The Oresteia: Agamemnon, the Libation-Bearers & the Furies (38 page)

884f
Similarly Hecuba exposes her breast to Hector
(Iliad,
Book XXII, line 80) to persuade him not to fight Achilles.

886
For an excellent discussion of Orestes’ hesitation and its consequences for the entire
Oresteia,
see William Arrowsmith, ‘The Criticism of Greek Tragedy’,
Tulane Drama Review,
iii (1959), 31-57.

902
Sold me:
in a manner of speaking, no doubt, but Orestes regards his forced exile as the worst disgrace a freeborn man could suffer.

904
I am ashamed to mention it in public:
by sending him away from Argos his mother could indulge her adulterous love for Aegisthus. In reply she refers to Agamemnon’s adulteries with captive women at Troy, especially Cassandra.

912
A father’s [curse]:
the Furies are regarded not simply as avengers of the mother-right in Aeschylus; they can expand their targets, as they have done in
A
and will do in
E.

913
I must be spilling live tears on a tomb of stone:
Clytaemnestra’s tears, in effect, are the last libation poured on Agamemnon’s tomb and its extension, the hardening resolution of Orestes. Her dream united her husband and her son in mutual purpose; now her recognition gives their union life. See Introduction, pp. 63ff.

915
I gave you life:
Clytaemnestra comes full circle (895), back to the life that only she can give, but her final words are fraught with tragic awareness and power.

918
The victims’ double fates:
probably Clytaemnestra and Agamemnon or Aegisthus, rather than the queen and Orestes, since the women have a limited understanding of his future.

921
The bright eye:
a traditional metaphor for the perception, hope and light which a leader offers his society.

925
Double lion:
Orestes and Pylades.

936f
God’s true daughter . . . Right
we call her: a
nomen-omen
deriving
Dikê
(justice) from
Dios
kora, daughter of god; see
A
n
.
688ff.

950
Look, the light is breaking: LB
may be seen as a tragic parody of the Mysteries of Eleusis. The imagery which has compared Orestes to an athlete struggling for victory - a wrestler, more particularly a charioteer (501) - may be drawn from descriptions of the candidate for initiation who struggles to escape this mortal coil and achieve a spiritual victory of blessings and repose. Orestes the wrestler is about to be cast down, however, the charioteer about to be ridden off the track (1019ff.); the light invoked by the chorus, and the torch ignited by the liberator will illuminate a vision of despair; see Introduction, pp. 64ff.;
LB
n. 137;
A
notes, 1, 25, 109;
E
notes 7,13.

951
The huge chain that curbed,
etc. The weight of continuous ill fortune that has oppressed the Atreidae - the same metaphor that had described the effect of the Greek army on the Trojans
(A
133f).

959
The aliens,
etc. Metics; the chorus is probably referring to the usurpers, unaware that Orestes and Pylades must now be treated as aliens too; see
A
n. 63,
E
n. 1021.

977
The Sun:
it was customary to call on this all-seeing deity to witness acts of justice or injustice when the doer or sufferer was certain of being in the right, as Cassandra did before her death in
A.

982
The adulterer dies:
such a killing was allowed, as a crime of passion, by Attic law.

992
The bath of death:
Orestes’ word for bath can mean coffin as well. His mind has begun to leap in free association reminiscent of Cassandra when she is frenzied by Clytaemnestra and her nets; see
A
1116ff., 1241ff.

1006
Aegisthus’ blade:
this seems to imply that Clytaemnestra used the sword of Aegisthus to kill Agamemnon, despite the fact that Clytaemnestra’s preferred weapon was a battle-axe (876). Seneca in his
Agamemnon
(890ff.) represents Aegisthus as using his sword and Clytaemnestra as using a double axe, but Aeschylus does not say that Aegisthus took part in the murder.

1041
Menelaus:
according to Homeric tradition, Menelaus would arrive in a day or so, too late to be of help.

1043
A name for - :
the chorus cuts him short, in effect, before he can utter ill-omened words about his exile and his death.

1047
Lopped the heads of these two serpents:
as if he were a victorious Hercules or Perseus, though such praises only evoke the Furies in Orestes’ mind. Aeschylus was the first Greek writer to describe them as having snakes in their hair (like Gorgons).

1050
Cannot stay:
the phrase overturns Orestes’ declarations at the outset, ‘I have come home . . . the exile home at last.’

1
Mother Earth:
man first worships Earth, his source of food, ‘but before long,’ as Jane Harrison writes in the Introduction to
Themis,
‘he notices that Sky as well as Earth influences his food supply. At first he notes the “weather,” rain and wind and storm. Next he finds out that the Moon measures seasons, and to her he attributes all growth, all waxing and waning. Then his goddess is Phoebe. When later he discovers that the Sun really dominates his food supply, Phoebe gives place to Phoebus, the Moon to the Sun. The shift of attention, of religious focus, from Earth to Sky, tended to remove the gods from man; they were purged but at the price of remoteness.’ That is the price of Delphi, as Aeschylus portrays it; for the humanism of Athens and her gods, see Introduction, pp. 85ff.

3
Tradition:
literally
Themis,
the Titaness whose province is established law and custom.

4
Third by the lots of destiny:
perhaps in the third generation of the gods, as apportioned by Zeus before the birth of Apollo. In E the ‘triad’ motif recurs less in explicit statement than as a kind of structural obsession, an
idée fixe
that turns destruction into joy. The Furies’ refrains, painfully repeated (e.g. 329-34, 342-7), resolve into a third, harmonious song (1004-11, 1023-30). The entire trilogy, as others have observed, recalls the ’triad’ of stanzas found in choral lyric poetry, like the opening ‘triad’ in
A
(112-60); the turn and counter-turn resolved in a final stand that unifies the partners as a priest presides at a marriage. The basic ’triad’ of the trilogy itself makes the third play a metaphor for the Mean; The
Eumenides
reconciles the opposites within the
Oresteia
to produce a state of equilibrium; see Introduction, pp. 91ff.;
E
772ff., 1004ff.;
A
n. 245,
LB
n. 61; C. John Herington, ‘Aeschylus: The Last Phase’,
Arion,
iv (1965), 387-403; and Diskin Clay, ‘Aeschylus’ Trigeron Mythos’,
Hermes,
xv (1969), 1-9.

7
Phoebe:
another Titaness, generally associated with the moon, whose name connotes not only radiance but purity. As Apollo’s grand-mother, it was appropriate for her to bestow her name upon him at birth, Phoebus Apollo. The note of ‘purification’ in these names, sounded three times over in the Greek, prepares us for the purging of Orestes.

The light-in-darkness theme will now extend into a cosmic conflict between the gods of the Sky and powers of the Earth; see 396ff., 720, 759ff., 937f., 1043ff.;
A n.
25,
LB
n. 137. The imagery of
E
expands the destructive force of images in
A
and the human potential of those in
LB,
while the two extremes are harmonized at last, thanks to a new flexibility of poetic technique in the final play. Earlier images are diffused; they exceed their literal boundaries, blending with other images and often turning into actions that achieve a greater, more positive moral effect; see Introduction, pp. 89ff.

9f
Delos
. . .
Pallas’ headlands:
in this account Apollo came to Delphi from Delos (his island birthplace and one of his chief sanctuaries) via Attica, the land of Pallas Athena.

13
The god of fire:
Hephaistos, whose provinces were fire and mechanical crafts, was the father of Erichthonios, mythical king of Athens. Road-making is probably mentioned here as a symbol of civilization, though it may refer to Apollo’s Sacred Way from Athens to Delphi. The reference to his early journey through Attica anticipates his return to Athens later in this play. The reference to Hephaistos and road-making may anticipate the final torchlit procession; see 396, 1039;
A
n. 109,
LB
notes 137, 950.

21
Athena Pronaia,
the ‘Defender of the Temple’, had a notable shrine at the main entrance to the sanctuary at Delphi. Her precinct can still be visited in the valley below the Castalian Spring. Athena
Pronaia
would become conflated with Athena
Pronoia,
the Goddess of Forethought, a power she begins to exercise within this play.

22
Corycian rock,
etc. A wild district on a plateau of Parnassus, high above Delphi, with a famous cave frequented by Pan and the Nymphs.

24
Dionysus:
the god traditionally took over control of the Delphic sanctuary during the three months of winter, when Apollo departed for a more genial climate. The vice-regency of Dionysus began, as the priestess recalls, with his savage epiphany at Thebes. Pentheus, the young king of Thebes, was torn in pieces by his mother and other frenzied maenads because he had resisted the god - torn in pieces ‘like a hare’, as Aeschylus phrases it, as if to remind us that the Olympians had been ruthless in the past, and, more specifically, to recall the vivid image of the hare mangled by hunting eagles, a symbol of the destructiveness of war (
A
122ff.) and to hint, too, at the fate of Orestes if he is delivered over to the Furies.

27
Poseidon:
was said to have had a cult at Delphi in earlier times; his sparkling sea lies clearly visible below the sacred mountain.

28
Zeus:
significantly, perhaps, all the Olympian gods mentioned are male except Athena. The only major male gods who are not mentioned are Ares, god of war and destruction, and Hermes, who will appear later. This ‘masculinity’ may contrast with the more feminine powers who will preside at Athens; see Introduction, pp. 87ff.

29
Seat:
actually a kind of tripod on which the Pythia sat while delivering her oracles in the interior of the temple.

31
Where are,
etc. Normally there would be a crowd of Greeks and others waiting to enter the temple and ask the oracle their questions. Greeks had precedence over non-Greeks.

37f
Crawling on all fours . . . an old woman,
etc. This rather sensational visual effect embodies a theme stressed by the elders in
A:
the helplessness of old age in the face of violence and terror. The Pythia in Aeschylus’ time had to be a woman of at least fifty years of age. She may symbolize the need for a new, young régime in general, or reflect the poet’s failing strength in 458 B.C.

42
I see,
etc. For the resemblance of this scene, perhaps of the entire play to the world of dreams, see Introduction, pp. 73, 96. Here dreams will reach their supernatural extreme, prophetic and ordained; at the same time they will lead us from the flux of nightmare to a living, waking vision of individual responsibility and promise - dreams become a dominant culture pattern of the race; see 108f., 131ff., 156ff.;
A
n
.
91, LB n. 42.

51ff
Gorgons . . . Phineus:
the first were the fabulous monsters whose terrifying appearance - tusks, protruding lips, snaky hair - turned people to stone; see
LB
n. 818. The winged Harpies, another group of notoriously hideous female demons, persecuted Phineus, a king of a district on the Black Sea, by snatching away or defiling his food.

58
What they wear:
black, the colour of sacrilege and bad omens.

65f
Healer,
etc. For the limits of Apollo’s cures and purgations see Introduction, p. 75. Homeopathy - an immersion in poison, plague and their moral analogies: maddening guilt and the agony of failure - becomes the means to individual and social health in the
Oresteia;
see 330ff., 518ff., 543ff., 795ff., 993ff., n. 178;
A
n. 907, LB n. 69ff.

67
No, I will never fail you:
that was Apollo’s first promise
(LB
273); must Orestes challenge him to keep his word?

74
The dark pit,
etc. Tartarus, the underworld to which the Titans were condemned by the Olympians.

83
Her ancient idol:
the olive-wood figure in the Erechtheum on the Acropolis, the original patroness of Athens, not the colossal statue created (later than this play) by Pheidias for the Parthenon.

93
Hermes:
the Escort of the Dead emerges here to lead Orestes back to life, a sign of the hopeful, regenerative turn that men and gods will take in this concluding play; see
A
n. 505,
LB
notes 1, 126, 803.

94
Shepherd him well:
animal imagery will turn from brutalizing to humane effects. The more savage images (115, 191f.) are abandoned for images which are more sacramental (326ff., 462ff.). The Furies turn from hunting-hounds (132f.) to more domestic creatures (248), foreshadowing the shepherded community, the triumph of civilization (955ff., 991ff., 1009ff.). The serpent, their symbol, will discard its venomous, infernal aspect (493f.) as the Furies assume their powers of regeneration (919f.). The Oresteia celebrates the husbandry of heaven; see
A
n. 810,
LB
n. 252.