1. Aeschylus’ Libation Bearers
Aeschylus’ Libation Bearers
The Downward Spiral
Orestes
Aegisthus
CLA77, Andrew Scholtz

2. “Where will it end?” (Chorus, p. 226)
clas215
9/19/2018
“Where will it end?” (Chorus, p. 226)
chorus, p. 226:
Here once more, for the third time, the tempest in the race has struck the house of kings and run its course. First the children eaten,
the cause of all our pain, the curse. And next the kingly man’s ordeal, the bath where the proud commander, lord of Achaea’s armies lost his life. And now a third has come, but who? A third like saving Zeus? Or should we call him death? Where will it end? – where will it sink to sleep and rest, this murderous hate, this Fury?
These, the play’s closing lines, as intoned by the chorus are rich in resonance.
On the one hand, they evoke with chilling compression the tragic, doom cresting upon doom like wave upon wave crashing upon a storm-beaten shore.
On the other hand, employing the stripped-down version of what I’ve been calling “metonymic poetics,” they connect these events with a set of motifs whose implications extend well beyond their literally understood scope.
Thus we see each of these killings compared to a drink offering – the technical term is “libation,” where a special drink, usually wine, but sometimes, when the deities are those of the underworld, concoctions mixed from milk and honey, is poured upon the ground or floor for whichever god or gods to lap up and drink. at ancient greek drinking parties, called symposia, three libations were typically poured: one to dionysus, one to aphrodite, and one to “savior zeus” – zeus as the god both of good company and of safe-keeping. after all, the drunken guests all hope to make it through the evening safe.
only here, the drink being poured is not wine but another liquid likewise red: blood. and the guests are themselves victims sacrificed to appease the gods of justice. the third pouring in this litany, that represented by the killing of clytemnestra, is, it is hoped, going to be the third and last to “saving zeus” – the bloodletting that will save the house.
but where will it ever end? where does the bloodletting stop, where does a just settlement begin?
Feast of Thyestes
Sacrifice of Iphigenia Murder of Agamemnon, Cassandra
Murder of Clytemnestra, Aegisthus
19-Sep-18
aeschylus libation bearers
bacchae 2

3. aeschylus libation bearers
Is dikē hubris?
ELECTRA:
… teach me what to say
CHORUS LEADER:
Let some god or man come down upon them.
Judge or avenger, which?
LEADER:
Just say “the one who murders in return.”
How can I ask the gods for that and keep my conscience clear?
How not, and pay the enemy back in kind?
IS A NON-HUBRISTIC DIKE POSSIBLE? CAN JUSTICE CONSENT TO A BRIGHTER FUTURE FOR THE HOUSE OF ATREUS?
if so, what are the criteria of a “just” justice?
where is a privileged justice? if the lex talionis cannot bring closure, what can?
ORESTES Now force clash with force - right with right (dike with dike, 448)
does might make right here?
association of justice principle of “help friends, harm enemies” in 1st episode electra + chorus
pp chor: “say a blessing as you pour, for those who love you … [friends =] all who hate Aegisthus.” cly and aeg = those upon whom chor wishes “let some god or man come down upon them.”
other quotes
CHORUS (p. 180): “to cleanse a man’s red hands swells the bloody tide”
182-3: leader: just say (i.e., pray for) the one who murders in return! el: how can i ask the gods for that and keep my conscience clear? leader: how not, and pay the enemy back in kind?
ap to or: “gore them like a bull … or pay their debt with your own life…. – such oracles are presuasicve, don’t you think? … and even if i’m not convinced, so many of yearnings meet and urge me on” 191-2
ch: “let the grey retainer, murder, breed no more”
Orestes to Clytaemnestra: “You killed and it was outrage—suffer outrage now” (p. 219 l. 917)
Chorus: “He (Orestes) came back with a lust for secret combat, stealthy, cunning vengeance” …
cont.: “but his hand was steered in open fight by god’s (Zeus’) true daughter (i.e., by Athena)” (p. 220 ll. 933–6
19-Sep-18
aeschylus libation bearers
CLA77, Andrew Scholtz

4. aeschylus libation bearers
clas215
9/19/2018
Agenda
Discussion Topic
Clytaemnestra: Mother or Monster?
Libation Bearers: Introduction to Play
Here We Go Again. . .
Libation Bearers
Tragic Patterns?. . .
19-Sep-18
aeschylus libation bearers
bacchae 2

5. Discussion Topic Clytaemnestra: Mother or Monster? 1-13-99
CLA77, Andrew Scholtz

6. aeschylus libation bearers
Discussion Quotes
“What outrage — the woman kills the man! What to call that monster of Greece, and bring my quarry down? Viper coiling back and forth? Some sea-witch? — Scylla crouched in her rocky nest — nightmare of sailors? Raging mother of death, storming deathless war against the ones she loves!” (Cassandra, Agamemnon p. 151) “Wait, my son — no respect for this, my child? The breast you held, drowsing away the hours, soft gums tugging the milk that made you grow?” (Clytemnestra, Libation Bearers p. 216)
DRAMATIC READING OF SCENE, PP. 216 FF.
"What outrage — the woman kills the man!  What to call  that monster of Greece, and bring my quarry down? Viper coiling back and forth?  Some sea-witch? —  Scylla* crouched in her rocky nest — nightmare of sailors?  Raging mother of death, storming deathless war against  the ones she loves!" (Cassandra, Agamemnon p. 151)
* Scylla = famous sea monster.
"Wait, my son — no respect for this, my child? The breast you held, drowsing away the hours, soft gums tugging the milk that made you grow?" (Clytemnestra, Libation Bearers p. 216)
ANCILLARY CONSIDERATIONS
Tragedy is?. . .
Clytemnestra sympathetic?
Clytemnestra tragic?
Matricide. . .
Fitting punishment?
“Just” justice?
19-Sep-18
aeschylus libation bearers

7. Libation Bearers: Introduction to Play
Libation Bearers: Introduction to Play
Here We Go Again. . .
CLA77, Andrew Scholtz

8. Oresteia: Ideological Conflicts
clas215
9/19/2018
Oresteia: Ideological Conflicts
man v.
woman
civic harmony
civic chaos
(democracy
tyranny)
persuasion
violence
new
old
JUSTICE
the plays speak the language of ideological affirmation:
of gender ideologies, political ideologies, and so on.
but the conflicts dramatized in plays necessarily put a whole range of cherished truths on trial:
that the patriarchal suppression of women (par for the course in the world known to our playwright and his audience) is just.
that men’s lust for glory constructive.
that the conflicts that inevitably arise in the social-political order can be neatly resolved through existing institutions, that justice without compromise jives with social or political order, with human happiness. for in a world where crime punishes crime, could justice itself be the problem?
Tragedy a vehicle for putting the city and society on trial, whether for the purpose of validation, critique, or both. So, for instance, Edith Hall’s notion of tragic dialogue as a polyphony of voices rising up to challenge assumptions cherished by tragedy’s target audience, yet constituting a discourse — that of tragedy — celebrating the very values tragedy put on trial. (Concordia Discors) Agamemnon as such a tragedy, one that validates the city and its institutions, yet challenges cherished assumptions
but the ending looks forward as well to the epiphany that will come in the next play in the series of three: the eumenides. for we see now that the ideological conflicts of this play and its precursor in the tetralology, the ag, play out against the cosmic backdrop of god versus god.
for how better to see the cosmic resonances of the drama than to attend to dilemma that creates this dual vengenace, that wreaked on the one hand by or, on the other hand by or, creates:
the presumptively just dictates of apollo’s oracle, which demands the killing of agamemnon be avenged.
the presumptively just dictates of the furies, earth-born goddesses of retribution, who seek to hound orestes, the mother-killer, into madness?
19-Sep-18
aeschylus libation bearers
bacchae 2

9. Libation Bearers Prologue 177 f. Orestes Parodos 178 ff.
Libation Bearers
Prologue 177 f. Orestes
offering of hair
Parodos 178 ff.
mourning, libations, Clytemnestra’s dream, general foreboding
1st episode (begin) 180 ff.
Electra, Leader, Orestes, whole Chorus
recognition, reunion
Kommos (lyric interlude) 192 ff.
Electra, Orestes, Chorus
mourning, invocation
1st episode (end) 198 ff. Electra, Leader, Orestes
more invocation, Clytemnestra’s dream, plan
1st stasimon 204 f.
Clyt’s crime, natura/myth parallels
2nd episode 206 ff. Orestes, Porter, Clyt, Leader, Nurse
deception
2nd stasimon 212 f.
prayers for justice
3rd episode 213 ff. Aegisthus, Leader, Chorus, Servant, Clytemnestra, Orestes, Pylades
killing, agōn, killing
3rd stasimon 219 f.
victory song
exodos 221 ff. Orestes, Chorus, Leader
victory, madness, Furies
this play is in several ways a doublet for the the ag: is central event is the act of revenge around which the rest of the action revolves. (hence my subtitle for today’s lecture, “here we go again.”
it differs, though, in that it is far less focused on the vast thematic and mythic backdrop and more on the action itself.
explain situation: several years have passed. or grown, returned to seek revenge. cly’s dream of the infant snake biting her breast. the advice given her to seek to appease the spirit of the dead ag with drink offerings poured by electra assisted by captive trojan slave women.
think though as well about the situation of same: the slave women’s ironic loyalty to the partisans of agamemnon, their rapist, the ironic choice of electra to represent clyt at the grave of her father.
Chorus, parodos, p tragic formula. “And the ancient pride (sebas) no war, / . . . could tame. . . . Success (to eutukhein), / they bow to Success, more god than god himself. / But Justice (Dike) waits and turns the scales. . . . And the blood that mother earth consumes . . . breeds revenge / and frenzy (Ate) goes through the guilty, / seething like infection, swarming through the brain.”
1st episode. contains quasi-reprise of the Persians conjuration scene. only here, the spirit of ag is invoked not to make a special appearance all on his own, but to empower and guide the avengers.
1st stasimon 204 f.
p. 204 – anticipation of the 1st stasimon of Antigone. “marvels, the eareth breeds many marvels, … oh but a man’s high daring spirit, who can account for that?” in soph, it’s human-kind and human ingenuity that is the “marvel” from the start.
Clyt’s crime, natura/myth parallels. catalogue of women’s hubris, precursor-parallel to the “many are the wonders” chorus from antigone.
the earth’s wonders
althaia, mother of meleager
scylla, megarian princess and in love with minos, kills father nisus (beseiging enemy of minos) by cutting his lock of immortal hair
“woman’s brazen cunning” – misogynistic?
lemnian women (husbands take thracian mistresses, kill all men, marry argonauts, surviving men on lemnos carry off athenian women, men kill wives and children fearing the athenian loyalties of the athenian brides)
2nd episode 206 ff.
Orestes, Porter (doorman), Clyt, Leader, nurse
deceptive messenger speech in brief:
leader: “oh dear friends who serve the house, when can we speak out, when can the vigor of our voices serve orestes?” – the power of the chorus is in their words
p nurse, bewailing the supposed death of or, recalls, among other things, taking him out to relieve himself as an infant. “oh I tried and I missed”
p. 211, chorus let’s nurse in on secret of or’s return (cf. od), instructs not to convey cl’s bodyguard instruction to aeg
exodos with ekkuklema scene explicitly reprising parallel scene from agamemnon:
the twin bodies wheeled out on trolley, clyt wrapped in the weavings, metonymically linked to the red carpet, with which she ensnared aga in his bath before stabbing him.
but new development, too: the Furies, or Erinues, goddesses of retribution, seeking the blood of orestes, a mother-killer implicated in blood-guilt.
CLA77, Andrew Scholtz

10.
Libation Bearers
Tragic Patterns?. . .
CLA77, Andrew Scholtz

11. Aristotelian Analysis. . .
clas215
9/19/2018
Aristotelian Analysis. . .
Complex plot
Anagnorisis (recognition)?
Peripeteia (reversal)?
Desis (complication)? Lusis (resolution)?
Pity, fear, catharsis?
19-Sep-18
aeschylus libation bearers
bacchae 2

12. aeschylus libation bearers
Aeschylean Epiphany?
verbal
ambiguous
human
visual
clear
divine
as in the ag, so too in the lb, the finale exhibits the visible outoome of vengeance: bloody bodies wheeled out on the ekkuklema. the riddle of clyt’s dream is resolved, its prophecy fulfilled. but we have yet to bring gods clearly into the picture to
19-Sep-18
aeschylus libation bearers
CLA77, Andrew Scholtz

13. aeschylus libation bearers
Tragic Formula?
Koros
Hubris
Atē
Dikē
“ ‘The proud dead stir under the earth, / they rage against the ones who took their lives.’ [Chorus quoting elderly women in palace] … / ... Justice waits and turns the scales. … / … frenzy (atē) goes through the guilty, / seething like infection, swarming through the brain” (Chorus, parodos, p. 179)
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aeschylus libation bearers

14. Further Patterns Tragic cycle Tragic knowing Crime begets crime
Further Patterns
Tragic cycle
Crime begets crime
Blood guilt
Tragic knowing
19-Sep-18
aeschylus agamemnon 1
CLA77, Andrew Scholtz

15. clas215
9/19/2018
Orestes with Erinyes
bacchae 2

16. Blood-Guilt & Justice on Trial
Blood-Guilt & Justice on Trial
Pollution
Purification-retribution
Pollution? Guilt? Justice?
Orestes purified with blood of piglet
Burkhardt on Blood Purification: the guilty party must in any event be bloodied
bloodshed = pollution …
requiring purification
by sacrifice
by blood-revenge
sacrament / sacrilege
in libation bearers
Chorus Leader Now for the murderers. Remember them and - Electra What? I’m so unseasoned, teach me what to say. Leader Let some god or man come down upon them. Electra Judge (dikastes) or avenger (dikephoros), which? Leader Just say ‘the one who murders in return!’ Electra How can I ask for that and keep my conscious clear? Leader How not and pay the enemy back in kind? ( )
Clytaemnestra: “You have no fear of a continuing curse, my son?” (899)
· · · · · ·
Orestes: “I must escape this blood … it is my own” (1036)
“Wash old works of blood / in the fresh-drawn blood of justice” (Chorus, p. 212)
“What of the future? What of the prophet god Apollo? … Make all mankind your enemy, not the gods.” (Pylades, p. 217)
19-Sep-18
aeschylus libation bearers
CLA77, Andrew Scholtz