propitiatory sacrifice, not simply household cleaning. If Electra treats the libations in this way, she implies that there is something abominable about them.

  100 Join me here: as metaitioi, here partners rather than accomplices; see A n. 796, E n. 102.

  107 Like an altar: it might be impious to think of a tomb as an altar, and the women demonstrate their reverence at once.

  116 Electra’s reluctance to name Orestes - as if she had never thought of him as the avenger - is matched by the reluctance of the women (178ff), who may never have thought he would return.

  122 Judge or avenger, which? An important moral distinction, too subtle for the chorus, which disregards it here.

  123ff Hate and love in equal measure, they seem to say, as if one emotion might reinforce the other.

  126ff Herald king: like Orestes she prays to Hermes, but here as the god of messengers who mediates between the living and the dead.

  130 The high watch: perhaps the ancestral powers attached to their house, not the dead in general.

  131ff Earth, etc. Images of fertility and parenthood waver between destruction and creation. Heredity is both a fatal legacy and a challenge that a person forge his destiny himself; see 211, 382 and n., 529ff., 630ff., 674 and n., 915; A n. 265, E n. 322.

  137 The light that saves our house: Orestes is the phôs, the man who brings the phaos, the light of salvation, but his light is plunged in darkness at the last; see 326, 408, 850, 950 and n.; A n. 25, E n. 7.

  159ff This difficult passage, a ‘polar expression’, seems to mean, ‘Let our lamentations, accompanied by libations, have the positive force of preserving what is good and the negative force of preventing what is evil. ’So the women implement Electra’s prayer for good, her curse against the bad (n. 17). Clytaemnestra’s offering, meant to soothe the dead, enlivens them and their avengers; the act of mourning becomes a call to action; the grave itself, the region of oblivion, becomes a source of personal identity and power.

  165 The bow of Scythia, named after the people of South Russia who originated it, was shaped with a double curve, like a Cupid’s bow, to give it extra torsion. As Heracles regularly used one, the chorus may be thinking of him here, invoking him in his aspect of the liberator, which he shared with Perseus; see n. 818. Imagery of athletics seems to have an optimistic effect - each sport seems to bring Orestes closer to victory, but his charioteering and his archery will bring him failure in the end. Wrestling seems to predominate in this play about engagement and embrace; see 343, 378, 485f., 676, 853 and n., 1019ff, 1031; A n. 169ff., E n. 151.

  195ff The turbulence of Electra’s emotions, as Anne Lebeck observes, forecasts those of her brother at the end of the play.

  203 Sailors: imagery of sailing takes an auspicious course until it meets ‘the tempest in the race’ (1065); see 634f., 810ff.; A notes 185ff., 1004; E n. 250.

  205 A mighty tree: images from planting and agriculture tend to be personal, genealogical, hopeful. Even when Orestes’ pain begins to ‘bloom’ (1004), he is ’armed with the branch and wreath’ of suppliants to Delphi (1032); see 264ff:, 490f.; A n. 517, E n. 494.

  206ff Tracks, etc. The thick dust around Agamemnon’s tomb, where no wise Argive would go for fear of Clytaemnestra’s wrath, would take a clear impression. The recognition of special characteristics in a footprint, which Euripides found ludicrous (Electra, 503ff.), might have been common practice in an epoch of skilled hunters and trackers. Moreover, Electra finds a resemblance in the contours of her brother’s print, not its size.

  233 Work of your own hand: presumably what Orestes now displays as proof of his identity is a garment woven by Electra with a distinctive design of wild animals, sent to him as a gift during his exile or given to him at birth as a swaddling band. Images of crafts and artistry may have a constructive effect in LB - the smith of Fate may counteract his work in A (A 1564f., LB 628ff.); Clytaemnestra’s masterwork, the robes, will stimulate Orestes’ conscience even as they drive him mad; see Introduction, pp. 65ff.; LB 975ff., A n. 150, E n. 308.

  240ff Four loves in one, etc. So Andromache praises Hector in the Iliad (Book VI, line 429f.), hoping to persuade him not to fight and jeopardize their family. But Electra will stir her brother into combat, and he will ultimately reconstitute his family and his people.

  244 My sister: Iphigeneia, sacrificed by Agamemnon. In other accounts Electra has a living sister, Chrysothemis, who is often seen as her foil, weak, conventional. Here, as Sidgwick says, ‘Iphigeneia dead, Electra is alone.’

  248 Saving Zeus, Third Zeus: see A n. 245.

  252 Viper: literally echidna, here perhaps like the ravenous monster of that name - half beautiful woman, half grim speckled snake - described by Hesiod. The image of the snake strangling an eagle would seem to reverse the common emblem of the victory of good over evil - an eagle strangling a snake; but see Introduction, pp. 69ff.; LB n. 514.

&nbs
p; Animal imagery will distinguish the children from their parents in A, stressing their weakness (Electra as a dog that fawns on hope, LB 195, vs. Clytaemnestra who fawned in treachery), their vengefulness (Orestes as the bull, LB 280, vs. the cow that gored his father), and their dignity (as the regal lion, LB 925, vs. the ravening lion, Agamemnon), but Orestes must be hunted by the hounds of his mother’s curse, 1054f., the final revenge of Artemis for the work of Zeus’s winged hounds in A. The pattern which had a brutalizing effect (A n. 810) is more suggestive here of natural energies that can go either way; see E n. 94.

  261 Banquets: the image is now associated with forms of propitiation, even nourishment, as well as with Thyestes’ feast and its effects; see 47off., 531ff., 1067; A n. 138, E n. 110ff.

  262 Destroy the eagle’s brood, etc. Zeus depends on the eagle to embody his auguries and on kings to represent his power among men.

  272 In the fire: not burning on the funeral pyre, as Rose observes, but burned alive in what the Romans called the tunica molesta, the dress of pitch.

  282ff This vividly phrased passage describes the two main punishments for those who become polluted by refusing to exact vengeance for a kinsman’s murder (a relic of a primitive state of society before the community as a whole punished murderers according to a legal process). The first punishment consists of foul and maddening sicknesses (including a kind of leprosy), and the second, forcible ejection from the community.

  312ff The movement of the chant (see Introduction, pp. 56ff.). is reflected in its designations: it begins as a goös, a wailing lament that carries glory and revenge; as it changes to a thrênos, a formal dirge, its vengeance can be felt like a double lash, then a stabbing arrow, yet it has a constructive moral power too; it conveys a nomos, a custom of revenge that turns into a stasis, a popular revolt on behalf of justice. The goal of the chant is to become a paiôn, a battle-song that may be a thanksgiving hymn as well. Its structure, the responsion of its stanzas and its voices. may be ‘choreographed’ as follows: