The Oresteia: Agamemnon, the Libation Bearers, the Eumenides

  The latter, created two years before his death and awarded first prize by his city, represents the maturity of Aeschylus and Athens. It is a kind of national biography, and he rehearsed it in public as a playwright who directed and actually performed his work. Aeschylus the actor emulated Aeschylus the poet; he galvanized his words upon the stage. We may imagine him striving together with Orestes, torn by the forces that contended for his world, the archaic against the modern, and eager to unite them. For Aeschylus was born in Eleusis, close to the Mysteries, yet Athens was his city. One of the ancient nobility, he was also a democrat - a fine amphibian, adapted to the present and the past. He epitomized Ortega’s man of antiquity: ‘before he did anything, [he] took a step backwards, like the bullfighter who leaps back to deliver his mortal thrust’. As Aeschylus portrays the founding of the Areopagus, he may seem to endorse the latest, radical reforms that curbed its jurisdiction to cases of homicide, but he also recalls its older senatorial powers that had been stripped, he urges against all innovations in the court, and lends it a broad humanitarian cast that should govern life to come. A conservative democrat, he conserves his origins by competing with them, evincing their potential for the future.

  Aeschylus is the great religious visionary. He makes old myths new with all the arrogance of the Chosen. He may well have been the first to present the Furies on the stage, then identify them as the Furies, Semnai and Eumenides in one. Imagine him as the leader of his chorus - an old man, rising up from the elders of the city, he rejuvenated his native spirits at the last, his ‘children always young’. They were impulsive, aggressive, at times irrational, yet he redeemed their fierce vitality through his art; he trained them into song and social value. For he had a mission too: to make the crisis between the Furies and the gods the origin not only of the Areopagus but of Athens in her prime. Ultimately like Athena, he reclaimed the energies of his mothers for the greatness of his fathers. It was as if he had returned to his birthplace, where he prayed, as Aristophanes had him pray, ‘O Demeter, you who nursed my heart, /make me worthy of your mystic rites.’ Never an initiate himself, it seems, he proved his worth as a kind of initiating priest who led those rites in his own inimitable ways - in the savage parody of Agamemnon, the tragic parody of The Libation Bearers, finally the sacred parody of The Eumenides, where the closing pageant is a civic marriage of men and gods, the civic birth of Athens. The Mysteries of Eleusis leave us rapt as saints. The Mysteries of Aeschylus, breaking out of ritual into drama, lead us towards a living waking vision, a state of consciousness where we must act as citizens. Aeschylus recasts the secrets of the Mysteries in spectacular public form. This was heresy, and legend tells that he was brought to trial, perhaps for this offence, but he won his freedom by appealing to his performance at Marathon or seeking refuge at the altar of Dionysus. Or both, we may say, since his exploits for democracy and the religious power of his art were intertwined. His authadeia had merged with his megaloprepeia; his arrogance became magnificence in the service of his maker. At the end of the Oresteia, when the joy of the people blends with the Escorts’ song of praise to the gods, Aeschylus might say with the Psalmist, ‘Not unto us, O Lord, not unto us, but unto thy name give glory.’

  Aeschylus had achieved pure unity of being, the Mean in art and life. Athens granted him a kind of immortality. A public decree insured the reproduction of his work, and after he died his work won many victories - in effect his tragedies became enshrined. Yet in life the man was restless, striving to the end. One of the old breed, politically disenchanted perhaps, probably no longer at home in an Athens captious, brilliant, somewhat over-ripe, he died in Sicily, ‘the America of the day’, as Lattimore describes it, ‘the new Greek world, rich, generous and young’. He was approaching seventy. Some say he had gone to produce his Oresteia. ‘Old men ought to be explorers,’ as Eliot advises,Here and there does not matter

  We must be still and still moving

  Into another intensity

  For a further union, a deeper communion

  Through the dark cold and the empty desolation,

  The wave cry, the wind cry, the vast waters

  Of the petrel and the porpoise. In my end is my beginning.

  Aeschylus’ rite of passage is our own. The final act of mimesis is our re-creation of his world. We may see the house of Atreus become the house of Athens and the city of mankind. We see as Cassandra sees. Civilization rises from barbarity and it is perishable, its progress is the fruit of human struggle, a new barbarity may engulf the future. Yet seeing is believing, too. An act of commemoration is asking for commitment from us all, a spirit of desire far from Aristotle’s blend of pity and fear that purges us of both emotions, ‘calm of mind, all passion spent’. In the Oresteia we are not purged, we are over-mastered by the spirit of Dionysus - ‘Heaven blazing into the head’. It is not pity and fear but reverence and terror, tragic joy, the only spirit that could lead a people to become a myth by charging myth with all the fullness of their hearts. Here tragedy stands between the ecstasy from which it may have risen and the spectacle it would become. Here tragedy sounds a call to action. The torches blaze. The drums begin. The riders of Athens mount. Ahead are ‘girls and mothers, /trains of aged women grave in movement’. And following them the audience and ourselves. Athena leads us towards a creation always new. The end of the Oresteia is simply our beginning. Performance is all. ‘Cry, cry in triumph, carry on the dancing on and on.’

  ROBERT FAGLES

  W. B. STANFORD

  AGAMEMNON

  FOR MY MOTHER AND FATHER

  Be like me! - amid the incessant flux of appearances, eternally creating, eternally driving into life, in this rushing, whirling flux eternally seizing satisfaction - I am the Great Mother !

  - NIETZSCHE, The Birth of Tragedy

  CHARACTERS

  WATCHMAN

  CLYTAEMNESTRA

  HERALD

  AGAMEMNON

  CASSANDRA

  AEGISTHUS

  CHORUS, THE OLD MEN OF ARGOS

  AND THEIR LEADER

  Attendants of Clytaemnestra and of Agamemnon,

  bodyguard of Aegisthus

  TIME AND SCENE: A night in the tenth and final autumn of the Trojan war. The house of Atreus in Argos. Before it, an altar stands unlit; a watchman on the high roofs fights to stay awake.

  WATCHMAN:

  Dear gods, set me free from all the pain,

  the long watch I keep, one whole year awake ..

  propped on my arms, crouched on the roofs of Atreus

  like a dog.

  I know the stars by heart,

  the armies of the night, and there in the lead

  the ones that bring us snow or the crops of summer,

  bring us all we have -

  our great blazing kings of the sky,

  I know them, when they rise and when they fall ...

  and now I watch for the light, the signal-fire

  breaking out of Troy, shouting Troy is taken.

  So she commands, full of her high hopes.

  That woman - she manoeuvres like a man.

  And when I keep to my bed, soaked in dew,

  and the thoughts go groping through the night

  and the good dreams that used to guard my sleep ...

  not here, it’s the old comrade, terror, at my neck.

  I mustn’t sleep, no -Shaking himself awake.

  Look alive, sentry.

  And I try to pick out tunes, I hum a little,

  a good cure for sleep, and the tears start,

  I cry for the hard times come to the house,

  no longer run like the great place of old.

  Oh for a blessed end to all our pain,

  some godsend burning through the dark -Light appears slowly in the east; he struggles to his feet and scans it.

  I salute you!

  You dawn of the darkness, you turn night to day -

  I see the light at last.

  They’ll be dancing in the
streets of Argos

  thanks to you, thanks to this new stroke of-

  Aieeeeee!

  There’s your signal clear and true, my queen!

  Rise up from bed - hurry, lift a cry of triumph

  through the house, praise the gods for the beacon,

  if they’ve taken Troy . . .

  But there it burns,

  fire all the way. I’m for the morning dances.

  Master’s luck is mine. A throw of the torch

  has brought us triple-sixes - we have won!

  My move now —Beginning to dance, then breaking off. lost in thought.

  Just bring him home. My king,

  I’ll take your loving hand in mine and then . . .

  the rest is silence. The ox is on my tongue.

  Aye, but the house and these old stones,

  give them a voice and what a tale they’d tell.

  And so would I, gladly . . .

  I speak to those who know; to those who don’t

  my mind’s a blank. I never say a word.

  He climbs down from the roof and disappears into the palace through a side entrance. A CHORUS. the old men of Argos who have not learned the news of victory, enters and marches round the altar.

  CHORUS:

  Ten years gone, ten to the day

  our great avenger went for Priam -

  Menelaus and lord Agamemnon,

  two kings with the power of Zeus,

  the twin throne, twin sceptre,

  Atreus’ sturdy yoke of sons

  launched Greece in a thousand ships, so

  armadas cutting loose from the land,

  armies massed for the cause, the rescue -From within the palace CLYTAEMNESTRA raises a cry of triumph.

  the heart within them screamed for all-out war I

  Like vultures robbed of their young,

  the agony sends them frenzied,

  soaring high from the nest, round and

  round they wheel, they row their wings,

  stroke upon churning thrashing stroke,

  but all the labour, the bed of pain,

  the young are lost forever.

  Yet someone hears on high - Apollo,

  Pan or Zeus - the piercing wail

  these guests of heaven raise,

  and drives at the outlaws, late

  but true to revenge, a stabbing Fury!

  CLYTAEMNESTRA appears at the doors and pauses with her entourage.

  So towering Zeus the god of guests

  drives Atreus’ sons at Paris,

  all for a woman manned by many

  the generations wrestle, knees

  grinding the dust, the manhood drains,

  the spear snaps in the first blood rites

  that marry Greece and Troy.

  And now it goes as it goes

  and where it ends is Fate.

  And neither by singeing flesh

  nor tipping cups of wine

  nor shedding burning tears can you

  enchant away the rigid Fury.

  CLYTAEMNESTRA lights the altar-fires.

  We arc the old, dishonoured ones,

  the broken husks of men.

  Even then they cast us off,

  the rescue mission left us here

  to prop a child’s strength upon a stick.

  What if the new sap rises in his chest?

  He has no soldiery in him,

  no more than we,

  and we are aged past ageing,

  gloss of the leaf shrivelled,

  three legs at a time we falter on.

  Old men are children once again,

  a dream that sways and wavers

  into the hard light of day.

  But you,

  daughter of Leda, queen Clytaemnestra,

  what now, what news, what message

  drives you through the citadel

  burning victims? Look,

  the city gods, the gods of Olympus,

  gods of the earth and public markets -

  all the altars blazing with your gifts!

  Argos blazes! Torches

  race the sunrise up her skies -

  drugged by the lulling holy oils,

  unadulterated,

  run from the dark vaults of kings.

  Tell us the news !

  What you can, what is right -

  Heal us, soothe our fears!

  Now the darkness comes to the fore,

  now the hope glows through your victims,

  beating back this raw, relentless anguish

  gnawing at the heart.

  CLYTAEMNESTRA ignores them and pursues her rituals; they assemble for the opening chorus.

  O but I still have power to sound the god’s command at the

  roads

  that launched the kings. The gods breathe power through

  my song,

  my fighting strength, Persuasion grows with the years -

  I sing how the flight of fury hurled the twin command,

  one will that hurled young Greece

  and winged the spear of vengeance straight for Troy!

  The kings of birds to kings of the beaking prows, one black,

  one with a blaze of silver

  skimmed the palace spearhand right

  and swooping lower, all could see,

  plunged their claws in a hare, a mother

  bursting with unborn young - the babies spilling,

  quick spurts of blood - cut off the race just dashing into life!

  Cry, cry for death, but good win out in glory in the end.

  But the loyal seer of the armies studied Atreus’ sons,

  two sons with warring hearts - he saw two eagle-kings

  devour the hare and spoke the things to come,

  ‘Years pass, and the long hunt nets the city of Priam,

  the flocks beyond the walls,

  a kingdom’s life and soul - Fate stamps them out.

  Just let no curse of the gods lour on us first,

  shatter our giant armour

  forged to strangle Troy. I see

  pure Artemis bristle in pity-

  yes, the flying hounds of the Father

  slaughter for armies . . . their own victim . . a woman

  trembling young, all born to die- She loathes the eagles’ feast !’

  Cry, cry for death, but good win out in glory in the end.

  ‘Artemis, lovely Artemis, so kind

  to the ravening lion’s tender, helpless cubs,

  the suckling young of beasts that stalk the wilds -

  bring this sign for all its fortune,

  all its brutal torment home to birth!

  I beg you, Healing Apollo, soothe her before

  her crosswinds hold us down and moor the ships too long,

  pressing us on to another victim . . .

  nothing sacred, no

  no feast to be eaten

  the architect of vengeanceTurning to the palace.

  growing strong in the house

  with no fear of the husband

  here she waits

  the terror raging back and back in the future

  the stealth, the law of the hearth, the mother -

  Memory womb of Fury child-avenging Fury!‘

  So as the eagles wheeled at the crossroads,

  Calchas clashed out the great good blessings mixed with doom

  for the halls of kings, and singing with our fate

  we cry, cry for death, but good win out in glory in the end.

  Zeus, great nameless all in all,

  if that name will gain his favour,

  I will call him Zeus.

  I have no words to do him justice,

  weighing all in the balance,

  all I have is Zeus, Zeus -

  lift this weight, this torment from my spirit,

  cast it once for all.

  He who was so mighty once,

  storming for the wars of heaven,

  he has had his day.

&n
bsp; And then his son who came to power

  met his match in the third fall

  and he is gone. Zeus, Zeus -

  raise your cries and sing him Zeus the Victor!

  You will reach the truth:

  Zeus has led us on to know,

  the Helmsman lays it down as law

  that we must suffer, suffer into truth.

  We cannot sleep, and drop by drop at the heart

  the pain of pain remembered comes again,

  and we resist, but ripeness comes as well.

  From the gods enthroned on the awesome rowing-bench

  there comes a violent love.

  So it was that day the king,

  the steersman at the helm of Greece,

  would never blame a word the prophet said -

  swept away by the wrenching winds of fortune

  he conspired! Weatherbound we could not sail,

  our stores exhausted, fighting strength hard-pressed,

  and the squadrons rode in the shallows off Chalkis

  where the riptide crashes, drags,

  and winds from the north pinned down our hulls at Aulis,

  port of anguish . . . head winds starving,

  sheets and the cables snapped

  and the men’s minds strayed,

  the pride, the bloom of Grcece

  was raked as time ground on,

  ground down, and then the cure for the storm

  and it was harsher - Calchas cried,

  ‘My captains, Artemis must have blood!’ -

  so harsh the sons of Atreus

  dashed their sceptres on the rocks,

  could not hold back the tears,

  and I still can hear the older warlord saying,

  ‘Obey, obey, or a heavy doom will crush me! -

  Oh but doom will crush me

  once I rend my child,

  the glory of my house -

  a father’s hands are stained,