Clytemnestra’s dream that she gave birth to a serpent is traditional. It is found both before Aeschylus and after. The asps of Libya and divers other serpent things were “matricides”; at birth they tore and killed their mother. See Herodotus 3, 109; Euripides’ Orestes 479. ↩
“An accent of Parnassian speech”: It is interesting to note that there is no trace of Phocian dialect in Orestes’ actual language later on. To make him talk broad Phocian would, according to convention, have made him “comic,” like certain Boeotians, Spartans, and Scythians in Aristophanes. On the other hand, an oriental colour is often allowed in tragic language, especially in lyric passages, e.g. in Aeschylus’ Persae. ↩
The reading is doubtful. I read μ’ οἱ for μοι and καλεῖν for βαλεῖν. ↩
“One Below”: i.e. Agamemnon. ↩
Chorus: The sense of this chorus is often difficult and the text apparently corrupt, especially the end. “There are many terrible things, but none so terrible as a woman’s passion; for instance (602), Althaea, daughter of Thestios, who slew her son Meleâger; or (612) Skylla of Megara who betrayed her father Nîsos; or (631) the Lemnian women, who slew their husbands; and, after all (623—a stanza has been transposed) have we not an example here in Clytemnestra?”
Althaea: See Swinburne’s Atalanta in Calydon. When her son Meleâger was born she saw in the room the three Fates, one of whom foretold that Meleâger should die when a red brand then burning in the fire was consumed. Althaea leapt out of bed and saved the brand. Afterwards, when Meleâger fell in love with Atalanta, and in a feud on her behalf killed his mother’s two brethren, she threw the brand into the fire.
Skylla: Skylla, daughter of Nîsos, King of Megara, whose life depended on a magic lock of hair. She fell in love with Minos, who was besieging Megara, and betrayed her father to him. The rings of Cretan gold were apparently a love-gift.
Lemnos: The native women of Lemnos in one night rose and killed their Greek husbands, perhaps because the men had left them for Thracian concubines, perhaps for other reasons. See Rise of the Greek Epic, Ed. 2, p. 77. ↩
The time is now evening and the scene is in front of the castle of the Atreidae. In Aeschylus’ time there was probably no actual change made in the stage arrangements. The back wall represented a palace front, while in the centre of the orchestra was an altar or mound which stood for Agamemnon’s tomb. In the first half of the play you attended to the tomb and ignored the back scene: in the second you attended to the castle and ignored the mound.
Observe the delay before the door is opened. This increases the dramatic tension and at the same time makes us feel that the House is “beset with evil.” An ordinary great house would be thrown open at the first knock. ↩
The first entrance of Clytemnestra, about whom we have thought and talked so much, is immensely important. She comes unexpected, standing suddenly in the great doorway where we last saw her, with blood on her brow and an axe in her hands, standing over the dead bodies (Agamemnon 1372). Before that we had seen her in the same position, hardly less sinister, calling Cassandra to her death: “Thou, likewise, come within.” (Agamemnon 1035.)
The first entrances of Clytemnestra in the two Electra plays are also striking. In Sophocles (Electra 516) she bursts in upon Electra, like a termagant, in a sudden agony of rage. In Euripides (Electra 998 ff.), when we have been led to expect a savage murderess, we meet “a sad, middle-aged woman whose first words are an apology, controlling quickly her old fires, anxious to be as little hated as possible.” ↩
There is an almost reckless fluency about Orestes’ speech. In his bitterness he treats the news of his death as a trifle, not showing, nor expecting from others, any particular emotion about it. As a matter of fact, it gives Clytemnestra a greater shock than he expected. There is no reason to doubt the general sincerity of her words. Of course, she feared Orestes and knew he was her enemy. When it comes to a fight she is ready. At the same time, she has, as shown in the last scenes of the Agamemnon, an aching sense of disaster and friendlessness, and would like to think that, when all the rest of the House had gone under, the son she had sent away was living somewhere unhurt, and might perhaps be grateful to her. As it is, her old enemy, the Curse of the House, has beaten her. ↩
This poignant and vivid scene of the old nurse, ludicrous in her tears, is a striking departure from the stately conventions of Greek tragedy. Neither Sophocles nor Euripides has left any scene like it. Herakles in the Alcestis is pro-Satyric. The panic-stricken Phrygian slave in the Orestes (Orestes 1369–1530) is grotesque, but grotesquely horrible. In actual language the nurse’s diction is on the whole tragic in colour and her metre correct: the grammar is rather loose and exclamatory. The name “Kilissa” (Cilician woman) suggests a slave. ↩
Again the sense is difficult and the text extremely uncertain. The chorus pray in the name of their innocence and Agamemnon’s long service to Zeus for pity; to the Gods of the Possessions of the House (Latin penates, sometimes grouped together as Zeus Ktêsios) to help in the cleansing and rebuilding of the House (l. 800); to Apollo of the Cavern of Delphi, the God of Light, to
