CHORUS: I’m ready, too. I don’t refuse to die.
AEGISTHUS: I’m glad to hear that—it will be our omen.
CLYTEMNESTRA: No, precious darling, let’s not do more damage.
There’s plenty here to reap, a mournful harvest
and good supply of pain—we don’t need more.
Honored old men, move on toward home. Give way
to fate before you suffer […
…] chance. What we did was necessary.
And if these troubles have a cure, it’s welcome:
1660
a spirit’s heavy hoof—too bad!—has struck us:
a woman’s words, if someone cares to listen.
AEGISTHUS: These people talk as if they’re picking flowers,
pelt me with silly words—and take their chance.
They’ve lost their minds, to flout the man in power.
CHORUS: We’re Argives. We don’t fawn on worthless men.
AEGISTHUS: I’ll settle with you in the days ahead.
CHORUS: Not if good fortune steers Orestes home.
AEGISTHUS: I know myself that exiles feed on hope.
CHORUS: You eat! Get fat, soil justice—since you can.
1670
AEGISTHUS: You’re quite a fool. You’ll pay for it, I promise.
CHORUS: And you’re a cock beside your hen. Keep crowing!
CLYTEMNESTRA: Ignore their empty barking. I will rule
over this house with you, and set it right.
(Aegisthus and Clytemnestra exit into the palace, leaving the corpses onstage as the Chorus look on in silence.)
* * *
*1 Troy.
*2 King of Troy.
*3 Alexander is another name for Paris, Helen of Troy’s lover and kidnapper.
*4 “Danäans” is one of the names used in the Iliad to designate the Greeks; it implies that they are descended from Danaus (a descendant of Io) who settled in Argos with his daughters (see Prometheus Bound 853-56).
*5 Because a walking staff is used.
*6 Another name for the Trojans; Teucer, the son of the river Scamander, was believed to be the ancestor of the Trojan royal family.
*7 The seer Calchas.
*8 The “winged hunting dogs” of Zeus are eagles.
*9 Artemis.
*10 They are literally “ostriches,” if the text is not corrupt—as its editor strongly suspects.
*11 Apollo.
*12 The original king of the gods, Uranus, who was overthrown by his son Cronus; Cronus was overthrown in turn by his son Zeus.
*13 Chalcis, in Euboea, was the point from which the Greek army planned to sail against Troy, but contrary winds kept them pinned down there while their “jars” of provisions were emptied.
*14 The speech that follows describes seven stages of relay in the transmission of the fire beacons from Mount Ida, near Troy, to Argos. The distances of the stages range from about a hundred miles to less than fifteen. Some of the places named by Aeschylus cannot be identified with certainty.
*15 There is a short gap (known as a lacuna) in the manuscript text.
*16 Alexander is another name for Paris.
*17 An uncertain restoration of a difficult stretch of text.
*18 See note to line 61.
*19 I do not see a serious enough problem in the text here to decline any reading or translation, as M. L. West does.
*20 Apollo.
*21 A lacuna; see note to line 288.
*22 Text very uncertain.
*23 I have kept these three lines in their original order, though West adopts the order 656, 655, 657.
*24 Text of the line is very doubtful.
*25 It is rare in Greek drama for a character to remain onstage alone during a choral ode, but Clytemnestra seems to do so here, unless she exits and reenters as the ode concludes.
*26 The Furies or Erinyes are ancient, terrifying goddesses charged with certain kinds of punishment and vengeance. Furies make up the Chorus of the third play in the Oresteia trilogy.
*27 A series of lacunae; see note to line 288.
*28 The so-called Trojan horse was used to sneak Greek soldiers inside the walls of Troy.
*29 Geryon was a giant, usually described as three-headed, whom Hercules killed in the course of his twelve labors.
*30 Clytemnestra refers obliquely to the murex snail, a marine creature that was crushed to produce the purple dye that colored royal robes.
*31 Sirius, the Dog Star, rose during the hottest, unhealthiest time of year.
*32 Text uncertain.
*33 I have supplied the words “it strains” and “still he might” as an attempt to fill in part of a gap in the manuscripts.
*34 The text of this stasimon is uncertain. It contains a phrase at the beginning that the editor has despaired of emending, and several lacunae (see note to line 288), of which I have marked only those not plausibly filled in.
*35 Apollo’s son Asclepius was killed by Zeus for using his medicinal skill to bring the dead to life.
*36 Heracles, son of Zeus and Alcmene, had to live as a slave for a time.
*37 Cassandra’s relationship to Apollo is a complicated one. Apollo conceived a passionate desire for Cassandra, a princess of Troy, and granted her the gift of prophecy. Cassandra accepted the god’s advances but then, for some reason, pulled away at the last minute (see lines 1202–12). Apollo did not revoke his gift, but he added a codicil that Cassandra’s prophecies would not be understood or believed.
*38 The text in the second half of both these lines is very doubtful.
*39 An oblique reference to the so-called banquet of Thyestes. Atreus, father of Agamemnon, in an effort to neutralize a perceived threat from his brother Thyestes, fed him a disguised meal of his own children’s flesh. The savage crime took place in the same palace that Cassandra now stands before.
*40 There are several versions of this myth, but in the one Aeschylus probably alludes to, Queen Procne of Thrace, after her transformation into a nightingale, laments her son Itys, whom she herself has killed as revenge against her husband, Tereus, for the rape of her sister Philomela.
*41 Another impressionistic vision of the banquet of Thyestes (see note to line 1097), described more explicitly below.
*42 The line in angle brackets was probably not written by Aeschylus but inserted later.
*43 Apollo.
*44 The oracle of Apollo at Delphi.
*45 I prefer the original manuscript reading over the conjecture adopted in West’s text, which depicts Cassandra as reduced to actual physical misery.
*46 I am following the original manuscript reading instead of West’s conjecture.
*47 A tentative translation of an unclear line, in which the pronoun (“them”) has no clear referent.
*48 This entangling robe will be displayed onstage in the Libation Bearers and spoken of, in horror, in the Eumenides. Just how it immobilized Agamemnon is unclear.
*49 “Zeus below ground” is Hades, lord of the Underworld. Clytemnestra here perverts the Greek ritual by which someone drinking wine would pour three libations, the third in honor of “Zeus the Savior.” Here the “libations” are knife thrusts, and the third goes to Hades the Savior—of corpses.
*50 Atē, a Greek word that can be translated “ruin” or “rash blindness (leading to ruin),” is sometimes personified as a goddess.
*51 Chryseis, according to Homer’s Iliad, was the daughter of a Trojan priest, taken as war booty by Agamemnon and enslaved for sexual purposes.
*52 The Greek word here rendered as “sons” is a loose expression indicating descent; it refers to Agamemnon and Menelaus, who are Tantalus’ great-grandsons.
*53 This refers to the slaughter of Thyestes’ children (see note to line 1097).
*54 Another lacuna. The previous line presents good evidence of corruption but does not appear at all unsalvageable for a translator.
*55 Pleisthenids is another name for Atreids.
*56 T
his is a possible general meaning of two lines that are too corrupt to allow any precise reconstruction or translation.
*57 In most versions of the myth there were only three children.
*58 A nautical metaphor that the seafaring Athenians would easily appreciate. In their military, the lower classes, who owned neither horses nor metal armor, rowed the warships that made up the navy.
*59 Orpheus was a mythical musician whose lyre playing and singing were able to enchant even the gods.
INTRODUCTION TO AESCHYLUS’ LIBATION BEARERS
Years have passed between the close of Agamemnon and the opening of Libation Bearers, the second play in the Oresteia trilogy. Word of Agamemnon’s murder has long since reached Phocis, the mountainous region of northwest Greece ruled by Strophius, an ally of Argos. For years Strophius has played guardian to Orestes, the only son of Agamemnon and Clytemnestra, at the latter’s request; evidently Clytemnestra wanted her son out of the way as she prepared her husband’s murder. Orestes has grown to young manhood at Strophius’ court, alongside Strophius’ son Pylades, who has by now become Orestes’ best friend.
By exiling her son, Clytemnestra also placed him beyond her own power; she cannot control him as she and Aegisthus now control his sister, Electra, isolating her from potential allies and keeping her under guard. How Clytemnestra ultimately expected to deal with the problem her son presented is unclear; perhaps she hoped to win him over by sending messages across the mountains. But other messages, from a much nearer source, have reached Orestes first. Phocis borders on Delphi, the Greek world’s most important shrine and the seat from which Apollo delivers his oracles. That god, often referred to as Loxias in his role as prophet, has given Orestes a directive to kill Clytemnestra and a promise to protect him afterward, and has even threatened him with physical harm should he not carry out this deed (lines 1028–33). And so Orestes has come back to Argos, to the tomb of his murdered father, where we see him leaving offerings as this play opens, his best friend, Pylades, by his side.
Tombs often figure prominently in Greek tragedy, since they loom so large in Greek religion. The mythic figures portrayed in tragedy were imagined to exercise power even after death, to become semidivine beings the Greeks called heroes (the English derivative word has much weaker force). A kinsman or suppliant seeking the aid of a hero could bring ritual offerings to his or her tomb, pouring liquids such as wine, milk, or honey onto the ground so as to nourish the person below it. These drink-offerings to the dead are known in Greek as choai, a word usually translated as “libations” (though that word is also used to translate the Greek word spondai, drink-offerings made to the gods). Other gifts, too, were sometimes left at heroes’ tombs, including locks of clipped hair—the gift that Orestes leaves on his father’s grave in the opening lines of this play. No sooner has this been done than Orestes hears others approaching, and hides.
The Chorus that give the play its title, Libation Bearers, now enter: elderly slave women who have come to Agamemnon’s tomb bearing drink-offerings on behalf of their mistress, Clytemnestra. (Sometimes the play is referred to instead by its Greek title, Choephoroe, which means “libation bearers” but makes more specific reference to the purpose of the libations.) Their dirgelike song and their cheeks torn by their own fingernails attest to the unease within the palace. Agamemnon’s ghost has been haunting it, crying out in the night and bringing bad dreams to the queen. A particularly vivid nightmare has prompted her to send these propitiatory gifts: as we hear later, she has dreamed that a viper was suckling from her breast, drawing blood out together with milk. Accompanying these slaves is Electra, now virtually a slave herself, or a prisoner, forced to do the bidding of a bloodstained mother whom she loathes and fears.
The reunion of brother and sister, sole allies long parted from each other, was clearly a part of this story that offered great theatrical energy, and all three of the Electra dramas in this volume (this play plus the Electras of Sophocles and Euripides) develop it into powerful recognition scenes. Aeschylus allows Electra to detect her brother’s return, before meeting him, by the lock of hair and footprints he has left at the tomb. That artifice was later spoofed by Euripides, whose Electra protests, in a direct reference to this play, that no sibling could be identified by such clues (lines 524–38). The differing approaches reveal much about the techniques of the two playwrights and the distance that tragic drama had traveled from its middle to its late stage. For Aeschylus, composing the Oresteia in 458 B.C., the mythic world of tragedy did not admit such practical questions as whether footprints run in families. Euripides, by the time of his Electra in 413 B.C., had brought a new concern with realism and plausibility (or the lack of it) to the Athenian stage.
Once they have joined forces, Orestes and Electra, together with the Chorus, join in a long exchange of lyric invocations to the hero who lies beneath them, imploring his help in the fight ahead. As the incantations rise in fervor, we might well expect (given the precedent of the Persians) that Agamemnon himself will emerge from the earth, but this doesn’t happen; it’s a ghost-raising scene with no ghost. But even if they don’t appear onstage, the supernatural powers that are here summoned can be felt near at hand, silently allying themselves with Electra and Orestes. It’s a kind of alliance we never felt in the case of Clytemnestra in the Agamemnon; her preparations for murder, one imagines, did not include pious prayers of this kind.
Orestes contrives to play the role of a messenger in order to gain access to the palace, bearing a false report of his own death. The effect this report has on Clytemnestra is stunning. Though the news delivers her from fear, she feels only grief and dismay. She is, despite her history of tyranny and murder, a mother, and this will make it hard for Orestes to bring himself to kill her. Fortunately, as things play out, he takes on Aegisthus first, and he gets to deal with him alone, after the Chorus—taking an unusually active part in the plot—persuade the royal nurse, Cilissa, to omit an important message telling him to bring his bodyguard along.
The moment of truth arrives: the reunion of mother and son, very different in tone from the earlier reunion of brother and sister. Orestes, sword in hand, at first shrinks from the deed he has sworn to do, especially when Clytemnestra bares the breast that suckled him. But the viper she saw in her dream had drawn blood from that breast as well as milk. Orestes, reminded of Apollo’s orders by Pylades—who now breaks his play-long silence, creating a theatrical effect as though Apollo himself had spoken—forces his mother into the palace and goes forward on the path of matricide. He knows the cost will be steep. His crime, under Greek religious sanctions, stains him with miasma, a pollution so toxic that none may touch or speak with him, and enrages the Erinyes, dread goddesses who torment kin-murderers. The claim these haglike creatures now have on Orestes will be the problem of the trilogy’s third play, the Eumenides.
The palace doors open and two bloodied corpses are wheeled out, just as in the last scene of the Agamemnon. Orestes holds up the bloody robe with which his two victims, years earlier, had ensnared his father, binding him fast so as to butcher him more effectively. One more new cloth has been added to the dense weave of imagery Aeschylus develops in this trilogy, starting with the nets and snares referred to in its opening chorus, proceeding to the purple carpet on which Agamemnon is made to tread, continuing here with the entangling robe, and ending, in the Eumenides, with the red cloaks the Erinyes wear as they march in a festal procession—garments that, for Athenians, identified them as metics (metoikoi, coinhabitants), foreigners living in their city as welcome guests. Aeschylus typically builds up accretions of motifs in this way; in the Persians we see him doing likewise with shackles, bonds, and yokes. It’s astonishing today, when we pore over his written works to unlock these patterns, to realize that he wrote his plays to be seen just once and never read or studied.
Exploiting the natural structure of the trilogy, Aeschylus has in the Agamemnon and Libation Bearers brought us to a point of homicidal balance. Strok
e has been met by counterstroke; two rulers of Argos have died, in symmetrical fashion, with their consorts. The score has in some sense been evened, yet the fundamental questions surrounding the house of Atreus have not been resolved. As in a “best of three” wrestling match—an analogy evoked by the Chorus of Agamemnon in their great opening ode—it is up to the final play, the Eumenides, to break the tie.
THE ORESTEIA
LIBATION BEARERS
Translated by Sarah Ruden
Throughout the translation, I have used the Greek edition of D. L. Page (Oxford Classical Texts, 1972) as reproduced with commentary in A. F. Garvie, ed., Aeschylus: Choephori (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1986). Wherever I have disagreed with both of these scholars on the reconstruction or interpretation of the text, I have indicated the variance in a footnote.
CAST OF CHARACTERS (IN ORDER OF APPEARANCE)
ORESTES, son of the late king Agamemnon and his widow, Clytemnestra
PYLADES, son of King Strophius of Phocis, with whom Orestes was sent to live by his mother, Clytemnestra, before her murder of Agamemnon
CHORUS of elderly female slaves belonging to the Argive royal house
ELECTRA, daughter of the late king Agamemnon and his widow, Clytemnestra
A male slave of the Argive royal house
CLYTEMNESTRA, widow of Agamemnon, present ruler of Argos along with her lover, Aegisthus
CILISSA, elderly nurse who helped raise Orestes and Electra
AEGISTHUS, cousin of Agamemnon, lover of Clytemnestra and present joint ruler of Argos
Setting: The play takes place at the grave of Agamemnon in the town of Argos. The palace with its gate is in the background. Enter Orestes and Pylades from outside the city.
ORESTES: Hermes Below,*1 you guard my father’s power:
fight with me, save me—I appeal to you.
I’ve now returned from exile to my homeland.
On my father’s mounded grave I call on him
The Greek Plays Page 14