Libation Bearers

First produced at Athens in 458 BC, Libation Bearers (Choephoroi) is the second play of Aeschylus’ Oresteia, preceded by Agamemnon and followed by Eumenides. It is set in front of the palace at Argos, where Agamemnon was murdered by his wife Clytemnestra and her lover Aegisthus. Orestes, Agamemnon’s son, comes home from exile with his friend Pylades to avenge his father, as Apollo has ordered him to do. He greets the tomb of Agamemnon and leaves a lock of his hair on it, and then sees a group of women in black approaching with offerings; among them is his sister Electra (lines 1–21). The two recognise each other at the tomb, and with the help of the Chorus they plan the revenge (lines 212–584). Orestes and Pylades come to the palace as strangers from Phocis and announce that Orestes is dead. Aegisthus is lured inside and killed; Clytemnestra pleads with her son, but after Pylades’ few words he kills her as well (lines 653–930). Orestes shows the bodies and the robe in which his father was trapped, and then, seeing the Erinyes (Furies) that his mother’s blood has brought on him, runs off towards Apollo’s sanctuary at Delphi (lines 973–1062).

Date and Historical Background

The three plays of the Oresteia were produced together as one group, with a satyr play, Proteus. According to the ancient introduction (hypothesis) to Agamemnon, this was in the archonship of Philocles (458 BC); Aeschylus won first prize with Agamemnon, Libation Bearers, Eumenides and Proteus, and the choregos was Xenocles of Aphidna. The satyr play Proteus does not survive.

The play was already well known in antiquity. In Aristophanes’ Frogs (405 BC), the contest between Aeschylus and Euripides in the underworld opens with the first lines of Libation Bearers: Euripides asks for the prologue of the Oresteia, Aeschylus recites the opening address to Hermes, and Euripides objects to the sense of the lines and to the repetition in them (Frogs 1124–1176; compare Libation Bearers 1–3). Aristotle (Poetics 1455a) uses the scene of the lock of hair in this play as his example of recognition by inference.

Characters and Setting

Characters

• Orestes, son of Agamemnon and Clytemnestra, returning from exile
• Pylades, Orestes’ friend, who comes with him and speaks only three lines (900–902)
• Electra, Orestes’ sister
• Chorus of women who serve in the palace, foreign captives who were brought to the house as slaves (lines 75–77)
• Clytemnestra, queen of Argos, Orestes’ mother and the murderer of Agamemnon
• Aegisthus, Clytemnestra’s lover, who rules Argos with her
• Kilissa, Orestes’ old nurse (named in line 732)
• A servant of the house, who opens the door to Orestes (line 657) and later brings the news of Aegisthus’ death (lines 875–884)

Setting

The scene is the front of Agamemnon’s palace in Argos, as in Agamemnon. The tomb of Agamemnon stands before it, and the whole first half of the play takes place at the tomb.

Summary of Libation Bearers

Prologue

Orestes arrives at his father’s grave with Pylades. He prays to Hermes of the underworld to be his saviour and ally (lines 1–3), and says that he has come back to this land. He lays two locks of hair on the mound: one in thanks to the river Inachus, who nursed him, and one as a token of mourning, since he was not there to cry over his father’s death or to stretch out his hand at the funeral (lines 4–9). Then he sees a procession of women in black robes and recognises Electra among them (lines 10–18). He prays to Zeus for vengeance, and withdraws with Pylades to see what the women want (lines 18–21).

Parodos (Entrance Song)

The Chorus enters with Electra, carrying libations (offerings of liquid) for the dead king. They have torn their cheeks and clothes in mourning (lines 22–31). Clytemnestra has sent them: she has had a terrifying dream, and in the night, they say, she shrieked out in her fear from the inner rooms, so that the whole house was shaken (lines 32–36). The interpreters of the dream have warned her that the dead beneath the earth are angry with the killers (lines 37–41), and so she sends these offerings, which the Chorus describes as a gift without grace (lines 42–46). They are afraid to repeat what she has told them to say, and they call her a godless woman (lines 46–47). They also speak of their own condition as slaves, who must obey the rulers, whether just or not, and who weep for their masters under their clothes (lines 75–83).

First Episode

The first episode is by far the longest part of the play (lines 84–584). It can be divided into three parts: the recognition, the lament (kommos) and the plan.

Recognition Scene

Electra does not know what to say as she pours the libations at the tomb of the father whom her mother has killed: should she say that she brings them from a loving wife to her husband? She asks the Chorus for advice (lines 84–100). They tell her to pray for someone to come to the house to kill the killers, and to remember Orestes (lines 106–123). Electra then calls on Hermes, Earth and her dead father, and prays that Orestes may return. She asks to be more self-controlled and more devout than her mother (lines 124–141), and asks that an avenger should appear and that the killers die in their turn (lines 142–144). The Chorus joins her in a song of mourning (lines 152–163).

Then Electra sees the lock of hair on the tomb, and works out whose it is: it is just like her own hair, and no one else would have cut it for this grave (lines 167–180). She hesitates between hope and doubt (lines 183–211), and then she finds footprints, which match her own feet in size, one set that belongs to a traveller and one to a companion (lines 205–210). At this moment Orestes steps forward and tells her to go on praying, for the one she has prayed for is in front of her (lines 212–219). Electra thinks he is playing a trick on her; he asks her to hold the lock against his own hair and shows her a piece of cloth that she once wove, with the figures of animals on it (lines 220–232). He then asks her to rejoice with care, for those who are closest to them are their enemies (lines 233–234).

Electra greets him as the one who gives her the love of four persons: she must call him father, and her mother’s share of love goes to him, because the mother is justly hated; she must call him the sister who was cruelly sacrificed (Iphigenia), and he is the one faithful brother who gives her respect (lines 238–243). Orestes prays to Zeus and tells the story of an eagle, the father, who died in the coils of a terrible viper; the young are starving, too weak to bring home their prey. Zeus, he says, should look on the orphaned brood of an eagle (lines 246–263). The Chorus tells the two to be quiet, in case someone hears and reports it to the rulers (lines 264–268).

Orestes then explains why he has come. Apollo has told him that he must kill his father’s killers in the same way, and has threatened that if he does not, he will pay with his own life and suffer all kinds of illness, skin diseases, madness, nightmares and the attacks of the Erinyes sent by his father’s blood; he would also be shut out from the mixing-bowl and the altars, and would die dishonoured and without friends (lines 269–296). Orestes asks whether one should trust such oracles, and answers that even if he does not, the deed has to be done. Several motives meet in it: the command of the god, his grief for his father, his lack of property, and his unwillingness to see the Argives, who conquered Troy, ruled by two women (lines 297–305).

Kommos

The kommos (lines 306–478) is a long lyric dialogue between Orestes, Electra and the Chorus, in which they call on the dead Agamemnon to help them. The Chorus begins by saying that the old saying must be fulfilled: a hostile word for a hostile word, a murderous blow for a murderous blow, “the one who did must suffer” (lines 306–314). Orestes wishes that his father had died at Troy, killed by a Lycian spear; he would then have left a good name and a great tomb across the sea (lines 345–353), and Electra adds that he should not have been buried by the walls of Troy but killed by his own killers (lines 363–371). Electra tells how her mother buried the dead king without citizens or mourners (lines 429–433), and the Chorus adds that she mutilated the body (line 439); Electra herself was shut away in a corner, like a dog (lines 445–449). The singers stir each other up: “Ares will meet Ares, Right will meet Right” (line 461). They ask the gods below to send help to the children (lines 476–478), and Orestes and Electra then address their father directly: he should give his son power over his house, and he should remember how he was killed in the bath and in the net (lines 479–509).

The Plan

The Chorus approves, and Orestes asks why Clytemnestra has sent these libations so late (lines 510–522). The women answer: it was because of the dream. She dreamed that she gave birth to a snake and laid it in swaddling clothes; she offered it her breast, and it drew in a clot of blood with the milk. She woke up screaming, and many lamps were lit in the house in the dark (lines 523–539). Orestes prays that the dream may come true for him, and explains it: if the snake came out of the same place as he did, was wrapped in his swaddling clothes, and gaped at the breast that fed him, mixing blood with the milk while she cried out in fear, then she must be killed by violence, for she fed a monstrous creature. “I become the snake, and I kill her” (lines 540–550).

The plan is laid out in lines 554–584. Electra is told to go inside the house and keep the plan secret; she is to look after things there (lines 554–555, 579–580), and she does not appear again in the play. The Chorus must keep quiet or say only what is needed (lines 581–582). Orestes and Pylades will come to the gate dressed as strangers, speaking the dialect of Phocis near Parnassus (lines 560–564). If the doorkeepers do not let them in, the story will spread through the city; if they do find Aegisthus on his father’s throne, Orestes will strike him down before he can even ask who the stranger is, and the Erinys, who has not gone without blood, will drink for a third time (lines 565–578).

After the plan the Chorus sings its first stasimon (lines 585–651). The earth and the sea breed many terrors, but nothing is as reckless as the passion of men and women who are not afraid to do wrong. The singers give examples of women who killed their kin: Althaea, who burned the log on which the life of her son Meleager depended (lines 602–611), and Scylla, daughter of Nisus, who cut the immortal lock of her father’s hair for gifts from Minos (lines 612–622). They also mention the crime of the Lemnian women, which the story ranks first among evils (lines 631–637). They end by saying that the sword of Justice stands ready, and that an Erinys with a long memory will bring a child into the house to pay for old blood (lines 639–651).

Second Episode

Orestes knocks at the gate and calls loudly; a servant answers, and Orestes asks to speak to the master or mistress of the house (lines 653–667). Clytemnestra comes out and offers him the hospitality of the house: warm baths and a bed (lines 668–673). Orestes says that he is a Daulian from Phocis, and that on his way to Argos he met a man named Strophius, who told him to tell Orestes’ parents that Orestes was dead, and to find out whether they wanted the ashes brought home or buried abroad. He adds that the ashes lie in a bronze urn (lines 674–690).

Clytemnestra cries out that the house is utterly ruined. She blames the Curse that has hit even the things that were safely out of reach, and says that Orestes, who had stayed clear of the mud of destruction, was her one hope as a healer of the house, and now she writes him off (lines 691–699). She then orders the strangers to be taken to the men’s quarters and says she will tell the rulers of the house (lines 707–718).

The Chorus, left alone, calls on the earth and on the mound of Agamemnon to help, and on Persuasion, Hermes and the Night to be present at the coming fight (lines 719–729). Then Orestes’ old nurse Kilissa appears, in tears, on her way to fetch Aegisthus (lines 730–735). She says that her mistress has shown a sad face before the servants, but hides a laugh inside (lines 737–741), and she mourns for the baby she nursed, with a long speech about how she looked after the child who could not speak, and washed his swaddling clothes (lines 743–763). She has been told to ask Aegisthus to come with his bodyguards (lines 766–769). The Chorus tells her not to pass on that message: he should come at once and gladly, without guards, so that he can hear the story without fear, because “in a messenger the bent word is made straight” (lines 770–773). The nurse is hesitant but agrees (lines 774–782).

The second stasimon (lines 783–837) is a prayer. The Chorus asks Zeus, the gods in the house, and Hermes to help the right side win, and calls on Orestes to take courage when the moment comes and, when his mother calls him “child”, to say “father’s”; they tell him to keep the heart of Perseus in his breast and to finish the deed without blame (lines 827–837).

Third Episode

Aegisthus arrives alone, saying that he has been sent for: he has heard that some strangers have brought unwelcome news, that Orestes is dead. He wonders whether this is true or just a rumour made by frightened women (lines 838–847). The Chorus tells him to go in and ask the strangers himself (lines 848–850). Aegisthus says he will question the messenger closely, to find out whether he was there when Orestes died or only heard of it by a vague report; “he will not deceive a mind with open eyes” (lines 851–854). He goes in, and the Chorus prays for Orestes to win (lines 855–868). A cry is heard from the house (line 869), and the Chorus steps back so that it seems not to be involved (lines 872–874).

A servant runs out and shouts that the master is dead, and calls for the women’s door to be opened (lines 875–884). Clytemnestra appears and asks what the noise is about. “The dead are killing the living,” the servant says (line 886), and she understands the riddle and says that they are caught by trickery, just as they killed; she calls for an axe (lines 887–891). Before she gets it, Orestes comes out with the sword. “It is you I am looking for. He has had enough” (line 892). She bares her breast and begs him to respect it, the breast from which he drank (lines 896–898). Orestes asks Pylades whether he should be ashamed to kill his mother (line 899), and Pylades, in his only speech, answers: what of the oracles of Apollo, and the oaths? “Hold all men your enemies rather than the gods” (lines 900–902). Orestes says that Pylades is right, and tells his mother to come inside, to die beside Aegisthus (lines 903–907).

They argue as they go. She says she raised him and wants to grow old with him; he answers that she killed his father and cannot live with him (lines 908–909). She blames Fate (Moira), and he says that Fate also brought this death (lines 910–911). He says that she threw him into misfortune; she denies that she cast him out, and he answers that he was shamefully sold although his father was a free man. She asks where the price is that she took for him, and he says he is ashamed to speak of it plainly (lines 913–917). She then tells him not to blame her for his father’s toil, and he says that a man works while the wife sits at home (lines 918–921). She warns him: “Beware your mother’s angry hounds,” and he asks how he is to escape his father’s if he gives up now (lines 924–925). “I seem to be mourning in vain at a tomb, though I am alive,” she says; he answers that his father’s fate has decided this death (lines 926–927). “I bore and raised this snake,” she says, and he replies that the fear from the dream was a true prophet; she has killed whom she should not, and now she will suffer what should not be suffered (lines 928–930). He leads her in, and the killing takes place inside.

The third stasimon (lines 931–972) celebrates what has happened. The Chorus says that Justice has come at last to the house of Priam’s sons, and to the house of Agamemnon has come a double lion, a double Ares, and the exile whom Apollo sent has done the deed with the god’s help (lines 935–941). They call it a day of freedom and sing that Right (Dike) is the daughter of Zeus, and that Apollo’s secret plan has brought punishment to the guilty (lines 946–956). They hope that the house will lift itself up and that the time will come when the whole stain is driven from the hearth (lines 961–971).

Exodos (Exit Song)

The doors of the palace open, and Orestes stands over the bodies of Clytemnestra and Aegisthus. He asks the Argives to look at the two tyrants who killed his father and ruined the house, who have sworn to die together and have kept their oath (lines 973–979). Then he shows what he calls the trick: the robe in which they bound his father, with its bonds for hands and feet, and he asks the Sun, who sees everything, to bear witness that the killing of his mother was done justly (lines 980–990). He says he is not speaking about Aegisthus, who has been punished as the law punishes adulterers, but about the woman who plotted this against her husband (lines 989–993). He calls her a viper or a sea-snake whose touch would rot someone else, and the garment a snare, a net, a robe that binds the feet; he would rather die childless than live with such a woman in his house (lines 994–1006). He then holds up the robe, stained with Aegisthus’ sword, and with a mix of praise and mourning he says that he is pained at the deed, the suffering and the whole family, and that his victory brings stains that nobody should envy (lines 1010–1017).

His mind begins to fail. He says he feels as if he were driving horses off the course, and that fear is ready to sing and dance in his heart. While he still has his wits, he declares to his friends that he killed his mother not without right, calls her a father-killing stain and a thing hated by the gods, and names Apollo as the one who ordered the deed and promised that he would be free of blame if he did it (lines 1021–1033). He will go to Apollo’s sanctuary at the centre of the earth, with an olive branch and a wreath, and asks the Argives to be witnesses of what happened (lines 1034–1043). The Chorus tells him that he did well, and that he freed the whole city of Argos by cutting off the heads of two serpents (lines 1044–1047).

Then Orestes cries out: he sees women in grey robes, with their hair in a mass of snakes (lines 1048–1050). The Chorus says that it is only his imagination, because his hands are still wet with fresh blood. He answers that these are not fancies but his mother’s angry hounds, that he sees them and they are dripping blood from their eyes, and “you cannot see them, but I can” (lines 1051–1062). The Chorus tells him that Apollo can purify him and release him from his troubles, and wishes him good fortune (lines 1059–1064). Orestes runs from the stage. The Chorus ends by counting the storms that have hit the house of Atreus: first the feast of the children of Thyestes, second the death of the king who led the Achaeans, killed in his bath, and now a third storm, either a saviour or a death. They ask where it will come to rest and how it will end (lines 1065–1076).

A Brief Analysis

The play answers Agamemnon point by point. The robe in which Agamemnon was trapped is now held up as evidence (lines 980–1006), and the Chorus sings that a double lion, a double Ares, has come into the house of Agamemnon (lines 937–938). The principle that governs the first half of the play is stated in lines 312–314: blow for blow, “the one who did must suffer”.

The play does not present the matricide as simple justice. Orestes is under a command from Apollo, with threats of terrible punishment if he does not obey (lines 269–296). His motives are mixed, as he admits (lines 297–305), and at the decisive moment he hesitates and needs Pylades to remind him of Apollo (lines 899–902). Clytemnestra, for her part, speaks of Fate and of the dream; she calls her son a snake that she herself raised (lines 910, 928), and in the end the dream she had is fulfilled in exactly the way Orestes read it.

The end is left open. The Chorus praises Orestes for freeing Argos (lines 1044–1047), but he himself sees the Erinyes (lines 1048–1062), and the last song asks where the storm that has hit the house will end (lines 1075–1076). The answer is left for Eumenides. Apollo’s sanctuary, to which Orestes flees (lines 1034–1039, 1059–1060), offers a possible way out, but at the end of this play it is only a hope.

Libation Bearers Sources

Aeschylus, Libation Bearers (lines 1–1076); Aristophanes, Frogs 1124–1176; Aristotle, Poetics 1455a; the ancient hypothesis to Agamemnon, for the date, the prize and the choregos. An English translation of the play can be read on Perseus (Libation Bearers).

See Also: Oresteia, Agamemnon, Eumenides, Orestes