#oresteia

ELEKTRA: ORESTES, DO YOU / LOVE ME?

Apollo burdened Orestes when he commanded him to kill his mother, but he never abandoned him. He defended Orestes from the Furies in Athens and remained with him every step of the way.

From Orestes' perspective, Apollo had proven himself to be a trustworthy ally, even when his commands were difficult.

So when Apollo eventually commands him to kill Neoptolemus, Orestes doesn't give it a second thought. He has trusted this god before, and Apollo has never led him astray.

Of course, Orestes has his own reasons. Neoptolemus married Hermione, to whom Orestes had previously been engaged, so he'd have little reason to object to Apollo's command.

But interestingly enough, it doesn't have to stop with Orestes.

Neoptolemus killed Astyanax and used his body to kill Priam before Zeus' altar. In traditions where Apollo is Hector's father, that gives Apollo an especially personal reason to want Neoptolemus dead.

So Apollo doesn't even have to convince Orestes to hate the man he's targeting. He only has to point him toward someone he already resents.

And after everything Apollo has done for him, why would Orestes ever question him?

“I shall teach you old men the lesson you failed to learn when you were children” Clytemnestra in Aeschylus' Agamemnon (trans. Ted Hughes)

Clytemnestra is the wife of Agamemnon, the king of Atreus and commander of the Greek army that assails the walls of Troy. In order to placate the goddess Artemis, he sacrifices his oldest daughter Iphigenia on the goddess’ altar, spilling her blood and breaking the heart of his wife in the process. Clytemenestra, consumed by hatred and the desire for revenge after the murder of her daughter, invites Agamemmnon’s cousin and enemy Aigisthos into the palace and into her bed, while Agamemnon is away at Troy. Finally, after 10 years of waiting, Agamemmnon returns triumphant to his city, palace and wife. Finally, after 10 years of waiting, Clytemnestra gets her revenge and murders her husband in the bath. Through fear and intimidation tactics, she and her lover Aigisthos assume the throne and live happily - for a while. Years later, her now grown son Orestes, who grew up far away, and her daughter Electra conspire to kill their own mother as revenge for the murder of their father. She dies screaming, kicking, cursing and Orestes falls mad with the blood guilt of murdering your own mother. Only after the intervention of a god or two, order is restored in the house of Atreus. For now, at least.

To me, Clytemnestra is a character transcending boundaries. The adulterous wife, the villainess that kills her husband, the wronged mother revenging her daughter, the cold queen disowning her grieving children, “a man’s heart in a woman’s body”, as Aischylos puts it. She’s all that and more. In Euripides’ Electra she even is a doubting woman looking back on her life and her choices, maybe not regretting but perhaps questioning what it was all for. She’s all of these things, yet none of them wholly. You look at her and you feel for her because how could he, how could her beloved husband murder their perfect innocent daughter, all for the promise of Troy. You look at her and you revel in her bloodlust as she swings the axe at Agamemnon and gives the perfect villain speech at the steps of his, well now her, palace. You look at her and you’re repelled by the ice cold indifference towards her remaining children, abandoned like a toy no longer worth playing with. Was there only enough love for the one daughter in her? When she kills Agamemmnon does she feel relief, satisfaction, finally she has had her triumph over the one who wronged her more than any other? Or is there also a tinge of sadness, of grief, for the life she used to know, before the day her daughter’s blood got spilled in the name of a war she doesn’t care about?