Orestes should think of his duty to his father and forget all else. As Perseus when killing the Gorgon turned his eyes away lest her face should freeze him to stone, so let Orestes, when he meets his mother, veil his eyes and smite. ↩
Aigisthos: Just as they mention “him who sowed the seed of wrong,” he enters. In a short but vivid scene we may perhaps see the man’s harshness and confidence, but the truth is that in Aeschylus we are told almost nothing about Aigisthos except that Clytemnestra loved him. ↩
The usual rather low-toned, prayerlike song broken in upon by the death-cry. (Cf. Agamemnon 1342, Euripides’ Electra 1163, etc.) The Chorus naturally shrink away from the house in order not to be involved in imminent danger. This also has the advantage that it leaves the scene empty, and the slave who rushes out in terror crying for help finds no one. I receive the impression that the scene is meant to be dark, which would imply that at the end of the play Orestes stood between men holding torches. There is wonderful power in this scene. There are no men to help; no women even; all the world is dumb and asleep. Then suddenly there is Clytemnestra. ↩
“The dead are risen”: A deliberately riddling line, in the Greek meaning either: “I tell thee the dead are slaying the living man,” or “I tell thee the living man is slaying the dead.” ↩
“Aigisthos, my beloved”: Up to this moment she has been ready to fight. The death of her beloved unstrings her. One would like to know whether Aeschylus meant her actually to have the axe and drop it, or whether Orestes is intended to come too soon. Note with what intensity even when the fight has gone out of her she fences for her life. Every line of the scene is charged with meaning and feeling. The thing that breaks her is the sudden realization (928) that this is the serpent of her dream. An interesting piece of technique which I have not tried to represent is here found in the original. Orestes’ words in 927 are so arranged as to produce almost exactly the word “hisses” (σοὐρίζει for σοι ὁρίζει = συρίζει). ↩
“A woman starves”: This is her first argument in Agamemnon 862 ff.: “That any woman thus should sit alone,” etc. ↩
Chorus: A short song of exultation. Justice has come both to Troy and to Argos. Hermês, the God of Guile, has done it, but Justice held his hand and he only did her will. We have had several times already the scruples of Orestes’ conscience, but this is the first doubt expressed by the Chorus as to the righteousness of the mother-murder. “Is the power of God hemmed in so strangely to work with wrong?” All doubts, however, are swallowed up in joy at the liberation of Argos and the downfall of the tyrants. ↩
This marvellous scene scarcely needs comment. The showing of the robe in which Agamemnon was slain is, perhaps, imitated in the Forum Scene of Julius Caesar, which came to Shakespeare direct from Plutarch’s Lives (“Brutus” ch. 20, “Anthony” ch. 14). But the main interest here is in something quite different. The madness of which we have seen the approaching shadow now closes in upon Orestes. The first definite sign of it comes at l. 996, where, as Conington followed by Dr. Verrall pointed out, he tries to find a name to describe his mother. As he gropes for the word, the great crimson robe with the stains of blood obsesses his mind and he calls her “a winding-sheet, a snare, a net,” and so on. (So Cassandra in Agamemnon 114 calls her “a net and a snare.”) We may notice that “dead without a child” (1006) is a more awful curse in Greek than in English. He appears at this point to sink into speechlessness, only to rouse himself more fiercely at l. 1010: “Did she the deed or no?” The few low-toned lines of music by the Chorus add a great beauty to the scene. ↩
Orestes’ last sentence is unfinished; as he was evidently going to leave behind him some word of bad omen, the Leader of the Chorus interrupts with words of comfort. As she mentions the “two serpents’ heads” (1048) there is a cry of horror, and the “armed slayer” is seen appealing to the slave women to protect him. He has seen the shapes with snaky hair beginning to crowd upon him. The last touch of tragedy is in 1061 when he realizes that he is alone in his suffering (“You cannot see them; I alone can see”) and knows that he “shall never rest again.” ↩
The last chorus states with a clarity unusual in Aeschylus and more characteristic of Euripides, the exact problem of the Trilogy. First came the sin of Atreus against the children of Thyestes—though that too was an act of revenge; second, the punishment of that by Thyestes’ son Aigisthos when he and Clytemnestra murdered Agamemnon; thirdly, the punishment of that second crime at Apollo’s bidding by Orestes. Is Orestes the Third Saviour, or is his act only another link in the interminable chain of crime? If the Curse is now brought to sleep, is that because the House is really purified or because there is nothing left for the Curse to work upon? For the “Third Saviour,” see my Four
