The Libation Bearers

“Terror, the dream diviner of

this house, belled clear, shuddered the skin, blew wrath

from sleep, a cry in night’s obscure watches,

a voice of fear deep in the house,

dropping deadweight in women’s inner chambers.

And they who read the dream meanings

and spoke under guarantee of god

told how under earth

dead men held a grudge still

and smoldered at their murderers.”

Dreams, omens, and prophecies are prominent throughout the Libation Bearers and the rest of the Oresteia (See: Symbols & Motifs). Here, the Chorus refers allusively to the prophetic dream of Clytaemestra, which predicts the return of Orestes (the dream will be elaborated later in the play). The Chorus stresses the role of the gods in generating omens such as prophetic dreams, and also introduces the idea that the dead (Agamemnon in this case) can punish their killers from beyond the grave.

“All the world’s waters running in a single drift

may try to wash blood from the hand

of the stained man; they only bring new blood guilt on.”

Throughout the Oresteia, bloodshed always leads to further bloodshed: Agamemnon’s killing of Iphigenia leads Clytaemestra to kill him, and Clytaemestra’s killing of Agamemnon will in turn lead Orestes to kill her. Though every murderer in the Oresteia believes that their actions are justified, they each accomplish little more than the perpetuation of the cycle of intrafamilial violence, raising The Moral Implications of Retribution.

“I myself pour these lustral waters to the dead,

and speak, and call upon my father: Pity me;

pity your own Orestes. How shall we be lords

in our house? We have been sold, and go as wanderers

because our mother bought herself, for us, a man,

Aegisthus, he who helped her hand to cut you down.

Now I am what a slave is, and Orestes lives

outcast from his great properties, while they go proud

in the high style and luxury of what you worked

to win. By some good fortune let Orestes come

back home. Such is my prayer, my father. Hear me; hear.”

Electra’s invocation of her father’s shade describes her feelings toward The Dynamics of Power and Familial Loyalty in her life. Electra, like her brother Orestes, is loyal to her father Agamemnon and, therefore, hates her mother Clytaemestra, who murdered him. There is also some dramatic irony in this scene: Electra does not realize that Orestes is already in Argos—and hiding nearby—as she prays for his return.

“ELECTRA. Yet here it is, and for appearance matches well…

CHORUS LEADER. With whose hair? Tell me. This is what I long to know…

ELECTRA. With my own hair. It is almost exactly like.”

Electra’s recognition of Orestes’s hair and footprints was a famous scene in ancient theater, alluded to and reworked even by other playwrights in antiquity. Electra’s certainty that the lock of hair can only belong to a member of Agamemnon’s family suggests that their royal blood makes them special and sets them apart in a very concrete way.

“Footprints are here.

The feet that made them are alike, and look like mine.

There are two sets of footprints: of the man who gave

his hair, and one who shared the road with him. I step

where he has stepped, and heelmarks, and the space between

his heel and toe are like the prints I make.”

Even in antiquity, Aeschylus was sometimes ridiculed for having Electra recognize Orestes from the fact that his footprints were exactly the same size as her own: After all, siblings often have differently-sized feet, especially when one is male and one is female. However, Aeschylus is representing Orestes as a youth on the cusp of manhood. Orestes only becomes a man when he avenges his father, so it is perhaps natural (from an ancient Greek perspective) that here his hair and footprints should be smaller and even effeminate.

“The big strength of Apollo’s oracle will not

forsake me. For he charged me to win through this hazard,

with divination of much, and speech articulate,

warning of chill disaster under my warm heart

were I to fail against my father’s murderers;

told me to cut them down in their own fashion, turn

to bull-like fury in the loss of my estates.”

Orestes is confident in his mission because it is Apollo who ordered it: After all, one must always obey the gods. Nevertheless, his confidence will dwindle over the course of the play as his conscience increasingly recoils from the idea of killing his own mother, invoking the theme of Divine Commands Versus Personal Conscience.

“The spirit of Right

cries out aloud and extracts atonement

due: blood stroke for the stroke of blood

shall be paid. Who acts, shall suffer. So speaks

the voice of the age-old wisdom.”

The idea that justice involves suffering is important throughout the Oresteia. Here, the Chorus conflates justice with retribution: If one does wrong, the person they have wronged must seek revenge. However, the play also challenges the idea that justice and retribution are one and the same, as retribution ultimately achieves no more than perpetuation of the cycle of wrongdoing, thus complicating The Moral Implications of Retribution.

“It is but law that when the red drops have been spilled

upon the ground they cry aloud for fresh

blood. For the death act calls out on Fury

to bring up from those who were slain before

new ruin on ruin accomplished.”

To some extent, retribution has its origins in the divine. In ancient Greek religion, those who shed another person’s blood were believed to incur “blood guilt,” which was enforced by the underworld goddesses known as the Furies (Erinyes in Greek). Similarly, it is a god (Apollo) who commands Orestes to kill his mother, raising the issue of Divine Commands Versus Personal Conscience. The blood imagery in this passage also reflects the frequent use of blood symbolism in the play (See: Symbols & Motifs).

“None can find fault with the length of this discourse you drew

out, to show honor to a grave and fate unwept

before. The rest is action. Since your heart is set

that way, now you must strike and prove your destiny.”

The Chorus supports Orestes and Electra’s cause, though they do recognize that their plan risks perpetuating the cycle of bloodshed. Their reminder to Orestes to take action and “prove [his] destiny” highlights how much this event will shape Orestes’s life.

“But I pray to the earth and to my father’s grave

that this dream is for me and that I will succeed.

[…]

If this snake came out of the same place whence I came,

if she wrapped it in robes, as she wrapped me, and if

its jaws gaped wide around the breast that suckled me,

and if it stained the intimate milk with an outburst

of blood, so that for fright and pain she cried aloud,

it follows then, that as she nursed this hideous thing

of prophecy, she must be cruelly murdered. I

turn snake to kill her. This is what the dream speaks loud.”

Orestes interprets his mother’s dream about the snake as foretelling his successful vengeance: Like the snake that was born from Clytaemestra in her dream, he will “bite” her when he kills her. Orestes is pleased with this interpretation because it predicts his success, but the symbolism of the snake is also ambivalent, as the ancient Greeks saw snakes as a treacherous creature associated with darkness and the afterlife. Like the snake, Orestes will become an ambivalent figure, showing loyalty to his father as well as committing a horrible sin when he kills his own mother. The snake symbolism also ties into the use of animal and natural imagery in the play to suggest the savagery of the interfamilial dynamics (See: Symbols & Motifs).

“Our Fury who is never starved for blood shall drink

for the third time a cupful of unwatered blood.”

The Fury (or Erinys) mentioned here represents the blood guilt of Agamemnon’s family, who have been murdering each other for generations. The third “cupful of unwatered blood” represents Orestes’s plan to murder Clytaemestra. The first two “cupfuls” would have been the bloody rivalry between Atreus and Thyestes and Clytaemestra’s murder of Agamemnon. The symbolism of the blood speaks to the cycles of violence that plague the family (See: Symbols & Motifs).

“Numberless, the earth breeds

dangers, and the awful thought of fear.

The bending sea’s arms swarm

with bitter, savage beasts.

[…]

But who can recount all

the high daring in the will

of man, and in the stubborn hearts of women

the all-adventurous passions

that couple with man’s overthrow.”

The Chorus represents the treachery of women as the most terrible of all the dangers bred by the earth—and the treachery of Clytaemestra, who killed her own husband, is the worst of all. This misogynistic view of women as dangerous was common in ancient Greek myth and literature. This passage also invokes natural imagery filled with sinister undertones to emphasize the animalistic behavior of the family (See: Symbols & Motifs).

“She put a sad face on

before the servants, to hide the smile inside her eyes

over this work that has been done so happily

for her—though on this house the misery is now complete

from the plain story that the stranger men have brought.

But as for that Aegisthus, oh, he will be pleased

enough to hear the story.”

Aeschylus’s Cilissa—the nurse of the young Orestes—becomes a foil for Clytaemestra. Although Cilissa is only an enslaved woman who had to nurse him and not Orestes’s mother, she truly grieves when she believes that Orestes is dead, while Clytaemestra (at least according to Cilissa) only puts “a sad face on” to keep up appearances and prevent her household from seeing how happy she really is that her son is dead.

“FOLLOWER. I tell you, the living are being killed by the dead ones.

CLYTAEMESTRA. Ah, so. You speak in riddles, but I read the rhyme.

We have been won with the treachery by which we slew.

Bring me quick, somebody, an axe to kill a man.”

When Clytaemestra realizes that Orestes has returned to avenge Agamemnon, she asks for an axe, the same weapon she had used to kill her husband. This brief exchange sheds a lot of light on Clytaemestra’s character and the perverse familial dynamics of the play: Just as Orestes is prepared to kill his mother, Clytaemestra is apparently prepared to kill her son, reflecting The Dynamics of Power and Familial Loyalty.

“Hold, my son. Oh take pity, child, before this breast

where many a time, a drowsing baby, you would feed

and with soft gums sucked in the milk that made you strong.”

It was an ancient literary trope to have mothers bare their breasts to remind their sons of their familial duty. Here, Clytaemestra hopes to move Orestes to pity the mother who bore him. Clytaemestra’s plan is frustrated, however, by the fact that she has not been a good mother to Orestes, killing his father and trying to prevent him from gaining his inheritance.

“What then becomes thereafter of the oracles

declared by Loxias at Pytho? What of sworn oaths?

Count all men hateful to you rather than the gods.”

When Orestes hesitates to kill his mother, it is his friend Pylades who reminds him that he has no choice: Notwithstanding Orestes’s pangs of conscience, he must obey the gods, and the god Apollo has told him in no uncertain terms that he must avenge his father. Here, we find that in the conflict of Divine Commands Versus Personal Conscience, it is the divine command that wins out. However, this does not mean that what the gods command is always just.

“CLYTAEMESTRA. I think, child, that you mean to kill your mother.

ORESTES. No. It will be you who will kill yourself. It will not be I.

CLYTAEMESTRA. Take care. Your mother’s curse, like dogs, will drag you down.

ORESTES. How shall I escape my father’s curse, if I fail here?”

Orestes’s discomfort with killing his mother becomes evident in his last efforts to shirk responsibility for her death. First, he tells his mother that she is responsible for her own death, as she was the one who forced his hand by murdering his father. Then, when Clytaemestra cautions Orestes to beware her curse (foreshadowing the arrival of the Furies at the end of the play), Orestes responds by pointing out that if he does not kill Clytaemestra, he will be subject to his father’s curse. His dilemma reflects The Dynamics of Power and Familial Loyalty in the play.

“Time brings all things to pass. Presently time shall cross

the outgates of the house after the stain is driven

entire from the hearth

by ceremonies that wash clean and cast out the furies.”

Time plays an important but ambivalent role in the Oresteia, which catalogue a cycle of bloodshed and retribution that gets worse and worse over time. Throughout the trilogy, there is a sustained feeling that eventually time will end the violence, but most of the things that the characters of the trilogy do serve only to make things worse, raising The Moral Implications of Retribution.

“Behold the twin tyrannies of our land, these two

who killed my father and who sacked my house. For a time

they sat upon their thrones and kept their pride of state,

and they are lovers still. So may you judge by what

befell them, for as they were pledged their oath abides.

They swore together death for my unhappy sire

and swore to die together. Now they keep their oath.”

Like Clytaemestra in Agamemnon, Orestes proudly displays the bodies of his victims, insisting that his actions, however violent, were done to the benefit of order and justice. Also like Clytaemestra, however, Orestes cannot escape the fact that he has done a terrible thing, and instead of restoring order to Argos his actions merely continue the cycle of intrafamilial conflict and bloodshed.

“Now I can praise him, now I can stand by to mourn

and speak before this web that killed my father; yet

I grieve for the thing done, the death, and all our race.

I have won; but my victory is polluted, and has no pride.”

Having shed the blood of his own mother, Orestes increasingly realizes that his victory is “polluted”: Even if Clytaemestra was guilty and deserved to be punished for her crimes, Orestes did a terrible thing by killing his mother in cold blood. Orestes thus realizes that a person can feel guilt and regret even when they are simply following the orders of the gods, as Orestes did when he killed his mother to fulfill Apollo’s oracle for vengeance. His conflicted emotions speak to the theme of Divine Commands Versus Personal Conscience.

“But while

I hold some grip still on my wits, I say publicly

to my friends: I killed my mother not without some right.

My father’s murder stained her, and the gods’ disgust.

As for the spells that charmed me to such daring, I

cite above all the seer of Pytho, Loxias. He

declared I could do this and not be charged with wrong,

while if I refused, the punishment I will not speak:

no archery could hit such height of agony.”

Orestes realizes that he is going to be punished for his actions, sensing the Furies and already beginning to feel their madness descend upon him. Nevertheless, he maintains that he was not wrong to do what he did, even if for no other reason than that he had no choice: Apollo told him to avenge his mother, and as a mortal Orestes had to obey. If he had not obeyed Apollo, Orestes would have been punished, but having obeyed Apollo, Orestes is punished anyway. Orestes thus finds himself in a perverse situation where there are no straightforward, correct decisions for him to make.

“You liberated all the Argive city when

you lopped the heads of these two snakes with one clean stroke.”

The Chorus continues to take a positive view of Orestes’s actions, even after it is clear that Orestes is destined to suffer punishment. To the Chorus, Clytaemestra and Aegisthus were criminals—no better than snakes—whose deaths were necessary to restore order to Argos. However, even though it may be good that Clytaemestra and Aegisthus are dead, it was not necessarily just for Orestes to murder them, which reflects The Moral Implications of Retribution. The Chorus’ use of snake imagery here ties into the use of animal and natural symbolism used in the play (See: Symbols & Motifs).

“ORESTES. Ah, Lord Apollo, how they grow and multiply,

Repulsive for the blood drops of their dripping eyes.

CHORUS LEADER. There is one way to make you clean: let Loxias

touch you, and set you free from these disturbances.”

Orestes describes the terrifying Furies, whom he alone can see, who are goddesses from the underworld who punish murderers. The only way to escape the Furies, as the Chorus tells Orestes, is to achieve ritual purification, and for that Orestes must turn to Apollo, the very god who commanded him to kill his mother in the first place.