Table Of ContentAris and Phillips Classical Texts
AESCHYLUS
Libation Bearers
Edited with an introduction, translation and commentary by
Andrew Brown
LIVERPOOL UNIVERSITY PRESS
First published 2018 by
Liverpool University Press
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Copyright © 2018 Andrew Brown
The right of A. Brown to be identified as the author of this book has been asserted
by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval
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British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication data
A British Library CIP record is available
ISBN 978-1-78694-098-8 cased
ISBN 978-1-78694-099-5 paperback
Typeset by Tara Evans
Printed and bound in Poland by BooksFactory.co.uk
Front cover: Detail from an Etruscan bronze mirror dated to the 3rd quarter of the
5th century BC (Staatliche Museen zu Berlin Fr. 148, LIMC Erinys 28), better
preserved than the mirror mentioned on p. 10. Orestes is about to kill Clytemnestra
while behind him an Erinys with a snake in each hand seems to menace both
parties.
CONTENTS
Preface v
Introduction
1. The Myth 1
2. The Performance 12
3. Trilogy and Tragedy 24
4. Imagery 39
5. Textual Transmission 43
6. Influence in Antiquity 46
7. This Edition 52
Abbreviations 57
Bibliography 59
Χοηφóρoι / Libation Bearers 75
Commentary 165
Addendum 454
Metrical Analysis 455
Index 468
PREFACE
The need for an Aris & Phillips Libation Bearers (Choephori) is
clear enough. The Oresteia of Aeschylus, consisting of Agamemnon,
Libation Bearers and Eumenides, is not only the sole surviving
trilogy but one of the most celebrated of all works of Greek literature,
but only Eumenides has so far been covered in this series (by A.
J. Podlecki, 1989). For scholarly readers A. F. Garvie’s definitive
Choephori (Oxford, 1986) will remain standard for many years and
for ‘beginners’ there is a useful commentary by A. J. Bowen (Bristol,
1986) but between these there is still a niche for the current edition
to fill.
A&P editions have changed and expanded over the years and I
have not sought to make this one uniform with Podlecki’s Eumenides
or my own Sophocles’ Antigone (1987). In scale it more resembles
Bowen’s recent Suppliant Women (2013) and, in tackling an almost
equally corrupt play, I have been encouraged by Bowen’s example
to pay some attention to textual issues as well as to interpretation at
various levels. In many respects, however, Bowen has gone his own
way and I have gone mine.
Libation Bearers will not be the first Greek tragedy that anyone
reads as it would be eccentric not to precede it with at least
Agamemnon.1 I have therefore felt able to assume a little knowledge
of the building blocks of Greek tragedy and of basic grammatical
terms. More advanced jargon I have tried to avoid or to explain at
its first occurrence and in the index. I have not included a summary
of the play’s plot; those who need this will find an excellent one at
Sommerstein 2010a, 125–31.2
Like most scholars today I do not regard Prometheus Bound as an
authentic work of Aeschylus.
1 In the absence (so far) of an A&P Agamemnon, readers who use A. H. Sommerstein’s
Loeb Aeschylus (Cambridge MA, 2008) together with the ‘commentary for students’ on the
play by D. Raeburn and O. Thomas (Oxford, 2011) will be well served.
2 On a larger scale Conacher 1987, 102–38, can be recommended. For these references see
the Bibliography.
vi Preface
I am most grateful to the former Series Editor, Professor Christopher
Collard, for help and encouragement at an early stage, and to the
current Series Editor, Professor Alan Sommerstein, for generous
comments (by no means confined to those signalled by ‘AHS’) which
have greatly improved this edition. For the errors, omissions and
misjudgements that remain the responsibility is, of course, entirely
mine.
Andrew Brown
[email protected]
INTRODUCTION
1. The Myth
1.1 Homer
The myth of Orestes and the revenge he took on his father’s murderers1
no doubt has roots extending far back into prehistory but we first
encounter it in the Odyssey, where it is recounted or alluded to several
times. At the very beginning (1.29–47) the death of Aegisthus is a
paradigm for the punishment of human wickedness; then the story of
Orestes’ quest is repeatedly related to Telemachus (1.298–300, 3.193–8,
254–312, 4.90–2, 512–37); and later Agamemnon’s death is described
by Agamemnon himself in the Underworld (11.387–434, recalled at
24.96–7, 199–202). These passages, while differing in emphasis and
viewpoint, add up to a fairly consistent narrative. During Agamemnon’s
absence at Troy his wife Clytemnestra was seduced by Aegisthus. When
he returned, Aegisthus, with the collaboration of Clytemnestra, invited
him to a banquet at his (Aegisthus’s) house2 and there killed him ‘as
one kills an ox at its stall’ (4.535, 11.411). There was a fight between
Agamemnon’s followers and twenty men picked by Aegisthus, and
all were killed.3 Clytemnestra killed the Trojan prisoner Cassandra at
Agamemnon’s side. Aegisthus then ruled for seven years4 but in the
1 Garvie 1986, ix–xxvi, and Davies and Finglass 2014, 482–91, are useful
summaries of the story before Aeschylus. The relation of the Oresteia to its
predecessors is discussed by Föllinger 2003, 49–132, Sommerstein 2010a, 136–45.
On all Greek myths Gantz 1993 is indispensable: see 2.664–81 for this one. More
specialist studies include Davies 1968, Prag 1985, March 1987, 79–118.
2 Though at 3.234 Agamemnon is said, perhaps carelessly, to have died ‘at home’.
3 This is according to 4.536–7, which is hard to reconcile with 11.412–15, where
Agamemnon’s followers are simply massacred.
4 Seven is a traditional folktale number but is also realistic enough, given that
Orestes was about ten when his father was killed. Aeschylus does not specify the
time interval in the Oresteia but we may take it to be about the same. If Orestes’ exile
had lasted only seven years, it would be implausible that Electra and Clytemnestra
fail to recognise him, but he could have been sent away as a young child well before
the end of the Trojan War (one early mythographer says that he was three years
old: Herodorus fr. 11 Fowler). Electra was old enough to have done some skilled
2 Introduction
eighth Orestes returned from Athens5 and killed him. Orestes then
feasted the Argives at the funeral of his mother and of Aegisthus, and
on the same day Menelaus returned from his own travels.
This account differs from Aeschylus’s Oresteia in many respects,
but it has features that would seem odd even if we knew no other
version of the story. In particular it is conspicuously evasive about
the role and fate of Clytemnestra. The emphasis in the early books is
on the crime of Aegisthus, though Clytemnestra seems to have had a
share in its planning; then in the Underworld scenes the partners are
jointly responsible, though it is never quite clear that Clytemnestra
took part in Agamemnon’s actual murder. In the matter of Orestes’
revenge the wording at 3.309–10 is distinctly strange: ‘When he
[Orestes] had killed him [Aegisthus], he gave the Argives a funeral
feast for his hateful mother and cowardly Aegisthus’. If we knew
no better, we might take this to mean that Clytemnestra died not at
Orestes’ hands but by other means (suicide?), but this convenient
outcome is not found in any other version and in any case her death
has evidently been deliberately glossed over.6 Since Orestes was able
to perform funeral rites, he cannot have been polluted by the killing.
However, since Nestor’s purpose here, like Athena’s at 1.298–300
and 3.193–8, is to set up Orestes as an example for the encouragement
of Telemachus, son of the faithful Penelope, there was good reason
to play down the guilt and punishment of Clytemnestra and portray
Orestes’ revenge as an act of straightforward courage and filial piety.7
weaving (Cho. 231–2) but that is not a difficulty as her sister Iphigenia had sung
many times at her father’s banquets before she died (Ag. 243–5).
5 His presence there (Od. 3.307) is unexplained. The scholar Zenodotus read
‘from Phocis’, in line with all later accounts, and S. West 1988 on that line thinks
this may have been the reading known to the tragedians.
6 The lines were omitted by some ancient editions but we would have expected
an interpolator to make the matricide explicit; it is Homer who evades it. Delcourt
(1959, 21) notes that the Agamemnon of Book 11, despite complaining bitterly of
his wife’s conduct and asking after his son, makes no demand for revenge; also that,
when Eriphyle is mentioned at 11.326–7 (see p. 11 below), we hear that she was
bribed to betray her husband but not that she was killed by her son.
7 Even when matricide is not involved, blood vengeance is by no means an
inevitable reaction to murder either in Homer or in later authors: see 121 n. It has
Introduction 3
This is also in keeping with Homer’s general tendency to ignore myths
concerning crimes within the family – precisely the myths that are of
greatest interest to the tragedians.8 It is likely, then, that the killing of
Clytemnestra was always a feature of the Orestes myth – indeed that
it was central to the myth, since matricide can hardly be a minor detail
in anyone’s career.
1.2 Other poets
A poem in the Epic Cycle, the Nostoi attributed to one Agias of
Trozen, dealing with the Returns of the Greek heroes from Troy,
included the murder of Agamemnon ‘by Aegisthus and Clytemnestra’
and its punishment ‘by Orestes and Pylades’. The mention of Pylades
suggests that Orestes’ exile was spent in Phocis and this may in
turn suggest that the Delphic Oracle was involved, since Delphi is
in Phocian territory. Pylades and his father Strophius appear to have
been mentioned also by the genealogical poet Asius of Samos (fr. 5
Davies).9
The Catalogue of Women attributed to Hesiod mentioned Electra
(who is absent from Homer) as a daughter of Agamemnon and
Clytemnestra (fr. 23a.16) and made it explicit that both Aegisthus and
Clytemnestra were killed by Orestes (fr. 23a.29–30).
An obscure lyric poet called Xanthus is said to have influenced
the Oresteia of Stesichorus and to have claimed that Electra was
originally called Laodice (the name of a daughter of Agamemnon at
Il. 9.145) but was renamed Electra because she was a virgin (on the
implausible supposition that the name means ‘unbedded’).
always to be seen as the natural reaction, however, for the purposes of the Orestes
myth.
8 Thus Homer also ignores the sacrifice of Iphigenia if he knew of it – but I
leave that complex topic undiscussed as it is more relevant to Agamemnon than to
Libation Bearers.
9 By this account Pylades’ mother was Anaxibia, a sister of Agamemnon (Gantz
1993, 1.223). Her only function is that of a genealogical link making Pylades and
Orestes cousins, as they are in Euripides (IT 918, Or. 1233). Aeschylus, however,
by calling Strophius merely a friendly ally of Agamemnon’s family (Ag. 880–1, cf.
Cho. 914), implies that he is unrelated to it.
