Oresteia III: Choephoroe
by Thomas Fleming
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The Choephoroe (Libation Bearers) is the most dramatically interesting of three play. The dramatic focus is on Agamemnon’s two children–the long-suffering Electra and the heroic Orestes–and also highlights minor players such as the loyal Pylades, and even the lower-class character of the faithful nurse who intrigues with the Chorus to keep Aegisthus in the dark on the plot to kill him and Clytamestra. In this play we begin to say further how the themes of revenge, justice, and release from suffering will play out.
Orestes returns in disguise, like Odysseus or Jesus even, to bring redemption to Argos. Electra and the Chorus enter bringing libations–hence the title–to appease the ghost of Agamemnon. In a classic Anagnorisis (Recognition scene) by tokens, Electra and her brother are recognized by a lock of hair. Electra, like other people addicted to grief, refuses to believe her good fortune at first, but her brother Orestes explains that Apolllo has sent him to avenge his father’s murder, and threatened him with death or the plague of Erinyes (Furies) if he refuses. So Orestes has been put in the same position as Agamemnon, except in two important respects: 1) Clytaemestra, unlike Iphigenia, is guilty not innocent, but 2) it is worse to kill a mother than to kill a child. Remember that in many traditional societies, children owe non-reciprocal debts to parents.
Though Agamemnon was an ambiguous character in the first play, his sins have been paid for, and he is now portrayed as the great man who conquered Troy and did the gods’ bidding. For such a man to be killed by a woman and a weakling–a pair of women, really–is, as Orestes says, terrible. Brother and sister carry out the ritual of propitiation that the Queen demanded, but now it is turned against Clytaemestra herself. This reversal is one more instance of how roles shift from avenger to villain to victim. The children attempt to raise their father’s ghost to fight on their side. In one sense, the spirits of underworld are obviously on Oresrtes’ side, as the Chorus says: (400): “The nomos (law. custom) is that drops of blood spilt on the ground demand yet other blood.” Note again the ambiguous use of nomos, which means both a kind of ritual song used throughout the play and traditional law.
They cannot actually raise the spirit of Agamemnon, because Clytaemestra had mutilated his corpse through a procedure known as "maschalismos"– arms and legs are cut off an tucked under the armpits. This keeps him from returning to earth but also makes him powerless in other world–a terrible crime. Nonetheless, we feel his spirit is felt throughout play.
The choral ode (585 ff.) that follows is a disturbing portrait of human nature that Sophocles must have been answering in his ode on man in the Antigone: The earth breeds many terrible hours, monsters, and the worst of them is human arrogance, especially the reckless passions of women, and we are treated to a series of sex-crazed homicidal maniac women. But no one escapes the justice of Zeus:
"The anvil of justice is planted firm. Destiny forges the arms, and the deep brooding spirit of vengeance is bringing into this house the son who will pay back finally the pollution of blood that was shed long ago….."
It is in the Choephoroe that we begin to grasp the power of the dead in two forms: both the furies that spring up from the drops of the murder victim and the actual ghost of the dead Agamemnon, whose influence seems to invigorate his children. Orestes is now seen in some sense as Agamemnon himself.
First he comes from a far country–his father is in that most distant land of the dead from which we do not return– and the fact the he is paradoxically a native but also a stranger is played upon several times. When he poses as the stranger who reports to Clytaemestra that her son is dead, he becomes as it were dead himself. His mother unsuccessfully tries to disguise her joy, but gives the messenger (Orestes) a happy welcome. We hear Aegisthus’s death cry " e e otototoi"–off stage, and a real messenger comes in with the news, telling his mistress in one of the most chilling lines of Greek literature: "ton zonta kainein tous tethnekotas lego." I say that the dead are killing the living man.” Literally he refers to the Orestes who is thought to be dead, killing Aegisthus, but Aeschylus uses the plural, because Agamemnon takes part in the killing, as do all the murder victims in the house of Atreus.
Clytaemnestra is no sissy: She plays the man and calls for a battle axe, but she also appeals to Orestes’ love for his mother (896). Stunned, he asks his friend–the third actor on the scene–if he should from aidos — respect, reverence–spare his mother. Pylades-and this is the first known instance of a third actor speaking, though Sophocles had introduced one earlier in a non-extant play–reminds him he is under order from Apollo. Clytaemestra give the best justification she has: Agamemnon’s s crimes and the loneliness of a woman left behind for 10 years, but Orestes is unmoved by the unnatural mother who had exiled him. In 926, she comments ruefully–the magic of language now turned against her: "It is as if though alive I am singing my dirge to the face of a tomb, in vain." The expression is proverbial, the the dead Orestes taking vengeane gives it a new twist. He pulls his mother into the stage building to do the deed. The Athenians, after all, are not savages, who would put bloody murder on the stage!
Well, it has all worked out in the end. Justice is done, and the evil murderers and usurping tyrants have been avenged; The chorus rejoices, as Orestes displays the bodies–rather as Clytaemestra had displayed her victims, and he holds up the web in which his father had been snared, little realizing that he is now also caught. The Chorus comment, somewhat ambiguously, on the uncertainty of life, not knowing that their words also apply to Orestes, who starts breaking out into a fit of madness. Like Cassandra in the previous play, he begins to see what is unseen: In 1048 ff. he describes the Erinyes–black-robed gorgonlike demons, the hounds that will avenge his mother, and we are left wondering, again, what can put an end to the cycle.
One more round in the vendetta, which is now shaping up, additionally, as a conflict between what Apollo (and Zeus, as well?) have commanded and the ancient demands of blood enforced by the Erinyes. As the Chorus sings so movingly in the first play, Ailinon, Ailinon, eipe to d’eu nikato! Alas and alas, say let the good prevail!
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1 Comment by Joseph Salemi on 15 December 2008:
Concerning the line that begins “ton zonta kainein…” it should be noted that Richmond Lattimore mistranslates it as “I tell you, he is alive and killing the dead.” Dr. Fleming’s explication is much more sensible.
2 Comment by TJF on 16 December 2008:
Thanks very much for the note. Lattimore is equally possible in the Greek but makes no sense to me except in the tautological sense of killing people so as to make them dead. I don’t have much here to consult. I note that in the Loeb Weir Smyth, an excellent grammarian, agrees with me. I think this line is extremely creepy because it hints at something like zombies or vampires taking away our lives.
3 Comment by Sempronius on 16 December 2008:
How much was Orestes consciously modeled on Telemachus? It seems the two have quite a bit in common.
A far as the Choephoroe is concerned it appears that Aeschylus is detailing the demise of the old clan/tribal organisation of society based upon the Homeric palace economy derived from Mycenae.When Orestes tells Electra “Steady!You must not let this joy undo your caution.I know our nearest kin are our worst enemies”,the family,and with it,the clan and tribe no longer exercise their function as primary unit around which human affairs revolve.The family’s role as a repository of order and authority has played itself out.
4 Comment by TJF on 16 December 2008:
The tradition of comparing the two young heroes goes back to the Odyssey, in which Telemachus is made conscious of what Orestes has accomplished. Aeschylus is not an anthropologist and would not have understood very much of the clan and tribe mentality of the Bronze Age. What he is grappling with, however, is the transition Athens was making from the Age of Solon, when clans and phratries were the basis of the social and political system, to the Age of Pericles who was radicalizing the changes introduced by Cleisthenes: the reduction of the role of the phratries (kin and religious brotherhoods) and the great clans. This is a complex subject, but if Cleisthenes’ intention had been to revolutionize Athenian social life, he was a manifest failure. (I think, rather, he wanted to minimize the power of clans that rivaled his own.) In Aeschylus’ day, family and clan dominated social life, law, and politics. Even teh struggle for power between Pericles and Cimon (and Cimon’s successor as conservative leader, Thucydides son of Melesias) can be viewed as a struggle between two great clans and their allies: Cimon and Thucydides were Philaids, while Pericles’ mother was an Alcmeonid (like Cleisthenes) and his father Xanthippus, an ally of the Alcmeonidae. The family and clan are the center of Athenian life both in 458 and for some generations to come. What does seem to be happening here, though, is that Aeschylus is responding to change and social disturbance by showing the corruption of this family. We can discuss this a greater length in the third play. If people want some material on clan politics and Cleisthenes’ reforms, I do have some in my lectures.
5 Comment by T. Chan on 16 December 2008:
If people want some material on clan politics and Cleisthenes’ reforms, I do have some in my lectures.
Dr. Fleming, I would be interested in reading this–could you please post it?
6 Comment by Lee on 17 December 2008:
This is probably a mundane question, but what is the significance of pouring out (some) of the presumably wine in connection with the funeral? I noticed this also in the Iliad wrt feasts on behalf of the god(s). Is this in any way related to the Hebrew practice of pouring out the blood from animals onto the altar?
7 Comment by Sempronius on 17 December 2008:
“The family and clan are the center of Athenian life both in 458 and for some generations to come. What does seem to be happening here, though, is that Aeschylus is responding to change and social disturbance by showing the corruption of this family.”
In essence then family corruption and its consequences for society are at the heart of the trilogy.
Is Aeschylus pining for “the good old days”, or is he condemning them? What is unclear to me is what Aeschylus,and his audience,made of all this.Or was his approach much more nuanced and complex than a simple matter of pro or con?
“If people want some material on clan politics and Cleisthenes’ reforms, I do have some in my lectures.”
Yes, by all means,send as much as you’ve got.
8 Comment by TJF on 17 December 2008:
I don’t want to anticipate the discussion of the Eumenides. LEt us say that the conventional opinion is that Aeschylus is celebrating the Periclean “reforms” that diminished the power of families, clans, the aristocracy, and tradition. The pouring of libations to the gods was a standard part of many Greek religious rituals. I do not entirely subscribe to the view that it is simply a replacement for blood, because the Greeks continued to practice animal sacrifice, but that must be an important element. Two books by Walter Burkert might be looked at with profit: Homo Necans and Greek Religion. Of course this play takes its title from the chorus who bear the choai, libations poured out to the gods or heroes. (Agamemnon is certainly treated as a heros, that is, a man so great in life that his spirit holds power in the afterlife, particularly over the region in which he is buried. The cult of a hero is quite different from a cult of the Olympians. The basic difference is that heroes are venerated by offerings put or poured into the ground rather than poured out or burned on an offering in the sight of heaven. In this respect, they are like the chthonic deities–Hades, the Erinyes, etc.
9 Comment by Josh Cooney on 17 December 2008:
“One more round in the vendetta, which is now shaping up, additionally, as a conflict between what Apollo (and Zeus, as well?) have commanded and the ancient demands of blood enforced by the Erinyes”
Is there significance in that it is Apollo who gives Orestes the command for vengeance? Does the fact that it is Apollo matter, or is it sufficient to know that it is a command from a god? I believe Pylades’ only words in the play come when he reminds Orestes of the order from Apollo. And Dr. Fleming points out that having a third character speak is unusual. So I’m wondering if there is something significant about Apollo’s role.
10 Comment by Sempronius on 19 December 2008:
Was there any intra-familial violence in Aeschylus’ time?If so,how common was it?
Does the name “ORESTES” mean anything in Greek?
This drama leaves me a bit unmoved.It almost seems like an elaborate filler between the AGAMEMNON and the EUMENIDES.What am I missing Dr. Fleming?
11 Comment by Sempronius on 19 December 2008:
One other thing.Orestes and Pylades hide themselves in order to eavesdrop on Electra at Agamemnon’s tomb.The practice of concealment,or in the case of Odysseus,disguise,seems to have some particular importance in these post-Trojan cycles.Would that be so?
12 Comment by TJF on 19 December 2008:
Apart from killing an adulterous wife, intra-familial violence is not well-attested in Fifth Century Greece. That is one of the things that makes the plots of tragedies so arresting. But, then, tragedies are usually about a society that is out of joint, and nothing is weirder than familial strife such as Hesiod (a powerful influence on Aeschylus) had predicted. Orestes might suggest “man of the mountains” (from oros) or, less probably but more suggestive to the Greeks, “the one who stretches or strives. I’ll have to do a bit of checking.
The Choephoroe is the central play of the trilolgy. In it, the great crime of matricide is enacted, which bring the Erinyes into the middle of the drama. In answer to an earlier question, Apollo is quite important. This the lord of Delphi, the god of wisdom and truth and light, sweet reason and self-restraint. Apollo’s logic, which leads Orestes to kill his mother, is not however sufficient, as we shall see, and it is no accident that his name suggests the verb to kill or destroy.
An acute question on concealment and disguise. If Aristotle is right about tragedy, that one principal element is the revelation of what was previously unknown or concealed (anagnorisis scenes), then we are beginning to understand what tragedy is all about when we contemplate these scenes. They are, of course, exciting, and without this element there would be no such thing as mystery or detective fiction. (It is often said, correctly, that Sophocles’ Oedipus is the first and most brilliant piece of detective fiction.) Tragedies involve the pursuit of truth under the most difficult circumstances. What the characters–and the audience–are discovering are the great and terrible forces that lie above and below our human plane of action. We do not always respond to great works of art, for one reason or another, but I have never read the great scenes of this play–the invocation of Agamemnon, Orestes’ in disguise with his mother, the murder of Clytaemestra–without a thrill of horror
13 Comment by Sempronius on 22 December 2008:
An acute question on concealment and disguise. If Aristotle is right about tragedy, that one principal element is the revelation of what was previously unknown or concealed (anagnorisis scenes)… and without this element there would be no such thing as mystery…
“Tragos”,mystery,revelation.All of this points to the religious origins of Greek drama and,if I’m not mistaken,the ceremonies surrounding the cult of Dionysius.Probably this accounts for the use of masks and costumes;as a means to emphasize the element of concealment,as well as a continuation of the sacramental nature of religious rites from which Tragedy is derived.
Does Orestes’ murder of Clytemnestra provide an echo of some kind of primal sacrifice designed to restore the community to its pristine state?Would Aeschylus’ audience have interpreted it as such?Do all the murders in the Oresteia amount to ONE BIG MURDER that has to be understood, and assimilated in one manner or other,by the Polis and its citizens?
Finally,(sorry to put you through your paces Fleming) is there any significance in the fact that Clytemnestra was killed by her son while in disguise,as opposed to Agamemnon by his wife using dissimulation?
14 Comment by TJF on 29 December 2008:
The connection with Dionysian ritual is usually assumed, though there is scarcely any evidence. Masks are found elsewhere in religious drama, but comparisons can be perilous. The best works on the origins of tragedy available in English are two books by Pickard-Cambridge, but one must beware, in Dithyramb, Tragedy, and Comedy, of the later additions by the eccentric TBL Webster, who had a thing about satyrs and sex imagery.
Aeschylus’ audience would have scant knowledge of human sacrifice except as something they associated with barbarous peoples and primitive times. There are Greek myths, as in the story of Idomeneus’ return from Troy, but what religious significance they had by the V Century, it is hard to tell. The murders in the Oresteia, so far from reintegrating community, are seen as highly destructive. Matricide is a terrifying thing for the Greeks–in Aristophanes Clouds the mere threat of Pheidippides to beat his mother arouses his father to burn down Socrates’ think-tank.
Finally, there is a good deal in this and other Greek plays about false identity, and that is partly because the anagnorisis is so important. There is also, however, a lot of emphasis put on the way Clytaemestra trapped Agamemnon with a net. Some fanciful (though not necessary incorrect) interpreters would see a connection between the net, the so-called carpet–really strewn fabrics–and the rags worn by the Erinyes.