DISCLAIMER: I AM NOT AN ANCIENT GREEK SCHOLAR. FOR THE FULL DISCLAIMER, READ HERE
Buy my new book 1001 Nights of the Soul: My Journey Through the Odyssey. Kindle and paperback versions are available!
It is the eternal rule that drops of blood spilled on the ground demand yet more blood.
Aeschylus, The Libation Bearers, lines 394-95; Herbert Weir Smyth translation
Introduction
Libation – a liquid that is poured out as an offering.
The Libation Bearers, also called Choëphori (ko-ef-oh-rye), is the second play in Aeschylus’ Oresteia. Orestes now takes center stage and the story will follow him until the conclusion of the trilogy.
If you’ve read the Odyssey, or joined me on my journey through it, you know that Orestes had been in exile when his father Agamemnon was murdered. He returns from exile about eight years after his father’s murder and gets revenge. However, details between the Odyssey and the Oresteia are different concerning Agamemnon’s murder and Orestes’ revenge. Plus, the Oresteia goes further than the Odyssey by showing the aftermath.
All quotes from The Libation Bearers are from the Herbert Weir Smyth translation which is in the public domain. This translation appeared in the Loeb Classical Library. I had to rely on the Robert Fagles translation for the line numbers, so they may not be 100% accurate.
As always, I encourage you to read The Libation Bearers for yourself. You can do it! Read the publicly available Smyth translation, which is somewhat easy to read (especially if you could follow along with the Butler translations of the Iliad and Odyssey)! You might have to look up a word here and there, but it’s not too bad. If you prefer a modern translation, Robert Fagles translated the Oresteia (I’m a fan of all of Fagles’ translations). Richmond Lattimore also translated and/or edited the plays of Aeschylus (and other Greek playwrights) and compiled them into multiple volumes. Lastly, I just recently discovered a modern translation that the translator Ian Johnston offers for free! He’s also translated other ancient Greek works like the Iliad and the Odyssey.
Summary
Orestes, with his cousin Pylades, appears before the tomb of his father Agamemnon to pay his respects and put a lock of his own hair on it. A group of women approach and Orestes thinks one of them is his older sister Electra. Orestes and Pylades hide themselves to see what their intentions are.
The Chorus, a group of slave women, and Electra approach the grave of Agamemnon. They are tasked with presenting a libation on behalf of Clytemnestra because she is being haunted by nightmares as a result of her murdering Agamemnon. Electra doesn't want to carry out this task, however, and asks the women for advice. They advise her to pray for herself and Orestes, and for vengeance toward those responsible for Agamemnon's death.
While Electra is praying and pouring out the libations she notices the lock of hair. To her, it looks like a lock of hair that could have come from her own head and concludes that it may have come from Orestes' head. While she is trying to figure all of this out, Orestes comes out of hiding and declares that he has returned. Electra is skeptical until Orestes shows where he cut the lock of hair from his head.
Orestes explains that he has returned to avenge their father's murder. In fact, the god Apollo told him he had two choices: avenge his father or suffer greatly and die because the avenging spirits manifested after Agamemnon's murder will terrorize Orestes until he is homeless and friendless and wasted away.
After everyone offers their prayers, Orestes inquires why Electra and the other women were there bringing an offering. The Chorus explain that Clytemnestra had a nightmare where she gave birth to a snake, swaddled it like a baby, and when she went to nurse it it bit her. Orestes interprets this dream as an omen that he will successfully get revenge. He then hatches a plan where all the women go back to the palace like everything is normal while Orestes and Pylades will go there shortly after pretending be foreigners and suppliants.
Orestes and Pylades approach the palace and, changing his accent, Orestes calls for the master of the house saying he has a message. Clytemnestra greets him and Orestes states that while traveling he journeyed briefly with a man named Strophius (Orestes' uncle). When Strophius found out the "foreigner" was going to Argos, he asked him to pass a message along that Orestes was dead. Clytemnestra feigns distress at the news of her son’s death and invites the suppliants inside.
Later, a Nurse approaches the Chorus in tears because she heard about Orestes' death and she was tasked to fetch Aegisthus himself. The Chorus question the Nurse if she was to advise Aegisthus to bring guards with him. The Nurse confirms this and the Chorus tell her to leave that part of the message out and have Aegisthus come to meet the foreigners alone. The Nurse eventually agrees to do this and leaves.
When Aegisthus goes to question the foreigners, he is struck dead. When Clytemnestra comes to investigate the cries and the commotion, she finds out the foreigners are indeed Orestes and Pylades. Clytemnestra pleads for her life, but Orestes will not hear her. He forces her inside the room and kills her over the body of Aegisthus. While Orestes examines the robe that was used to snare Agamemnon, he begins to feel guilt for killing his mother. He decides to journey back to Apollo's temple to cleanse his guilt of murdering his mother. Suddenly, Clytemnestra's avenging spirits appear, though only Orestes can see them. Panicked, he rushes out of the palace and heads for Apollo’s temple.
For a list of the major characters, click here
The Inescapable Cycle
As I mentioned in my post on Agamemnon, the Oresteia focuses on the law of retribution and how it’s a never ending cycle. Here in The Libation Bearers, we see why it’s a never ending cycle: once someone gets sucked into it, he can’t escape—not without extreme consequences.
After Orestes reveals himself to his sister Electra, he explains that he was sent by Apollo:
Surely [Apollo] will not abandon me, the mighty oracle of Loxias, who urged me to brave this peril to the end and loudly proclaims calamities that chill the warmth of my heart, if I do not take vengeance on my father’s murderers. He said that, enraged by the loss of my possessions, I should kill them in requital just as they killed. And he declared that otherwise I should pay the debt myself with my own life, after many grievous sufferings.
Aeschylus, The Libation Bearers, lines 273-81; Herbert Weir Smyth translation
Basically, Apollo tells Orestes he either has to take revenge for his father’s murder or suffer terribly. But why? And what would Orestes suffer?
For [Apollo] spoke revealing to mortals the wrath of malignant powers from underneath the earth, and telling of plagues: leprous ulcers that mount with fierce fangs on the flesh… And he spoke of other assaults of the Furies that are destined to be brought to pass from paternal blood.
Aeschylus, The Libation Bearers, lines 282-89; Herbert Weir Smyth translation
So, the avenging spirits that manifest as a result of a man’s murder demand that either the son get revenge or he will get struck with a leprous disease. That’s not all though. The spirits will torment him day and night until it drives him into exile:
And then the god declared that to such as these it is not allowed to have a part either in the ceremonial cup or in the cordial libation; his father’s wrath, though unseen, bars him from the altar; no one receives him or lodges with him; and at last, despised by all, friendless, he perishes, shrivelled pitifully by a death that wastes him utterly away.
Aeschylus, The Libation Bearers, lines 296-301; Herbert Weir Smyth translation
That is Orestes’ fate if he doesn’t try to get revenge for Agamemnon’s murder: a lonely and painful death.1
The law of retribution doesn’t allow for many choices for the living. While Orestes makes it clear in the story that, regardless of Apollo’s oracle, he’d want to get revenge for his father’s murder anyway, he couldn’t choose to do something else. Orestes wasn’t allowed to forgive his mother, for example, and seek reconciliation. Or, even seek a lesser punishment for her crime. It is his mother, after all. A grieving mother enraged by her husband sacrificing their daughter (and Orestes’ sister).2
That is probably the true tragedy in this story. What about Iphigenia? Electra brings her up once by calling her sacrifice “pitiless.” And when Clytemnestra tells Orestes she killed Agamemnon because of what he did to Iphigenia, Orestes doesn’t care.
Was no one to avenge Iphigenia? Was Agamemnon suppose to suffer no consequences for what he did to her?
Or, is it that a wife murdering her husband is a worse crime than a father murdering his daughter?
I don’t know if this is an oversight on Aeschylus’ part, or if there was something in ancient Greek culture that would minimize something like Iphigenia’s death at the hands of her father, but it seems to me like Iphigenia becomes mostly forgotten. Neither Orestes nor Electra seem all that distraught over Iphigenia’s death compared to Agamemnon’s.
It could be argued, perhaps, that they didn’t think much about Iphigenia because their own circumstances didn’t allow much room to think about others.
Tyranny is Fiercer Than Tigers
As I read through The Libation Bearers, I wondered if Orestes and Electra would have felt differently about their mother, and her murdering their father in revenge for their sisters’ sacrifice, if she hadn’t been so heavy handed toward them?
When Electra is praying before the tomb of Agamemnon, she prays to him:
Have pity both on me and on dear Orestes! How shall we rule our own house? For now we are bartered away like vagrants by her who bore us, by her who in exchange got as her mate Aegisthus, who was her accomplice in your murder. As for me, I am no better than a slave, Orestes is an outcast from his inheritance, while they in their insolence revel openly in the winnings of your toil.
Aeschylus, The Libation Bearers, lines 135-43; Herbert Weir Smyth translation
Later on, Electra elaborates on how she was treated:
My father was murdered just as you say. But all the while I was kept sequestered, despised, accounted a worthless thing. Kennelled in my room as if I were a vicious cur, I gave free vent to my streaming tears, which came more readily than laughter, as in my concealment I poured out my lament in plentiful weeping.
Aeschylus, The Libation Bearers, lines 433-37; Herbert Weir Smyth translation
When Orestes finally confronts his mother, this exchange happens:
[Clytemnestra]: Have you no regard for a parent’s curse, my son?
[Orestes]: You brought me to birth and yet you cast me out to misery.
[Clytemnestra]: No, surely I did not cast you out in sending you to the house of an ally.
[Orestes]: I was sold in disgrace, though I was born of a free father.
[Clytemnestra]: Then where is the price I got for you?
[Clytemnestra]: I am ashamed to reproach you with that outright.
Aeschylus, The Libation Bearers, lines 899-904; Herbert Weir Smyth translation
I’m actually not quite sure if this exchange is meant to be taken literally. Orestes certainly felt like he had been treated like a slave by his mother by being sent off for all those years.3 I also think Orestes is saying that the “price” Clytemnestra got for his being sent away was the murder of Agamemnon. In any case, Orestes is not sympathetic at all to his mother. Neither is Electra. And who could blame them? Both were treated poorly by Clytemnestra. Beyond the grief and anger she felt toward her daughters’ sacrifice, this is not at all a woman to be sympathized with.
Clytemnestra is an example of someone who experiences a tragedy and allows it to warp them. It would have been one thing if Clytemnestra had killed Agamemnon on her own and then accepted the consequences. However, that’s not what she did. Instead, she had an affair with Aegisthus, one of Agamemnon’s enemies, and plotted Agamemnon’s murder and takeover of his rule over Mycenae. She sent Orestes into exile under the pretense of protecting him from potential civil unrest, but really it was to keep him from inheriting Agamemnon’s estate. After Agamemnon’s murder, Clytemnestra and Aegisthus rule Mycenae like tyrants, squandering away Orestes’ inheritance. On top of that, Clytemnestra locks Electra in her room like a prisoner and treats the house servants poorly. Clytemnestra is so warped that, when she’s told Orestes is dead, she’s secretly happy about it.
Clytemnestra loses a daughter to a sick and twisted sacrifice and responds by treating her two remaining children like trash. Enemies even. The brother and sister of the daughter that Clytemnestra avenged. Shouldn’t that rather be a time to bring your remaining children closer to you? Mourn her death?
Once again, Iphigenia gets lost and forgotten in all of this. The brutality done to her gets quickly overshadowed by tyrannical rulers and revenge plots. The avenging spirits that manifested from Agamemnon’s murder don’t care about the fact that Agamemnon murdered his daughter. They simply demand revenge and Orestes better carry through with it or else. There’s no room for sympathy toward his own sister.
I don’t know if I will bring up Iphigenia again when I write about the final play in the Oresteia, but I will say it won’t be the last time I will write about her. The playwright Euripides wrote a couple of plays featuring Iphigenia, and fortunately she gets a happier ending.
Unfortunately though, I won’t be covering Euripides for quite a while.
Something to look forward to!
How the Gods Are Different (Part Two)
When writing about the Odyssey, I mentioned that the gods were portrayed a bit differently compared to the Iliad. For example, Athena in the Iliad was petty and did she what could to keep the Trojan War going because she wanted to see Troy sacked, while in the Odyssey she acted more like a fairy grandmother to Odysseus and his family. Poseidon in the Iliad was somewhat reasonable and sided with the Achaeans, but in the Odyssey he was Odysseus’ vindictive divine antagonist, and for petty reasons no less.
It’s no different here in the Oresteia regarding Apollo. In the Iliad, Apollo sided with the Trojans, despite being treated poorly by their previous king. Agamemnon had taken a priest of Apollo’s daughter, Chryseis, as a war prize. The priest came before Agamemnon as a suppliant and asked for his daughter back. Agamemnon treated him harshly and drove him away. The priest prayed for justice and Apollo hit the Achaean army with a plague until Agamemnon gave Chryseis back to the priest. So, Apollo sided against the Achaeans because of Agamemnon.
Apollo is mentioned, but does not appear directly in the Odyssey. A fun (and funny) fact: when Odysseus raided the Ciconians on his way back from the Trojan War (see Book 9), he spared the priest of Apollo there and treated him respectfully. It seems Odysseus learned from Agamemnon’s bad judgment.
In the Oresteia, however, Apollo is all over the place. He is now helping Orestes get revenge for Agamemnon’s murder, though in more of an advisory role. And remember, Agamemnon’s murder is not the only murder being avenged—it’s also Cassandra’s murder (another woman who has been quickly forgotten in the story). Recall that Cassandra at first had agreed to be Apollo’s consort, but then changed her mind and Apollo punished her for it. Then, just before her murder, Apollo completely abandons her.
So, Apollo is helping Orestes, the son of Agamemnon—the commander of the Achaean army and the very reason Apollo sided against the Achaeans—get revenge for not only Agamemnon’s murder, but also the murder of Cassandra, a woman who rejected him and whom he abandoned in her time of greatest need. Not only that, but Apollo will also directly intervene to help Orestes in the next play.
I don’t know what else to say to that. Maybe there will be some answers in the final play of the Oresteia? In any case, I continue to maintain that these Greek gods are absolutely exhausting and it’s no wonder Greek philosophy started with trying to find out about how the world works without using gods as explanations.
That's all for The Libation Bearers by Aeschylus.
May your days be filled with grace.
-Andronikos
Buy my other book Revenge and its Discontents: My Journey Through the Iliad. Kindle and paperback versions available.
Find me on social media!
1Hi, this is Andronikos from the future. After reading through The Eumenides, I’m actually a bit confused about whether Apollo was threatening Orestes with punishment if he didn’t avenge Agamemnon, or whether Apollo was telling him what would happen due to how the law of retribution works. To me, The Libation Bearers seems to state the latter, while The Eumenides seems to state the former. You’ll see when you read my post on The Eumenides. Regardless, my point still stands: Orestes wasn’t given a choice in the matter. He couldn’t choose an alternative to revenge—not unless he wanted to experience terrible suffering and isolation.
2Although, the counterargument to this is that what Clytemnestra did after killing Agamemnon makes it more difficult to sympathize with her. I explore this more in the next section.
3I don’t think it’s stated in the play, but Orestes and Pylades, the man who accompanied Orestes, are cousins. Strophius, the man Orestes mentions to Clytemnestra while pretending to be a foreigner, is Orestes’ uncle and Pylades’ father. If Orestes was allowed to travel back home with his cousin in tow, I don’t think his uncle was treating him poorly. I could be wrong though.