Oresteia

“The people’s voice is heavy with hatred,

now the curses of the people must be paid,

and now I wait, I listen…

there—there is something breathing

under the night’s shroud. God takes aim

at the ones who murder many;

the swarthy Furies stalk the man

gone rich beyond all rights—with a twist

of fortune grind him down, dissolve him

into the blurring dead—there is no help.

The reach for power can recoil,

the bolt of a god can strike you at a glance.” 

According to the chorus, the people of Argos view the Trojan War as a pointless effort. Many of their young men have died for the sake of a single woman. The citizens are unhappy, especially since Agamemnon has been gone so long, leading to civil unrest. The chorus also reminds the audience that one’s fortune can easily be overturned.

“And now this cause involving men and gods.

We must summon the city for a trial,

found a national tribunal. Whatever’s healthy,

shore it up with law and help it flourish.

Wherever something calls for drastic cures

we make our noblest effort: amputate or wield

the healing iron, burn the cancer at the roots.” 

Agamemnon recognizes the political and social unrest brewing in Argos in his absence. As king, it is his duty to right these wrongs. His invocation of a tribunal foreshadows Orestes’ trial in The Eumenides, which will finally end the troubles of the House of Atreus.

“Come to me now, my dearest,

Down from the car of war, but never set the foot

That stamped out Troy on earth again, my great one.

Women, why delay? You have your orders.

Pave his way with tapestries.

Quickly.

Let the red stream flow and bear him home

To the home he never hoped to see—Justice,

Lead him in!

Leave the rest to me.

The spirit within me never yields to sleep.

We will set things right, with the god’s help.

We will do whatever Fate requires.” 

The image of a “red stream” foreshadows the bloodshed that awaits Agamemnon in the palace. 

“This—

you treat me like a woman. Groveling, gaping up at me—

what am I, some barbarian peacocking out of Asia?

Never cross my path with robes and draw the lightning.

Never—only the gods deserve the pomps of honor

and this stiff brocades of fame. To walk on them…

I am human, and it makes my pulses stir

with dread.

Give me the attributes of a man

and not a God, a little earth to walk on,

not this gorgeous work.

There is no need to sound my reputation.

I have a sense of right and wrong, what's more—

heaven's proudest gift. Call no man blest

until he ends his life in peace, fulfilled.

If I can live by what I say, I have no fear.” 

Agamemnon is hesitant to accept the welcome Clytaemnestra has prepared for him. Treading on royal robes and expensive tapestries is too ostentatious. Such welcomes should be reserved for the gods alone; accepting this invitation may incur their wrath. “Call no man blest / until he ends his life in peace” is a common aphorism in Greek tragedy, where heroes rarely end their lives in peace. 

“No… the house that hates god

an echoing womb of guilt, kinsmen torturing kinsmen, severed heads,

slaughterhouse of heroes, soil streaming blood—.”

Cursed by Apollo because he spurned her, Cassandra is subject to prophetic visions that nobody else is able to believe or comprehend. She sees the bloody history of the House of Atreus, both past and future. The bloody feast in which Atreus attempted to serve the gods the flesh of his own kin has cursed Agamemnon’s bloodline, resulting in Iphigenia, Agamemnon, and Clytaemnestra’s deaths. The chorus sympathizes with Cassandra but is unable to understand her. 

“We will die,

but not without some honour from the gods.

There will come another to avenge us,

born to kill his mother, born

his father’s champion. A wanderer, a fugitive

driven off his native land, he will come home

to cope the stones of hate that menace all he loves.

The gods have sworn a monumental oath: as his father lies

upon the ground he draws him home with a power like a prayer.” 

Cassandra’s final prophesy foreshadows Orestes’ return in The Libation Bearers to avenge his father’s death. This prophesy also exposes Clytaemnestra’s lie about her son. She sent him away to be safe from his revenge, not to protect him from a citizens’ revolt.

“Words, endless words I've said to serve the moment—

now it makes me proud to tell the truth.

How else to prepare a death for deadly men

who seemed to love you? How to rig the nets

of pain so high no man can over leap them?

I brooded on this trial, this ancient blood feud

year by year. At last my hour came.

Here I stand and here I struck

and here my work is done.

I did it all. I don't deny it, no.

He had no way to flee or fight his destiny—

our never-ending, all-embracing net, I cast it

wide for the royal haul, by coil him round and round

in the walls, the robes of doom, and then I strike him

once, twice, and at each stroke he cries in agony—

he buckles at the knees and crashes here!”

Clytaemnestra’s triumph is one of the most striking scenes of the play, as she unveils Agamemnon’s body, tangled in a bloody net of royal robes. She spent a decade plotting her revenge, dissimulating and pretending for the people of Argos to ensure her plan’s success. Agamemnon’s death is a great dishonor; a warlord should die in battle, or in peace after victory, not ensnared in a net and slaughtered.

“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 that 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.”

The chorus of enslaved women sing about Clytaemnestra’s guilt and how she is haunted by the vengeful spirit of Agamemnon. The murdered king cannot rest because he was not given his due funerary rites, so Clytaemnestra sends their daughter Electra with libations to calm his spirit. However, the chorus suggests that this will do little to wash the blood from the queen’s hands because of the pollution incurred by his murder. 

“You light to my eyes, four loves in one!

I have to call you father, it is date;

And I turn to you the love I gave my mother—

I despise her, she deserves it, yes,

And the love I gave my sister, sacrificed

On the cruel sword, I turn to you.

You were my faith, my brother—

You alone restore my self-respect.”

Orestes’ arrival marks the answer to Electra’s prayers and the potential of the redemption of their lineage. Without a father or husband, Electra is vulnerable in a house ruled by enemies. Orestes takes on the role of the entire family Electra lost.

“Apollo will never fail me, no,

his tremendous power, his oracle charges me

to see this trial through.

I can still hear the god—

a high voice ringing with winters of disaster,

piercing the heart within me, warm and strong,

unless I hunt my father's murderers, cut them down

in their own style—they destroyed my birthright.

‘Gore them like a bull,’ he called, ‘or pay their debt

with your own life, one long career of grief.’

He revealed so much about us,

told how the dead take root beneath the soil,

they grow with hate and plague the lives of men.

He told of the leprous boils that ride the flesh,

their wild teeth gnawing the mother tissue, aye,

and a white scurf spreads like cancer over these,

and worse, he told how assaults of Furies spring

to life on the father's blood…” 

Orestes has been charged by Apollo to avenge his father's death. To some degree, this consecrates the act of matricide as divine retribution. However, Orestes is now in a terrible position: If he fails to avenge Agamemnon, he will suffer for the rest of his life under his father's curse. If he kills his mother, he will be tormented by the Furies she invokes. 

“No,

I pray to the Earth and father’s grave to bring

That dream to life in me. I’ll play the seer—

It all fits together, watch!

If the serpent came from the same place as I,

and slept in the bands that swaddled me, and its jaws

spread wide for the breast that nursed me into life

end cloth stained the milk, mother's milk,

and she cried in fear and agony—so be it.

As she bred this sign, this violent prodigy,

so she dies by violence. I turn serpent,

I kill her. So the vision says.” 

Clytaemnestra’s guilt manifests in a dream of her giving birth to and nursing a serpent. Orestes believes the serpent biting his mother represents him avenging Agamemnon. For Clytaemnestra, it is an ill-omen; it is what caused her to offer the customary ceremonial libations to Agamemnon that she denied him at his funeral. 

“Now, say none

At the doors will give us a royal welcome

(after all the house is ridden by a curse),

Well then we wait… till a passer-by will stop

And puzzle and make insinuations at the house,

‘Aegisthus shuts his door on the man who needs him.

Why, I wonder—does he know? Is he home?”

The decorum of hospitality, or xenia, was a sacred bond between hosts and their guests. Aeschylus’s audience would have understood the ingenuity and dishonesty of Orestes’ plan. By disguising himself as a traveler, Orestes forces Aegisthus to accept him as a guest or risk incurring dishonor or even spiritual pollution. 

“What of the future? What of the Prophet God Apollo,

the Delphic voice, the faith and oaths we swear?

Make all mankind your enemy, not the gods.” 

Pylades’ single piece of dialogue in The Libation Bearers reaffirms Orestes’ mission when his confidence wavers. Killing Clytaemnestra has been divinely ordained by Apollo; Orestes already knows the consequences of failing to avenge Agamemnon outweigh the pollution of matricide.

“Clytaemnestra: Ai—you are the snake I bore—I gave you life!

Orestes: Yes!

That was the great seer, that terror in your dreams.

You killed and it was outrage—suffer outrage now.” 

At the crux of the action of The Libation Bearers, Clytaemnestra finally realizes the significance of her dream. She fails to convince Orestes to spare her life. The outrage she caused by murdering her husband will be matched by the outrage of Orestes killing her. 

“This—how can I dignify this… snare for a beast?—

sheath for a corpse’s feet?

This winding sheet,

this tent for the bath of death!

No, a hunting net,

it coiling—what to call—?

Foot-trap—

Woven of robes…

why, this is perfect gear for the highwayman

who entices guests and robs them blind and plies

the trade of thieves. With a sweet lure like this

he'd hoist a hundred lives and warm his heart.

Live with such a woman, marry her? sooner

the gods destroy me—die without an heir!” 

As Orestes examines the results of his act of vengeance, he reflects upon the injustice inflicted upon Agamemnon, and is at a loss for words. Agamemnon was murdered while ensnared in a “net” of robes—a dishonorable end for a king and military commander. Orestes stands over his mother’s and Aegisthus’s bodies, entangled in bloody robes, mirroring the scene of Clytaemnestra’s triumph in Agamemnon.

“Leader: What dreams can whirl you so? You of all men,

You have your father’s love. Steady, nothing

to fear with all you’ve won.

Orestes: No dreams, these torments,

not to me, they’re clear, real—the hounds

of mother’s hate.” 

Upon spilling his mother’s blood, Orestes is immediately beset by guilt and the curse of Clytaemnestra’s curse, embodied by the Furies. This represents the role of the Furies as punishers of those who break bonds, as well as a physical manifestation off Orestes’ own wrongdoing. On stage, this would likely be the first entrance of the Furies, though they have been previously invoked; they will pursue him into the action of The Eumenides. 

“They disgust me.

These grey, ancient children never touched

by God, man or beast—the eternal virgins.

Born for destruction only, the dark pit,

they range the bowels of the earth, the world of death,

loathed by men and the gods who hold Olympus.” 

Apollo is disgusted by the sight of the Furies encircling Orestes at the Oracle of Delphi, and he makes no secret of it here or during Orestes’ trial. Because the Furies are associate with death, vengeance, and bloodshed, Apollo views them as a polluting influence in his temple; he expels them shortly after. 

“Apollo: Authority—you? Sound out your splendid power.

Leader: Matricides: we drive them from their houses.

Apollo: And what of the wife who strikes her husband down?

Leader: That murder would not destroy one’s flesh and blood.” 

This exchange between Apollo and the leader of the chorus of Furies prefigures the argument that will win Orestes’ freedom. The leader argues that punishing Orestes lies within their divine jurisdiction, despite Apollo’s hand in the matter, because Clytaemnestra is Orestes’ blood relative. Apollo argues that the oath of marriage is sacred, and he accuses the Furies of being selectively outraged at the crimes they decide to punish. 

“Come, Furies, dance!—

Link arms for the dancing hand-to-hand,

now we long to reveal our art,

our terror, not to declare our right

to steer the lives of men,

we all conspire, we dance! we are

the just and upright, we maintain.

Hold out your hands, if they are clean

no fury of ours will stalk you,

you will go through life unscathed.

But show us the guilty—one like this

who hides his reeking hands,

and up from the outraged dead we rise,

witness bound to avenge their blood

we rise in flames against him to the end!” 

This choral ode is both a stage direction and a didactic exposition of the Furies’ divine role as punishers of wrongdoers. The Furies represent guilt, both in terms of conscience and in the legal/moral sense. Until the trial system established by Athena at the end of The Libation Bearers, the Furies held jurisdiction over punishing the sins of humanity.

“Who are you? I address you all as one:

You, the stranger seated at my idol,

And you, like no one born of the sown seed,

No goddess watched by the gods, no mortal either,

Not to judge by your look at least, your features…

Wait, I call my neighbours into question. It offends the rights,

It violates tradition.” 

As expected from the goddess of wisdom, Athena’s treatment of the Furies is completely different from her brother Apollo’s. Athena marks the differences between the chthonic Furies and the Olympian gods, but, adhering to the host-guest relationship of xenia, she checks her impulses and treats the Furies with respect. The Furies respect her in return.

“Queen Athena, first,

The misgiving in your final words is strong.

Let me remove it. I haven’t come for purging.

Look, not a stain on the hands that touch your idol.

I have proof for all I say.

The Law condemns the man of the violent hand

to silence, till a master trained at purging

slits the throat of a young suckling victim,

blood absolves his blood. Long ago

at the halls of others I was fully cleansed

in the cleansing springs, the blood of many victims.

Threat of pollution—sweep it from your mind.”

Orestes’ lines give a sense of the ancient Greek laws and rituals surrounding pollution. “Victim” here refers to an animal sacrifice to the gods. Orestes has undergone the proper, spiritual purgation and is free of pollution; Apollo himself administered the proper purging rites. Now, he must be acquitted of guilt by the laws of man; to do so, he supplicates Athena, the goddess of justice, for a fair trial to be spared from the wrath of the Furies. 

“All in all I tell you people

Bow before the altar of the rights,

Revere it well.

Never trample it underfoot, your eyes set on spoils;

Revenge will hunt the godless day and night—

The destined end awaits.

So honour your parents first with reverence, I say,

And the stranger guest you welcome to your house,

Turn to attend his needs,

Respect his sacred rights.”

In another didactic choral ode, the Furies address the audience to instruct them how to avoid incurring their wrath. This passage highlights the Furies divine jurisdiction as protectors of bonds and rights, including familial bonds and the rights of guests. 

“Here is the truth, I tell you—see how right I am.

The woman you call the mother of the child

is not the parent, just a nurse to the seed,

the new-sown seed that grows and swells inside her.

The man is the source of life—the one who mounts.

She, like a stranger for a stranger, keeps

the shoot alive unless god hurts the roots.

I give you proof of all that I say is true.

The father can father forth without a mother.

Here she stands, our living witness. Look—

Child sprung full-blown from Olympian Zeus,

never bred in the darkness of the womb

but such a stock no goddess could conceive!” 

The crux of Apollo’s argument for Orestes’ innocence is based on the ancient Greek idea of conception: the mother was seen as a mere vessel for the issue of the man to grow within. Under this formulation, children have no direct relation to their mother. Therefore, the act of killing Clytaemnestra to avenge Agamemnon carries no more legal or spiritual weight for Orestes than if he had done the same to a stranger who killed his father.