The Oresteia: Agamemnon, the Libation-Bearers & the Furies (36 page)

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

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.

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: