Play: The Libation Bearers

Overview
The Libation Bearers, the second play of Aeschylus’s Oresteia (458 BCE), follows Orestes and Electra as they avenge the murder of their father, Agamemnon, by killing their mother, Clytemnestra, and her consort, Aegisthus. It charts the collision between ancestral blood-vengeance and divine injunctions, setting the stage for the crisis of guilt and justice that will be adjudicated in the trilogy’s final play.

At the Tomb
Orestes arrives secretly at Agamemnon’s grave with his companion Pylades and an old tutor, bearing a lock of hair and prayers to Hermes of the Underworld for aid. He reveals that Apollo has commanded him to avenge his father’s murder or suffer dread punishments. As he hides, Electra approaches with a chorus of captive women sent by Clytemnestra to pour libations meant to appease the dead. Terrified by a nightmare in which she nursed a snake that drew blood, Clytemnestra seeks to quell ominous signs; the chorus and Electra instead turn the ritual into a call for justice and for the return of Orestes.

At the tomb, Electra discovers offerings that match her family: a lock of hair like her own, footprints akin to her brother’s, and a woven cloth she recognizes. Orestes steps forward and reveals himself. In a charged reunion, the siblings and the chorus unite around a plan sanctioned by Apollo’s oracle: to strike down Aegisthus and Clytemnestra as lawful requital for Agamemnon’s slaughter.

The Deception
Disguised as a traveler, Orestes goes to the palace door with the tutor bearing false news that Orestes has died abroad in a chariot crash, a report that lures Aegisthus into complacency. He is admitted into the house that once became the scene of his father’s death, and the chorus chants for Dike, Justice, to turn the tide within. Aegisthus arrives to confirm the supposed death; Orestes confronts him, and the murder is carried out inside, away from public sight, reversing the treacherous hospitality that destroyed Agamemnon.

Clytemnestra appears and recognizes danger too late. She bares her breast and pleads as a mother, testing the son’s resolve. Orestes falters, but Pylades, otherwise silent, utters his single, decisive counsel: remember Apollo’s command and the oaths. Bound to divine order and blood duty, Orestes kills Clytemnestra, completing the vengeance demanded by the dead and the god.

Revelation and Guilt
Orestes emerges and displays the corpses alongside the intricate robe that ensnared Agamemnon in his bath, a tangible emblem of deceit now turned against its makers. He proclaims the deed just and claims purification through obedience to Apollo, yet even as the chorus affirms the overthrow of the tyrants, a new terror breaks in: Orestes sees the Erinyes, the Furies, pursuing him for matricide. Invisible to others, they erupt from the violated bonds of blood, proof that one form of justice has summoned another, older claim.

Themes and Trajectory
The play binds funeral ritual and revenge, mother and son, guest-right and deception, into a chain of reciprocity that cannot resolve itself within the household. The snake-dream and the net dramatize the house’s tangled curse; Apollo’s oracle legitimizes action while not dispelling its pollution. The chorus voices both joy and dread, sensing that right has been done at a cost that summons darker powers. Orestes flees toward Delphi for sanctuary and judgment, propelling the trilogy toward its final movement, where the conflict between blood-vengeance and civic law will be confronted openly.