Jessica TylerLitHum C1001xProfessor Dames

In The Oresteia, Aeschylus underlines family as a dangerous and inescapable

institution, in which past wrongs influence individuals to act in retribution, creating an

unending cycle of bloodshed. The murderers continually try to justify their actions by

citing the misdeeds of their family members, and casting their own misdeeds as attempts

to rectify the past. This always culminates disastrously, bringing about either the

individual’s death, or (in the case of Orestes) unrelenting torment from a powerful deity.

In the house of Atreus, family becomes inescapable, because its heavy history and long

lineage never fail to mold a predisposition to future strife.

The trilogy opens with Clytaemestra’s murder of Agamemnon. While

Clytaemestra had various motives for killing her husband, the most sympathetic of them

all was Agamemnon’s sacrifice of their daughter, Iphigenia, for the cause of the Trojan

War. The Chorus describes her sacrifice, “The father prayed, called to his men to lift her

with strength of hand swept in her robe aloft and prone above the altar, as you might lift a

goat for sacrifice…to check the curse cried on the house of Atreus by force of bit and

speech drowned in strength” (Agamemnon, 231-237). Later in the play, as Clytaemestra

describes her murder of Agamemnon to the horrified Chorus, one can note the similarity

between the manner in which Agamemnon carried out Iphigenia’s murder and the

manner in which Clytaemestra carried out Agamemnon’s murder. She recounts, “That he

might not escape nor beat aside his death, as fishermen cast their huge circling nets, I

spread deadly abundance of rich robes, and caught him fast. I struck him twice. In two

great cries of agony he buckled at the knees and fell. When he was down I struck him the

third blow, in thanks and reference to Zeus the lord of dead men underneath the ground”

(Agamemnon, 1381-1387). First, both victims are decked out in robes before their

murder. Present throughout the trilogy, robes not only symbolized a means of

immobilizing the victim, but also evidence of a murderous act. Most notably,

Clytaemestra portrays Agamemnon’s murder as if she were describing a religious

sacrifice. As she murders Agamemnon, she states “thanks and reference to Zeus the lord

of men” (Agamemnon, 1387), as if the act of killing her husband is carried out in order to

honor the wishes of a higher power. Similarly, Iphigenia’s death was first and foremost a

sacrifice, which was carried out to supplicate the goddess Artemis and “to check the

curse cried on the house of Atreus” (Agamemnon, 235-236). The link between

Clytaemestra’s perception of the murder of her husband and the reality of the situation

that brought about her daughter’s death suggests that Clytaemestra saw her own crime as

the “sacrifice” of Agamemnon and as a means of undoing the wrong committed when her

daughter was sacrificed.

A particularly interesting aspect of Clytaemestra’s murder is her need to justify the

reason for her crime, and a denial of responsibility for it. She states:

“These being the facts, elders of Argos assembled here, be glad, if it be your pleasure; but for me, I glory. Were it religion to pour wine above the slain, this man deserved, more than deserved, such sacrament. He filled our cup with evil things unspeakable and now himself has drunk it to the dregs.” (Agamemnon, 1393-1398)

Clytaemestra believes that she is a heroine for having killed Agamemnon, and

even deserving of “glory”. She asserts that her actions were warranted because of

Agamemnon’s transgressions, “fill(ing) our cup with evil things unspeakable”, and that

she merely carried out the fate he deserved. After the Chorus reproaches her for being so

arrogant, she retorts, “You can praise or blame me as you wish; it is all one to me. That

man is Agamemnon, my husband; he is dead; the work of this right hand that struck in

strength of righteousness. And that is that” (Agamemnon, 1403-1406). Clytaemestra is

not intimidated by the viewpoint of the Chorus, and remains resolute in her belief that she

was in the right when she murdered Agamemnon. She further warrants her actions

through the concept of “righteousness”, meaning a higher standard of right and wrong,

most likely determined by the gods, which backed what she had done, and allowed her to

carry out the deed. Through these assertions, Clytaemestra attempts to defend the murder

of her husband, and remove herself from any guilt associated with the murder by

claiming herself as an instrument of fate.

Before Orestes murders Clytaemestra, he is quick to criticize her for all the

wrongs she committed against her own family, especially focusing on her adultery while

Agamemnon was fighting in the Trojan War. “Come here. My purpose is to kill you

over his body. You thought him bigger than my father while he lived. Die then and sleep

beside him, since he is the man you love, and he you should have loved got only your

hate” (The Libation Bearers, 903-907). When Orestes confronts Clytaemestra with her

adultery, it seems as though he focuses a disproportionate amount of attention on that

indiscretion. Even though Clytaemestra’s betrayal of Agamemnon was a serious

transgression, Orestes’ accusation of adultery is much less relevant than the larger issue

at hand: the murder of his father. Perhaps Orestes’ need to bring up every single crime

Clytaemestra committed against their family indicates an attempt on his part to avoid

confronting his relationship to Clytaemestra as her son. Later, Orestes even goes so far

as to express apathy for the fact that Clytaemestra is his mother, on the grounds that she

sent him away to a foreign kingdom as a child, and therefore was never truly there to

nurture him. “–A mother has her curse, child. Are you not afraid? –No. You bore me

and threw me away, to a hard life. –I sent you to a friend’s house. This was no throwing

away. –I was born of a free father. You sold me” (The Libation Bearers, 912-915).

Even though Orestes makes a valid point that Clytaemestra was never a caring mother

figure to him, he completely discounts the fact that she is still his mother by blood. In

doing so, he blatantly ignores the crime he is about to commit against a family member,

and instead avoids the issue by focusing on all the wrongs perpetrated by his victim. In

this way, Orestes tries to validate Clytaemestra’s murder by citing all of her

transgressions.

Just as Clytaemestra rationalizes her murder of Agamemnon using the sacrifice of

Iphigenia, Orestes similarly justifies his murder of Clytaemestra by claiming that he

committed the act strictly to avenge his father’s death. In addition, Orestes attempts to

free himself from any blame by saying that he acts on behalf of the gods; by murdering

Clytaemestra, he is carrying out the fate that, as an adulteress and a murderer, she

deserves. In the scene that precedes Orestes’ murder of Clytaemestra, she tries numerous

ways to convince Orestes to let her live, while Orestes rejects all of her pleas, stating why

it is imperative that he carries out her murder. “–I think, child, that you mean to kill your

mother. –No. It will be you who kill yourself. It will not be I. –Take care. Your

mother’s curse, like dogs, will drag you down. –How shall I escape my father’s curse, if

I fail here?” (The Libation Bearers, 922-925). Here, Orestes, when confronted by

Clytaemestra with the terrible fact that he wishes to kill the very person who gave birth to

him, adamantly rejects any desire to commit the crime. By declaring, “It will be you who

kill yourself. It will not be I”, Orestes emphasizes that it is Clytaemestra’s own actions

that sentence her to the fate of death, even though he must be the one to physically carry

out that sentence. When Clytaemestra retorts, reminding him that there will be grave

consequences for the crime he is about to commit- that “your mother’s curse…will drag

you down”, Orestes responds by stating the obligation he has to obtain vengeance for the

wrongs she committed to Agamemnon. Because Agamemnon is tied to Orestes by blood,

Orestes believes that he must take action in retribution for the sins against his father, even

if it means that he will commit a crime against his blood to do so. Because of his family

ties, Orestes is trapped. He must make a choice between avenging his father’s death by

murdering his mother, or preserving his mother’s life but failing to take action in

response to the crime perpetrated against his father. Regardless of which decision he

makes, Orestes must ultimately face a drastic consequence.

Despite Clytaemestra’s and Orestes’ attempts to avoid guilt for the murder of their

family members by declaring themselves as instruments of fate and bringing up the

indiscretions of their victims, neither of them escape without feeling the consequences of

their crimes. For murdering her husband, Clytaemestra must suffer by being murdered

by the hand of her son, and Orestes pays for his mother’s murder by being pursued

relentlessly by the Furies, until Apollo intervenes. Because of ties to murdered family

members, both Clytaemestra and Orestes are motivated to take action to vindicate their

fallen kin, but in doing so, are forced to commit egregious acts against other members of

their family. For the house of Atreus, the crimes of the past create an endless cycle of

violence driven by the relations each aggressor has to their murdered relatives.

Ultimately, it is the desire for vengeance that leads to every character’s downfall.