THE MYCENAEAN SAGA 417
his sister Electra, and the murder of their mother Clytemnestra and her lover
and husband Aegisthus. As has been noted in this chapter, Sophocles and Eu-
ripides also wrote plays on this same theme. Thus a unique opportunity is af-
forded us to compare and contrast the methods and the purposes of these three
great dramatists. Following are some interpretative observations with transla-
tions of pertinent excerpts from each of the three plays.
AESCHYLUS, LIBATION BEARERS (CHOEPHORI)The play opens with Orestes, accompanied by his companion Pylades, having
returned to Argos. Orestes, with a prayer to Hermes, places two locks of his hair
upon the tomb of his father Agamemnon. As Electra enters accompanied by a
chorus of women bringing offerings to the grave, the two young men withdraw.
After libations have been offered, during which Electra reveals her plight, she
discovers Orestes' locks of hair and immediately recognizes them because, in
texture, they are like her own. Similarly she is convinced Orestes has returned
because the footprints that he has left match hers exactly. These signs of recog-
nition strike the contemporary reader as dubious and extremely curious, but ap-
parently they were used by primitive people.^6
At this point Orestes reveals his identity by showing a woven design on his
clothing of wild animals that his sister remembers. Their recognition scene is
short, swift, and joyous. To Electra, her brother brings the light and the hope of
her salvation; in him alone four lost loves are restored: that of her father, her
mother, her sacrificed sister, and her beloved Orestes himself. A lengthy thren-
ody follows in which Orestes, Electra, and the Chorus elaborate upon the theme
of their just retribution and call upon Agamemnon, with prayers to Zeus and
Apollo as well. Orestes, very much in command, reveals his plans for the mur-
ders of Aegisthus and Clytemnestra and gives Electra directions for her limited
role in his plot. Orestes will be received into the palace and convey to Clytemnes-
tra the false news that Orestes is dead (supposedly learned from Strophius, to
whom the child Orestes had been sent).
Orestes has already disclosed the devastating power of Apollo's oracle with
its dire predictions. If he does not kill to avenge Agamemnon's murder, his life
will become a horror. Pursued relentlessly by the terrifying Furies of his father
and covered by boils and a kind of leprosy, he will wander endlessly, an exile
and pariah until he dies in misery. Orestes, then, is motivated by fear of these
punishments and also by compassion for his father, by desire to win the inher-
itance that is his due, and by dismay that heroes who returned from Troy with
his father are now subjected to the rule of two women, Clytemnestra and the
weakling Aegisthus.
Orestes and Pylades are received by Clytemnestra into the palace. She ac-
cepts the report of her son's death with intense and mixed emotions. The ser-
vant Cilissa is called upon to bring the news to Aegisthus, who is away, and we