The Libation Bearers Ramble Review
The Libation Bearers by Aeschylus feels heavier than The Agamemnon.
Years after the murder of Agamemnon, it follows Orestes returns from exile to avenger his father, reunites with his sister, Electra, and they plot the deaths of Clytemnestra and Aegisthus.
And much like it's prequel, the play's morality never stays black and white.
We see the fallout of Agamemnon's death. The household is haunted by his ghost, Orestes is exiled, and Electra is treated no better than a slave. So what follows next is believed to be the House of Atreus's restoration.
There's debate on whether Clytemnestra's grief reaction to hearing of her son's supposed death is genuine, but personally, the trilogy keeps exposing how she uses the roles of mother and lady of the house to her benefit.
While she claims she sent Orestes away for his own safety in The Agamemnon and that Phocis is an ally of Argos, she never brought him back after her revenge. And the nurse Cilissa claims her joy was hidden behind grief. (I swear, she deserves an Oscar.)
She pleas to Orestes that she's his mother, how she raised and nursed him, but Cilissa previously revealed that she was the one who did so.
Hot take, but if nurturing makes a parent, then Cilissa was more of Orestes' mother than Clytemnestra herself.
And yet, despite all of this, the play succeeds in making matricide never feel easy.
One of the play's saddest parts is how Orestes is encouraged to sever his relationship with his mother completely, to define himself only as Agamemnon's son, so that their emotional bond is destroyed to clear his guilt.
And after killing Clytemnestra, a disoriented Orestes returns to the chorus and begins unraveling as they celebrate their city's 'liberation':
"All that’s been done and suffered, all my bloodline
grieves me, in my defiled, unenviable victory."
- Line 1016-1017
There's no real victory here.
Agamemnon killed his daughter Iphigenia, so Clytemnestra avenged her by murdering him, and then Orestes avenged him by murdering his own mother. Every act of violence had a reason behind it, but it did them no good. It was just passed to the next person.
And Orestes' "choice" was never fully his own to begin with.
He explained how Apollo threatened him with disease, madness from the Furies, and a lonely death if he failed to avenge Agamemnon. While he said he would have done it anyway, he was still cornered.
A god didn't just command him. He threatened to pick one life to be destroyed: his or his mother's.
And the cruel part is Apollo's warnings still happen.
The Furies appear as Orestes’ mind begins to slip, and he’s driven to madness, running out of the stage.
In the end—for now—nobody wins in the House of Atreus.
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