A review by shoba
The Oresteia: Agamemnon, The Libation Bearers, The Eumenides by Aeschylus
4.0
The Oresteia
The Oresteia, written in the 5th century BCE, was a Greek tragedy written in three parts by Aeschylus. The trilogy includes the plays: Agamemnon, The Libation Bearers, and The Eumenides. The Oresteia remains the only complete trilogy of Greek drama that has survived from antiquity.
Agamemnon
Agamemnon, king of Mycenae, sacrificed his daughter, Iphigenia, for favorable winds and then sailed for Troy. For nine years Queen Clytemnestra waited for her husband’s return, remembering all. One night a beacon appears in the sky, signaling victory over Troy. Soon the daughter of King Priam of Troy and Agamemnon’s war prize , Cassandra, accompanies Agamemnon home. To avenge her daughter’s murder, Clytemnestra stabs Agamemnon and Cassandra.
CLYTEMNESTRA:
So it stands, elders of Argos gathered here.
Rejoice if you can rejoice- I glory.
And if I'd pour upon his body the libation it deserves, what wine could match my words?
It is right and more than right. He flooded the vessel of our proud house with misery, with the vintage of the curse and now he drains the dregs. My lord is home at last.
The Mycenaeans curse Clytemnestra.
CHORUS:
Woman! - what poison cropped from the soil or strained from the heaving sea,
what nursed you, drove you insane….
You have cut away and flung away and now the people cast you off to exile, broken with our hate.
The Leader of the elders of Mycenae reminds all who are present that Orestes, the son of Agamemnon and Clytemnestra, lives and he will avenge his father’s death.
LEADER:
Orestes-
If he still sees the light of day, bring him home, good Fates….Our champion in slaughter!
The Libation Bearers
With the approval of Apollo, Orestes arrives to avenge his father’s death.
CHORUS:
…And for all you love under earth
and all above its rim, now scarf your eyes against the Gorgon's fury-
In, go in for the slaughter now!
The butcher comes. Wipe out death with death.
Orestes kills his mother’s lover and then confronts her.
CLYTEMNESTRA:
Hand me the man-axe, someone, hurry!
Now we will see. Win all or lose all,
we have come to this- the crisis of our lives.
ORESTES:
It's you I want….
The Furies torment Orestes for the murder of his mother and he flees.
ORESTES:
No, no! Women- look- like Gorgons, shrouded in black,
their heads wreathed, swarming serpent….
No dreams, these torments,
not to me, they're clear, real- the hounds of mother's hate….
You can't see them
I can, they drive me on! I must move on-
The Eumenides
Orestes arrives at the temple of Apollo in Delphi, tormented by the Furies. Apollo appears, fights off the Furies and rebukes their Leader.
LEADER:
You commanded the guest to kill his mother.
APOLLO:
- Commanded him to avenge his father, what of it….
And what of the wife who strikes her husband down?
LEADER:
That murder would not destroy one's flesh and blood.
Matricide, explains the Furies, the reason they torment Orestes. He killed his mother, a blood relative, unlike Clytemnestra who merely killed her husband. Athena arrives and the Furies state their case against Orestes. They will allow Athena to judge the merits of their case against him.
ATHENA:
You would turn over responsibility to me, to reach the final verdict?
LEADER:
Certainly.
We respect you. You show us respect.
Athena choses not to judge the case herself but selects ten citizens, Judges, who will cast a vote each to decide the case. As a witness for Orestes, Apollo makes the argument that men alone have claims on their children because they provide the seed while women simply carry the growing fetus. To bolster his case, Apollo points to Athena, who sprung fully formed from Zeus. The ten Judges cast their votes and Athena casts hers for Orestes. The votes are counted, there was a tie, and Orestes wins the case. Athena quickly tries to appease the Furies’ anger. She promises the Furies a home in Athens and the new responsibility, changing their previous black robes to reddish-purple ones, of guarding its citizens.
From The Magus by John Fowles-
“To begin with there was something pleasantly absurd about teaching in a boarding school (run on supposedly Eton-Harrow lines) only a look north from where Clytemnestra killed Agamemnon.”
From The Magus by John Fowles-
“To begin with there was something pleasantly absurd about teaching in a boarding school (run on supposedly Eton-Harrow lines) only a look north from where Clytemnestra killed Agamemnon.”