There was a problem filtering reviews right now. Please try again later. These plays are among the founding documents of Western Civilization, dramatizing the movement from bloody tribal revenge to a community of justice based on law. A good translation is essential to understanding them, and these translations are good. Compare the first lines of the Agamemnon from the older Lattimore version published by the University of Chicago: Still, most of us aren't going to learn Ancient Greek, so if we are to read these plays at all we need translations, approximate as they may be.
The best a translator may be able do is to render the original into a version that is understandable and can be enjoyed by the educated reader. Shapiro's Oxford version is quite clear and understandable Modern English poetry, and I have enjoyed reading it, which was definitely NOT the case with Lattimore's. The copious end notes in this edition are also quite helpful. Agamemnon's great trilogy in a well-translated rendering. This is the best translation I've read of The Oresteia. There is an excellent Introduction that recounts the background of the story, the Translator's discussion of how he dealt with the issues of turning classical Greek into modern English and Notes at the end that give detailed explanations of various passages.
All in all, this is excellent. The purpose of this translation is to make the book more relevant to the modern reader. This is the only translation I've yet read. I bought this one because I loved the Sophocles translation in the same series. This is by different translators and I didn't find it quite as engaging, but still enjoyed it. Kindle Edition Verified Purchase. Superb translation that conveys the drama of the original in accomplished English that is not stilted or contrived.
Read these, do good things. On April 4, , Robert F. Kennedy stopped in Indianapolis during his bid for the Democratic presidential nomination. That day, Martin Luther King, Jr. He quoted a passage by Aeschylus: Evidently, Jackie had recommended Aeschylus as a way to make sense of the tragedy that had befallen their family in November, This piqued my own interest in Aeschylus.
Via Google, I eventually discovered that the passage is from Agamemnon. But which translation to read? Kennedy recited a slightly modified version of a prose translation by Edith Hamilton. Her rendering is nicely lyrical, but I wondered about the accuracy. I decided to check some of the other translations, using that passage as my metric. Hamilton herself translated the passage more than once.
Here is how their man, Robert Fagles, translated the passage: From the gods enthroned on the awesome rowing-bench there comes a violent love. From the gods who sit in grandeur grace comes somehow violent. But the rhythm is pleasing. From the high bench of the gods by violence, it seems, grace comes. Harsh the grace dispensed by powers immortal On the awful grace enthroned. Although the translation is evidently from , it sounds more like it was written in This grace is forced upon us by sacred spirits who reign above.
This seems like it might be a good version for students who have trouble understanding the more poetic versions. Good sense comes the hard way. The last line strikes a good balance between clear meaning and rhythmic punch, though. A New Translation by Ted Hughes: And this is how the gods declare their love. Truth comes with pain. So, where does this leave us? To quote another poet T. Unfortunately, her full Agamemnon is not available in e-book format.
Of course, one passage does not a translation make; this is not enough to make a truly fair comparison between translations of Agamemnon alone, much less the other plays. Still, I offer these comparisons in the hope that they will provide some small help to others who are trying to decide between translations. The Greek of the fifth century, with a total disregard of that logic which only enters religion when the systematizing theologian begins to blur the traces of its manifold and unreconciled origins, thought of the dead as at once removed to the lower world and residing in his tomb.
In the lower world he led a shadowy and help- less existence ; in the tomb he was a powerful daemon whose tendency towards maleficent interference in the affairs of the living could be re- strained only by constant attention to his needs. Doubtless the Greek peasant returning from market to his country home at dusk and passing through the Ceramicus and out at the Dipylon gate, many a time believed that he had seen the dead mournfully seated upon the steps of their tombs, in the dejected attitude the vase-painter has made familiar to us.
It is this conception of the dead as a powerful tomb-haunting daemon that Aeschylus has emphasized in the Choephori. Here the moving force, the actual hero one might say, is just this spirit of the departed crying out for vengeance from the grave where he resides, working for 1 Cf. Fairbanks, Athenian White Lekythoi, p. On one of a series of Roman sarcophagi, 1 going back probably to some famous Greek painting, 2 the ghost of Agamem- non, mysteriously shrouded, actually appears at the door of the tomb, and beside it sleeps a Fury holding the axe of Clytemnestra.
Here the painter has not illustrated the play ; he has given an illuminating inter- pretation of its spirit. We cannot expect as much of the mere artisans who decorated the vases. Yet, despite the very general way in which the vase -painter has treated his theme, there are certain points in the characterization of the individuals that he never forgets. The relative importance of Orestes and Pylades is always carefully indicated. The figure of Py lades is placed in a position of less prominence — he plays the part of the com- panion, the willing but not vitally interested friend, while on the purely sepulchral vases the figures bringing offerings are usually ranged sym- metrically at either side of the tomb.
Electra too is distinguished from her attendants, either by the signs of mourning, — the short hair and the black robe, — or by the prominence of her position in the centre of the composition, or yet more subtly, by the indication of the ravages of grief and ill-treatment that make Orestes recognize her among the band of mourners and exclaim: A detailed examination of the vases will, I think, bear out these general statements.
Robert, Die antiken Sarcophagreliefs, Vol. The Oresteia of Aeschylus in the shape of an Ionic column standing on a high plinth, a youth is seated clasping a staff between his hands. Before him, to the left and on slightly higher ground, stands another youth with hanging pilos, a spear in his right hand and a sheathed sword in his left. A chlamys is draped over his left arm. He seems to be addressing the spirit in the tomb.
On the Berlin relief x Py lades is similarly seated in front of the grave, quite in the spirit of Aeschylus, a witness, but in no sense a participant in the scene. If both youths were merely worshippers at the grave, the careful differentiation between the two could have no meaning, but for Orestes and Pylades it is altogether admirable.
After the long journey Pyaldes, not inspired by the larger emotions that exalt and sustain his friend, sits down wearily upon the ground. If the ancient shepherds were as prone to take their noonday rest in the shade of some convenient monument as are their modern descendants, the vase-painter may very well have taken this figure, which has a certain genre-like charm, from life, and not have borrowed it from his storehouse of inherited types. Orestes, on the other hand, moved by the sight of his father's grave, and conscious of his personal danger, invokes the help of Chthonian Hermes and addresses the dead spirit: Although made in Campania, the picture probably brings us nearer to the time of Aeschylus than is at first apparent, for it belongs to a class of vases modelled in shape, technique, and treatment on the Attic Nolan amphora.
One cannot say with certainty, although there is something in the refinement and delicacy of the faces and the purity of outline in the figures that argues strongly in favor of this supposition. The two vases that Overbeck 4 wishes to associate with this opening 1 Mon.
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Walters, History of Ancient Pottery, I, p. Overbeck, Gallerie heroischer Bildwerke, p. They show two youths at a grave. On one vase they merely stand at either side with an urn between them ; on the other they are making offerings of a wreath and a cake. With the withdrawal of Orestes and Pylades, Electra appears on the scene, followed by a chorus of women in wild lamentation. A hint of the gestures that accompanied this parodos, although not reflected in any of the vases connected with the trilogy, may be found in a sepul- chral statue 2 that has come down to us, depicting a woman who wails and tears her hair, and in the figures on certain white Athenian lecythi.
The Oresteia: Agamemnon, The Libation Bearers, The Eumenides by Aeschylus
V, however, shows two men in this position. The Oresteia of Aeschylus A single vase VII , on which the picture is divided between the two sides, shows the moment just before the meeting of brother and sister. A woman with her chiton drawn up over head, is engaged in tying a taenia about a stele inscribed ATAM E which stands on a three-stepped base. Opposite her another female figure holds a basket of taeniae. On the reverse two youths are depicted, both with chlamys and hang- ing petasos, and carrying long staves. The one seems to hold back, while the other, Orestes, advances.
This reluctance on the part of Pylades to participate in the coming scene of recognition is simply but effectively indicated, and gives a touch of individuality to a composition that otherwise approximates very closely to the general type of vases with sepulchral themes. The veiled woman is of course Electra 1 and the other probably an attendant, although the name of Chrysothemis has been suggested for her. When we come to the actual meeting, and the scene that rises to a climax in the joyful greeting of brother and sister and the dedication of Orestes to the deed of murder and revenge, we find that art had antici- pated the work of Aeschylus, and formulated it in a group remarkable for the profound expression of feeling.
The conception can hardly have been original with the maker of the small and badly mutilated relief from Melos VIII , but must represent either the culmination of a type that had been long developing, or the creation of some single great artist. The relief was probably made before the year B. Her legs are crossed, and she leans her head, which is veiled, on her left hand.
A pitcher for pouring libations is at her feet. Behind her stands an old woman likewise veiled, evidently the nurse. From the opposite side three men approach. The foremost has one foot raised on the steps of the monu- ment, and, leaning over, is about to touch Electra's arm, while the second, at some distance, holds his hand thoughtfully to his chin. The 1 Electra is similarly veiled on the earliest extant monument connected with this scene, the terra cotta from Melos, and on a series of vases from Southern Italy. The horse in the foreground indicates that they are travellers. In spite of archaic severity and poor preserva- tion, the emaciated figure of Electra, with its inwardness of grief, its absorption in thoughts of consuming melancholy, breathes a certain spirit of ruined nobility that we look for in vain on the works of the later vase-painters.
They are not keyed emotionally to so high a pitch, nor are they so direct and concentrated in exression. Although Robert 1 gives the name of Talthybius to the man leaning over and touching Electra on the arm, I think, purely as a matter of feeling, that the tenderness of the gesture belongs rather to the brother than to the old servant, and the argument that the second youth, because he is obviously the most distinguished of the three, must therefore be Orestes, as Robert maintains, does not seem cogent.
I prefer to follow those 2 who see in the three men Orestes, Pylades, and a servant.
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With this interpretation the beauty and consistency of the gamut of emotions becomes at once apparent, ranging as it does from the stolidity of the servant to the sympathetic aloofness of Pylades, and rising to a climax in the joyful eagerness of Orestes, thus brought into immediate contrast with the intense gloom of the unconscious Electra. We have here a conception of the recognition scene based, in all probability, as Robert 8 has shown, on the Oresteia of Stesichorus and antedating, though not by many years, the drama of Aeschylus.
What then, we may ask, did the Aeschylean trilogy do, either to preserve and popularize what was already in existence, or to modify it and bring it into stricter accord with the version of the play? Strange to say, we must answer: At the time of its production nothing at all. A single vase IX of the second half of the fifth century preserves the tradition of the relief, but in a form that has lost both in individuality and intensity, and approximates rather to the scheme of the funeral lecythi. If, as Robert holds, this type of mourning woman was origi- nally created to illustrate the myth of Orestes and Electra, then it appears early to have been divorced from this subject and applied to a 1 K.
Robert, Bild und Lied, p. Conze, Annali delP Inst. Brunn, "Troische Miscellen," Sitzungsber. She appears as the defunct, mournfully seated on the steps of her tomb, or as the faithful servant placed above her mistress's grave. But another view is possible. The terra-cotta relief may represent the application to a particular myth of a type that at its inception had only a general funerary significance. The single vase from the fifth century that illustrates the legend of Orestes and Electra in a manner recalling the terra-cotta relief is a white Athenian lecythus in the British Museum IX , here published for the first time Plate I.
The drawing, as far as can be judged, is rather angular and lacking in freedom. Electra the name was originally inscribed sits on the upper step of a stele with one foot drawn up on the lower step, resting her left arm and right elbow on her raised knee, and supporting her chin on her right hand. She wears a black sleeveless chiton and a red himation. Orestes name also originally inscribed stands before her to the left, and extends his right hand as if in conversation.
He 1 Robert, Bild und Lied, p. Furtw angler, Collection Sabouroff, pi. I, text to pi. To the right is an attendant carrying a large box or basket in her right arm and lifting the drapery from her shoulder with the left hand. Possibly it is due to the influence of the Choephori of Aeschylus that the old nurse is now consistently eliminated from the scene, and the youthful attendant substituted.
This figure, with the rather mean- ingless gesture, becomes popular on South Italian vases, and seems to have been developed from that of a woman lifting a corner of her veil. Both the general resemblance in type and the essential difference in spirit between this vase and the relief are at once apparent. On the vase the climax is over, the recognition has taken place, and Orestes and Electra are found in conversation with one another.
On the relief, on the other hand, we are, as it were, suspended between two moments representing the emotional extremes of joy and despair. Electra is still plunged in gloom, but let her feel that touch upon her arm and she will be raised to the heights of unbounded joy that in the play call forth the restraining words of Orestes: One other vase X of the last quarter of the fifth century, 2 on which the figures are drawn in a large and noble style reminiscent of Phidian art, probably shows the same scene, but the scheme of the composition differs from that of the Melian relief.
Electra, seated sideways, towards the right, on the plinth of a grave stele, looks up at Orestes who stands before her leaning on a staff. Her hair is shorn, and she wears no veil. Evidently they are conversing, for her right hand is extended in an expressive gesture. On the left side of the stele a servant holds a basket of wreaths and taeniae. Here even the attitude of dejection that indicated in a certain measure the mood of Electra has been aban- doned.
She expresses neither the joy of the moment nor the sorrow of her past life, and the scene, like the gatherings of sacred characters in Renaissance art, has been generalized to the extent of representing a mere "Conversazione. Fairbanks, White Athenian Lekythoi, p.
The Oresteia of Aeschylus material, and an amphora XI in Naples seems to mark the transition from the old to the new style. Although it has the characteristics of Lucanian vase-painting, 1 especially in the large type of head and some- what coarse physiognomies, the combination of dignity with grace in the attitude of the figures, and the simple lines of the drapery, suggest, if not direct influence, at least reminiscences of Phidian art. The left leg is slightly raised, and she clasps the knee in an attitude of mild and dreamy dejection.
Above her stands an attendant, exactly in the pose of the one on the Athenian lecythus IX. Orestes and Pylades approach from the right, the former somewhat in advance and extend- ing his right hand as if addressing Electra, although there is nothing to indicate that she gives heed or is even aware of his presence. A youth, seated above at the extreme right, undoubtedly introduced merely to fill an unpleasing void, may be interpreted as a follower of Orestes. It is at once apparent that the treatment of the theme has again gained in individuality.
Even omitting the inscriptions the spurious addition of which is proof of the strong suggestion contained in the picture , we are in no danger of seeing in it merely a grave ceremony taken from the daily life of the people. With the introduction of Pylades the group now contains only those figures that the scene of the Choephori requires, and I think we are at last justified in perceiving a distinct connection, though not necessarily through the medium of the stage, between the drama and vase-painting.
A series of Lucanian vases, so closely connected in subject and style as undoubtedly to be the product of one factory, if not the work of a single artist, shows a somewhat different treatment of the theme, but one 1 Characteristic of Lucanian ware are the rosette, the arms hung up in the field to fill space, and the use on the reverse of this vase, published in Inghirami, Vast Fit- till, II, pi. Furtwangler, Masterpieces of Greek Sculpture, p.
I shall discuss them in the following order: Lucanian calpis, Naples XII. Lucanian amphora, published by Inghirami, pi. In the centre Electra, veiled, her head supported by her right hand, sits on the steps of a funeral monument in the form of an Ionic column.
A taenia tied about the shaft, a variety of vases, a black taenia and a pomegranate lying on the three-stepped base sufficiently indicate the nature of the ceremonies that have been performed. To the left of the grave stands Orestes with a spear in his left hand and a phial e extended in the other, while Hermes occupies the corresponding position to the right. He is placed upon the base of the tomb, and leaning on his kerykeion, crowns the column with a wreath.
Pylades is seated at the left, under the handle of the vase ; he turns his head to look towards the centre. He holds a spear in one hand and a large pilos in the other. A bearded man with a staff stands directly behind Hermes, and a similar figure, wearing a close fitting cap and likewise carrying a staff, is seated, facing the centre, on a sack tied together at one end. He occupies the space under the right handle. The figure of a nude youth at the left, and that of a servant holding an alabastron at the right, complete the composition. All the figures, with the exception of Orestes and Electra who are drawn in three quarter view, look towards the centre.
For a vase of so late a date the grouping is strangely symmetrical ; nor is the picture animated by any unifying idea that would tend to counteract the unpleasing impression of its formal arrangement. Electra, in spite of the advent of her brother, and although placed at an angle that, of necessity, makes her aware of his presence, maintains the dejected attitude appropriate to the opening of the play.
Orestes, on the other 1 Permission to publish this vase and the photograph from which the plate was made were obtained through the kindness of M. Orestes, Electra, and Hermes at the Tomb of Agamemnon Lucanian Amphora, Louvre The Oresteia of Aeschylus hand, is pouring a libation, a ceremony he could not have performed until after the recognition had taken place. The introduction of a nude youth into a scene in which he is obviously out of place, merely in order to provide a counterpart to the female ser- vant at the extreme right, does not show the inventive power of the artist in a favorable light.
There is, however, an imaginative touch in the figure of the retainer, whose foreign appearance, in combination with the baggage upon which he is seated, at once suggests the further development of the plot: No other interpretation suggests itself, and yet it is difficult to explain his presence on any other ground than the deliberate choice of the vase-painter ; for by a slight shifting of the remaining figures the composition could easily have been extended to its present dimensions, and the decorative requirements equally well fulfilled.
He does not reappear on any of the vases that represent abbreviations of this picture. On XIII the composition is reduced to seven figures. Pylades and the Paedagogus are omitted, the retainer with the baggage transferred 1 The pouring of a libation by Orestes is not alluded to in the text of the play.
It might, however, have taken place during the kommos without special mention. Tucker, The Choephori of Aeschylus, p. The attitude of Hermes is the same, but he now stands on the ground instead of on the step of the monument, and Orestes holds a pitcher. There are unessential modifications in the poses of the end figures. Only four of the characters are present on XIV. To the right of Electra stands Hermes, identical with the one on vase XII, except that the right hand holds no wreath.
The servant at the extreme right of XII and XIII has been moved to a position directly behind Hermes, and now lifts her drapery with the left, and an alabastron with the right hand. Orestes, with a cantharus in his hand, occupies the left field. The picture on XV Plate II , which consists of only three figures, — Electra seated on a high five-stepped monument, surmounted by a Doric column supporting a crater, with Orestes to the left and Hermes to the right, — appears to be an excerpt from the larger composition of XIII, from which it differs only in unessential details.
Orestes holds a cylix, and the position of Electra is slightly shifted towards the left. On all the vases there are minor variations, which I have not noted, in the shape of the monument and the nature and number of the offerings and vases placed upon the steps. It would be idle to seek for a basic composition among a series of pictures in which the elements are rather aligned than composed, and the meaningless figures of serving men and women represented in pre- ference to characters of such primary importance in every version of the myth as Pylades, who is omitted on all but the most comprehensive treatment of the story XII.
Electra is everywhere the same figure of gentle and resigned melancholy, pensively leaning her head upon her hand.
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She is still the direct descendant of the old Electra of the Melian relief, but one feels that she has survived rather as a type than as an individual ; for all the stern and tragic intensity has vanished with the emaciated form. Here the limbs are rounded, the body gracefully bent under the weight of affliction. She appears rather a burdened than a bitter and rebellious spirit.
This emotional attenuation is the price she has had to pay for her long apprenticeship as the universal type of mourning, during which she seems to have been recreated in the milder spirit of the ideas which, towards the middle of the fifth and in the fourth century, centred around the conception of the dead. The Oresteia of Aeschylus That the vase-painters of Southern Italy were capable of more dramatic feeling, the pictures connected with the Eumenides will show. The servant seated on the baggage offers the link that binds the picture most closely to the Choephori, for by his presence emphasis is laid on a feature that, so far as we know, is purely Aeschylean, and one upon which hinges the whole development of the plot: She is seated in the familiar attitude on the steps of an aedicula, holding a large jar in her lap.
Orestes, with a gesture indicative of surprise and pleasure, ap- proaches from the right, while Pylades, with a nice sense of differentia- tion is made to stand quietly on the other side of the monument and look back upon the scene.
Compared with the somewhat dull adherence to a type, one might almost say to a formula, in some of the vases reflecting the Choephori, this one is vivified by an imaginative strain of unusual freshness and charm. The artist has here succeded in giving a poetic suggestion of the momentary emotion without introducing the note of exaggeration that mars so many of the dramatic vase-paintings. She holds a black taenia in the right hand, and a large hydria ornamented with a taenia and branches in her left arm.
Orestes leans forward upon his spear, and looks smilingly into his sister's eyes, as if trying to draw from her a joyful recognition of his identity. It is the moment when Electra, who has previously accepted too confidently the uncertain evidence of 1 Cho. But, were it not for the evidence of the vase previously discussed, on which she holds in her lap a jar of similar proportions, it might be argued that the size of the hydria is inconsistent with the offices that Electra actually performs at the grave, 2 and suggests rather the moment in the Electra of Sophocles when Orestes, after having handed his sister the bronze urn containing, supposedly, his own ashes, demands it back with the words: In the play of Sophocles the meeting of brother and sister does not take place at a tomb, and on the only certain illustration of his Electra that we possess 4 the vase-painter has avoided any indication of locality.
He has further been at pains to emphasize the fact that the urn which Orestes holds out to Electra is of bronze, by giving the rim a shape that is found only in metal vases. I think, therefore, that the inspiration of our vase may be sought far more justly in the lines I have quoted from the Choephori. Perhaps so, although we have travelled very far away from the tragic conception of Aeschylus.
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Electra, in a some- 1 Cho. The Oresteia of Aeschylus what modified form of the now familiar attitude of mourning, sits upon a very large striped cushion ; but her appearance, no doubt under the influence of the love scenes so prevalent on South Italian vases, has indeed undergone a change " into something rich and strange. Her elbow no longer rests upon her knee, but the hand is brought up to the veil with a gesture which, in combination with her adornment, gives her more the appearance of a bride than of an afflicted princess reduced to the condition of a slave.
Orestes, with spear in one hand and sheathed sword in the other, stands at the left, and a servant or, perhaps, — in view of the richness of her costume and the jewelry she wears — Chrysothemis at the right, with mirror and pyxis. In fact it does not coincide with the version of any of the three great tragedians.
Electra, clad in a black chiton and scanty himation, her hair cut short, appears in front of a house indicated by a platform and a column with a hydria in one hand and a taenia in the other. Were it not for the taenia, one would at once connect the picture with the play of Euripides, in which Electra, as the wife of a peasant, goes to fetch water, but this badge of mourning seems to indicate that she is bound for the tomb of Agamemnon.
The gesture of her right hand, furthermore, indicates that she has caught sight of Orestes and Pylades, who are engaged in conversation at the left of the picture and are apparently unaware of her presence. But this is not the case in any of the extant dramatic versions. Electra is always surprised by her brother, and the vase-painters never take liberties with this essential feature of the story. One must therefore conclude that this vase illustrates an otherwise unknown version of the Orestes myth. I have also omitted two vases which Overbeck connects with the meeting of Orestes and Electra at the tomb of their father, because I do not feel convinced that they represent more than an ordinary funerary scene.
On the first Overbeck, Her. Two vases stand on the base of the stele and another hangs in the back- Hetty Goldman The remaining scenes of the play, into which so much of bloodshed and moving dramatic contrast is compressed, find no reflection in the vase-painter's art. The murder of Aegisthus had received its lasting expression in a composition formulated before the days of the great tragedians, and, in all probability, under the influence of the Oresteia of Stesichorus. Its widespread popularity is attested by the fact that it has survived in whole or in part on no less than seven 1 vases of the early fifth century.
The archetype of all these pictures Robert recon- structs in the following manner: Clytemnestra rushes to the assist- ance of her husband brandishing an axe ; a warning cry of the frightened Electra. Electra and Tal- thybius, at either end of the composition, are united by the concentra- tion of their terrified interest upon the same point, the axe of Clytem- nestra ; while in the centre the eyes of the mother, frustrated in her ground.
On the second vase Overbeck, op. The absence of any acces- sory figures, such as usually appear on the South Italian vases connected with the recognition scene, and the typical and unemotional manner in which the offices at the tomb are performed warrant us in rejecting a mythological interpretation for these pictures.
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In the catalogue description of the vase, the scene is interpreted as the death of Orpheus contaminated by the " Aegisthus " type, because the seated figure wears a long chiton and holds a lyre in one hand. But the picture otherwise corresponds to the most complete representation of the murder of Aegisthus by Orestes — Talthybius, Clytemnestra, and Electra are all present — and Orpheus, in legend and art, meets his death at the hands of women and not of a man.
The lyre does not necessarily characterize a Greek as a professional poet or minstrel, and if we have here an actual case of contamination it ought surely to be stated in the opposite way, as the murder of Aegisthus contaminated by the Orpheus type. The Oresteia of Aeschylus murderous attempt, meet those of the son, who plunges his sword into the heart of her paramour, in a glance of ferocious hatred.
The dramatic and emotional climax is complete. As far as we know, this picture continued to dominate the popular imagination, even after a succession of dramatic poets had presented a variety of versions. So far as I am aware, it appears only once on vase-paintings later than the production of the Oresteia. A late vase from Bari XIX represents it in the following; manner.
Orestes seizes Aegisthus, who is seated on a throne, by the nair and stabs him in the breast. Behind Orestes, Cly- temnestra appears with the double axe. To the right, behind Aegisthus, Pylades departs with drawn sword, and a woman, resembling Clytem- nestra in dress and attitude, rushes up with a foot-stool lifted in her hand.
This, according to Furtwangler, 1 must be Electra, who in her passion has come to take a hand ; and he further suggests that her active participation in the scene shows the influence of tragedy upon the con- ception of her character. But the influence at work must, of course, be that of Sophocles and Euripides, not Aeschylus, in whose play she has no share either in the planning or the execution of the murder, and appears upon the stage for the first and last time in the scene at the grave.
Here the motif of Clytemnestra attempting the life of her son is preserved from the vases created under the influence of older poetry ; and this older type, so compact and forceful in expression, was never, so far as we can judge, replaced by any inspired by the writings of the dramatic poets. Clytemnestra, when she hears of the murder of Aegisthus, calls out: A servant departs, and before he can reenter with the weapon Orestes appears, Clytemnestra makes the maternal appeal, shows him the breast 1 Berliner Philologische Wochenschrift, , p. These sarcophagi belong to the time of Hadrian and so show the survival of the motif in the second century a.
Why, we must ask ourselves, does Aeschylus introduce this demand for a weapon which is never brought and plays no part in the final scene? Robert 1 in commenting upon the passage says: If Aeschylus, a resourceful and daring playwright, really felt the need, at the very height of the tragedy, of throwing a meagre sop to a possible conservative element by thus referring to older tradition, what, one must ask, would have been the actual psychological effect upon the spectators?
Would they have been more impressed by the apparent concession to tradition, or by the contrast between what is implied in the call for arms and what really takes place when mother and son are brought face to face? Aeschylus, in thus contrasting the old savage motif with the more humane one, meant, I believe, to throw the emphasis on the latter, and by causing a sudden revulsion of feeling in his audience, to make the emotional effect of the scene all the more poignant. They are prepared for a scene of horror, in which the unnatural ferocity of Clytemnestra enlists all the sympathies on the side of Orestes.
The weapon, however, is never brought. Orestes appears, and Clytemnestra, abandoning all thought of self-defence, appeals to him in the sacred name of motherhood. For the moment the sympathies of the audience flow back to the mother, who pleads, not alone to preserve her life, but also to justify it in the eyes of her son. Two primal instincts are aroused in Clytemnestra: Aeschylus first shows her to us as the woman of savage but magnificent courage, brought to bay by an enemy whose identity she has not yet recognized. Her spirit is that of 1 K. The Oresteia of Aeschylus Macbeth, who never so nearly attains to heroic stature, as when, aban- doned and aware of "the equivocation of the fiend that lies like truth," he exclaims: I 'gin to be a' weary of the sun, And wish the estate o' the world were now undone.
At least we'll die with harness on our back. But Orestes has both the hardness and the delicate scruples peculiar to youth and innocence, and while, on the one hand, he cannot understand or sympathize with the temptations that solitude and a sense of wrong had brought to her, when she pleads: When he accuses her of having sold him and she demands that he state the price she received in return he says: Instinctive pity, not understanding, prompts him momentarily to spare her life, but when he finally fulfills the command laid upon him by Apollo he seems in spiritual accord with it and so responsible for his deed.
Although there are no representations of Clytemnestra's appeal to Orestes on extant vases, the design on an Etruscan mirror XX makes it extremely probable that the motif was not invented by Aeschylus, but was taken over by him from some poem sufficiently well known in the early part of the fifth century to have influenced popular art.
The picture accords perfectly with the version of Aeschylus, and the names of Orestes Urusthe and Clytemnestra Clutumsta are inscribed. It is possible, but extremely improbable, that the engraver of so archaic a mirror was sufficiently well acquainted with the play of Aeschylus to have adapted to this subject a design originally depicting another myth.
It is also to the Choephori that we must look, I think, for the sugges- tion of a vase-picture XXI illustrating no actual scene, but the event that takes place prior to Orestes's return and inspires the action of the play, — his visit to Delphi. In the centre Apollo, with lyre in orfe hand and a laurel branch in the other, sits upon the omphalus, which is decked with taeniae. Directly in front of him to the left, with one foot raised, stands Orestes, his gaze fixed in rapt and solemn attention upon the prophetic god. Over the left shoulder he carries a spear and in his right hand he holds a sword, as if consecrating it to the deed of vengeance.
Behind Apollo appear Pylades, as always in the vase- paintings inspired by Aeschylean conceptions a mere spectator, and the Pythia seated upon the tripod and holding a taenia. A female figure, standing close to Orestes, cannot be named with any certainty. The gesture of her left hand indicates that she is in some way actively connected with the scene, but perhaps merely as an officiating priestess. The interior designs of the kylikes, perfected by Epiktetos, Euphronios, and their contemporaries, served as obvious models for disposing a design in a circular space; and they had in the subjects a mythological repertory ready to hand.
Hartwig, Die griechischen Meisterschaien des strengen roth- figurigen Stits, pi. Heydemann Vasensammlungen zu Neapel, No. The attitude of Orestes and the calm expression of his face hardly seem consistent with such an interpretation. The Oresteia of Aeschylus The probable connection of this vase with the trilogy is further strength- ened by the fact that Orestes pursued by the Furies is depicted on the reverse. The Choephori ends as Orestes, who has assumed the suppliant's emblems, the bough and chaplet, rushes from the stage pursued in imagination by the Erinyes of his mother, and the retiring chorus asks the question that is to find its answer in the Eumenides: For, although the conception of the Erinyes belonged to the most primitive element in Greek religion, Aeschylus, by bringing them upon the stage, was the first to give them a bodily presentment fixed in all the details of feature and costume.
But we must avoid a too unimaginative literalness in trying to reconstruct for ourselves the appearance of these Furies. By adding together all the features of Gorgons and Harpies that ancient art has preserved, 1 we can hardly hope to create a type that will actually correspond to what Aeschylus brought upon the stage. Horror is in no such mathe- mathical sense the sum of all its parts, and if Aeschylus had really only produced a composite picture of what was already familiar, it is incon- ceivable that he should have so terrified his audience. It is far more probable that the sight of certain features, hitherto associated only with the supernatural, in combination with a more human countenance, aroused the horror and disgust of which exaggerated accounts have come down to us in literature.
The Pythian priestess adds that their flesh as well as their garments was black, and that unlike the Harpies, whom they otherwise resembled, they had no wings. These features, which are the only ones that the text of the play forces us to associate with the Erinyes, all appear, with the exception of the blood oozing from the eyes, on one or another of the vases deal- ing with the flight of Orestes, and I think the weight of this negative evidence may at least be brought to bear against the suggestion that 1 This is the method of K.
The Oresteia of Aeschylus Aeschylus portrayed them with the distended mouth and protruding tongue of the typical gorgoneion. On the cylix of the sixth century 4 both Harpies and Boreadae fly through the air propelled each by two enormous pairs of wings and winged boots. If Aeschylus had some such archaic painting in mind, and it is quite as reasonable to suppose that he refers to an old and famous work as to a newly executed one, the feature most clearly distinguish- ing his Furies from their artistic prototypes would certainly be their winglessness.
A Nolan amphora now in the British Museum, 5 probably dating from the decade preceding the production of the play, although falling far 1 O. Furtwangler gives an interesting estimate of the artistic merits of the vase: Sie ist unerreicht durch die Lebendigkeit, durch die Frische und die Originalitat ihrer dionysischen Bilder. Weder attische noch chalkidische Vasen bieten etwas, das sich kiinstlerisch mit der Phineus-Schale messen Hesse.
Sie gehort zu den bedeutendsten altertiimlichen Malereien die uns erhalten sind, und sie lasst uns ahnen, was uns von alter Kunst verloren ist, indem wir sonst, statt der Arbeit eines wirklichen Kunstlers wie diese, in der Regel nur handwerksmassige Dekorationen auf den alteren Vasen besitzen. Phineus, enthroned en face beside the depleted table, stretches out his right arm and turns his head toward a Harpy, who makes off to the left with food and drink.
Her equipment for flight consists of a single pair of wings. The apprehensive glance she casts backward is without meaning, unless we assume that the original painting included the pursuing Boreadae. At the left of the picture a Harpy lies at the feet of the seated Phineus, her limbs relaxed and head reversed in utter exhaustion or death. At the right two Boreadae bind a second Harpy, who, though fallen to her knees, offers desperate resistance. The pathos and the fiery, almost excessive energy of the painting awaken surprise in us w T ho are dependent primarily upon sculpture for our con- ceptions of Greek art, and therefore look for these characteristics in the products of the fourth rather than in those of the fifth century.
If, now, we compare these Harpies with the Furies on a South Italian crater of about the same date, 3 we find the two almost identical, both in general conception and in details of costume, save that the former are winged and the latter have snakes coiled in their hair. Their features are beautiful and majestic, without a touch of brutishness or ferocity, and they both wear short chitons, heavy studded belts with crossed shoulder straps, and high hunting boots.
Art, therefore, seems 1 J. It is not too much to conclude that the two were dependent on one and the same original. The Oresteia of Aeschylus to have accepted the partial analogy between Harpies and Furies which Aeschylus indicates at the opening of the Eumenides. And yet, although the nearest to Aeschylus in point of time, it is by no means the most faithful to the play.
Orestes kneels on a small altar composed of rough stones, and there is neither omphalus nor laurel tree to indicate that the scene takes place at the Delphic sanctuary. His face, seen from the front, has the distraught and roving glance of a maniac. Of the suppliant's emblems he wears only the wreath.
The drawn sword is here, as always, in his hand, and with his left arm, about which he has wrapped his chlamys, he tries to defend himself against the attacks of the onrushing Erinyes. Snakes writhe in their hands and bind their hair like fillets. They are wingless, and the foremost, who wears the short chiton of a huntress, and over it a fringed jerkin with cross straps, seems to resemble closely the Erinys enstaged by Aeschylus.
The second, whose figure was placed farther towards the side of the vase, and there- fore treated with less care, wears only a sleeveless chiton. Artemis seated, bow in hand, upon a rock, occupies the corresponding position at the left, and Apollo, standing by the side of Orestes, holds a laurel branch in his right hand and extends the other as if to repel the perse- cutors of his suppliant.
Apart from its chronological importance the vase has little to commend it. The drawing is both awkward and care- less and the composition disjointed.