The Complete Aeschylus, Volume I: The Oresteia by Aeschylus
1906–34 / 1650–1673 The Chorus members, old and feeble and armed only with their staffs, respond to Aegisthus’ threats by preparing to fight his armed guard. Aegisthus welcomes the fray and the two sides face off. Clytemnestra’s decisive intervention prevents a battle, but the acrimony continues until she again intervenes to take Aegisthus inside. Their exit into the palace at once symbolizes his accession to the role of tyrannos in place of the fallen king, and his dependence on the queen. Unusually, the Chorus exits in silence. The play comes to an end, but not to a conclusion.
LIBATION BEARERS
1–25 / 1–21 Prologue As if in fulfillment of Cassandra’s prophecy (Agamemnon 1463–70 / 1279–85) and the Chorus’ last hope (Agamemnon 1901–3 / 1646–48, 1928 / 1667), Libation Bearers opens with the return of Orestes to Argos to avenge his father’s murder (22–23 / 18–19). The first part of the play will reunite him with his sister Electra at their father’s tomb, the place where the power of his spirit can most directly inspire them and strengthen their resolve.
1–11 / 1–9 These lines are not transmitted in the manuscript tradition of the Oresteia. 1–6 / 1–5 have been restored from Aristophanes’ Frogs, and 7–11 / 6–9 from scholia (later annotations included in our manuscript tradition) to other authors. This is by no means the complete opening of the prologue, but we cannot say how much has been lost. No information essential for the audience’s understanding of the situation is missing, however, and only a few lines may be lost.
1 / 1 Hermes of the dark earth This is Hermes the escorter of souls to the underworld. The god appears in many of his main functions in the course of the trilogy, for example, as the patron god of heralds (Agamemnon 582–83 / 514–15), as the god of stratagems and deception (934–40 / 811–18), and as protector of travelers (Eumenides, 105–6 / 89–90). Orestes calls him “overseer of my father’s power” (2 / 1) because he hopes to enlist him as a god associated with the realm of the dead, Hermes, in his own cause. The meaning of this phrase was already debated by the shades of Euripides and Aeschylus himself, in Aristophanes Frogs 1138–49. Euripides sustains quite improbably that it means “who looked upon my father’s murder,” Aeschylus that it refers to Hermes as “watching over his father’s [i.e., Zeus’] realm” (at least possible, since the Greek does not specify whose father is meant). Both appear to be wrong, which may be part of Aristophanes’ joke.
14 / 12 What bad luck could it mean? Despite the hopefulness of Orestes’ return, the beginning of the play is shadowed by uncertainty and foreboding. Orestes’ first reaction on seeing the libation bearers is that their mourning garb is ill-omened. He and his companion Pylades hide in order to discover their purpose in visiting the tomb. The Chorus’ dirge and Electra’s mourning continue the atmosphere of gloom—“sheer sunlessness” (58 / 51)—into which the reappearance of Orestes will come like a ray of light.
27–104 / 22–83 Parodos The Chorus, a band of slave-women, is led on by Electra, who remains silent until the parodos has been completed. Despite having been captured (at an unspecified time and place) by the Argive army and brought as slaves to Argos (92–96 / 75–78), the women are loyal to their dead master, Agamemnon. Their song emphasizes the fear and misery that beset Argos, and their own helplessness; but they predict that Justice will still find “way to right the balance” (69 / 61).
27–37 / 22–31 The Chorus describes (and their dance presumably mimes) all the traditional behaviors of female mourners—blows to the head, raking of the cheeks with fingernails, rending of garments, beating of the breast. Thus, as the Chorus brings Clytemnestra’s libation to Agamemnon’s tomb, it enacts a belated dirge for Agamemnon, the tribute that the Elders were sure he would not receive from Clytemnestra (Agamemnon 1775–82 / 1541–50).
38 / 32 terror, dream-seer of the house The Chorus has been sent from the palace with libations (27–28 / 22–23); now we learn that the cause was a terrifying dream, attributed by expert interpreters to the anger of the dead who lie still unavenged (45–47 / 39–41). Nowhere is Clytemnestra, whose dream it was and who instigated the libations, named. She figures in the second strophe simply as “the godless woman” (51 / 46).
50 / 44 O mother Earth! She is invoked here as an averter of evils (as at Aeschylus’ Suppliants 890 – 91 = 900 – 1) and because the libations are to be poured into the earth. How will she receive such “ill-favored favors”?
71–74 / 62–65 bright day … twilit shadows … black night A formulation of the idea, expressed again and again in the trilogy, that justice may come soon or late, but it will inevitably arrive.
85–90 / 71–74 An implicit comparison is to be understood in this expression: just as there is no remedy for the violation of a virgin, so there is no cleansing of the blood stain from a murderer’s hand.
105–668 / 84–584 First episode The first half of the play is one long act, set at Agamemnon’s tomb. At its center is the enormous kommos (see note on Agamemnon, 1220–1348) that honors the slain king and calls on his aid from the world below (352–552 / 306–478); otherwise, the action is limited to the reunion of brother and sister and, following the kommos, the forging of Orestes’ plan. Following this expansive, highly ritualized first half, the second part of the play will move swiftly and with a sense of inevitability to enact Orestes’ vengeance on Clytemnestra and Aegisthus and to show its consequences for him.
129 / 106 like an altar to me Cf. 383 / 336, where Electra says that Agamemnon’s tomb “welcomed us as suppliants,” although one would ordinarily take refuge at the altar of a god, not at a tomb. The force of equating Agamemnon’s tomb with an altar is to stress his character as a hero who still exercises power from his grave. In Euripides’ Helen, Helen is a suppliant at the tomb of the dead king of Egypt, Proteus, who receives heroic honors; and in Sophocles’ Ajax, the young Eurysaces is placed as a suppliant at the body of the fallen Ajax, as if to show that his father has already become a sacred hero.
143 / 120 Electra asks, in effect, whether she is to pray for a “judge” (dikastês, the regular Athenian term for a juror) or an “executioner” (dikêphoros, literally, a bringer of justice; the term Aegisthus used at Agamemnon 1814 / 1577 of the day that has brought Agamemnon’s death). The first alternative is unreal in the sense that judicial remedies do not yet exist, but it is the clearest indication so far in the Oresteia of the possibility of a legal decision replacing an act of reciprocal vengeance.
145–46 / 122–23 Electra’s question implies a surprising distance from the standard Greek morality of “good to my friends, harm to my enemies” that the Chorus embraces in its answer. The explanation may be, as is often said, that Electra is thinking of the murder of Clytemnestra—an enemy, indeed, but also her own mother. But since Clytemnestra is not specifically mentioned here, some have concluded that Electra is depicted as one—unlike Clytemnestra—to whom desire for vengeance does not come naturally, and who still needs instruction. At 164–76 / 138–148, Electra scrupulously places her prayer for evil in the midst of prayers for good. Certainly, the tone of Electra’s religious scruples could hardly be more different from that of Clytemnestra’s delight in Agamemnon at shedding her enemies’ blood.
147 / 124 Greatest herald For Hermes as chthonian escort of souls from this world to the world below, see note on 1. Here, however, it is not Hermes but “nether spirits” (daimones) who are said to “oversee my father’s house” (149–50 / 125–26), the Erinyes or Curses who come from the realm of the dead.
156–76 / 130–48 Having decided on the appropriate form of prayer and invoked Hermes as conveyor of the message, Electra turns in these lines to the prayer itself that accompanies her libation. We have put the entire passage in quotation marks to reflect that these are the ritual words that preface her libation.
157 / 131 a saving light The imagery of light, so pervasive in the trilogy as a whole, is focused in Libation Bearers on the figure of Orestes. As he takes vengeance on Aegisthus and Clytemnestra, Orestes is repeatedly hailed as the br
182–84 / 154–55 this earthwork of the good / that turns back / evil A description of the power of the hero’s tomb to protect his friends by defending them from his enemies.
190 / 159 let him come soon The unspoken subject is Orestes, depicted as a spearman, an archer, or wielding a sword, like Ares himself—a more or less exhaustive list of the weapons the “savior of the house” might use.
192 / 161–62 the Scythian bow A kind of bow with a double curve made famous by the skilled archers of Scythia.
198–351 / 164–314 As the ritual in commemoration and exhortation of Agamemnon ends, the recognition scene begins. The recognition tokens in this scene were parodied by Euripides in his Electra, 518–44, for his own purposes, but they are not as naive as the judgment of many critics of the nineteenth and earlier twentieth centuries might suggest. Since the audience already knows the truth, they will have no inclination to be skeptical. In any case, the scene is staged as the answer to prayers that Electra herself can hardly believe to have been fulfilled at last—a finely judged play of hope and doubt that leads with dramatic and emotional conviction to the joyous reunion.
198 / 165 What’s this? Electra sees a lock of hair left on the tomb, and the fact that this is a characteristic offering made by a close relative of the dead renders Electra’s insistence on the similarity of this hair to her own less implausible.
237 / 205 Wait! Look! The token of the matching footprints is to be understood as an additional piece of evidence that revives Electra’s hopes after her realization that she cannot know with certainty who sent the offering of hair. But then, paradoxically, her lack of confidence in her own judgment returns, and it is only when Orestes shows her the certain token of her own childhood weaving (263 / 231) that she accepts that he is truly her long-lost brother.
265–66 / 233–34 These lines serve as a sort of stage direction: this is the point at which Electra’s joyous recognition becomes manifest, and Orestes must restrain her from the shout that might betray his return to his enemies.
270–77 / 238–44 A reminiscence of the memorable lines of the Iliad 6, 429–30, in which Andromache calls Hector in her father, mother, brother, and husband. Ironically, Andromache is pleading for Hector to stay out of battle, Electra is urging him to do battle against their enemies.
274–75 / 242 the sister, too, / so cruelly slaughtered The only direct reference to Iphigenia in Libation Bearers (but see note on 287–88), a momentary reminder that Agamemnon, the great king foully slain, was not himself free of blood-guilt.
277–78 / 244–45 Power and Justice / and Zeus the third, supreme Another idiosyncratic version of the three libations, but with Zeus in his rightful place; see further Introduction, p. 31.
280 / 247 orphans of a father eagle The father eagle is of course Agamemnon, and the viper who killed him, Clytemnestra. Since the eagle is Zeus’ bird, the comparison is likely to elicit Zeus’ favor in guiding the avengers. Snakes and eagles are traditional enemies in Greek literature, but here a viper is specified because of the belief that the female of that species killed the male while copulating and was killed in turn by her children, who chewed their way out of her womb (see, e.g., Herodotus, Histories 3, 109). Orestes himself becomes the snake that draws his mother’s blood (603–11 / 526–34, 627–28 / 549–50, 1057 / 928).
287–88 / 255–56 nestlings of a father who never failed / to sacrifice to you In the context of the metaphorical connection of Agamemnon with the eagle, there may be an indirect reminder of the sacrifice of Iphigenia here. The Greek word for sacrificer [thutêr] is used elsewhere in the Oresteia only of Agamemnon’s role in the killing of his daughter. In Agamemnon, the omen of the eagles destroying the pregnant hare (132–56 / 114–38) is what leads to the sacrifice of Iphigenia.
290 / 257 holy banquets opulent as his The underlying principle here is that of do ut des, the idea that suitable homage must be given to the gods to obtain their favor—and that a god’s failure to reward the homage will threaten its continuation. The same principle is applied in the appeal to Agamemnon’s ghost at 557–62 / 483–88.
302 / 268 their bodies hissing as the black pitch burns This might refer to burning on the funeral pyre, but might also be understood as a wish that the victims be covered in pitch and burnt alive, a punishment at least known to the Greeks (e.g., Plato, Gorgias 473c).
303 / 269 Apollo’s great oracle Orestes makes clear that Apollo, through his oracle at Delphi, has explicitly charged him with avenging Agamemnon’s death, and has ordered him to kill the killers in the same way they killed his father—by dolos, craft or trickery.
311–38 / 76–96 Orestes gives a long and vivid account of the terrors that await him if he does not follow Apollo’s instructions. The description fluctuates between what anyone unable or unwilling to avenge kinfolk must expect to suffer and particulars that reflect his own circumstances. Apollo tells him what will happen if he does not kill Aegisthus and Clytemnestra; but the audience, familiar with the outline of the story, will recognize that the speech also describes what awaits him for killing them: to be driven from his city maddened by the pursuit of his mother’s Erinyes. The threat of punishment by his father’s Erinyes (320–38 / 283–96) thus makes it unmistakably clear that there will be no easy escape for Orestes.
340–41 / 298 I’d still be driven / to carry out the work At the end of the speech, Orestes insists that even without the threats of punishment, his own desires determine his decision to avenge his father. Though Orestes will understandably hesitate before striking down his mother (1027–31 / 899–904), indecisiveness and moral qualms have no place in Aeschylus’ characterization. Orestes has made up his mind before the play begins.
350 / 305 he has a woman’s heart See note on Agamemnon 1876.
352–552 / 306–478 Kommos This is the longest and formally most complex of all such lyric structures in extant tragedy, and the one that most fully integrates Chorus and actors as equal partners. It has four distinct parts of varying size and formal makeup (following the schema set out in A. F. Garvie, ed., Aeschylus, Choephori, Oxford, 1986, 124–25). The first and longest section (352–82 / 306–422) is a great dirge of highly symmetrical structure: six strophic pairs (i.e., metrically equivalent strophe and antistrophe; see note on Agamemnon, 48–296) arranged in four triads, with each triad introduced by marching anapests (see note on Agamemnon, 48–123) chanted by the Chorus, and the stanzas of each triad sung in alternation by Orestes, the Chorus, and Electra. The second section (483–524 / 423–55) is a lyric narrative of the events since Agamemnon’s murder in three strophic pairs asymmetrically arranged and distributed among the participants. In this section, Orestes announces his determination to kill his mother (499–503 / 435–38). The third section (525–36 / 456–65) is a brief direct appeal to Agamemnon single contained in a strophic pair in which both stanzas are symmetrically divided among the three participants. This appeal will be continued by Orestes and Electra in the spoken iambics of 553–83 / 466–609). The final section (537–52 / 466–78) consists of a single strophic pair sung, in the manner of a brief stasimon, by the Chorus. It sums up the dire situation of the house and posits its children, Orestes and Electra, as the only hope for a “bloody healing” (546 / 472).
361 / 314 the story three times old Here as at Agamemnon 1692–93 / 1476–77 we have the sort of Greek compound in tri-that often has an intensive rather than numerical force. Here both senses seem to be at work. The “story” of retributive justice is very old and important, and it corresponds to the curse on the house that is repeatedly imagined in the trilogy as extending over three generations (see further on 1204–17 / 1065–76).
370 / 322 here before the palace door The first
386 / 339 wrestle Ruin to a third fall In a Greek wrestling match, the victor had to win three falls. Thus “third” here has the sense of “third and last,” “final.” See further Introduction, pp. 35–36.
396 / 346 a Lycian spear The Lycians were the Trojans’ principal allies in the Iliad; here the name is practically a synonymous with Trojan.
418 / 368 killed in the same way Orestes, in the corresponding strophe, has said it would have been better if his father had died fighting at Troy (395–98 / 345–48). Electra answers with an equally unreal wish—his killers are the ones who should have died in battle at Troy.