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Giulia Maria Chesi
The Play of Words
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Giulia Maria Chesi
The Play of
Words
Blood Ties and Power Relations

in Aeschylus Oresteia
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Acknowledgments
I wish to thank Anna Di Re DellAnna for her Greek lessons at school; my Cam-
bridge College, the Faculty of Classics, and my friends, Enrico Ventura, Lorenzo
Corti, Rachel Bryant Davies, Sherin Saeidi, Giulitta Nardi Perna, Kai Schpe,
Tessa Marzotto, Helen van Noorden, Maria Kilby, Paula Ornelas, Francesco Gius-
ti, Marco Formisano and Craig Williams, for their unvaluable support; Agis Mar-
inis, Elton Barker, Pat Easterling, Lucia Prauscello, Renaud Gagn and the anon-
ymous readers of De Gruyter for their precious suggestions; Davide Ruggerini, for
the index; Maria Erge (De Gruyter) for editorial assistance.
Especially I thank Froma Zeitlin, for having done the first step; Thomas Poiss
for his integrity; Simon Goldhill, il (mio) Maestro, for his deinon example of hu-
mility, generosity, patience, and intellectual responsibility in teaching me how to
read and how to write; my dad Mario and Licia, for always being there; Jim, for
our time in Berlin-Mitte, as he was a child; Laura, for our being sisters; Diego, for
his intelligence and our love.
My deepest thanks go to my grand-mom and to Cristina my mother, my best
friend for having taught their child the social duty of (female) dis-obedience
someone has said that it requires less mental effort to condemn than to think
Emma Goldman
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A Cesarina e alle sue lunghe ore

The term non father does not exist in any realm of social categories
A. Rich, Of Woman Born
More peculiar perhaps, but sadly unsurprising, were the assessments I accepted
about fictional women. For example, I quickly learned that power was unfemi-
nine and powerful women were, quite literary, monstrous Bitches all, they
must be eliminated, reformed, or at the very least, condemned
L. R. Edwards, Massachusetts Review 13 (1972)
Perhaps this is one of those cases, not infrequent in Aeschylus, in which the
word is more important than the man (or woman)
R. P. Winnington-Ingram, Studies in Aeschylus

Contents
Abbreviations XIII
Introduction 1
How I re-read the Oresteia: language, narrative and womanhood 1
Agamemnon 10
I Clytemnestra and Iphigeneias sacrifice 10
Clytemnestra or Iphigeneias mother and Agamemnons wife 10
Mother, daughter and sacrifice 15
Iphigeneias silence and paternal violence 20
Clytemnestra, Agamemnons dilemma and paternal
treachery 27
Clytemnestra, Agamemnons dilemma and maternal
sophronein 30
Clytemnestras motherhood, the Alastor and the Erinys 35
Conclusions 43
II Cassandra, the chorus and Iphigeneias sacrifice 44
Clytemnestra as an adulterous wife and a bad mother 45
Problematising Clytemnestras representation as a bad mother and
a bad wife 50
Conclusions 55
III Clytemnestra and the war against Troy 55
The chorus on the war against Troy 57
Clytemnestra on the war against Troy 60
The voice of the other 67
Agamemnon on the war against Troy 74
The misuse of power 77
Conclusions 81
Choephoroi 82
I Clytemnestra as mother-echthros and non-tropheus 83
The nurse on trephein 83
Clytemnestra on trephein 86
Agamemnon as father-tropheus 91
Clytemnestra as mother non-tropheus and female tyrant 95
Conclusions 98
II Clytemnestra as mother-echthros and non-tokeus 99
Unauthenticated
XII Contents
Agamemnon as father-tokeus and Clytemnestra as mother non-

tokeus 99
The father-tokeus and the estrangement between mother and
son 107
Conclusions 109
III Clytemnestra as mother-philos 110
The adulterous wife is still a mother 110
Clytemnestra as mother-tropheus 113
Clytemnestra as mother-tokeus 117
Maternal sophronein 122
Clytemnestra as mother-philos and the death of her son 125
Divine command against the mother and human suffering for the
mother 128
Conclusions 130
IV Shall I kill the mother? The reality (of the metaphors) of son and
mother 131
The blood of the mother, once again 131
The maternal continuum, once again 135
Clytemnestras dream and metaphorical motherhood 137
Orestes and Apollonian logos 140
Orestes logos and biological motherhood 142
Conclusions 146
Eumenides 147
The Erinyes and maternal sophronein 148
The Erinyes, their painful memory and female genealogy 155
The legitimacy of words 160
Athenas persuasion, the Erinyes and/or Eumenides 169
Zeus, his Erinyes and the Trojan War 176
The son, the father and the war against Troy 181
Conclusions 184
General conclusions 186
Bibliographic References 188
Index of Names and Subjects 206
Index Locorum 208
Unauthenticated
Abbreviations
D-P J. D. Denniston, D. L. Page, Aeschylus: Agamemnon (Oxford 1957).
DK Die Fragmente der Vorsokratiker, ed. H. Diels and W. Kranz (6th edn.; Berlin 1952).
KN The Knossos Tablets. A translation by J. Chadwick, J. T. Killen, J.-P. Olivier (4th edn.; Cam-
bridge 1971).
L Oeuvres compltes dHippocrate, vols. 7 8, ed. . Littr (Paris 1851 1853; repr. Amster-
dam 1962).
LSJ H. G. Liddell, R. Scott, H. S. Jones, A Greek-English Lexikon, with a Revised Supplement,
(9th edn.; Oxford 1996).
LSN S. D. Goldhill, Language, Sexuality, Narrative: The Oresteia (Cambridge 1984).
OCD S. Hornblower, A. Spawforth, The Oxford Classical Dictionary (3rd edn.; Oxford 1996).
W Iambi et elegi Graeci ante Alexandrum cantati, vol. 2, ed. M. L. West (Oxford 1972).
The editions used are: Agamemnon, Denniston-Page (1957); Choephoroi, Garvie

(1986); Eumenides, Sommerstein (1989). Ag.= Agamemnon; Cho. = Choephoroi;
Eum.= Eumenides. Other abbreviations follow the common usage for classical ab-
breviations.

Introduction
How I re-read the Oresteia: language, narrative and
womanhood
Lire cest trouver des sens, et trouver des sens, cest les
nommer [] Je nomme, je dnomme, je renomme: ainsi se
passe le texte
R. Barthes, S/Z
Aeschylus is the terror of systematizers

C. J. Harington, Aeschylus
The Oresteia is the tragic story of Orestes, who murders his own mother in re-
venge for his fathers assassination, and is ultimately acquitted by the court of
Athens. In order to understand the dynamics of violence and power involved
in the story of Orestes, we need to look at the complex characterisation of Cly-
temnestra as mother, wife and queen in the trilogy. Critics, starting from Simone
de Beauvoir (1949), continuing with Zeitlin in her influential article on misogyny
in the Oresteia (1978, repr. 1984 and 1996), Goldhill (1984) and more recently
McClure (1997, 1999), Wohl (1998) and Foley (2001), have focused their attention
on the negative characterisation of Clytemnestra as a bad mother, an adulterous
wife and a female usurper of male power, whose mind is darkened. However, the
Aeschylean discourse on motherhood, wifehood and power is much more artic-
ulate. Undeniably, the narrative of the play is constantly concerned with the pro-
jection of a negative image on Clytemnestra, and thereby we are faced with a
successful separation of her role as mother, wife and queen: she is not a mother
giving and nurturing life, but an adulterous wife, a tyrant and a foolish female.
Such a gesture of separation also implies exerting control over Clytemnestra. The
repudiation of her maternal role works as the crucial step in the trilogy towards:
the definition of bloodlines as paternal (the father is the only genetic pa-
rent);
the definition of motherhood as socially contingent (mother = the wife of the
childrens father);
the authorisation of Agamemnons power in the family and in society (gen-
itor, husband, head of the family, king, warrior), in order to justify matricide.
This discourse of separation and control over Clytemnestras role as mother, wife
and queen allows us to agree with Seidensticker (1995: 156) that the power and
authority of men, in polis and oikos, remain essentially unquestioned in drama.
Yet, this statement might be applied only with some reservations to the Oresteia.

2 Introduction
In fact, the Aeschylean play exposes the limits of this very discourse of separa-
tion, by means of a narrative that confronts us with the characters and the cho-
rus constant failure to suppress Clytemnestras role as a mother giving and nur-
turing life, and to characterise her as a bad wife, a tyrant and a foolish woman.
In performing this failure, the plays discourse on inter-familial violence introdu-
ces a question both on kinship relations (is kinship maternal and/or paternal?)
and on power relations (is the authorisation of power feminine and/or mascu-
line?). These questions jeopardize the very condition of the possibility of politics,
i. e. of a communal life together in the family and in society according to the au-
thority of the law of the Father.
Thus, my contention is that a re-reading of the Oresteia is required, for the
following reasons. First, in my interpretation, we can assume that the play per-
forms a gesture of separation in regard to Clytemnestras female roles, without
suggesting any definitive answer to the questions it raises. Second, we can
argue that the trilogy is not an assertive and normative text, simply responding
to the question Is it true that Clytemnestra either is or is not a mother giving life,
and therefore a bad wife and usurper of male power?. Quite the contrary, as I
hope to show, the Aeschylean play unfolds as a text, which asks to be read in
connection to the related question Who is Clytemnestra, i. e. is she a mother giv-
ing and nurturing life, and therefore a bad wife and an usurper of male power?.
The difficult task of defining who Clytemnestra is affects the way in which
we interpret Orestes position in the family and in society. The question Who
is Clytemnestra? fundamentally implies the question Who is Orestes?, pushing
us to ask ourselves to what degree the Oresteia is a paradigmatic text. Indeed, if
Following Goldhill (1990: esp. p. 108) on Barthes, I use character as fictional figure, on the
assumption that we can account person and figure as two fundamentally different concepts:
while a figure is devoid of any inner life, a person is not. Through language, a figure constructs a
discourse that is part of the play and its narrative. On characters in a play as lacking an inner
life, cf. also Griffith (1999: 37 38). On Griffith, cf. Easterling and Budelmann (2010: 290). On
characters and discourse, cf. below n. 6.
The emphasis on reading the Oresteia might raise the objection that the play was written for
the performance on stage. However, by exploring the complexities of Aeschylean language and
the related discourse on Clytemnestras wifehood and motherhood, my study approaches the
Oresteia as a written text, and, following Goldhill (1986: 284), assumes that performance does
not efface the textuality of drama. Moreover, one might note that a performance is a text; on this
point, cf. Goldhill (1993). On the performative dimension of Greek tragedy, cf. e. g. the ground-
breaking book of Taplin (1978); Sider (1978); Easterling (1997); Gould (2001: 174 202); Goldhill
(2007); Ley (2007); Avezz (2009). Especially for Agamemnon and Choephoroi, cf. Di Benedetto
(1989: 76 101); Hardwick (2005); Fusillo (2005); Goward (2005: 24 42); for Eumenides, Jouanna
(2009).

we are not in the position to determine whether Clytemnestra either is or is not a

mother giving life, a good/bad wife and usurper of male power, we cannot even
say if Orestes is or is not her son and therefore that he is or is not just the son of
his father and his legitimate heir, and, finally, that power is or is not strictly male.
Therefore, as Aeschylus re-writes Homer, the tragic poet turns the story of Orestes
into a question, and precisely into a question about origins and belonging. This
is akin to saying that, in Aeschylus, Orestes no longer has a paradigmatic func-
tion as he does in Homer; and not just because of the matricide, but because his
very identity is put into question. That is to say: Orestes becomes a tragic char-
acter in Aeschylus as he stops being unequivocally the son of the father, i. e. the
male subject of power. Again, in the case of Clytemnestra (as with Orestes), the
Aeschylean text displays itself as a set of questions:
1) in regard to Orestes position in the Atreid family: is it the case that Orestes is
linked to his family through paternal bloodline and/or through a blood con-
nection with his mother?
2) in regard to Orestes position in society: is the validation of Orestes power as
the legitimate son and heir of his father successful? Is it the case that the
authority of male power has to exclude/include maternal (and) female
power?
According to these questions I pose to the Aeschylean text, this book problem-
atises the plays discourse on Clytemnestras and Orestes position in the family
and society, reading the plays narrative about interfamilial violence and matri-
cide as a narrative of uncertainties on the origins of birth and power. Thus, my
study on the Oresteia might help revalue the place of blood in politics, to rethink
what blood means for patriarchal thought. This is the fundamental reason why
I explore the plays discourse on blood ties and power relations as the privileged
way to explain the dynamics of violence hunting the Atreid family. Accordingly, I
explore the characters rhetoric of appropriation of keywords such as ,
, , , , , , , (words related to the
sphere of blood ties) and , , , , (words related
to the sphere of power relations). In particular, I shall discuss:
1) how in Agamemnon, Choephoroi and Eumenides the characters and the cho-
rus appropriation of the above mentioned keywords constructs a negative
image of Clytemnestra as non-mother, bad wife and tyrant, giving shape
to a narrative of acceptance of the male origins of birth and power;
Quote from Goldhill on Antigone (2012: 234).

4 Introduction
2) how, at the same time, the characters and the chorus appropriation of those
same keywords does not have the power to construct an authoritative dis-
course on Clytemnestra as non-mother, bad wife and female usurper of
male power and therefore unfolds a narrative of doubt and hesitation on
the male origins of birth and power.
This discussion produces several considerations about how we commonly han-

dle the tragic language of the Oresteia. To begin with, the language of the Ore-
steia is not simply a means of self-representation, permanently stressing the fail-
ure in communication, which leads to conflict; and the characters do not
unambiguously appropriate keywords for themselves, while remaining irrecon-
cilable as to the usage by other dramatis personae (as we would say according
to Vernant on tragic language). It does much more than that. The language of
the Oresteia performs the difficult process of establishing the authority of a dis-
course on womanhood through the characters rhetoric of appropriation of key-
words. Therefore, as I intend to show, we can argue that:
1) it stages a constant failure in the process of making a decision about women
as characters in the play;
2) it also stages, in turn, the readers constant failure to take a position on this
characters failure in decision-making.
In this sense, the language of the Oresteia accomplishes two different things. My
first point concerns the act of decision-making as characters in the play. The lan-
guage of the Oresteia shows that every male deliberative action is exposed to the
danger of failing, since there is no decision-making without a discourse that jus-
The expression a narrative of doubt and hesitation is Prof. Goldhills, from the lecture The
Narrative of the Chorus, Cambridge 17. 10. 10.
Cf. Vernant (1977: 35): Les mots changs sur lespace scnique ont moins alors pour fonction
dtablir la communication entre les divers personnages que de marquer les blocages, les bar-
rires, limpermabilit des esprits, de cerner le points de conflit. Pour chaque protagoniste,
enferm dans lunivers qui lui est propre, le vocabulaire utilis reste dans sa plus grande partie
opaque; il a un sens et un seul. A cette unilatralit se heurte violemment une autre unilat-
ralit (italics mine). On the characters various usage of language as the central theme of the
Oresteia, cf. notably Goldhill (1986: 3): It is the way in which what one does with words becomes
a thematic consideration of the Oresteia that makes this trilogy a drama of logos ; Goldhill
(1997a: 136 150; esp. pp. 136 141 for the Oresteia).

tifies it, and no discourse without the violence inherent in the use of language.
This implies:
1) that tragic violence against female characters in the Oresteia begins with
and fails through language;
2) that the trilogy, in all three plays, is properly concerned with failure and not
simply with the process of decision-making;
3) that male deliberative actions engage with the difficult process of defining
who a woman is (as mother, wife, queen), and of dealing with an acceptable
definition. The construction of this definition marks in the Oresteia the con-
dition for and the limits of male rationality.
My second point concerns the characters acts of making their decisions in rela-
tion to the readers act of taking a position in the text. The language of the Ore-
steia shows that it is an oversimplification to read the Oresteia following Aristo-
tles view on tragedy. According to Aristotle, what matters in tragedy are the
characters actions. This is certainly true: it is precisely actions that Agamemnon
and Orestes put into question. Yet, if we simply abide by Aristotle, we forget the
reader and miss the question that tragedy actually triggers for us. The language
of the play, in performing the characters constant failure in decision-making
(and thereby the inherent undecidability), forces us, as readers, to question
our own position-taking in the text. The play and its language, in other words,
cause us to take a step further into the undecidability of the text, and not, as
Following a common practice in the Humanities and Social sciences, I use discourse in order
to refer to the way of thinking displayed by the characters through their use of language, and
therefore to the system of values and to the conduct of actions they construct as a possible truth.
I argue (against a common view) that the language of the Oresteia problematises the usual
Athenian practice of taking a decision in the boule rather than simply mirroring it. Cf. Hall (2010:
64 65): Deliberation means the entire process of giving and receiving advice, acquiring in-
formation, weighing up alternatives, and decision-taking. Its importance in terms of the
decisions made by the city is underlined by the speed with which the oligarchs who took power
in 411 ousted the democratically elected Council. The council met almost every day (Xeno-
phon, Hellenica 2.3.11), and it considered matters relating not only to the states finances and the
scrutiny of magistrates, but the Athenian cults, festivals, navy Greek tragedy offers a training
in decision-making. Aeschylean characters deliberate less than those in the other two tra-
gedians. Yet, the Oresteia contains the two loci classici of the conflict involved in decision-
making, notably Agamemnons dilemma (Ag. 211) and Orestes tragic question What shall I do?
(Cho. 899).
Cf. Agamemnons dilemma in Ag. 211 and Orestes question What shall I do? in Cho. 899. Cf.
Aristot., Po. 1450b3 4: We maintain that tragedy is primarily an imitation of action (),
and that it is mainly for the sake of the action that it imitates the personal agents ( -
). The translation of this passage is by Barnes (1984).

6 Introduction
Vernant would say, a step back: notably, according to Vernant, the reader under-
stands what the characters do not, namely the ambiguities of language and the
conflict they trigger. This turns Orestes question What shall I do? into our own
question What shall I do, therefore, who am I?, i. e. How did I become what I
am?. Accordingly, the play engages us, as readers, in a process of destabilization
of our own identity in the family and in society, and of its unity through lan-
guage and actions.
Again, the play supports this interpretation. When the jury of Athens votes
half in favour of Orestes and half against him, his acquittal constitutes a moment
of acceptance of the plays discourse on the separation of Clytemnestras role as
mother, wife and queen: Orestes is acquitted because Clytemnestra is not his
mother, but the adulterous and murderous wife of his father and king of
Argos. Yet, at the same time, the acquittal of Orestes exemplifies the failure of
this discourse on separation (the jury is divided), causing the narrative to shift
from a moment of acceptance to one of doubt and hesitation: the figure of
Orestes, acquitted in dubio pro reo, symbolises the characters failure to instan-
tiate the father or the mother as the sole origin of birth and power. So for whom,
as a reader, do I actually have the power to vote? In both cases (for the mother or
for the father) Orestes will be acquitted, and one way or the other we will still be
haunted by the shadow of the voices against or for Orestes, questioning our po-
sition in the text and, accordingly, what we might say in support of our position,
and what we think we are because of this position. This is how the story of
Orestes becomes our own story, and how this story, against Aristotles interpre-
tation of Greek tragedy, can hardly be read without the way of being () of
its reader, understood precisely as our own history of reading and, accordingly,
as our own story of permanent difficulty to establish who we are as subjects in
the family and in society. So, when Aeschylus re-writes Homer, turning Orestes
Cf. Vernant (1977: 36): Cest seulement pour le spectateur que le langage du texte peut tre
transparent tous ses niveaux, dans sa polyvalence et ses ambiguts. Le langage lui devient
transparent, le message tragique communicable dans la mesure seulement o il fait la dcou-
verte de lambigut des mots, des valeurs, de lhomme, o il reconnat lunivers comme con-
flictuel et o, abandonnant ses certitudes anciennes, souvrant une vision problmatique du
monde, il se fait lui-mme, travers le spectacle, conscience tragique.
Cf. Goldhill (1984a: 174): the Oresteia, a play which not only dramatises a failing search for a
defined but which also dramatises the very act of interpretation as blocked, in error, a
series of mconnaissances.
On the story of Orestes becoming our own story, cf. Barthes (1970: 184): Tel le discours: sil
produit des personnages, ce nest pas pour les faire jouer entre eux devant nous, cest pour jouer
avec eux. On Aristotles and Greek tragedy, cf. Hardys translation of Poetics, 1450a15
18: La plus importante de ces parties est lassemblage des actions accomplies, car la tragdie

story into a question, the tragic play passes this question on to his reader. Hence,
in reading the Oresteia I chose to adopt the position of a resisting reader (Fet-
terly), in the hope to escape the tyranny of what Goldhill (with Barthes) calls the
critical level.
What I have said in regard to the language of the characters can be applied
to the language of the chorus as well. Since the chorus brings the dramatic
movement from a narrative of acceptance to one of doubt and hesitation con-
cerning Clytemnestras motherhood, wifehood and female power, the language
of the chorus neither comments on the staged events as an idealized spectator
(according to German Idealism, notably Schlegel), nor it represents a frightened
spectator, somehow aware of the opaque nature of language and of its dangers
(according to Vernant). Rather, the chorus is involved in the narrative construc-
tion of the play, along with the characters. Its language, like that of the charac-
ters, thereby forces us as readers to take a failing position within the text. It is in
the performance of this dramatic exchange between characters, chorus and read-
er that the language of the play writes and re-writes its own narrative. Thus, I
would expand upon Goldhills idea that we cannot understand the play if we
do not understand the narrative of the chorus, suggesting that we cannot under-
stand the play if we do not understand the verbal exchange in the play perform-
ing both the characters and the chorus failure to make a decision, and the read-
ers failure to take a position within the text itself.
In relation to the plays discourse on motherhood, wifehood and power re-
lations in the family and society, my analysis of Orestes story of violence follows
the chronological order of the trilogy. I have accordingly divided this book into
three chapters. In the chapter on Agamemnon (1), I look at the characters rhet-
oric of motherhood and wifehood, focusing on the narrative of Iphigeneias sac-
rifice and on Clytemnestras characterisation as a queen. In the chapter on Choe-
phoroi (2), I investigate the plays discourse on motherhood, wifehood, power
imite non pas les hommes mais une action et la vie et la fin de la vie est une certaine manire
dagir, non une manire dtre () (italics are mine).
Cf. Fetterly (1978: xxii); LSN: 4: Hence both my questioning of the textual critics in their
prescriptive readings, their assumption of the corrupt and to-be-corrected text, and also my
questioning of the literary critics who slipping the universal passkey into all lacunae of si-
gnification, find a critical level is established, the work is closed, the language by which the
semantic transformation is ended becomes nature, truth, the works secret .
Cf. Vernant (1977: 35 36): Le chur, le plus souvent, hsite et oscille, rejet successivement
dun sens vers un autre, ou parfois pressentant obscurment une signification demeure encore
secrte, ou la formulant, sans le savoir, par un jeu de mots, une expression double sens.
Prof. Simon Goldhill discussed this idea in his lecture The Narrative of the Chorus, Cam-
bridge 17. 10. 10.

8 Introduction
relations in family and society, looking at Orestes matricide and Clytemnestras

characterisation as a tyrant. In the chapter on Eumenides (3), I examine the dis-
course on motherhood, wifehood and, again, familial and societal power rela-
tions at work in Orestes trial.
Finally, some notes on the terminology. Speaking of Clytemnestra as mother
giving life and as mother nurturing life, I assume that there is a difference be-
tween the sexes and that this difference consists precisely in the exclusive power
of a woman to conceive and to maintain life in utero, through her blood. This
does not assume an essentialist position on women, whereby a woman becomes
a woman only through pregnancy and marriage. Instead, this is to say that cul-
turally constructed gender distinctions are based on sex, and that the law of the
Father consists in, and is made possible by a) the social acceptance of marriage
and the definition of the mother as wife and female procreator for the Father, b)
the social acceptance of the sexual, reproductive and economic exploitation of
the female body. By maintaining that cultural womanhood cannot be separated
from biological womanhood, I differ from those scholars who, as they speak
about politics of menstruation, neglect the fact that its social meanings tend
to undermine the power of female biology. For this reason, I also differ from
Butler (2000, ch. 1), whose criticism of Irigarays concept of the maternal never
speaks of the mother, her body and its relation with maternal thinking or think-
ing through the body. Finally, I assume that the gender studies on the feminine
and the female character of Clytemnestra, since they neglect the maternal di-
mension of Clytemnestra as a mother giving life, cannot be regarded as feminist:
by neglecting her maternal body, they construct motherhood according to the
patriarchal view of the mother figure as a projection of male identity, i. e. as
the wife of the father for whom she has borne children.
Furthermore, I refer to the parental role of Clytemnestra and Agamemnon
with the following terminology: genitor and genitrix term the social role of the
father and the mother, as according to the classical definition of Barnes (1973:
Cf. Gianini Benotti (1972); Rich (1977); Trebilcot (1983); Fouque (1994); Demichel (1994);
Heritier (1996); Irigaray (2000); Lipperini (2007).
Cf. Skultans (1970); Brownmiller (1975); Dworkin (1981); Dally (1982); Ehrenreich (1983);
Fraser (1989); Weinbaum (1994), with further bibliography; Cheah and Grosz (1998), in their
interview with Butler; Mclanahan and Percheski (2008).
Cf. for instance Laws (1990).
On the mothers body and its relation to maternal thinking or thinking through the body, cf.
Gallop (1988); Irigaray (1984); Ruddick (1989); Muraro (2006).
On the question whether gender studies on female characters in Athenian drama are fe-
minist or not, cf. Rabinowitz (2004) and Gilhuly (2006: 5) on Rabinowitz (2004).

63); genetic father terms the carnal father, as in Barnes (1973: 63); the mother giv-
ing and nurturing life terms the biological mother.
The bibliography was updated to November 2013, as the book went to press.

Agamemnon
I Clytemnestra and Iphigeneias sacrifice
In this section, I explore Clytemnestras representation of Iphigeneias sacrifice,

focusing on Clytemnestras rhetoric of motherhood and on paternal violence in
its relation to the mother-daughter bond. In order to understand the discourse
that takes place when a son kills his mother, we have to start from the narrative
of violence involved in the mother-daughter bond (Iphigeneias sacrifice), before
looking at the narrative of violence involved in the mother-son relationship (ma-
tricide). This particular critical perspective leads us to ask not only where the
stories of women are in mens plots, but where the stories of mothers are in
the plots of sons and daughters. By doing so, we will be able to point out
the differences in the play which pertain to the relationship between mother
and daughter, and between mother and son, investigating the discourse of vio-
lence at work in Aeschylus representation of matricide. In discussing the sacri-
fice of Iphigeneia from the narrative perspective of Clytemnestra, my analysis dif-
fers consistently from most studies in the scholarship, which insist instead upon
the relationship between a daughter (Iphigeneia) and a father (Agamemnon).
In sections one to six, I explore Clytemnestras rhetoric of motherhood and
maternal revenge according to her rhetoric of appropriation of the keywords
, , and in Ag. 316, 600, 602 604, 606, 612, 1405, 1438,
1557, , and in Ag. 1417 1418, in Ag. 1525, in
Ag. 607 and 896, in Ag. 1523, in Ag. 1425, and
in Ag. 265, in Ag. 1432. In section seven I sum up my conclusions.
1 Clytemnestra or Iphigeneias mother and Agamemnons wife
A discussion of Iphigeneias sacrifice, from the perspective of Clytemnestras

rhetoric of motherhood, inevitably leads to the question of how Clytemnestra ex-
plains the murder of Agamemnon. We detect four manners in which she refers to
the death of Agamemnon:
Cf. Hirsch (1989: 4).

Cf. Di Benedetto (1977: 187); Nussbaum (1986: 32 41); Wohl (1998: 71 82); Fllinger (2003:
85 86; 2007: 17). For extended bibliography, cf. below n. 37 and 57.
I use the expression rhetoric of appropriation as Goldhill does (1986: 46): It is this sort of
one-sided laying claim to evaluative and normative words that I term the rhetoric of appro-
priation .

as a compensation for Iphigeneias sacrifice (Ag. 1397 ff., 1412 ff., 1525 ff.,
1551 ff.);
as the work of the power of the Alastor of the Atreid family (Ag. 1497 1504);
as a punishment for his relation with Cassandra (Ag. 1438 1447);
as a revenge for his relation with Chryseis and other captive women
(Ag. 1439), and as protection of her own adulterous union with Aegisthus
(Ag. 611 612; 1434 1436).
These different levels of explanation conform to the status of a woman with a

child, that is to say to Clytemnestras position as wife and mother. Thereby,
she focalises on Agamemnon in different ways. When she refers to Cassandra,
Aegisthus and the captive women of Troy, she is talking in her role as wife, fo-
cusing upon Agamemnon as her husband. Here, she insists upon the sexual re-
lationship between Agamemnon and Cassandra (Ag. 1438:
; 1442 1443: , /-
; 1446: ). Moreover, she hints at her sexual independ-
ence from her man, as her rhetoric of appropriation of the words and
in passage 611 614 points out:

.
, ,

Yet, when she speaks of the murder of Agamemnon as a compensation for the
sacrifice of Iphigeneia, and as the effect of the power of the Alastor of the Atreid
family, she is talking in her role of mother, focalising upon Agamemnon as the
father and the murderer of her daughter. Accordingly, she identifies herself as
the mother of Iphigeneia and not as the wife of Agamemnon. As we infer from pas-
In line 1438 Clytemnestra is referring to herself (cf. D-P ad loc.). What is true for Clytemnestra
(Agamemnon is her ), it is not for the nurse. In Cho. 764 the nurse refers to Ae-
gisthus as of the Atreid house. For Aegisthus as lovemate of Clytemnestra, cf. also
Clytemnestras rhetoric of appropriation of the word as object of her philia in Ag. 1654:
, , . At line 1443 following Fraenkel (ad loc.) and
Lloyd-Jones (1978: 58 59), I read, as in the MS, . For an interesting discussion of
passage 1446 1447, cf. Fuqua (1972); especially for line 1443 and the erotic undertone of -
, cf. Tyrrell (1980); Koniaris (1980); Borthwick (1981).
On Clytemnestras representation of Agamemnon as father and murderer of her daughter, cf.
Loraux (1990: 77): Mortelle, Clytemnestre connat la mort en sa fille: elle a irrmdiablement
perdu Iphignie et elle tue le pre meurtrier.

12 Agamemnon
sages 1397 1418, 1497 1500 and 1551 1557, in casting Agamemnon as the sacri-
ficer of Iphigeneia, she either refuses to identify herself in the role of wife, or she
talks about Agamemnon as the father of Iphigeneia and refers to him as in
the general sense of the demonstrative pronoun that one. In passage 1397 1418,
she mentions Agamemnon twice, in relation to the sacrifice of Iphigeneia:
Ag. 1397 1398:

Ag. 1417:
Yet, in these same lines, she admittedly refers to him as her husband (Ag. 1405:
), with the sole purpose of denying his marital status by stating that he is
dead (Ag. 1405: , ). Further, she mentions Agamemnon as that
one, but not as her husband (Ag. 1414: ).
Similarly, in passage 1497 1500, she identifies herself with the wife of Agamem-
non by denying it at the same time (again, Agamemnon is dead; Ag. 1500: -
). Moreover, she denies to be Agamemnons wife
(Ag. 1498 1499: / ). Finally, to
the old men of Argos who reproach her for the killing of her husband
(Ag. 1544: ), she replies that Agamemnon is the father of his
own daughter Iphigeneia (Ag. 1556 1557: / ).
Consistent with this representation of Agamemnon as the father of Iphige-
neia, Clytemnestra refers to him as her husband, and to herself as his wife,
only when she is not talking about Iphigeneia; the first time in the so called bea-
For similar remarks on line 1405, cf. Winnington-Ingram (1983: 108 109): The word
receives great emphasis; its juxtaposition to suggests perhaps a causal connection be-
tween those two conditions.
On the Alastor and Clytemnestras motherhood, cf. below ch. 1, I. 6.
I differ from Belfiore (2000: 145) who quotes lines 1555 ff. as evidence that Klytaimestra says
that she killed her husband in vengeance for his sacrifice of their daughter Iphigeneia. I also
differ from Neuburg (1991: 60). In glossing lines 1555 1557, Neuburg notes: Clytemnestra sees
herself as having acted justly under the rubric of avenger for family-murder, while the chorus
sees her only as someone who has slain her own husband, which is obviously reprehensible.
This is right, but not quite the point. Neuburg misses the fact that here Clytemnestra refers to
Agamemnon as pater and to Iphigeneia as thugater, thereby pointing out her position as mother
and avenger of her daughters death. Such omission is sadly surprising, since in his paper
Neuburg wants to look at the question of family relationships as crucial to the drama as a
whole (p. 53). Now, how is it possible to answer this question limiting oneself to speak of
Clytemnestra as avenger, keeping silent about Clytemnestras position as the mother who
avenges her daughters sacrifice?

con-speech, then in the speech she delivers immediately after the exchange be-
tween the chorus and the herald:
Ag. 316:
Ag. 600:
Ag. 602:
Ag. 603:
Ag. 604:
Ag. 606:
Critics, however, have often dismissed the complexity of Clytemnestras self-rep-

resentation as mother and wife, most of the times suppressing Clytemnestras
self-representation as a mother. This is a common trend in the scholarship,
which reflects precisely the following prejudice: a woman with a child is not a
mother in the first place, but the wife of her husband, i. e. the object of the
male desire for sex and reproduction. In order to pursue this critical level,
scholars in fact read the narrative of Iphigeneias sacrifice while bearing in
mind the discourse of Apollo, and following it as if it were indisputably right.
So they tend to define a single narrative frame for the character of Clytemnestra:
the adulterous wife of the father of the child. Yet, to erase the complexity of Cly-
temnestras explanation for the murder of Agamemnon, from her narrative per-
spective as both mother and wife, amounts to erasing the complexity of the
plays discourse on motherhood, wifehood and violence. Now, a discussion of
Cf. for example Foley (2001), who looks at Clytemnestras action only as the action of a wife
against her husband (cf. ch. III. 4, Tragic wives: Clytemnestras). Foleys omission might be
explained by the fact that she turns the parameters of her analysis of female acts in Greek
tragedy into the division of women into maternal women (mothers) and non-maternal women
(wives, concubines). Thus, on the one hand, she sees as mothers only old women, who are not at
the mercy of eros anymore (Aethra in Euripides Suppliants, Jocasta in Phoenissae, Hecuba in
Hecuba); on the other hand, she categorises Clytemnestra, Medea and Jocasta only as wives. On
this distinction, cf. Hirsch (1989: 1 27), esp. on Jocasta pp. 1 8. For further bibliography, cf. n.
75.
Cf. e. g. Bunker (1944: 200); Earp (1950: 55); Kitto (1956: 36); Peradotto (1964: 390); Vickers
(1973: 145); Betenski (1978: 20); Kraus (1983: 195 196); Maitland (1992: 30); Pulleyn (1997: 567);
Kppel (1998: 194 197); Gould (1978: 59 60; 2001: 165); Helm (2004: 45); McClure (2006: 81);
McHardy (2008: 103 104); Wolfe (2009: 698 703). In her discussion of the maternal authority in
the Persians and of the characterisation of Clytemnestra in the Agamemnon, McClure denies
maternal authority in the case of Clytemnestra. She observes at p. 82: Clytemnestra is never
once directly alluded to as a mother by the other characters in the Agamemnon except when
Cassandra refers to her oxymoronically as the mother of death . As I will show, Cassandras
representation of Clytemnestra as a mother of death aims to undermine the authority of Cly-
temnestras rhetoric of motherhood.

14 Agamemnon
Clytemnestras rhetoric of motherhood and wifehood can help us in two direc-

tions. First, to differentiate the characters representation of Clytemnestra as
merely an adulterous woman from her self-representation as an avenging mother
and a woman refusing sexual dependence on her man. Second, to underline
the differences between the Aeschylean and the Homeric Clytemnestra.
Homeric epos does not tell the story of Iphigeneias sacrifice, and it is vague
about the death of Clytemnestra (the only time Clytemnestras death is men-
tioned (Od. 3, 309 310), it is not clear whether she is murdered by his son
Orestes, or she commits suicide). Moreover, Clytemnestra is only portrayed as
the adulterous wife of Agamemnon (Od. 3, 266272; 11, 439; 24, 199), and as
the counter-example of Penelope, the faithful wife of Odysseus (Od. 13, 379
381; 20, 33 35; 24, 191 202). We might say that the Homeric story of the Atreids
focuses on the horizontal relations between a wife (Clytemnestra), a husband
(Agamemnon) and a love mate (Aegisthus). Aeschylus maintains Homers char-
acterisation of Clytemnestra as an adulterous wife: yet, his Clytemnestra is the
mother of a matricidal son and of a sacrificed daughter in the first place. The Ore-
steia is a tragedy not because Clytemnestra betrays her man, but because she
kills the father who has killed her daughter, and will be killed in return by
her own son. The vertical relations between parents and their children become
the object of Aeschylus poetic interest. Moving from Clytemnestras depiction
as a wife to her depiction as a mother, Aeschylus is breaking a silence in
Homer and rewriting the Homeric epic tradition, a shift that posits motherhood
as a crucial issue in all three plays of the trilogy: in Agamemnon through Clytem-
nestras depiction as a mother and through her rhetoric of explanation of Aga-
memnons death as revenge for Iphigeneias sacrifice; in Choephoroi through
Electras and Orestes rhetoric of explanation of motherhood and matricide; in
Eumenides through the dispute between Apollo and the Furies on the role of
mother and father in reproduction.
The Aeschylean characterisation of Clytemnestra as mother allows a com-
parison with Penelope. As we will see, in Aeschylus Clytemnestra is a bad
Cf. Loraux (1990: 76 77): Mais il y a aussi Clytemnestre dont on fait trop vite une adultre
meurtrire. On Clytemnestra as an adulterous wife and the murder of Agamemnon as an excuse
for sex, cf. below Cassandras discourse in ch. 1, II. 1.
On the paradigmatic function of the Atreid myth, the absence of Iphigeneias sacrifice and
the uncertainty about Clytemnestras death in the Odyssey, cf. e. g. Duering (1943: 95 105);
DArms and Hulley (1946); Lesky (1967: 10 18); March (1987: 84 86); Thornton (1988); Hlscher
(1967; 1989: 297 310); Olson (1990); Griffith (1991: 176); Sommerstein (1996: 190 192); Gould
(2001: 164 165); McHardy (2008: 104 105); Wolfe (2009: 695 696). The Nostoi and the Ehoiai
mention Orestes matricide; cf. Vogt (1994: 97 n. 1).

wife for the characters in the play, nonetheless she is and remains a philos of her
children: in tragedy, bad wife is not equivalent to bad mother. In Homer, instead,
Penelopes role as mother is never detached from her role as wife. She is depict-
ed either as a (good) mother since she is a (good) wife (Od. 2, 113:
, ; 11, 178:
), or as a woman who might abandon, or not recognize her
man, and therefore as a mother who might not take care of her son:
Od. 16, 73 75: ,

Od. 19, 524 525: ,

Od. 23, 97 99: , ,
,
;
The expression , is particularly important in regard to my

discussion of the Aeschylean discourse on motherhood. It is precisely this Ho-
meric characterisation of the mother as a bad mother that is destabilized by
the narrative and the language of the Oresteia, as a central step for the represen-
tation of matricide as a problematic act of violence.
In what follows, I turn to a discussion of Clytemnestras rhetoric of mother-
hood in relation to the sacrifice of her daughter and to Agamemnons paternal
violence. My discussion takes the chorus representation of Iphigeneias sacrifice
in the parodos as a starting point.
2 Mother, daughter and sacrifice
The sacrifice of Iphigeneia is narrated at length in the parodos (Ag. 205 227). As
has often been observed, in the chorus report Iphigeneias sacrifice represents
the tragic version of the wedding ritual, in which a virgin passes from her kurios
into the hands of Hades (her spouse). Several elements in the text support this
position. Iphigeneia is a virgin (Ag. 215: , 229: -
, 245: ); she seems to wear the saffron bridal veil (Ag. 239: -
); the erotic undertone of verses 240241 evokes hymeneal images
( -/ ); the image of the
force of the gag in line 238 ( ) suggests the trope of the bride

16 Agamemnon
tamed like an animal in her first sexual encounter. However, there is even more
in this analogy. The sacrifice of Iphigeneia can be seen as some kind of funeral
nuptial with Hades, precisely because her death represents a precondition for
war: as the expression (Ag. 227) shows, in the case of Iphige-
neia the preliminary sacrifice to marriage () is her own sacrifice and
prelude to war.
Yet, Iphigeneia is not just a virgin. Following Clytemnestras and the chorus
discourse, when Agamemnon kills Iphigeneia in sacrifice as expedient (Ag. 199:
) and conditio sine qua non for winning the favourable winds for the expe-
dition to Troy and starting the war against Troy, as a matter of fact he kills his
own daughter:
chorus Ag. 224 227: -

, -

Clytemnestra Ag. 1417 1418: ,
,
This clash of civic and paternal duties constitutes the core of Agamemnons di-
lemma, and leads to the irremediable conflict between Agamemnon and Clytem-
nestra:
Ag. 206 208: ,

,

Cf. e. g. Goldman (1910: 117); Peradotto (1969: 245); Cunningham (1984); Armstrong and
Ratchford (1985); Armstrong and Hanson (1986); Seaford (1987: 124 125); Griffith (1988: 553
554); Lynn-George (1993: 7 n. 23); Bowie (1993: 20); Wohl (1998: 72, 78); Fletcher (1999: 16); Heath
(1999: 28 29); Delneri (2001: 60 61).
On the virgins sacrifice as funeral wedding with Hades, cf. Loraux (1985: 68 75). On the
expression , cf. Zeitlin (1965: 466): In this context, proteleia is used with greater
effect than before. Iphigenia was literally the preliminary sacrifice before the departure of the
fleet. As Zeitlin, cf. also Dumortier (1975a: 190 191); Petrounias (1976: 210); Lebeck (1983: 81).
On the death of a virgin as condicio sine qua non for the beginning of war, cf. Burkert (1972: 77):
Das vorbereitende Jungfrauenopfer prgt bei den Griechen vor allem die Einleitung des Krieges,
with full evidences at n. 30, p. 77 78. On this topic, cf. also Loraux (1985: 61 65). For
as preliminary sacrifice to marriage, cf. Burkert (1972: 74 75 with n. 20).
This clash returns in the opposition between the stated necessity of the war against Troy in
Ag. 224 227 and Agamemnons description as Iphigeneias father in Ag. 228, 231, 244, 245. On
this topic, cf. LSN: 30 31. On Agamemnons dilemma and his position as father, cf. ch. 1, I. 4.

Ag. 211 213: ;

;
In Ag. 1417 1418, Clytemnestra enlightens us on the mechanisms of this conflict

between sexes. Clytemnestra speaks this passage after the murder of Agamem-
non, when she claims, in front of the chorus, the rightneousness of her violent
deed. In this line, according to Clytemnestras rhetoric of appropriation of the
word , a mother, through her , guarantees the continuity of life in
the family. Quite the contrary, according to Clytemnestras appropriation of the
word , the father and warrior kills his own daughter for the sake of war,
breaking up the continuity of life in the family, which he, as kurios, is supposed
to safeguard through the virgins marriage. In translation, we should try to
maintain this opposition. So, for example, Smyth (Loeb 1936) aptly translates
he sacrificed his own child, even her I bore with dearest travail; Collard
(2002) he sacrificed his own daughter, the darling of my womb; Centanni
(2003) ha sacrificato sua figlia. Mia figlia! Che io ho partorito; Carson (2009)
this man sacrificed his own child, my most beloved, my birthpang, my own.
The Greek supports this reading. Indeed, the substantive properly indicates
the female child in relation to its mother at the moment of giving birth and, read
with , it stresses the insoluble clash between the one who gives birth (the
mothers figure) and the one who kills for the sake of war (the fathers figure).
Following this line of interpretation, we can make the following observations:
On Agamemnons position as kurios of Iphigeneia, cf. Fllinger (2007: 21), with extended
bibliography at n. 39. Furthermore, it is certainly true that sons guarantee the continuity of the
oikos in Athens, and daughters can do it only if there are no sons. Agamemnons tragic action,
then, might reflect the Athenian idea that the death of a son, and not the death of a daughter,
threatens the continuity of the oikos. Yet, it is also equally true that without regeneration of life,
an oikos becomes extinct: sons are born only from mothers. Now, with Iphigeneias death, there
will be no sons born from her who will be the heads of new households, and no daughters who
will bear sons. It is notable that in the Atreid house Electra is still capable of bearing children.
Yet, this objection does not affect the matter in a substantial way: Agamemnon, in sacrificing
Iphigeneia, still violates his role as kurios, and the fact that he could be the kurios of Electra does
not efface the tragic dimension of Iphigeneias sacrifice.
Cf. Loraux (1990: 79 80): la fille, on sen souvient, pouvait tre dsigne comme dis, dun
nom qui renvoie au vcu mme de laccouchement, dans sa dure et sa douleur, mais avant que
la sparation de la mre et de lenfant ne soit accomplie. Thus, as Loraux (1990: 137 n. 93)
observes, properly designates the female child in relation of her mother, and not just the
child in relation to the female. For this meaning of , cf. Dumortier (1975: 28) who notes that
En Agam., 1417 1418, , signifie le fruit de la douleur, lenfant sera lenfant, par
rapport la femme. On , cf. as well Winnington-Ingram (1983: 110) who notes that this

18 Agamemnon
1) when Clytemnestra speaks about her relationship with Iphigeneia, she fore-
grounds the biological tie between mother and daughter. By referring to the
relation with her daughter as a biological tie, Clytemnestras rhetoric of
motherhood lies in sharp opposition to that of all the other characters in
the play, except for the Furies. Cassandra and the chorus in Agamemnon,
Electra, Orestes, the nurse and the captive women in Choephoroi, Apollo
and Athena in Eumenides, all share an interpretation of motherhood, accord-
ing to which a mother is solely the wife of the husband for and from whom
she has borne children not a woman who, through the experiences of preg-
nancy and labour, gives birth to her child;
2) from Clytemnestras maternal perspective, the murder of Agamemnon repre-
sents the punishment for his warlike violence against the inviolable bond of
life between a mother and the creature of her womb.
Two further considerations can be fairly put forward. First, Clytemnestra is clear-
ly concerned with the public scope of her daughters death (she talks about Iphi-
geneias sacrifice as the condition for the Trojan War). Second, in contrast to
what Hall (2006: 67) has observed, Clytemnestra does not seem to be giving
voice to the pain of the disturbed tragic woman. Rather, she appears to be lu-
cidly criticising, from a maternal point of view, the violence of the father who
kills his own daughter in order to sail to Troy.
In referring to Iphigeneia as the exclusive fruit of her womb, Clytemnestra
does not use only the expression in Ag. 1417 1418. In
Ag. 1525 she also describes her child as her own shoot:
word, as in line 1525, designates the intimate physical connection between mother and
child.
On Agamemnons warlike violence and Iphigeneias death, cf. Hammond (1965: 42 47);
Peradotto (1969: 255 257); Dodds (1973: 57); Petrounias (1976: 151 152); Vellacott (1977: 115);
Gantz (1982: 11 13; 1983: 75 77); Winnington-Ingram (1983: 83) and Seidensticker (2009: 242
243), according to whom Agamemnon kills Iphigeneia because of his military ambitions: the
sacrifice of Iphigeneia allows him to attack Troy and to prove his value in war. These sholars,
however, refer to the chorus description of Iphigeneias sacrifice and not to Clytemnestras
representation of Iphigeneias death. On Agamemnons military ambitions, cf. now the
thoughtful discussion of Lawrence (2013: 76 77).
Accordingly, I differ from Foley (2001: 213) who argues that in these lines Clytemnestra is not
concerned with the public aspect of Agamemnons choice.

Clytemnestra speaks this line in her last confrontation with the chorus, when she
justifies the death of Agamemnon as a revenge for Iphigeneias sacrifice
(Ag. 1527 1529). We must look at this line carefully. It might seem prima facie
that for Clytemnestra the conception of her daughter is the result of a sexual en-
counter with her husband. However, one could ask whether or not she is actually
claiming that the male, in the process of reproduction, is just a donor of sperm,
and the woman, instead, the unique genetic parent of the child. The text seems
to support this question. In line 1525, the Greek, as Fraenkel argues (ad loc.),
reads: my shoot that I conceived by him. Now, when Clytemnestra affirms
that she conceived her child from this man here ( ), she is
clearly representing Iphigeneia as her daughter ( ) and not as
their common child. We find an echo of Clytemnestras representation of the
child as fruit of the maternal body also at line 898, in Clytemnestras welcome
speech to Agamemnon. Here, Clytemnestra describes the Atreid as the only
child of the father:
We might detect a sarcastic tone in this phrase. The Greek reads a dative:
(i. e., for the father). As a dative possessive, expresses the idea that Aga-
memnon is the only son of his father (; cf. LSJ) and the guarantor of
the continuity of the genealogical line of the Atreids (cf. Fraenkel ad loc.). Yet,
read as a dative of reference, it also seems to imply that children are born of
their fathers according to the fathers point of view.
There is more to be said about the expression ,
and about the implied idea of the autonomy of the maternal body in generating
life. The assimilation of the embryo to a shoot () seems to suggest the no-
Cf. e. g. Mazon in Vidal-Naquet (1982): Au beau fruit que javais de lui; Medda in Di
Benedetto (1999): Ma al mio germoglio, che da lui avevo concepito; Sommerstein (2008): the
offspring that I conceived by him.
Accordingly, I differ from Winnington-Ingram (1983: 110) who argues that in Ag. 1417 and 1525
Clytemnestra describes Iphigeneia as her and Agamemnons child.
For a different reading of this line, cf. Sommerstein (2008: 103 n. 185): Agamemnon is not, of
course, an only son; this phrase, like the previous three, metaphorically describes him as one on
whom depends the whole safety of the house and/or the city. Of course, Agamemnon is not the
only child of Atreus (Menelaus is his brother). Thus, it could be argued that the phrase a fathers
only son implies a reference to Orestes (who is the only son of Agamemnon) and that it
expresses a presentiment of Orestes revenge. However, referred to , the adjective -
means the only member of a kin or kind, hence, generally, only, single (LSJ), unicus
(Italie). Moreover, one has to bear in mind that here Clytemnestra is talking about Agamemnon.

20 Agamemnon
tion of a biological continuity between a mother and the baby in her womb: as a
shoot grows up from a branch, so a baby does from the maternal body. It is not
by chance, then, that Apollo, in his speech in defence of Orestes, will use the
word to name the embryo:
Eum. 660 661: ,

Eum. 665 666: ,

Apollos re-appropriation of the word indicates how much the gods and
Clytemnestras discourses on motherhood differ from one another. For Clytem-
nestra, the child is the offspring of the maternal womb: the maternal body is
the condition of life; the baby is the fruit of the mothers body. For Apollo, in-
stead, the child is the offspring of his father (Eum. 660: );
the mother does not give life to her baby, i. e. the mothers body does not nurture
the life of the baby in her womb (Eum. 665: ).
Whereas Clytemnestra describes the mother-child bond as an intimate physical
relation (the mothers womb is the origin of life), Apollo reduces the mother-
child dyad to a merely physical relation: the mothers body as Apollo properly
says is by definition a foreign host to a foreign guest, i. e. a stranger to a strang-
er (Eum. 660 661: / ). In this interpretation,
within the course of the dramatic events from Agamemnon to Eumenides, we
seem entitled to talk about the Oresteia as a tragedy in which the characters
try to justify inter-familial violence by withdrawing the authority of Clytemnes-
tras maternal claim to the reproductive power of her maternal body.
In the following section, I address the topic of the silence of Iphigeneia on
the altar, exploring further Clytemnestras rhetoric of motherhood and maternal
revenge in relation to Agamemnons use of paternal violence.
3 Iphigeneias silence and paternal violence
Before being led to the altar, Iphigeneia has been gagged. The brute force of the
gag (Ag. 238: ), a violent bit which imposes a forced silence on Iphi-
geneia, assimilates the young girl to an animal (Ag. 232: ). The
On the corrupted sacrifice of Iphigeneia, cf. the seminal article of Zeitlin (1965: 466467). On
Aeschylean silence, cf. Taplin (1972); Thalmann (1985); Montiglio (2000: 192, 216 219, 246 247).
On the motif of the gag, cf. Petrounias (1976: 158), with further bibliography at n. 611.

animal violence of Iphigeneias silence is contagious. As Iphigeneia cannot

speak while being sacrificed, also the chorus can only keep silent (Ag. 247:
) about the moment the father plunges the sac-
rificial knife into his daughters throat (Ag. 208: ; 209 210:
/ ). Now, if we listen to the chorus
silence and try to give it a voice, the most obvious explanation (i. e., the ritual
convention according to which the sphage cannot be described) does not seem
conclusive. Further remarks are necessary. In what follows, I introduce two sug-
gestions.
My first remark is essentially epistemological. The silence of the chorus, by
mirroring the silence of Iphigeneia, expands and reverses it. Iphigeneia does not
say what she knows and would like to tell to her father and her household
(Ag. 228: ; 237: ); the cho-
rus does not say what it has not seen and does not know (Ag. 247:
). Thus, the silence of the chorus says something about
how difficult it is to use language in order to describe the horror of violence,
and reminds, in this sense, of the silence of the watchman, the first moment
of silence in the play (Ag. 36: ). On this topic, as Wohl (1998:
79) has similarly observed, it should be pointed out that the chorus might simply
not talk about something that it thinks actually happened, but in the end did
not. Nonetheless, as I see it, this does not affect the issue in a significant way.
Whether we argue that the chorus is keeping silent about something that really
happened but it has not seen and does not know, or if, on the contrary, we main-
tain that it is keeping silent about something it thinks really happened, but it has
not seen and it does not know, the silence of the chorus still faces us with the
difficult task of putting violence into words.
My second suggestion concerns the aetiology of Iphigeneias sacrifice. The
absence in the Aeschylean version of the caput aquae for Artemis wrath grounds
the chain of inter-familial murders in the Atreid family in a causal suspension:
we do not know why Iphigeneia has to die. Yet, the chorus does not keep silent
On Artemis wrath, cf. e. g. LSN: 20 25; Daube (1938: 144 150); Whallon (1961); Lloyd-Jones
(1962: 189 191; 1983); Hammond (1965: 46); Dawe (1966); Peradotto (1969); Fontenrose (1971:
79 81); Lebeck (1971: 29 36); Langwitz-Smith (1973: 4 6); Freyman (1976: 67 68); Lawrence
(1976; 2013: 7173); Neitzel (1979); Sommerstein (1980); Bergson (1982); Winnington-Ingram
(1983: 85 86); Elata-Alster (1985); Furley (1986); Clinton (1988); Thiel (1993: 47 87); Kppel
(1998: 110 ff.); Heath (2001); Helm (2004: 41 42); Grethlein (2013: 81 83). For a recent discussion
of some of these positions, cf. Geisser (2002: 260 262); Fllinger (2003: 67 71). For a detailed
discussion of the Aeschylean language in lines 122 130, cf. Edwards (1939). On the animal
imagery in the portent of the eagle and the hare, I shall mention West (1979), according to whom

22 Agamemnon
only about the origin of Iphigeneias sacrifice. In its report of the events in Aulis,
it does not even mention the most important aspects of this sacrifice. At the be-
ginning, it does not tell the reasons for Artemis demand; at the end, as we have
seen, the old men do not speak about the young girls throat being cut. Indeed,
the chorus talks about Iphigeneia as she is being sacrificed only through allu-
sions: the comparison of the girl with a goat (Ag. 232: ), her assim-
ilation to a beautiful painting (Ag. 242: ). We could
say with Derrida that there are in the tale of the chorus only, everywhere, dif-
ferences and traces of traces.
Traces of traces, then. As Rehm (1994: 51) has observed, the traces of Iphige-
neias blood on the altar can be read as a morbid substitution of her menstrual
blood: The bear Iphigenia shows her readiness for the onset of menstruation,
which will take the ironic, and fatal, form of her own blood being shed. Relying
on Rehm, I make the contention that the traces of Iphigeneias blood on the altar
are themselves traces of the biological symbiosis between mother and daughter.
There is indeed a symbiotic relation between the mother and the daughters
blood: by virtue of the same menstrual blood only the daughter, through preg-
nancy and labour, can become as her mother did a mother herself. As Lor-
aux (1981: 49 n. 67) has pointed out, Clytemnestra uses the word to indicate
this symbiotic identity between mother and daughter (Ag. 1417 1418: -
/): dis, par un redoublement du fminin, caractrise
la fille. Following this line of interpretation, we may explain the daughters
this imagery parallels the Archilochean fable of the eagle and the fox. On Wests article, cf. the
note of Arnott (1979); Davies (1981) and, more recently, Heath (1999a).
Cf. Gurd (2005: 20), who claims that Iphigeneia sacrifice is alluded to only through de-
formed refractions, and on line 242 Fletcher (1999: 16 19). On the impossibility of the chorus to
speak directly about the sacrifice of Iphigeneia, cf. also Delneri (2001: 58). The simile
recalls the mythical version according to which Iphigeneia was not sacrificed, but was
instead replaced by a stag.
Derrida in Positions, quoted after Culler (1983: 99).
With mothers blood I mean the mothers menstrual blood. This equivalence is well attested
in the Corpus Hippocraticum. The Hippocratics thought the uterus to be a container full of blood
from the body; in case of a pregnancy, this blood served as nourishment for the fetus; otherwise
it flowed out from the vagina through menstruation (Hipp., Mul. 1. 1, L 8. 12, 1. 24 25, L 8. 62
68; Nat. Puer. 14 15, L 7. 492 497). Cf. Hanson (1992: 39); Dean-Jones (1989: 182 186; 1994: 171,
200); King (1998: 76, 90); Cole (2004: 164).
On the maternal continuum in feminist debate, cf. e. g. Chodorow (1974: 47 48) who dis-
cusses at great length the consequences that the intimate physical relationship between mother
and daughter has on the psychological development of the daughter (esp. pp. 58 66); Kristeva
(1977: 420); Irigaray (1984: 100 103). Relying on Loraux on the meaning of the term , I have
found sadly surprising Foleys silence on the symbiotic relation between Iphigeneia and Cly-

sacrifice by her father and its horror as a break-up of the blood connection be-
tween mother and daughter. Moreover, we can conclude that in the Oresteia vio-
lence against female characters (father kills daughter; and as we will see, son
kills mother) goes along with a discourse on the maternal body.
Against this background, when Clytemnestra uses the word in relation
to her child as the fruit of her womb ( ), she conceives the mother-
daughter dyad as a bond of philia that links people related by maternal blood.
This generates an overvaluation of kinship relations through maternal consan-
guinity and a related undervaluation of social kinship ties through marriage.
As Zeitlin (1978: 158) has similarly pointed out, seeing herself as a mother, Cly-
temnestra does not see herself as a wife: If the female overvalues the mother-
child bond, her own unique relationship, she will, in turn, undervalue the mar-
riage bond. Following Zeitlin, I argue that Clytemnestras overvaluation of kin-
dred ties prevents her from facing a dilemma before killing Agamemnon. In fact,
she does not have to struggle between the choice of avenging a philos (Iphige-
neia) or killing one (Agamemnon): she does not see her husband as her philos,
only Iphigeneia.
Clytemnestras separation of her role as mother from her role as wife leads to
a tragic conflict. Explaining the murder of Agamemnon as a mothers revenge for
the death of her daughter and philos, Clytemnestra suppresses the fact that as a
mother, who acts for her daughter and therefore against the father of her daugh-
ter, she is also, inevitably, acting as a wife against her husband. Clytemnestras
rhetoric of appropriation of the word at lines 1372 1376 points in this di-
rection:
temnestra. Foley (2003: 120 121) only takes into account the symbiotic relationship between
Hecuba and Polyxena. I also do not understand why here Foley borrows a notion from the
feminist theory on the mothers body (i. e. the notion of symbiotic relation between daughter and
mother), but without explaining how the bodies of Hecuba and Polyxena are connected through
the symbiotic relation between bodies with the power of giving life.
Cf. Goldhill (1991: 26): there is no notion of violence without a discourse of the body.
I differ from Foley (2001: 205), who takes Agamemnons dilemma as a proof that moral
choices are a prerogative of men. Yet, Clytemnestras and Agamemnons positions can hardly be
compared. Clytemnestra, as I argue, does not have to choose between two philoi (for her,
Agamemnon is her enemy). Cf. Zeitlin (1978: 157): There the two traits of mother love and
conjugal chastity diverge, are, in fact, antithetical to each other. For Clytemnestra, then, the
premises of a moral dilemma are not given. Agamemnon, instead, has to struggle between
killing his daughter and philos and betraying his army.

24 Agamemnon
,
;
Clytemnestra speaks this passage immediately after the murder of Agamemnon,

trying to provide an explanation, perhaps a justification, for her behaviour be-
fore the killing: she says that she has fought against the one who she treated
as her philos, i. e. Agamemnon as her husband (in reference to her definition
of Agamemnon as in Ag. 600), but who in fact was not. Clearly,
according to Clytemnestra, the bond of philia seems even to exclude any expres-
sion of social kinship through marriage.
At lines 606 608, in the speech she delivers after the chorus exchange with
the herald, Clytemnestra views philia in the very same way. In this passage, she
talks to the messenger and depicts herself as a watchdog faithful to Agamemnon
and hateful of his enemies:

,
,
This self-representation as a faithful dog provides a good example of Clytemnes-

tras ability to manipulate language: as a woman who chooses a love-mate, she
certainly cannot be a faithful dog ( ), i. e. a faithful wife ( -
) to her husband (). In this sense, the image of the dog alludes, as in
the Homeric tradition, to female sexual impudence. However, beyond this de-
ceptive self-depiction, we can still detect in these words an emphasis on the fi-
delity of a mother to her own daughter. As Betenski (1978: 15) and Loraux (1990:
142 n. 123) have noticed, it can be fairly argued that the loyalty of the dog Clytem-
nestra is obviously in favour of her daughter, and that her hostility is meant
against Agamemnon, her , i. e. the father who bereft her of her daugh-
ter. So Clytemnestra manipulates the meaning of the pronoun . The mes-
senger interprets the pronoun as referring to the absent Agamemnon; she hints
at the sacrifice of her child. Again, in this interpretation, Clytemnestra portrays
her marital relationship with Agamemnon as a bond between enemies (-
, ).
Clytemnestras discourse on philia as a bond between mother and child im-
plies the authorisation of the mother as subject of power in the Atreid house-
hold. In this regard, Clytemnestras rhetoric of appropriation of the word
Cf. Redfield (1975: 194 195). As Redfield, cf. also Harriott (1982: 17); Mainoldi (1984: 108);
Goldhill (1988: 15).

is again very telling. In line 896, in the context of the long speech she delivers to
the chorus shortly before Agamemnons entry on stage, Clytemnestra talks about
Agamemnon as the watchdog of the house:
As has been observed, she seems to transfer her sovereign authority from herself
to Agamemnon, who is finally back home as her husband and king of Argos
(). If this remark is correct, an opposite statement seems legitimate as
well. Using the words and to point out Agamemnons position as
the kurios of the Atreid house, Clytemnestra may also claim the role of mistress
of the Atreid household for herself. In fact, as Petrounias has similarly ob-
served (1976: 141 142), she seems to suggest that Agamemnon is not in the posi-
tion to be the watchdog protecting his house, i. e. the lord and the head of his
family: as the chorus asserts, he killed his own daughter, delight of the house
(Ag. 208: ). According to this interpretation, Clytemnestra might
assert the legitimacy of her female authority in the house because she does
not violate, through an act of violence, the parental relationship with her
child. She does not violate the bond between parent and child; Agamemnon
does, and by doing so, he repeats the crime of his father Atreus.
In passage 606 608, again, Clytemnestras rhetoric of appropriation of the
word can be read as a textual evidence of her self-representation as mis-
tress of the Atreid household. As Fraenkel (ad loc.) has pointed out, here the ad-
jective is used in the same meaning of . Thus, as con-
Cf. Sevieri (1991: 21). In Homer the dog is already thought of as a violent protector of familys
life (Od. 20, 14 16). On this topic, cf. Harriott (1982: 15 16); Mainoldi (1984: 166); Goldhill (1988:
16). In regard to Clytemnestra as the mistress of the Atreid house, we shall notice that Aga-
memnon refers to Clytemnestra precisely in her function of guardian of the house in Ag. 914:
, . Cf. Mainoldi (1984: 166): Agamemnon appellera Cly-
temnestre guardienne de ma maison (Ag. 914), en montrant ainsi la confiance quil a en elle. On
this line, cf. also Kraus (1978: 45).
In opposition to Clytemnestra, who claims the power of the mother in the family system for
herself, Athena ascribes to the fathers figure the role of the head of the family (Eum. 739 740).
On this issue, cf. pp. 165 166.
Cf. Freyman (1976: 70) who observes that Agamemnon decision not to sacrifice Iphigeneia
would have affirmed the bond of parent and child and would have broken the curse and the
circle of pathos and Walsh (1984: 71) who comments on Agamemnon as the sacrificer of his
daughter: The figure thutr thugatros, then, indicates the natural fact of kinship, violated by
Agamemnons choice. On the cena thyestea, cf. below ch. 1, I. 6. On Agamemnon repeating
Atreus crime, cf. Sewell-Rutter (2007: 22).

26 Agamemnon
tains a reference to the loyalty of the chorus towards the king (Ag. 806), so
hints at Clytemnestras loyalty towards Agamemnon in his public role
as king. Read this way, the expression produces an eloquent
clue of the complexity of Clytemnestras deceptive language. We can infer from
the expression two levels of communication. On the first one,
the faithful dog, which Agamemnon will find at home, is in fact his adulterous
woman; on the second one, the faithful dog, which Agamemnon will find at
home, is in fact the woman who is not loyal to her king (and husband).
The idea, according to which Clytemnestra in lines 606 608 is claiming the
authority of her power in the Atreid house, is supported in the text at the lines
609 610:
As Fraenkel argued (ad loc.), the expression

does not contain a reference to Clytemnestras chastity: the word
is not a term for the seal of chastity; it designates instead the seal that kept
safe the properties of the master of the house during his absence. Thus, with
this phrase, Clytemnestra mentions her position as the oikophulax and oikono-
mos in the Atreid household. Quoting Fraenkel: She is only concerned with stat-
ing that she has left everything of value undisturbed.
Keeping with this discussion of Clytemnestras discourse on philia and the
mother-daughter bond, we are in the position to say that the violation of phi-
lia-relations in Agamemnon does not threaten social bonds only (such as the
ones established by marriage and xenia), but also kindred ties based on maternal
consanguinity. Clytemnestras defence of blood ties might be understood as the
defence of the authority of the bond of maternal philia, which runs through
blood and not through marriage, and, accordingly, as the defence of the author-
ity of maternal genealogy and the related maternal power in the social system of
the family and of the community. Thus, the Aeschylean tragic discourse on blood
and social kinship does not simply ascribe blood kinship to the mother and so-
cial kinship to the father: the maternal kinship is determined by both blood ties
On the expression as not referring to Clytemnestras

chastity, cf. also Pelling (2005: 97). Following Fraenkel, I differ from Fowler (1967: 30), who reads
lines 609 610 as referring to Clytemnestras sexuality.
On Greek tragedy and the transgression of the reciprocal relations of philia, cf. Belfiore. In
her treatment of Agamemnon Belfiore discusses only the violation of the marriages relationship.
This is not surprising, since she looks at the character of Clytemnestra merely in her role as wife
(2000: 144): In the main pathos, wife deliberately kills husband.

and the bond of philia. In Saxonhouses words (2009: 51), the bond of philia de-
riving from the maternal kinship and the biological consanguinity with the
mother can be understood in terms of the ties of family arising from the proc-
esses of birth from the females womb.
However, Clytemnestras discourse on maternal blood ties and maternal
power is potentially vulnerable. As I will argue in my discussion of the charac-
terisation of Clytemnestra as a bad mother and an adulterous wife in Cassandras
speech and in Choephoroi, the play constantly performs the attempt to suppress
the blood connection between mother and child, in order to instantiate the Fa-
ther as the only genetic parent of the children and as the only subject of power.
At the same time, this attempt fails: there is no way to deny the primary kin re-
lation with the mother and to figure bloodlines and power relations as merely
male and paternal. Accordingly, as we shall see, the play destabilises its own dis-
course on matricide as a necessary act of dike.
In what follows, I dwell on Clytemnestras rhetoric of motherhood in relation
to paternal violence further. In sections 2 and 3, I focused on Clytemnestras rhet-
oric of representation of her maternal bond with her female child, i. e. on the re-
lation between Clytemnestra and Iphigeneia. In sections 4 and 5, I shift my focus
to the relation between Clytemnestra and Agamemnon in connection to their
child Iphigeneia, exploring the particular way Clytemnestra talks about Aga-
memnons decision to sacrifice Iphigeneia.
4 Clytemnestra, Agamemnons dilemma and paternal treachery
In her last dramatic exchange with the chorus, shortly before Aegisthus appear-
ance on stage, Clytemnestra asserts that Agamemnon turned himself into the
sacrificer of Iphigeneia with deception:
I differ from Butler (2000: 11 12) who writes on Antigone: Not only does the state pre-
suppose kinship and kinship presuppose the state but acts that are performed in the name of
the one principle take place in the idiom of the other, confounding the distinction between the
two at a rhetorical level and thus bringing into crisis the stability of the conceptual distinction
between them. If I am not wrong, Butler is missing a crucial point: paternal kinship is both
biological and social insofar as it is grounded in the suppression of the primary blood relation
with the mother. Therefore, the state presupposes kinship only insofar as it is linked to the father
and not to the mother. However, I agree with Butler that the discourse of the tragic text on
kinship tends to destabilize the category of blood and social kinship. On this topic in relation to
the Oresteia, cf. pp. 102 107, 162 170, with n. 265. On the dichotomy of social and blood kinship
in Greek tragedy, cf. e. g. Vernant (1996: 342 343); Goldhill (2004: 38). For more recent con-
tributions on this topic, cf. n. 166 and n. 167.

28 Agamemnon
Ag. 1521 1524:

< >
<>

;
Fraenkel (ad loc.) does not consider this passage a question, and objects that it
contains an explicit reference to Agamemnons dolos, namely to the episode of
Achilles marriage with Iphigeneia. He comes to the conclusion that Clytemnes-
tra denies on Agamemnons part. Here, as elsewhere, she insists on retal-
iation in its most precise form (cf. especially 1527 9). However, if we interpret
line 1524 as ending with a question mark (cf. the OCT text by D-P), the Greek,
with a rhetorical question, seems to imply that Agamemnon has been using de-
ceit (cf. Sommerstein 2008: for did he not also cause a calamity for this house
through treachery?). Why does Clytemnestra speak of dolos in connection to
Agamemnons violence against Iphigeneia? Agamemnon does not answer this
question directly, as it eludes every possible allusion to the episode of Achilles
wedding with Iphigeneia. It seems necessary, then, as it is often the case with
Aeschylus, to place ourselves on the margins of the text and, inevitably, to
risk an interpretative drift. My contention is that the dolos of Agamemnon may
be equivalent to the solution of his dilemma. When the old men recall Agamem-
nons tragic impasse, they also report, in the form of direct speech, his belief that
shedding virginal blood is an act of themis according to Artemis:
Ag. 214 217:

-
<> -

On Agamemnons tragic impasse and his sacrifice of Iphigeneia, cf. e. g. the influential
contributions of Daube (1938: 170 178); D-P (1957: xxiii xxix); Reeves (1960: 168 171); Whallon
(1961); Lloyd-Jones (1962); Dawe (1963: 47); Fraenkel (1964: 334 335); Lesky (1966); Bergson
(1967); Revier (1968: 11 24); Peradotto (1969: 249 261); Dodds (1973: 57 58); Dover (1973);
Tyrrell (1976); Bollack (1981: 276 284); Nussbaum (1986: 34 36); Sevieri (1992); Basta Donzelli
(1997). For a review of the secondary literature on Agamemnons decision, cf. Kppel (1998: 98
109); Geisser (2002: 263 267); Fllinger (2003: 54 57). For most recent contributions, cf. e. g.
Rechenauer (2001: 72 73); Fllinger (2003: 85; 2007: 17); Willink (2004: 49 54); Sewell-Rutter
(2007: 153 166); Gruber (2009: 300 310); Lawrence (2013: 7483). In verses 215 217 there are
many philological difficulties. Following Ewans (1975: 26 28), I read the expression <>
as it is allowed for Artemis. As Ewans, cf. Winnington-Ingram (1983: 85 n. 16).

Now, Agamemnons dolos might consist in mistaking Iphigeneia for a virgin:

when he sheds her blood, he is not shedding virginal blood, but the blood of
his daughter. In the frame of such a representation of the sacrifice of a daughter
as the sacrifice of a virgin, Agamemnons rhetoric of appropriation of the word
is silent on the blood connection between mother and daughter, in sharp
opposition to the Furies use of the same word in Eumenides (cf. p. 168). Further-
more, Agamemnons rhetoric of appropriation of the word (
) consistently differs from Clytemnestras use of the related verb
. In the first case, we have a representation of the killing of Iphigeneia as
a ritual death ( ), which is also an anticipation of the corresponding
discourse on Iphigeneias sacrifice in Choephoroi (cf. pp. 9697, 102). In the sec-
ond case, as we have seen, we have a condemnation of the use of paternal vio-
lence against a daughters life.
Further remarks on the blood shed by Iphigeneia are possible. As has been
observed, in some medical and philosophical literature (Hipp., Mul. 1. 6, L 8. 30;
1. 72, L 8. 152; 2. 113, L 8. 242; Aristot., HA 581b1 2), the body of a bleeding
woman is associated with the bleeding body of a sacrificial animal. The sacri-
ficial analogy used by physicians and philosophers appears again in the lan-
guage of the Oresteia in relation to Iphigeneias sacrifice:
Ag. 231 234:

The comparison of the chorus between Iphigeneia and a goat helps us under-
stand something about this corrupted sacrifice which remains untold by the
old men: at the moment of her sacrifice, Iphigeneia is not like a goat on the
point of being slaughtered on the altar; she has replaced the animal in a substi-
This reading of verses 1523 1524 seems to work even if we assume that by the words
Clytemnestra is referring to the false wedding of Iphigeneia and Achilles. In this case
Agamemnon would clearly be a father who does not do what a father is supposed to for his
daughter: instead of giving Iphigeneia to her future husband, Agamemnon separates his
daughter from her mother through an act of violence and destroys her. Nonetheless, given the
Aeschylean silence about the wedding of Iphigeneia and Achilles, I would not push this idea too
far.
Cf. King (1986: 117 118; 1998: 88 98); Dean-Jones (1994: 101 103). On women, menstrual
blood and sacrifice, cf. also Osborne (1993).

30 Agamemnon
tution as perverse as if it was real. Thus, when the chorus uses the word
in reference to Agamemnons position as sacrificer of his own daughter, violence
against female characters (father kills daughter) is embedded in a discourse on
the female body. In order to be killed by her father, Iphigeneia has to abandon
what she is (a daughter and a virgin ready for marriage), and become something
she is not (an animal ready for sacrifice). Yet, obviously, Iphigeneia cannot shed
blood as an animal on the altar. As a virgin she has to shed blood by herself, with
her first menstruation and/or by her first sexual encounter; she is not supposed
to shed her blood by the knife of her father and sacrificer.
In the next section, I dwell on Agamemnons dilemma further, and discuss
his abuse of his own deliberative faculties in relation to Clytemnestras charac-
terisation of maternal mind.
5 Clytemnestra, Agamemnons dilemma and maternal sophronein
In the parodos, the chorus report of Agamemnons dilemma and of his decision
to sacrifice Iphigeneia insists on his abuse of deliberative faculties (Ag. 206
225). At first, according to the chorus, Agamemnon decides to kill Iphigeneia
(Ag. 215 217: / -/ . );
then, from that moment on (), he changes his mind, in consequence of a
wretched madness which gives foul advice, and finally dares to be the sacrificer
of his own daughter:
For the comparison of Iphigeneia with a sacrificial animal, cf. also lines 1415 1416 (
, / ). Clytemnestras assi-
milation of Iphigeneia to a grazing beast ( ) seems to point to her impos-
sibility to speak of Agamemnon as a father who kills his daughter. On this topic, cf. Hoffman
(1992: 110). Cf. also p. 85.
Cf. Dawe (1966: 9 11); Dodds (1973: 57 58); Gantz (1982: 11); Winnington-Ingram (1983: 83);
Helm (2004: 43). On Agamemnons decision and his mind getting lost, cf. also Lloyd-Jones (1962:
191 192); Lesky (1966: 82); Langwitz-Smith (1973: 6 8); Edwards (1978); Williams (1993: 134
135). Considering Agamemnon decision and his mind getting lost, the following observation of
Knox (1966: 215) is hard to follow: In Aeschylus and Sophocles, then, a change of mind is a rare
phenomenon; when it does occur, it is either attributed to a secondary character or affects a
secondary issue. I also differ from Pucci (1992: 520 521). In his extremely detailed and chal-
lenging analysis, Pucci (if I am not wrong) argues that Agamemnons parakopa is an aspect of
peitho and therefore that the Aeschylean text of the sacrifice of Iphigeneia makes the distinction
between her sacrifice as the work of madness and her sacrifice as a legitimate act collapse.
Surely, parakopa is an aspect of peitho (as Pucci argues at length, pp. 526 527, Agamemnon is
persuaded that it is right to sacrifice Iphigeneia). Yet, there is a distinction between peitho as a
destructive and as a positive force. On this issue, cf. pp. 171172, 178. Finally, note that the

Ag. 215 225: -

<> -
.

, ,

-

According to the chorus, Agamemnons bond of fatherhood with Iphigeneia af-

fects his reason: the decision to sacrifice his own daughter drives him out of
his mind. However, the bond of fatherhood does not prevent him from choosing
the death of Iphigeneia, as he has to decide if his daughter should live or not.
Indeed, the dilemma of Agamemnon and his decision to sacrifice Iphigeneia
come first (Ag. 206217); then his madness unfolds, and finally the killing of
Iphigeneia (Ag. 218225). Yet, whereas Agamemnon can rationally choose to
kill his own daughter, Clytemnestra is not able to accept the violent death of
Iphigeneia. Lines 1417 1425 point in this direction. Clytemnestra speaks this pas-
sage during her dramatic confrontation with the chorus after the murder of Aga-
memnon, when she defends the righteousness of her revenge:
,
,

;
.
,
,
,

Two points are worth attention here. First, Clytemnestra rebukes the chorus for
intending to punish her for the murder of Agamemnon, whereas it should in fact
punish Agamemnon for the killing of Iphigeneia. Second, Clytemnestra ends her
speech by saying to the chorus that it will learn from her to act and talk in the
chorus description of Agamemnon as a man at the mercy of his mind differs consistently from
Agamemnons self-representation as a reasonable person in his welcome speech to the city of
Argos (Ag. 849 850: /
).

32 Agamemnon
right way ( ), once she will rule in Argos

( / / ). In other words,
Clytemnestra is telling the chorus that a behaviour which conforms to sophronein
requires the man who deprives the mother of her daughter to be punished, and
that this lesson is something the chorus has to learn from her, once she has the
power in Argos. Thus, according to Clytemnestras rhetoric of appropriation of
the words and , knowledge (Ag. 1425: ), understood
precisely as knowing how to speak and how to act in the right way (Ag. 1425:
), presumes, on the one hand, the inviolability of the mother-child
bond (Ag. 1417 1418: ) and, on the other hand, the condem-
nation of the violence against this bond (Ag. 1417: ). In other
words, according to Clytemnestra, the chorus shall learn from her maternal mind
that a father cannot kill his own daughter. As we shall see (cf. ch. 3. 1), the Furies
rhetoric of appropriation of the verb also establishes the possibility of
acquiring sophrosune from the mother.
Against this reading of lines 1417 1425, it can be objected that Clytemnestra,
at the end of the passage, is not speaking as a mother, but as a queen. As Win-
nington-Ingram has pointed out (1983: 109), at the end of her speech the queen
has spoken not as mother. The political meaning of the verbs and
in lines 1423 1424 is undoubtedly in support of this critical position. Ac-
cordingly, by using the verbs and , Clytemnestra is telling
the chorus that it will have to obey her, once she will have prevailed on it and
seized the power in Argos. Read this way, passage 1421 1425 picks up a well-
known theme in the gnomic tradition. Moreover, it gives us good evidence of
Clytemnestras transgressive way of speaking, as underlined by the chorus reac-
tion in Ag. 1426 1427:
For the verb as referring to the sphere of knowledge, cf. Italie who quotes Ag. 1425
as an occurrence of in the meaning of prudentem esse, sapere. On the chorus and
Clytemnestra on the female mind, cf. pp 63, 70 72, 78 79. On the female mind in its relation to
female reproductive agency, cf. Diogenianus gramm., Paroemiae, 4, 2 3, 1. On female mind,
womb and female reproductive agency, cf. Sissa (1987), esp. ch. 1.
Cf. the same rhetoric of appropriation of by Aegisthus in Ag. 1619 1620:
/ , .
On in Ag. 1425, cf. North (1966: 46): When this appears in the Agamemnon in
the threats of Clytemnestra and Aegisthus to the Chorus (1425, 1620) it contains no deeper
significance than is customary in the gnomic tradition. Cf. also Rademaker (2005: 100, 118).

However, if this is right, we shall as well consider the possibility that in lines
1424 1425 Clytemnestra might be speaking both as queen and as mother: a
few lines above (in Ag. 1417 1418), she explicitly refers to the sacrifice of Iphige-
neia. In this case, the phrase /
in Ag. 1424 1425 would refer to Clytemnestras whole
speech in passage 1417 1425, and not just to lines 1421 1425. In other words,
as a queen, she is saying to the chorus: if I will rule the power in Argos, you
will learn to act and talk rightly, i. e. you will learn political obedience. As a
queen and as a mother, she is saying to the old Argives: if I will rule the
power in Argos (queens voice), you will have to learn that acting and talking
rightly implies the inviolability of the mother-daughter dyad and, therefore,
the punishment of the paternal violence against the mothers daughter (mothers
voice). I suspect that the only reason for dismissing this explanation is to be
found in the scholars common trend of suppressing Clytemnestras motherhood.
The meaning of the verb supports this line of interpretation. As
Rademaker (2005: 120) has pointed out, in Aeschylus indicates ab-
stention from unjustified violence, especially that against ones city or ones fam-
ily. Obviously, from the maternal point of view of Clytemnestra, Agamemnons
violence against Iphigeneia is unjustifiable and has to be punished. As a moth-
er, then, Clytemnestra is telling the chorus that it shall learn that the paternal
violence against the mother-child bond cannot be justified.
It seems important to consider that in lines 1424 1425 Clytemnestra is speak-
ing both as queen and as mother. Thus, this may affect the way we interpret the
narrative of the chorus in Agamemnon. Clearly enough, the chorus does not share
Clytemnestras rhetoric of motherhood and her discourse on and the
inviolability of the mother-child dyad. Indeed, as we have seen, by its reply in
Ag. 1426 1427 the chorus defines Clytemnestra as and terrible,
naughty, arrogant ( ). Clearly, this description of Clytemnes-
tra represents the paradigmatic counter-example of the Penelope. Yet,
this situation will change towards the end of the play. When Clytemnestra recalls
Iphigeneias death for the last time (Ag. 1555 1559), the chorus will finally admit
that it is hard to judge Clytemnestras and Agamemnons murderous acts:
Ag. 1560 1561: ,

Cf. Fraenkel (1964: 350): Sie hlt in dieser Szene dem Chor entgegen, was Agamemnon ihr
mit der Opferung Iphigeniens angetan hat, und hier ist der Chor nicht mehr in der Lage gegen sie
Partei zu ergreifen, sondern muss bekennen, dass er, jedes helfenden Gedankens beraubt,
keines Ausweg sieht.

34 Agamemnon
We see how the chorus might move from a moment of acceptance (only a foolish
woman can kill Agamemnon and claim the righteousness of this murder) to a
moment of doubt and hesitation (can we really condemn so easily a mother
who defends her daughter against paternal violence?).
As in line 1425, with her rhetoric of appropriation of the verbs
and , so in her first speech, at line 265, with her usage of the words
and , Clytemnestra seems to establish a link between the moth-
ers mind and the mother-child dyad:
Two remarks support this conjecture. First, as Winnington-Ingram (1983: 103)

has pointed out, with the phrase we see a hint of the biolog-
ical experience of motherhood: For instance, when the queen speaks of the
night as of a mother that has given birth to the day (265, 279), it is to remind
us of her own motherhood, of Iphigenia. Second, according to Goldhill
(LSN: 35), the expression seems to imply the expression -
: Her pun / is important because in a play on
words the word is only a sound image, to which one meaning or another
is attached.
Against this reading of line 265, it can be said that in Greek means
cheerful, kindly and not reasonable, sensible, of sound mind. Of course, the
adjective in Agamemnon denotes the quality of cheerfulness and polit-
ical kindness or loyalty (Ag. 140, 263, 797, 806). However, the adjective
in the meaning of reasonable, sensible, of sound mind is well attested in Ae-
schylus (cf. Pers. 768 772; Supp. 376 378, 640; Eum. 992 995). Moreover,
the related adverb denotes clearly in Agamemnon the capability of
speaking and acting as a sound-minded, intelligent, prudent person of good
sense (Ag. 351, 849 850).
I shall turn to a discussion of Clytemnestras mind in the chapter on Choephor-
oi, as I examine Electras rhetoric of appropriation of the words and
in lines 88 and 140 (cf. pp. 110 111, 122 125), and in the chapter on Eu-
menides, as I look at the Erinyes rhetoric of appropriation of the verb
(cf. ch. 3. 1 2). In the next section I analyse Clytemnestras rhetoric of explana-
Similarly cf. Goheen (1955: 133), and, most recently, Vogel-Ehrensperger (2012: 68 69).
Cf. Yarkho (1972: 171 with n. 11, 193, 196); LSN: 277 278. For as sound-minded,
intelligent, prudent, cf. also Alcman (1PMG=3 Calame, 37) with Calame (1983: 323): :
prendre ici au sens propre de qui a des , un esprit sain, bien portant, qui comprend .

tion of Iphigeneias sacrifice in relation to her representation as a vengeful agent

of supernatural forces.
6 Clytemnestras motherhood, the Alastor and the Erinys
During her last confrontation with the chorus, Clytemnestra identifies herself
with the Alastor of the Atreid family, and represents the murder of Agamemnon
as the effect of its curse, i. e. as the punishment of the cena thyestea:
Ag. 1497 1504:

Critics have often interpreted Clytemnestras appeal to the Alastor as a proof of

the entanglement of her murderous deed with the avenging plans of Aegisthus.
In other words, Aegisthus murders Agamemnon as a compensation for the cena
thyestea (Ag. 1587 1604) and Clytemnestra is nothing but the handmaiden of her
lover.
This reading, however, raises some difficulties. First of all, the text of Aga-
memnon mentions Aegisthus help only once, and without any reference to the
fact that Clytemnestra wanted to carry out the murderous intent of her lover
(Ag. 1654 1656). On the contrary, it repeatedly refers to Clytemnestra as murder-
ess of Agamemnon (Ag. 1379, 1405 1406, 1420 1421, 1552 1553) and it depicts
The Greek of this passage is full of uncertainties; for a discussion of the textual problems, cf.
Oliver (1960: 312 313); Neuburg (1991: 62 n. 31). Notably, Clytemnestra refers to the Alastor also
in the exodos: in passage 1475 1480 (see above p. 38) and in passage 1567 1576. In passage
1567 1576, however, she does not link the power of the Alastor to the cena thyestea, but to the
wealth of the Atreid house. She wishes that the Alastor will leave the Atreid house, in case they
are content with a small fortune. Thus, according to the apopempe, Clytemnestra is expressing
the belief that the curse of the Atreid family depends on the accomulation of a vast wealth (cf.
similarly the chorus in Sept. 766 771). As Di Benedetto (1984: 392) has observed, Clytemnestras
renunciation of a portion of the Atreid wealth si pone dunque su una linea di moderazione e di
saggezza. On Clytemnestras renunciation of a portion of the Atreid wealth, cf. now the
thoughtful suggestion of Raeburn and Thomas (2011: xxxii). On Clytemnestras and Aga-
memnons different view of the role of wealth in the Atreid family, ch. 1, III. 4.
Cf. e. g. Conacher (1987: 50 51); Kppel (1998: 171); Foley (2001: 220 224).

36 Agamemnon
Clytemnestra as a strong and autonomous woman (she organizes the magnifi-

cent return of Agamemnon to Argos all by herself (Ag. 280 316); in the carpet
scene, she provides the conditions for Agamemnons entry into the Atreid palace
without anyone helping her). Moreover, Aegisthus final revelation that he had
planned the murder of Agamemnon as a revenge for the cena thyestea (Ag. 1604,
1636 1637) does not confirm the idea that Clytemnestra is the passive executor
of the plans of her lover, and buckles under the dynamics of the curse the Atreid
family. Of course, for Aegisthus, the murder of Agamemnon means the fulfilment
of his own revenge. However, this does not seem to imply that the murder of Aga-
memnon, from Clytemnestras perspective as well, takes revenge for the cena
thyestea: a common goal does not necessarily mean a common cause. As Romilly
(1967: 98) has pointed out: Clytemnestre parle des fautes dAgamemnon, et
avant tout du meurtre dIphignie (1415sqq., 1524sqq.; 1551sqq.); et Egisthe
parle du meurtre des enfants de Thyeste, lui qui est le fils de Thyeste. In
this sense, as Peradotto (1969: 249), following Fraenkel, has noticed, it is appro-
priate to speak about the sacrifice of Iphigeneia as the first sufficient cause
(Ag. 223: ) for Clytemnestras murder of Agamemnon.
In defense of a reading of Clytemnestras violent deed as the compensation
of the cena thyestea, we could be tempted to argue that Clytemnestra, by appeal-
ing to the Alastor and linking the murder of Agamemnon to the cena thyestea,
finally reveals the real dynamics of her murderous action, i. e. the punishment
of Atreus crime. This, however, appears misleading. When Clytemnestra claims
that the Alastor, as avenger of the cena thyestea, is the author of the murder of
Agamemnon, the chorus does not believe her. As has been observed, with the
word (Ag. 1507) the chorus even speculates that Clytemnestra has
taken an active part in the murder of Agamemnon (she is not ) and
that therefore she has not submitted to the power of the Alastor:
Ag. 1505 1508:

;
; -

Following the chorus here, by explaining her murderous action as a punishment

of the cena thyestea, Clytemnestra might in fact be trying to avoid responsibility
Cf. similarly Euben (1982: 26); Sevieri (1991: 17); Scott-Morrell (1997: 147).
Cf. similarly Romilly (1977: 36).
Cf. e. g. Gantz (1982: 13); Winnington-Ingram (1983: 80); Seidensticker (2009: 244); Raeburn
and Thomas (2011: xxxvii).

for her deeds. It is not by chance that the chorus defines the Alastor as the col-
laborator (Ag. 1507: ) of Clytemnestra. Indeed, the chorus does not es-
tablish a direct link between the avenging power of the Alastor, the crime of
Atreus and Clytemnestras murder of Agamemnon. First of all, in its last refer-
ence to the curse (Ag. 1565 1566: /-
), the chorus names the curse in the context of its answer to
Clytemnestra, who is explaining the murder of Agamemnon as a compensation
for Iphigeneias death (Ag. 1551 1559). Yet, it does not mention the crime of
Atreus. Moreover, in the lines which follow (Ag. 1560 1561), the old men of
Argos agree, at least in part, with Clytemnestra about the murder of Agamemnon
being a legitimate act of revenge for the death of Iphigeneia. Accordingly, their
stance indicates that they link the death of Agamemnon and the power of the
curse to Clytemnestras revenge for Iphigeneias sacrifice rather than to her re-
venge for the cena thyestea. As Winnington-Ingram (1983: 112) has aptly ob-
served, Clytemnestra is actuated by motives extraneous to the bloody history
of the house of Atreus.
More than that, not only is the chorus silent about the connection between
the crime of Atreus, the power of the Alastor and Clytemnestras murder; it also
puts the power of the curse (Ag. 1565 1566: ;/
) in close relation to Zeus lex talionis (Ag. 1563 1564:
/ ). The folly
of mutual killings in the Atreid family seems, then, to be an effect of Zeus divine
law. In other words, for the chorus Zeus enacts the law according to which the
one who kills has to be killed, and this divine law of Zeus, not the cena thyestea,
is hunting the Atreid family with the violence of the chain of inter-familial mur-
ders (IphigeneiaAgamemnon Clytemnestra).
Similar remarks can be put forward in relation to passage 1460 1487, in the
long lyrical-epirrhematic exchange of the chorus with Clytemnestra in the exo-
dos. Here, the chorus mentions the curse of the Atreid house three times
(Ag. 1460 1461: / ; 1468: , ;
1481 1482: / ), attributing it to the avenging craft
of Zeus (Ag. 1486 1487: / ;).
Again, however, the chorus does not mention the cena thyestea. It positions the
ruin of the Atreid house in relation to Helens adultery, and it links the power of
the Alastor to the actions of women:
Cf. e. g. Daube (1938: 190); Vickers (1973: 385); Dover (1973: 61); Conacher (1974: 329); Ro-
senmeyer (1982: 240); Di Benedetto (1984: 391); ODaly (1985: 19); Konishi (1990: 130); Thiel (1993:
393); Lawrence (2013: 35, 99).

38 Agamemnon
Ag. 1455 1461: ,

,
,

Ag. 1468 1471: , -
,
<>

In the lines that immediately follow passage 1468 1471, Clytemnestra agrees
with the chorus that the Atreid house is haunted by the curse of the Alastor.
However, just like the chorus, she does not connect the power of the Alastor
with the cena thyestea:
Ag. 1475 1480: ,

,
There is more to say about the chorus representation of Clytemnestra as the col-
laborator of the Alastor. Such a characterisation seems to be coherent with Cly-
temnestras denial of her marital relationship with Agamemnon:
Ag. 1498 1499:

We have two issues to consider here. First, if we grant that Clytemnestra explains
the dynamics of her revenge on Agamemnon by her assimilation to the Alastor,
and that she refuses to be seen as his wife, we can argue that the action of the
Alastor embodies for Clytemnestra her maternal vengeful power: even if she is
not Agamemnons wife, she is still Iphigeneias avenging mother. Second, we
I differ from Winnington-Ingram (1983: 112), according to whom Clytemnestra, in appealing

to the Alastor, links her murderous action, as mother of Iphigeneia, to her marital status as wife
of Agamemnon, since in lines 1521 ff. she is referring to Iphigeneia as hers and Agamemnons
child. First, as we have seen (cf. pp. 1820), in passage 1521 1525, Clytemnestra talks about
Iphigeneia as exclusively her daughter. Second, the idea according to which in her appeal to the
Alastor Clytemnestra is relating her position as avenging mother to her status as wife, looks
problematic: Clytemnestra expressis verbis denies that she is Agamemnons wife.

are in the position to detect a striking similarity between the chorus and Clytem-
nestras representation of the murder of Agamemnon. For the chorus, Agamem-
non has been killed by the Alastor and Clytemnestra, his collaborator. Quite the
same, for Clytemnestra, Agamemnon has been murdered by the mother of Iphi-
geneia acting in cooperation with a supernatural being. Yet, following this inter-
pretation, it can be argued that Clytemnestra, in contrast to the chorus in
Ag. 1507 1508 ( -/), sees the action of the Alastor as
closely connected to the female history of the genealogical line of the Atreid fam-
ily. If, according to Clytemnestras explanation of Agamemnons murder, the
avenging mother is the collaborator of the Alastor, the Alastor is taking punish-
ment, together with Clytemnestra in her role as mother, also for the violence
done to the mother-daughter bond, i. e. to the female line of the Atreid family.
Further remarks on Clytemnestras denial of her marital status with Aga-
memnon are possible. Clytemnestras refusal is coherent with her discourse in
Ag. 1401 1406. Here as well, she explains her killing of Agamemnon as a com-
pensation for Iphigeneias sacrifice, refusing to identify herself as his wife (cf. p.
12). To sum up, we can assume that Clytemnestra, when she appeals to the Alas-
tor and uses the word (Ag. 1499) to deny her marital relation with Aga-
memnon, is claiming in fact the autonomy of her acts and her position as mother
in regard to her female status and actions as wife. In this interpretation, Cly-
temnestras denial of her marital bond with Agamemnon does not display her
revenge for Iphigeneias sacrifice as a mere excuse for sex. When she denies
being Agamemnons wife, she is not arguing that her explanation of his mur-
der as a compensation for Iphigeneias sacrifice is a cover up of her murder-
ous action in order to protect her adulterous relationship with Aegisthus. Clytem-
nestras self-representation as mother (and, accordingly, her refusal to be
Agamemnons wife) and Clytemnestras representation as wife of Agamemnon
do not overlap.
Further comments are possible about Clytemnestras appeal to the Alastor
and about the cena thyestea. Cassandras representation of the murder of the
king as the result of the power of the curse, and the revenge upon Atreus
crime (Ag. 1095 1097, 1188 1193, 1219 1226) is not a proof that Clytemnestra
is acting as an instrument of Aegisthus revenge, and, therefore, as the violent
agent of the Alastor of the Atreids. Indeed, this representation of the murder
of Agamemnon is coherent with Cassandras representation of Clytemnestra as
I disagree, then, with those critics who see a problem in Clytemnestras denial of her marital
status and her self-representation as mother. Cf. e. g. Fraenkel (ad loc.); Podlecki (1983: 33);
Geisser (2002: 314).
Similarly, cf. Hammond (1965: 42 43), especially on lines 1188 1193.

40 Agamemnon
a bad mother and an adulterous wife (cf. ch. 1, II. 1): as an instrument of Aegis-
thus murderous plan, Clytemnestra surely does not act as an avenging mother,
but as a polyandrous and murderous woman. Yet, Clytemnestra is not Cassandra.
Clytemnestras rhetoric of explanation of Agamemnons murder does not have to
coincide with Cassandras. Clytemnestra, as a mother avenging the death of her
daughter, and Cassandra, as a concubine speaking about the death of her mas-
ter, focus on Agamemnons death in a quite different way from one another: a
consequence of the power of the Alastor in the case of Cassandra; a consequence
of the power of the avenging mother who acts with the help of the Alastor of the
Atreid family in the case of Clytemnestra.
Coherent with this self-representation as an avenging mother who acts with
the help of supernatural forces, Cytemnestra does not just depict herself as the
personification of the Alastor of the Atreids. In the exodos, in the front of the
chorus, as she claims the righteousness of her violent deed, Clytemnestra
talks about the murder of Agamemnon as the fulfilment of justice operated by
an avenging mother ( ) who acts as an agent of
the Erinys ():
Ag. 1432 1433: ,

,
As Seaford has similarly pointed out (2003: 160), towards the end of the play, Ae-
gisthus description of the garments used by Clytemnestra in order to kill Aga-
memnon is consistent with such a representation of the murder of the king as
an action of an Erinys. In his speech, Aegisthus describes Clytemnestras murder-
ous garments as carpet of the Furies (Ag. 1580: ).
Further remarks on Clytemnestra as an avenging mother and a mater mon-
struosa are possible. In the long lyrical-epirrhematic exchange with the chorus,
in the context of the defence of her violent deed, Clytemnestra describes the mur-
der of Agamemnon as plotted a long time before (Ag. 1377 1378:
/ ) and affirms that her revenge is the
work of her right hand, artificer of justice (Ag. 1405 1406: /
, ). Here, she seems to balance her maternal revenge
and the supernatural force of the wrath of the house equally. Indeed, the phrases
and pick up closely Chalchas descrip-
tion of the sacrifice of Iphigeneia as the maker of discord rooted in the family
(Ag. 151: ).
Now, Chalchas description of Iphigeneias sacrifice aligns the wrath of the
house to the avenging power of Clytemnestra. As we infer from passage 150
155, for Calchas, Iphigeneias death is nothing but the cause of the strife between

Clytemnestra and Agamemnon, and the trigger of Clytemnestras revenge. We

have to consider two points here. First, the seer calls the discord aroused by Iphi-
geneias sacrifice , i. e. a discord that does not fear the husband.
Second, he links () this discord to Clytemnestras avenging power (
):
Ag. 150 155: ,

, -

,
For several reasons, the phrase might be read in

reference to the murder of Agamemnon as the result of the co-operation between
Clytemnestras maternal vengeful power and supernatural forces. If we read the
word with a capital letter, we have to assume that an avenging deity is at
work in the Atreid family. Yet, since classical Greek does not distinguish between
capital and small letters, it is also possible to read as an allusion both to
I differ from Furley (1986: 117) who refers to , renders it with fearless of
men and argues that lines 154 155 are to be read as an allusion not to Clytemnestras mur-
derous action, but to the cena thyestea and the avenging action of the Alastor of the Atreid
house. However, can hardly be referred to : specifically refers to
an attack against a man (cf. D-P and Fraenkel ad loc.) and has therefore to be linked with
. I also differ from Kppel (1998: 87 93). Kppel refers , through enallage, to
and translates it as der vor dem (Ehe)Mann nicht Halt macht. Nonetheless, he argues
that lines 154 155 allude to the cena thyestea and to the curse of the Atreid family. He translates
as Streitursache, die mit dem Haus mitgewachesen ist (d. h. mit ihm
seit jeher verwachsen), refers it to and comes to the conclusion that: Wenn nun das
Opfer als eine Ursache von Streit charakterisiert wird, die mit dem Haus verwachsen ist, dann hat
sie auch schon zu dem Zeitpunkt existiert, zu dem das Opfer vollzogen wird. This means that
the cause of dispute ( ) is not the sacrifice of Iphigeneia: the cause of dispute
exists already before Iphigeneias sacrifice, as his cause is said to be . Therefore, the
cause of dispute has to be the cena thyestea, and lines 154 155 do not refer to Clytemnestra. This
interpretation is hard to follow. By is certainly meant the sacrifice which Artemis de-
mands, i. e. the sacrifice of Iphigeneia. Given that the sacrifice of Iphigeneia () is said to be
innate maker of strife (D-P ad loc.) ( ), can only mean the
strife between Clytemnestra and Agamemnon (for obvious reasons, the sacrifice of Iphigeneia
cannot be the cause the cena thyestea!). Accordingly, lines 154 155 are to be read as referring to
Clytemnestra. On this matter, cf. most recently Sommerstein (2008: 19 n. 33): In Chalchas
oracular words the coming sacrifice of Iphigeneia is half-identified with the wrath it will
generate, which in turn is half identified with the person in whom that wrath will reside. On
the fight between Clytemnestra and Agamemnon, cf. notably the carpet scene: Ag. 940 (),
941 ( ), 942 ( ).

42 Agamemnon
divine wrath and to Clytemnestras maternal vengeful anger. As Hoffmann has

pointed out (1992: 129), the pun (avenger of children, or avenged by
children) with (children-making) supports this reading: the expres-
sion seems to work as a hint to Clytemnestras motherhood,
and to her violent action as a mother. Moreover, the anger of the Erinyes in Eu-
menides and their characterisation as (Eum. 382 383) both
suggest that the expression might imply a reference to Clytem-
nestra. Finally, Clytemnestras self-representation as of the Atreid
household (Ag. 609 610) seems to suggest the idea that Calchas may refer to
her, as he describes the wrath of the house as , i. e. as manager of
the household.
Against the background of a process of assimilation of Clytemnestra to su-
pernatural beings (the Alastor, the Menis, the Erinyes), her act of vengeance
for the death of Iphigeneia consigns her, as a mother, to a position of dreadful
longing. Unable to accept or even to control the grief she feels being separated
from the creature she has given birth to, the pain of Clytemnestra, like the
pain of Hecuba or Demeter, makes her a dangerous, uncontrollable, dreadful
and furious being, devoted to pain and wrath. Thus, an experience of insoluble
pain is at the base of Clytemnestras turn to violence, transforming her from a
mater dolorosa into a mater monstruosa. We have a vivid portrayal of Clytemnes-
tra as a mater monstruosa at line 1388 1392, in the context of the speech she
delivers immediately after the murder of Agamemnon and Cassandra:
,

,

Here, the language of Clytemnestra displays a strong evocative power. It may sug-
gest the idea of impregnation by the male. Just as the ground needs the rain in
Cf. Hammond (2009: 46), pace Fraenkel (ad loc.). On Clytemnestra as personification of
menis, cf. also Neustadt (1929: 243); Lesky (1966a: 98); Loraux (1990: 76 77); Rademaker (2005:
105).
On the expression recalling , cf. Winnington-Ingram (1983:
171 n. 59); LSN: 228, 232. I therefore disagree with Lebeck (1971: 34). According to Lebeck, the
expression refers to the cena thyestea and the curse of the Atreids, the ex-
pression to Clytemnestras murder of Agamemnon. For a very detailed criticism
of Lebecks critical position, cf. Erp Taalman Kip (1990: 53 60).
On maternal pain, wrath and revenge we should recall Loraux (1990).

order to produce crops (Ag. 1391 1392), the female needs the male semen in
order to give life to the embryo. However, in the case of Clytemnestra, this ex-
change is sterile. More than that, the image of Clytemnestra as a woman soaked
in male blood suggests perverse sexual intercourse, and an upset in the natural
order of fecundity. Why such perversion? One possible explanation is that Cly-
temnestras pleasure reflects the perverse nature of a woman enjoying a horrible
act of killing and an irreparable crime, which makes the chorus fear for the fu-
ture:
Ag. 1533 1534:

This is a plausible reading, but it simplifies the complexity of the passage, since
it tends to suppress Clytemnestras motherhood in favour of her sexuality, align-
ing her role as mother to that of wife and object of her husbands desire. I sug-
gest that the perversion of Clytemnestra might be read also as the perversion of a
mother who, avenging the death of her daughter, acts as an agent of the deadly
Erinyes. The text supports this line of interpretation. Lines 1390 1391 suggest the
association of Clytemnestra with the figure of the Erinyes (
/ ). As the Erinyes suck and
drink human blood (Ag. 1189; Cho. 577 578; Eum. 184, 253), so Clytemnestra is
delighted at the sight of Agamemnons blood. Furthermore, as Heath has noticed
(1999: 20 n. 9), the expression (Ag. 1392) shifts the attention to
Clytemnestras role as mother: in Greek the plural designates child-
birth (cf. LSJ).
In what follows, after a summary of sections one to six, I explore further the
plays representation of Clytemnestra as a hellish mother, looking at Cassandras
rhetoric of motherhood.
7 Conclusions
Looking at Clytemnestras revenge for Iphigeneias sacrifice in sections one to

six, we have seen that:
1. critics have often simplified the complexity of Clytemnestras discourse on
the murder of Agamemnon, reducing her role as mother and wife to her
Cf. similarly Goheen (1955: 134); Seidensticker (1995: 160); Sommerstein (1996: 246); Wohl
(1998: 107 108); Foley (2001: 211); Ypsilanti (2003: 368); Porter (2005a: 3); Pelling (2005: 98);
Vogel-Ehrensperger (2012: 203).

44 Agamemnon
role as wife. Yet, on a closer reading of Clytemnestras rhetoric of explana-

tion, her reasons for killing are polyvalent:
as a mother, she explains the murder of Agamemnon as the revenge for
the sacrifice of Iphigeneia and not as the violent act of a wife against her
husband;
as a wife, she explains the murder of Agamemnon as a means to protect
her adulterous relationship with Aegisthus, and to take revenge for Aga-
memnons union with Cassandra and other captive women;
2. according to Clytemnestras rhetoric of motherhood and maternal revenge:
Iphigeneia is the fruit of her womb. Therefore mother and daughter are
tied together by an inviolable bond of maternal consanguinity and phi-
lia;
Agamemnon sacrifices his daughter because this sacrifice will allow him
to fulfill his identity as a warrior;
Iphigeneias sacrifice breaks the biological continuum of daughter and
mother through an act of paternal warlike violence;
to Clytemnestra the murder of Agamemnon represents a fulfillment of
the justice of her maternal philia against paternal violence of war; it ex-
presses and upholds the inviolable character of the biological bond of
philia between mother and daughter;
the mother is a philos of her daughter (relative by maternal blood) but
not of her husband (relative by social ties through marriage);
the mother, being the origin of life, is also the mistress and the guardian
of the household;
Agamemnon kills by using dolos;
female mind is bound together with female reproductive power;
3. in respect to Clytemnestras revenge for Iphigeneia, and to her killing of Aga-
memnon, her attempt to separate her role as mother from her role as wife
and, accordingly, her overvaluation of maternal consanguinity and maternal
power are exposed to the danger of failing. Clytemnestra pretends to be the
only genetic parent of her child, and thus claims the right to kill the father of
her daughter. Accordingly, she is transformed from a mater dolorosa into a
mater monstruosa who acts as a personification of the Alastor, an Erinys
and the treacherous wrath of the Atreid family.
II Cassandra, the chorus and Iphigeneias sacrifice
As I suggested in the previous pages, if we read Agamemnon from the narrative

perspective of Clytemnestra as an avenging mother and a wife, we are entitled to

recognize a certain legitimacy in her revenge. As Foley (2001: 233) argued, we

might ask (quote):
1) Why should a mother tolerate what the chorus itself describes as the horrif-
ic, perverted, and unwilling sacrifice of her daughter?
2) Why should Clytemnestra accept a marriage made by others in which her
husband has become an enemy to herself, when she can choose a spouse
who protects her interests and pleases her?
At the same time, as we have seen, Clytemnestras separation between her role as
mother and her role as wife inevitably undercuts the legitimacy of her rhetoric of
explanation for the murder of Agamemnon as a compensation for Iphigeneias
sacrifice. In what follows, I discuss the plays problematisation of Clytemnestras
rhetoric of motherhood and maternal revenge further, focusing on the chorus
and Cassandras rhetoric of motherhood.
1 Clytemnestra as an adulterous wife and a bad mother
In the course of her long dramatic exchange with the chorus (Ag. 1072 1330),
Cassandra talks twice about Orestes coming matricide as an act of retribution
for Agamemnons and her own death:
Ag. 1279 1280:

Ag. 1318 1320:

This stated necessity of Orestes revenge is grounded in an interpretation of the

killing of Agamemnon, which consistently differs from Clytemnestras explana-
tion of her murderous action. Following Cassandras discourse at lines 1318
1320, Clytemnestra is a polyandrous woman/wife (; ) who
dared to kill her man ().
Cf. similarly Euben (1982: 26): Moreover, as I have suggested, what she does is importantly a
response to what Agamemnon has done to her. His choice for glory at the expense of house and
family is an assault on the wife-mother-woman whose dignity resides there.
On Cassandra and her depiction of Clytemnestra as a female killer of the male, cf. also
Ag. 1109 1111; 1125 1126; 1231. On Cassandra and Clytemnestras adultery, cf. also Ag. 1258
1259. On the word in line 1318, cf. p. 50.

46 Agamemnon
This depiction of Clytemnestra affects the way in which she is represented as

mother. Being a woman who betrays and murders her husband amounts to being
a mother necis auctor who acts against her philoi and therefore deserves to die:
Ag. 1102 1103:

Ag. 1235 1236:

Ag. 1283: ,
Lines 1235 1236 are particularly interesting and deserve further comment. The
occurrence of the word has puzzled the sensibilities of critics for a
long time, and several emendations have been suggested (cf. Fraenkel ad loc.).
Essentially, scholars considered the allusion to Clytemnestras motherhood to
be misleading: at this point of the plot, shortly before Agamemnons killing,
one would rather expect an allusion to the role of Clytemnestra as the (bad)
wife of her husband. Fraenkel, however, defends the transmitted text, suggesting
an obvious (and, because of the , quite natural) reading which phrases -
in strict relation to the phrase . Accord-
ing to him, the representation of Clytemnestra as a sacrificing mother of Hades
( ) and breathing Ares against her philoi (
) highlights a dramatic continuity between Agamemnon and Choephor-
oi. In Agamemnon, Clytemnestra is depicted as a mother acting against her chil-
dren (she, mother of the realm of destruction, destroying mother, murders Aga-
memnon, the father of Orestes and Electra); in Choephoroi, Clytemnestras hellish
dogs (Cho. 924: , 1054: ) are the
monstrous creatures which pursue the matricidal son Orestes.
To Fraenkels remarks we can add further reasons why should be
maintained. When Cassandra uses the words and in relation
to , she is repeating two words (, ) of primary importance in
Clytemnestras discourse on motherhood and maternal revenge (Ag. 1417 1418:
, ). This repetition reveals some impor-
tant differences in the presentation of the dramatic events. According to Clytem-
nestras rhetoric of motherhood, the murder of Agamemnon is a legitimate retri-
bution for the warlike violence of a father against the exclusive fruit of her womb
(cf. above I. 2 3). Read with Cassandra, Agamemnons death represents, in-
stead, the action of a bad mother or a mother-echthros who kills her husband,
bereaves her children of their dear father, and acts against her philoi.
On these lines as looking ahead to Choephoroi, cf. also Zeitlin (1966: 649 651 with n. 15).

Following this line of argumentation, Cassandras discourse confronts the

reader with a definition of the term that plays a crucial role in the Choe-
phorois discourse on motherhood and wifehood. In depicting Clytemnestra as a
mother-echthros who kills the childrens father, Cassandra, like the nurse, Elec-
tra, and Orestes, represents the bond of philia as inclusive of the father-child
bond, and as exclusive of the mother-child bond. Moreover, talking about Cly-
temnestra as an adulterous wife, Cassandra includes in the philia-relationship
the marital bond between wife and husband that Clytemnestra clearly violates:
being an adulterous woman, Clytemnestra is an enemy of her husband. Thus,
Cassandras emphasis on Clytemnestra as a promiscuous wife and as a bad
mother introduces a shift both in the representation of motherhood and in the
representation of blood ties and power relations:
for Clytemnestra: mother = woman giving life => adulterous wife bad
mother; philia is between mother and child, not between wife and husband
for Cassandra: mother = wife of the husband and the childrens father =>
adulterous wife = bad mother; philia is between wife and husband as be-
tween father and children

according to Clytemnestras discourse: mother = origin of life and power
according to Cassandras discourse: father = origin of life and power
As we will see, this is precisely the shift that contextualises Orestes, Electras
and Apollos representation of Agamemnon as the only genetic parent and as
the subject of power in the family and in society (husband, genitor, head of
the family, warrior and king).
Now, since Cassandra always tells the truth (Ag. 1241: ), her dis-
course on Clytemnestra in her role as mother and wife cannot simply be disre-
garded as false. However, at the same time, Cassandra is never believed by any-
one (Ag. 1212: ). Accordingly, her discourse might not be
fully persuasive. It might raise a doubt: how possibly might a mother be just
the wife of the father? In fact, we notice how the prophetic authority of Cassand-
ras discourse anticipates the dissent of half the Athenian jury from Apollos bias
and Orestes acquittal in dubio pro reo. It does not matter if the repudiation of
Clytemnestras motherhood is coming from Apollo or from his prophetess;
human beings in Aeschylus (can) resist the divine force of speech.
Just as Clytemnestra is a mother necis auctor, Orestes is a
(Ag. 1281). The choice of this image is hardly accidental, and it seems im-

48 Agamemnon
portant to me to maintain this metaphor in the translated text. As we have

seen, when Clytemnestra speaks of motherhood and uses the words and
(Ag. 1417 1418: ; 1525: ), she rep-
resents her daughter as her philos and as the fruit of her maternal womb. By con-
trast, when Cassandra speaks of the mother-son relation, relying on imagery
quite similar to that used by Clytemnestra ( ), mother and child
are tied together by a bond of death. As we will see (cf. pp. 136 138), this oppo-
sition (motherhood as a relation of life/death between mother and child) can
also be traced through Clytemnestras and Orestes discourse on motherhood.
Cassandra does not appropriate in a different way from Clytemnestra only
the words , and . She does the same for the word . The
dog, that in the words of Clytemnestra is the mother-philos of her daughter
and the mistress of the Atreid household (cf. pp. 24 26), in the words of Cassan-
dra becomes a hateful dog ( ) that kills, by means of deceptive
speech, the king who was victorious at Troy:
Ag. 1227 1230:

,
,

Cassandras image of Clytemnestra as a treacherous dog defines a negative dis-

course on Clytemnestras mind. As Fraenkel (ad loc.) observes, Cassandras hint
to Clytemnestras of mind is clearly ironic, an element which looks
forward to Clytemnestras depiction in Eumenides as a mother
(Eum. 459): the black-minded mother (cf. pp. 181182).
Now, using deception and cunning intelligence in the act of killing, Clytem-
nestra does not distinguish herself much from Agamemnon. With Goldhill (LSN:
87): She is also called (1237) which refers back to the description of
Agamemnons sacrifice of Iphigenia (221) and
this emphasises the parallelism between their actions. It is not a minor detail.
The assimilation of Clytemnestras and Agamemnons mind underscores the le-
For a different position, cf. Dumortier (1975a: 130). One might note that the depiction of
Orestes as a tree marks a continuity with Agamemnons representation by Clytemnestra as a tree
casting shade (Ag. 966 967: /
): like father, like son.
The murder of Agamemnon is described as Clytemnestras treacherous action also in Ag. 1129
by Cassandra, in Ag. 1495, 1519 by the chorus and finally in Ag. 1636 by Aegisthus. Note that
Thomson (1934: 75 76) takes as being an intrusive gloss. However, cf. Fraenkel (ad
loc.).

gitimacy of Clytemnestras opposition between mother and father that we have

seen at work in her speech at lines 1417 1425 (cf. above, I. 5). Moreover, Cassand-
ras use of the adjective looks forward to Electras criticism of Cly-
temnestras mind (cf. pp. 86, 122 124).
The chorus shares with Cassandra her views on Clytemnestra. For the old
men of Argos as well, Agamemnons death represents the murderous action of
a wife and a woman against her husband and against the man with power:
Ag. 1454:
Ag. 1461:
Ag. 1543 1544:

Ag. 1643 1646:
, ,
,
;
Specifically, the chorus represents the killing of Agamemnon as the deed of a

lazy and adulterous wife against her husband and victorious leader of the Greeks
in Troy:
Ag. 1625 1627: ,

;
Here, the chorus rhetoric of appropriation of the word as maritus (

) and vir fortis ( ) implies an appropriation of the word
as indicating the female who is both sexually and economically dependent
on her husband ( ; ). As we shall see, this
discourse on Clytemnestras wifehood will return in Choephoroi with Orestes and
Electras representation of Clytemnestra as a mother non-giving and non-nurtur-
ing life, and as a female usurper of Agamemnons power. Now, as a betrayer and
as a killer of her husband and king, Clytemnestra is for the chorus, as well as for
Cassandra, an enemy of the Atreid family whose murderous action has to be
punished:
The chorus also refers to Clytemnestras position as Agamemnons wife in Ag. 260. On this
line, cf. p. 68. Like the chorus, the watchman too, in speaking of Clytemnestra, points to her
marital status (Ag. 26 27: /
).
The chorus claims the necessity of Orestes revenge also in Ag. 1535 1536, 1646 1648, 1667.

50 Agamemnon
Ag. 1429 1430:

<>
In these lines, using the word after the killing of Agamemnon, the chorus
seems to claim a relationship of philia between Agamemnon as man and Clytem-
nestra as wife, ascribing the horror of Clytemnestras murderous action to the
transgression of the social bond of marriage. However, the chorus attempt to
separate her role as mother from her role as wife, which is at work in this char-
acterisation of Clytemnestra simply as a bad wife, is fraught with the risk to fail.
Once again, this separation pushes us to ask whether a) the repudiation of the
blood connection between mother and child, and b) the definition of the mother
as merely the wife of the husband, justify matricide and the legitimacy of Aga-
memnons power as father. I turn to this vulnerability of the discourse of Cassan-
dra and the chorus in the next section.
2 Problematising Clytemnestras representation as a bad mother and

a bad wife
Cassandras use of the word in line 1318 problematises the normalisation of

women into wives ( ): if Clytemnestra is a
woman and the wife of Agamemnon, Cassandra, on the contrary, is a woman
but not Agamemnons wife. On the ekkuklema, the destabilisation of Cassandras
self-representation as gune of Agamemnon is revealed by the parallelism be-
tween her lying corpse on the side of Agamemnon (Ag. 1372 ff.) and the lying
corpse of Clytemnestra on the side of Aegisthus (Cho. 973 ff.). Moreover,
when Cassandra prophesizes Orestes revenge for her death and for the murder
of Agamemnon in terms of the end of violence in the Atreid family (Ag. 1279
1280), she also describes her death as a sacrifice:
I differ therefore from Foley (2001: 92) who notes that Cassandra gradually fills the struc-
tural role of proper wife abandoned by Clytemnestra. As Foley, cf. Doyle (2008: 87 89); Vogel-
Ehrensperger (2012: 194). On the depiction of Cassandra as the wife of Agamemnon, cf. the
seminal paper of Seaford on tragic weddings (1987: 127 128), McNeil (2005) and now Debnar
(2010: 133 136). In her article, McNeil discusses at length the reason why the fabric of the carpet
scene visually reminds us of bridal cloths and, therefore, why the whole scene alludes to the
erotic triangle Agamemnon-Cassandra-Clytemnestra. On Cassandra as concubine of Aga-
memnon and the ambiguity of this status, cf. also the thoughtful suggestions of Wohl (1998: 113
116) and Roisman (2004: 103 104). On Cassandras self-representation as wife and its pro-
blematic aspects, cf. also Ag. 1179, with Morgan (1994: 127 128) and Lavery (2004: 16 19) on this
line.

Ag. 1277 1278: ,

In the words of the prophetess just like in the reply of the chorus (Ag. 1297
1298) a reminiscence of the sacrifice of Iphigeneia seems to be at work. The sac-
rifice is preliminary (Ag. 1278: , cf. parodos: 227: );
the altar is the one of the father (Ag. 1277: , cf. parodos: 210
211: -/, 231 234: -
); a stream of blood flows over the altar (Ag. 1278:
, cf. parodos: 209 210: /); Cassandra
heads for the sacrifice as a beast would (Ag. 1298: , cf. parodos:
232: ). The assimilation of the death of Cassandra to that of Iphi-
geneia recalls to mind Agamemnons violence against his daughter, and Clytem-
nestras vendetta for her daughter. Thus, it questions the very suppression of Cly-
temnestras motherhood, which we have seen at work in Cassandras
representation of Clytemnestra as a hellish mother and an enemy of her children.
At the same time, it challenges the bond of philia between father and children.
A similar, significant proliferation of meaning in Cassandras language re-
turns in the image of Clytemnestra as a sacrificing mother of Hades (Ag. 1235:
). Mazon posited this image to be a reference to Clytemnes-
tras position as a mother avenging the sacrifice of her daughter (cf. Fraenkel ad
loc.). By this interpretation, the veiled allusion to the sacrifice of Iphigeneia
seems to problematise Clytemnestras representation merely as a hellish mother
and the echthros of her children.
As in lines 1235 and 1277 1278, a reminiscence of the sacrifice of Iphigeneia
seems to be implied in verses 1117 1118 as well:
I am not certain as claimed by D-P (ad loc.) that on Cassandras lips

is pure metaphor. The image of a sacrifice that needs to be punished through
stoning () foretells the possible wrath of people against Clytemnestra
For the expression as recalling the sacrifice of Iphigeneia, cf. Zeitlin (1965:
471): The fathers altar, however, is a still richer allusion, referring to another death at a fathers
altar (Iphigenia). Note that the chorus language, in Cassandras scene, hints at Iphigeneias
sacrifice also in passage 1121 1122 where the expression echoes the ex-
pression in Ag. 239. On this parallelism, cf. Lebeck (1964: 40 41); Zeitlin (1965:
472 n. 21; 1966: 649 n. 12); Lynn-George (1993: 7 n. 23); Delneri (2001: 62); Mitchell-Boyask (2006:
283); Debnar (2010: 135).

52 Agamemnon
and Aegisthus (cf. Ag. 1615 1616: /-

, , ), as well as the necessity of Orestes revenge. At
the same time, as Zeitlin has aptly observed (1965: 472 n. 21), the image of sac-
rifice seems to look back at the revenge of Clytemnestra, who punishes the sac-
rifice of her daughter.
An allusion to Iphigeneias sacrifice seems to be at work also in passage
1167 1169. Here, Cassandra laments the total destruction of Troy and the sacri-
fices made by her father:
The expression sounds like a reminder of the sacrifice of Iphige-

neia on behalf of her father. Seen this way, in lines 1117 1118, 1167 1169, 1235
and 1277 1278, the semantic overuse of words related to the figure of the father
and to the sphere of sacrifice calls to mind the action of Clytemnestra in her role
as mother avenging the death of her daughter. Thus, it forces us to ask whether
Clytemnestras deed really represents just the action of a hellish mother and an
adulterous wife against her husband and the beloved father of his children.
Also the chorus expression (Ag. 1429), in the last con-
frontation with Clytemnestra, can be read as textual evidence of how difficult
it is to suppress Clytemnestras maternal role and to stress the justice of Orestes
revenge by using language. It is not easy at all paraphrasing a verse of Cassan-
dra (Ag. 1272: ) to distinguish friends
from enemies in this play. Does the chorus just say that Clytemnestra has lost her
philoi since she killed her husband, and bereaved, as a mother-echthros, her chil-
dren of their beloved father? It seems plausible to assume as well that these
words are looking forward to Clytemnestras expression of pain for Orestes
death, and to her claim of having been bereft of her son and philos in
Cho. 694 695 (cf. ch. 2, III. 5):
We can conclude with Goldhill (1984a: 173) that the boundaries we attempted to draw are
transgressed by the constituting relations of difference (and deferral) between terms inscribed in
a series each occurrence (repetition) of which is set in the extending and shifting series of the
sentence(s), speech(es), scene(s) of which it is a constituent part.

This ambiguity in the chorus rhetoric of appropriation of the word be-

comes even more evident if we consider that the chorus, foreseeing Orestes re-
venge upon his mother, cannot deny the blood connection between Clytemnestra
and Orestes:
Ag. 1509 1511:

It is exactly through this difficulty to represent blood ties (the word links the
father and the mother figure; the word refers only to the former) that
the play opens up a space for questioning the chorus and Cassandras attempts
to repudiate Clytemnestras motherhood, and to portray Agamemnon as the only
genetic parent and the subject of power in the family (genitor, husband) and in
society (head of the family, king, warrior).
By reading a text that constantly re-writes its own terms, what entitles me as
a reader to interpret the speeches of Clytemnestra about motherhood and mater-
nal revenge without also re-reading them in the light of Cassandras and the cho-
rus discourse, and vice versa? Some remarks on the word pertain to these
questions. The first time we find this word is in the prologue (Ag. 3: ).
The watchman is talking about his year-long guard as he slept on the roof of the
house like a watchdog:
Ag. 2 3: ,
,
Later on, he mourns the fate of the house, which is no longer stable as in the
past:
Ag. 18 19:

Now, what does the watchman actually mean as he says that he was waiting on
the roof like a watchdog? Different answers can be suggested. The more obvious
one refers to the Homeric tradition and the figure of Argos (Od. 17, 300 327). In
this case, the image of the watchman awaiting his master like a dog becomes a
symbol of unyielding fidelity. Yet, in Greek, the expression has an
additional meaning: as Loraux has noticed (1990a: 259 263), the adverbial
usage of implies the idea of order, justice, rule. Bearing in mind the mean-
ing of justice of the dog, it seems plausible to read the watchmans self-repre-
sentation as a watchdog in terms of an allusion to the revenge of Clytemnestra,

54 Agamemnon
the mother-watchdog against Agamemnon, her enemy (Ag. 607 608:

/ , ). In this case, the Atreid house
is not in order, since Agamemnon kills Iphigeneia. Similarly, the words of the
watchman may echo Clytemnestras portrayal of Agamemnon as watchdog of
the Atreid house (Ag. 896: ). Yet, in echoing
line 896, the watchmans words may as well allude to the sons re-
venge for the death of his watchdog father with the expression as
the justice due to the father.
There is more. We can observe that the expression echoes as
well Cassandras words in Ag. 1228. In this case, the justice of
the dog is to be understood as the intolerable revenge of Clytemnestra, the
evil mother and adulterous wife, against Agamemnon. Nonetheless, the expres-
sion can also be a reminder of the image of the winged dogs of
Zeus in the parodos (Ag. 135: ). With this image, Calchas
refers to the two eagles (Ag. 114) which, in the portent sent to the Atreids, will
devour a pregnant hare (Ag. 119). As has been argued, the eagles, which become
dogs, stand for Agamemnon and Menelaos, and the hare for Iphigeneia and/or
Troy. Again, in this case, the Atreid house is not in order, since Agamemnon
has sacrificed his own daughter for the purpose of sailing to Troy.
Now, how can we read the watchmans phrase , and make
sense of the narrated events? In other words, which position within the text
can I take as a reader? As we cannot set an unambiguous meaning for the ex-
pression , we can hardly say whether it refers to the legitimacy of
Clytemnestras vengeance of Iphigeneias sacrifice, to the killing of Agamemnon
as the intolerable action of a wife against the childrens father and the victorious
king in Troy, or to the legitimacy of Orestes vengeance. Accordingly, we can
hardly opt for a reading of the play that justifies inter-familial violence as a cen-
tral step towards the authorisation of the Father as the origin of life and power
(matricide as according to the chorus and Cassandra), or as a step towards the
defence of both maternal consanguinity and authority (murder of Agamemnon
as according to Clytemnestra). Looking back at the second stasimon and at
the parable of the lion cub, then, we might question what the justice of the
son (Ag. 724: ) is like: destabilising its discourse on blood ties
For a reading of as the justice of the dog, cf. also Wilson (2006: 190 194).
Metzger (2005: 39 41), in discussing , only interprets the -phrase as ex-
pressing qualities, i. e. like a dog. On the adverbial use of , cf. also Lavery (2004: 6 9).
On the image of the eagles, cf. Zeitlin (1965: 481 483). For a review of the scholarly inter-
pretations of the portent of the eagles, cf. Lawrence (1976); Conacher (1987: 76 83); Kppel
(1998: 105 100). On Artemis wrath, cf. pp. 21 22.

and power relations, the play puts into crisis the very notion of the justice of the
mother and the father. This impasse in defining a fulfilment of justice in relation
to the search for an authoritative discourse on blood and power relations is also
at the basis of the tragic discourse of Choephoroi and Eumenides, as I argue in ch.
two and three.
3 Conclusions
In sections one and two, we have seen that:

1. according to Cassandra, Clytemnestra is an adulterous wife and the treach-
erous killer of her husband, and, therefore, a bad mother, and an enemy to
her children. Matricide is a necessary act;
2. according to the chorus, Clytemnestra is an adulterous wife, a squanderer of
Agamemnons wealth, the killer of her husband and vir fortis, and therefore
an enemy to her husband and children. Orestes revenge is a necessary act;
3. Cassandra always tells the truth, but is never believed. Yet, in the case of her
discourse on Clytemnestra as mother and wife, she may not tell the whole
truth, and for this reason she might not be believed by the reader of the
play. Her characterisation of Clytemnestra as an adulterous wife and a bad
mother or a mother non-mother faces us with the attempt to separate her
role as mother from her role as wife, in order to justify matricide. However,
this attempt is fraught with the risk of failing. Indeed, Cassandras language
does not have the power to represent matricide as an act of dike;
4. the plays discourse on inter-familial violence functions as an open question.
In the case of Clytemnestras rhetoric of explanation for the murder of Aga-
memnon as a defence of maternal consanguinity and maternal rights against
paternal violence, the plays discourse does not turn the murder of Agamem-
non into a legitimate act of violence; in the case of Cassandras and the cho-
rus explanation of Clytemnestras murderous deed as the act of a bad wife
against her husband, the plays discourse does not represent Orestes matri-
cide as a legitimate act of violence. The play is so open to different interpre-
tations, that the very definition of a critical level for its language and narra-
tive is called into question by the reader.
III Clytemnestra and the war against Troy
In the first part of this chapter, I focus on the character of Clytemnestra as queen
(Ag. 84: , 914: ). Following her rhetoric of

56 Agamemnon
explanation, the killing of Agamemnon is a revenge for the excesses of the Trojan
War. If we maintain that, according to Clytemnestras discourse, the death of
Agamemnon avenges not only a wrong action against the members of the Atreid
family (Iphigeneias sacrifice), but also an action against the members of the
community of Argos and Troy (violence of the Trojan War), we have to agree
that the murder of Agamemnon represents also a political act. So I assume
that what is political in the Oresteia, as Macleod (1982: 132; cf. LSN: 253) has writ-
ten, is fundamentally a concern with human beings as part of a community.
Accordingly, I see the Trojan War as a political issue and the revenge for it (which
amounts to Agamemnons death) as a political action, specifically the murder of
a king.
In sections one and two, I explore Clytemnestras and the chorus represen-
tation of the Trojan War; in section three, I argue that Clytemnestras criticism of
the Greek expedition against Troy has a certain legitimacy for the chorus; in sec-
tion four, I look at Agamemnons discourse on his past in Troy; in section five, I
discuss Clytemnestras misuse of power; in section six I summarize my conclu-
sions.
For similar positions, cf. Kitto (1956: 9): What Clytemnestra will do is no mere domestic
murder; Harris (1973: 146 147): Aeschylus makes use of the interweaving of familial statues
with political ones; MacEwen (1990: 30): she not only defends her family, she believes she is
saving the state by killing Agamemnon. On the overlapping of public and domestic issues in the
Oresteia more generally, cf. Freyman (1976: 66); Foley (1981: 148 163); Fartzoff (1984); Patterson
(1998: 147). On the collision of public and domestic issues in the case of Agamemnon and the
Trojan War, cf. the chorus in the parodos at line 157: .
Further, on the Trojan War as a business of the communities of Argos and Troy, cf. Winnington-
Ingram (1983: 79): The war has a wide perspective: it affects communities.
The question of politics in Greek tragedy is obviously wide and has been approached in
different ways. Fundamentally, we can distinguish four main trends in criticism: the historicist
approach, which reads the extant plays as historical texts providing insight into the political
events and issues of the democratic Athens (e. g. Podlecki 1966); the so called democratic
reading of Goldhill (1987) according to which the content of tragic dramas and the public context
of their performances both mirror the democratic ideology of the classical polis (cf. also e. g. the
influential papers by Connor, Raaflaub and Strauss 1990; Longo and Ober and Strauss in Zeitlin
and Winkler 1990; Cartledge and Goldhill in Easterling 1997; Goldhill 2000a); Griffiths reading
(1995), according to which tragedy reinforces the identity of the political elite of the democratic
Athens; the new ritualism of Seaford (1994), according to which the self-destruction of a
tyrants household and the consequent foundation of a polis-cult narrated in the dramas reflect
the tragic concern with affirming the benefit and the survival of the citys community. For a
review of these influential interpretations, cf. Carter (2007: 21 64). For criticism of Goldhills
position, cf. Friedrich (1996); Griffin (1998), and on this criticism Gilbert 2009 (443), with further
bibliography. But see Goldhill 2000. For further bibliography on Greek tragedy and politics, cf.
Debnar (2005: 21 22) and Croally (2005: 70).

1 The chorus on the war against Troy
To the chorus, the Trojan War represents the just punishment for the crime of
Paris: it was Zeus who sent Agamemnon and Menelaos to Troy in order to
take revenge for Helens abduction (Ag. 40 62, 355 366, 699 716, 735 749).
Nonetheless, the chorus strongly undermines the significance of their expedi-
tion, and, as has often been observed, it seems to represent the murder of Aga-
memnon as a compensation for the excesses of the Trojan War. In this regard,
passages 461 471 in the first stasimon, and the chorus passage 1331 1342 are
particularly telling.
In the first place, the chorus criticises Agamemnons military conduct be-
cause of the large amount of lives that have been lost:
Ag. 461 462:

In connection to the condemnation for the death of so many people, the chorus
repeatedly mentions the danger of the wealth that Agamemnon and his army
have gathered by the use of violence. In the lines that immediately follow
On lines 735 737, cf. Grethlein (2013: 83 84); on line 749 and Helens representation as a
Fury, cf. Blondell (2013: 135).
Cf. e. g. Earp (1948: 163; 1950: 50); Lesky (1966a: 98 99); Lebeck (1971: 37 46); Leahy (1974:
20); Freyman (1976: 67); Romilly (1977: 35); Neitzel (1978: 421); Higgins (1978: 26); West (1979: 4);
Gantz (1983: 69 71); Winnington-Ingram (1983: 79 80); Euben (1990: 72); Rosenbloom (1995:
114); Griffith (1995: 83); Sommerstein (1996: 173); Kppel (1998: 137 140); Yarkho (1997: 192 193);
Helm (2004: 44); Himmelhoch (2005: 276); Raeburn and Thomas (2011: xxix; xxxvi); Lawrence
(2013: 81). I differ from Reeves (1960: 165 166) who observes that There is, however, not the
slightest indication, in my opinion, that the chorus disapproves of the war or that Aeschylus
condemns it or intends us to do so and from Meier (1988: 143) who claims that Agamemnon
bt fr Iphigenie, zugleich fr den Kindermord des Atreus; aber wohl auch fr das Unrecht an
Troja, obwohl davon keine Rede ist.
For a reading of lines 461 462 in connection to Agamemnons hybristic conduct in Troy, cf.
e. g. Langwitz-Smith (1973: 9); Scott (1978: 263 264); Winnington-Ingram (1983: 98). According to
these scholars, the chorus wish that Troy might not have been taken by the Greeks (Ag. 475
487) implies that with the adjective the old men of Argos might refer to Aga-
memnon. Cf. also Knox (1952: 21). According to Knox, as the image of the lion links
to Agamemnon (Ag. 734), so here might refer to him. On the excessive killing during
the Trojan War, cf. also Bollack (1981: 449); Rehm (1992: 81).
The chorus problematises the significance of the punitive action of the Atreids against Paris
in relation to their accumulation of an excessive wealth also in Ag. 381 384 and 773 781. On
passage 381 384 as referring to Agamemnon, see n. 102 below; on passage 773 781, cf. e. g.
Kitto (1956: 11 12); Podlecki (1966: 67); Lloyd-Jones (1970: 11); Winnington-Ingram (1983: 99);

58 Agamemnon
this passage, the chorus refers to Zeus wrath in relation to the goods which have
been gained wrongly:
Ag. 469 471: -

.

Similarly, in Ag. 1331 1334, the chorus seems to imply that excessive wealth
causes violation of dike:
Further, in lines 1338 1342, the chorus claims that the bloodshed in Troy will not
remain unpunished:

,

;
According to Broadhead (1959: 311), the bloodshed mentioned here refers to the
cena thyestea. However, this remark seems misleading. The flow of the lines
above seems rather to suggest a reference to Agamemnon and the Greek expedi-
tion against Troy. As Gantz has similarly observed (1982: 13 14), in lines 1335
1336, the chorus explicitly mentions Agamemnon as the conqueror of Troy (
/ ).
In the words of the chorus, the capture of Troy represents an experience of
death and destruction not just for the conquered city but for Argos as well. The
Argive families of the departed warriors endure suffering (Ag. 429 431); warriors
come back cremated to their households (Ag. 433 436); the foreign land covers
the bodies of its conquerors (Ag. 452 455). As a result, the people of Argos,
Gantz (1983: 80 81); Seidensticker (2009: 231 232); Raeburn and Thomas (2011: xxxix). On the
mechanism koros-olbos-hybris justice, cf. Sol. Fr. 6, 3 4 W; Pind. Ol. I 5657; XIII 10, P. II 25 29;
Thgn. 153 158; cf. Doyle (1970); Helm (2004: 25 29).
For the chorus representation of the Trojan War as a business of the Argive families, cf.
Fraenkel (1964: 337); LSN: 46. On passage 433 436, cf. Ouellette (1971: 307 311); Rutherford
(2010: 448 450).

who have lost their relatives in war, smoulder with hatred for the Atreids
(Ag. 449 451, 456 457). The chorus insists on the pain of the people of Argos.
In lines 427 431, the old Argives compare the pain of the people who have
lost their relatives with the pain of Menelaus for the abduction of Helen, and
come to the conclusion that the former sorrow is far greater than the second.
In this context, the chorus problematises the judicial status of the Atreids as
the righteous avengers of Paris. In lines 448 449, the old men of Argos speak of
Helen as casus belli ( /), projecting upon her the image of
the female as an object of exchange between men. Yet, at the same time, they
also question the position of men as arbiters of female sexual behaviour: the Tro-
jan War, with all its violence, takes place just for a woman ( ), i. e.
just for the sake of winning Helen back to Greece.
The futility of the Trojan expedition as a war fought for a woman emerges in
the lines that immediately follow passage 448 449. In line 451 the chorus de-
scribes the Atreids with the adjective . As Fraenkel and D-P observe
(ad loc.), the adjective calls to mind the adjective in Ag. 41.
Yet, the chorus is appropriating words related to the sphere of dike in different
ways. The adjective indicates Agamemnon and Menelaus going to
Troy to reclaim the stolen property and to exact the penalty awarded by the
court (D-P ad loc.). The adjective , instead, points out that Agamemnon
et Mnlas se retrouvent en position de coupables (Bollack ad loc.): in sending
their people to a war which will turn into a massacre perpetrated for a futile rea-
son, they surely do not defend the rights of people, and surely they do not do any
justice to their own duties as kings. This criticism of the Atreids as avengers of
Paris crime returns in passage 461 464, where the chorus, as we have seen, ac-
cuses Agamemnon of being responsible for the deaths of many and refers to the
Greek leader as a fortunate man acting without justice (Ag. 464:
).
Cf. the thoughtful remarks of Blondell (2013: 133 134): It is this desire for Helens presence
that drives the Trojan War The Greek kings quest is thus motivated not only by justice but by
uncontrolled passion. For the chorus representation of Helen as a woman and an object of
exchange between men, cf. Ag. 62, 225 226, 402. On line 62, cf. Lebeck (1971: 9). Notably, in
Homer Helen is already represented as an object of exchange between men (Od. 11, 435 439). On
Helen in the Odyssey, cf. Blondell (2013: 73 95).
I disagree with Fontenrose (1971: 75 78) who refers line 464, as well as line 468, to Paris,
arguing that both passage 461 464 and passage 381 386 refer to Paris. However, cf. the dis-
cussions of Knox (1952: 18); Zeitlin (1965: 503); Romilly (1967: 97); Lebeck (1971: 37 46); Scott
(1978: 266); Kraus (1978: 65 66); Euben (1982: 25); Buxton (1982: 105 106); Winnington-Ingram
(1983: 98 99); Fisher (1992: 274); Rosenbloom (1995: 108); Grethlein (2013: 85 87).

60 Agamemnon
Further remarks on the dike of the Atreids seem possible. The expression
in Ag. 230 points to the question of the legitimacy of the pu-
nitive expedition against Troy. As Roux (1974: 39) has illustrated,
properly means warloving justiciers (i. e. executioner) and in this
sense it sheds a problematic light on the Atreids retributive justice. Similarly,
the comparison of the Atreids to a furious bird outlines the dangerous violence
of their punitive justice:
Ag. 111 112:

On a closer reading, Menelaus and Agamemnons justice turns out to be the vi-
olent deed of a bird whose disgusting act of devouring a pregnant hare is narrat-
ed at some length by Calchas in the parodos. Now, as violent executioners of
Paris, the Atreids embody the avenging Erinys which has been sent to Troy
(Ag. 59: ).
In the next section, I dwell further on the plays discourse on the Trojan War,
exploring Clytemnestras representation of the Greek punitive expedition against
Troy.
2 Clytemnestra on the war against Troy
We can detect a parallelism between the chorus discourse on the significance of

the Trojan War and Clytemnestras representation of the Greek victory in Troy.
Like the chorus, Clytemnestra too defines the capture of Troy fundamentally
as an experience of death and suffering. Clytemnestras first speech to the city
of Argos (Ag. 320 350) and passages 861 876, 887 894, in her second speech
to the men of Argos, are particularly telling. In lines 320 350, she focuses on
the pain of the Trojan women and orphans (Ag. 326 329), on the suffering of
Greek warriors (now the victors) (Ag. 330 333), and on the countless dead
under the walls of Troy (Ag. 346: ). In her second speech
to Argos, she talks of the Trojan War as of a situation of emotional struggle for
women. Lines 861 862 are particularly interesting:
Clytemnestras self-representation as a woman who has to endure being aban-

doned by her husband insists upon the difficulties that the female sex has to
deal with, because of its dependence on the male. Now, when Clytemnestra

speaks about her position in war as a woman (), the word does not
only name, as in the chorus case, the female as an object of exchange between
men (Ag. 448 449: /). It also names the female as the
subject of suffering. This difference in the rhetoric of appropriation of the
word in the context of a discourse on war makes us aware of the complex
way in which Agamemnon engages with reflections on war and womanhood, and
should prevent us from considering the pain of Clytemnestra as mere hypoc-
risy.
Other observations are possible. Like the chorus, Clytemnestra does not
spare her criticism of a wealth that has been won regardless of the divine
laws. In this respect, the first speech she delivers to Argos is again very striking.
Here, she warns the Greek army that it would never come back home, in case it
destroys and sacks the temples of Troy:
Ag. 338 344:

,

,

Here, according to Kitto and Porter, Clytemnestra portrays the death of Agamem-
non as a consequence of the wrongs committed at Troy. Critics, however, have
On passages 861 876 (and 887 894) as deceptive speeches, cf. e. g. Konishi (1990: 93 94);
Kppel (1998: 150 n. 252); Foley (2001: 209). On Clytemnestra and her rhetoric of appropriation of
the word as a female subject of suffering and the object of her man, cf. Cho. 920:
, . On war and female pain, cf. notably the simile in Od. 8, 521
531.
Cf. Kitto (1956: 5) : Here we have the explanation of what is always implied later in the
play, that Clytemnestra avenges on Agamemnon not only the outrage that he has done on her,
but also the wrong that he has done to Greece and to Troy, in slaughtering so many of their sons;
Porter (1971: 468): not only is she bringing private justice to Agamemnon for the sacrifice of
Iphigenia, but also she is working with the gods to bring public justice to him for his other acts
of arrogance and impiety for destroying countless Greeks and Trojans for the sake of a pro-
miscuous woman, for sacking the altars and temples of the gods in Troy. Similarly Rehm (1992:
81): With these two extraordinary speeches, Clytemnestra forces us to see that the fate of Troy
and that of Argos are bound inextricably together. Therefore, I differ from Fontenrose (1971: 79):
And finally we must observe that Agamemnons martial deeds, however appraised, are neither
Clytemnestras nor Aegisthus reason for killing him and Benardete (2000: 69): She punished
Agamemnon for the sacrifice of her daughter, but she never connected that crime with the

62 Agamemnon
not taken these lines seriously, and they disregarded them as naive Dramatur-
gie (Wilamowitz-Moellendorff 1914: 168), as a mouthpiece for Aeschylean iam-
bics (Dawe 1963: 50), as the vivid portrayal of inverted power relations, inap-
propriate for a woman (McClure 1997: 116), or as a masterpiece of female
hypocrisy (D-P on line 338; Griffith 2001: 124). In particular, according to D-P
and Griffith, Clytemnestras hope that the Greek army will not indulge in hybris
conceals her wish that the Greeks will actually commit outrages against the gods
at Troy. In what follows, I defend Kittos and Porters reading of this passage,
trying to explain, in more detail, why it seems plausible to assume that Clytem-
nestra is drawing up a balance-sheet of the war, and why her analysis of the
wars excesses cannot be simply disregarded as a fulsome and transgressive
speech.
First of all, the idea of Clytemnestras hypocrisy seems to rely on the schol-
ars resistance to acknowledging that female characters may possess any ability
for political analysis. For example, in the case of Heracles in Philoctetes
(Ph. 1440 1441), his warning to the Greek army has never raised a discussion
about sincerity or hypocrisy. Against this view, it can be said that Heracles is
well disposed to the Greeks, whereas Clytemnestra is clearly in contrast with
Agamemnon. Yet, her hostility to him does not necessarily imply her enmity to-
wards the Greek army as well. We may argue that Clytemnestras language is not
deceptive at all; rather, as Ouellette (1994: 189) suggested, it seems constantly to
evoke what is absent. Indeed, in these lines, she is speaking about something
that exists (the Greek army) and something that has actually happened (the sack
of Troy), but also, at the same time, about something that may happen but has
not yet: when she speaks in Argos about the sack of Troy, she cannot be aware
that her suspicions have already come true. Her evocation of what might have
happened underpins her ability to put into words, in an objective manner, an ac-
tually true event that has already happened in Troy as she speaks.
injustice of the Trojan war. On Clytemnestras murder of Agamemnon as punishment for the
wrong committed at Troy, cf. also Seidensticker (2009: 244).
For a similar view, cf. Lloyd-Jones (1962: 193); Fontenrose (1971: 78); Euben (1982: 25; 1990:
71).
Cf. Betenski (1978: 12): Every reader recognizes that the linguistic splendor of the choral
odes in Agamemnon is open to many levels of interpretation ; but this is also true of Cly-
temnestras speeches. And yet her speeches tend to be labeled hypocritical or even fulsome
and left at that, a clear intrusion of readers moral judgments where literary judgement should
be operating.
On the power of imagination of Clytemnestras speech about the Trojan War, cf. also Earp
(1950: 57); Fraenkel (1964: 336); Sevieri (1991: 27).

Even the chorus reply to Clytemnestra seems to question an interpretation

of her criticism of the war as mere hypocrisy. As has been observed, when the
chorus claims that Clytemnestra has spoken sensible words like a wise man, it
valorises her speech:
Ag. 351: ,
Now, if Clytemnestras speech is concealing the wish that the Greek soldiers
would never come home, I do not understand why the chorus should praise
her words. The old men, like the warriors, are members of the community of
Argos; so how could they praise Clytemnestras words, knowing she is lying?
We can suppose that the chorus is charmed by her manner of speaking, and
that it has been persuaded by her deceptive language. Yet, although deception
might indeed be at work, dismissing Clytemnestras words as merely deceitful
appears misleading. We actually have good reasons for taking the chorus val-
orisation of her words seriously: Clytemnestras and the chorus positions on the
issue of war do not differ very much; both of them condemn the violence of war.
As Higgins has aptly observed (1978: 26 27), Klytaimnestra, always clever,
knows better than Agamemnon the perils of war.
Criticizing the excesses of the Trojan War, Clytemnestra claims that dike will
punish Agamemnon for his conduct at Troy:
Ag. 910 911: ,

She speaks these lines at the beginning of the carpet scene. As has been pointed
out, the image of the red carpet might be read as a symbol of the bloodshed in
war. It seems possible, then, to assume that with the word Clytemnestra
is referring to the impending death of Agamemnon as a compensation for the
countless deaths which occurred during the war against Troy.
Cf. Katz (1994: 89): Once again, the chorus valorizes Clytemnestras appropriation of the
male sphere. On the chorus valorisation of Clytemnestras manner of speech in line 351, cf. also
Winnington-Ingram (1983: 103).
Cf. Rademaker (2005: 111) who observes that the words and (Ag. 351)
shall be read as a reference to her adultery with Aegisthus.
On the carpet as a symbol of the death of Agamemnon and/or of the dead in Troy, cf.
Goheen (1955: 115 126); Alexanderson (1969: 17 18); Lebeck (1971: 86); Lanahan (1974: 25); West
(1979: 4); Albini (1993: 178); Zierl (1994: 172); Macintosh (1994: 82); Rosenbloom (1995: 109); Zak
(1995: 62 63); Scott Morrell (1997: 161 162); McClure (1997b: 128); Foley (2001: 210); Gould (2001:
184); Helm (2004: 44); Seidensticker (2009: 255); Lawrence (2013: 84).

64 Agamemnon
Towards the end of the play, the last line of passage 1521 1529, where Cly-
temnestra explains to the chorus that the murder of Agamemnon is a compensa-
tion for Iphigeneias sacrifice, points in this direction too:
D-P (ad loc.) start from the assumption that Clytemnestra establishes the blood-
shed started off by Agamemnon as a central theme: Agamemnon was the ag-
gressor; it is an essential part of Clytemnestras defence that he began the shed-
ding of blood. Yet, D-P do not specify whose blood was shed. Taking for granted
that Agamemnon has led an army to Troy and sacrificed his daughter for the sake
of war, it seems plausible that the bloodshed mentioned here might refer to the
deaths of war and to the death of Iphigeneia. In this sense, Clytemnestra is stat-
ing the righteousness of her vendetta: Agamemnon, as leader of the Greek expe-
dition, is responsible for the loss of many human lives, and has to be punished
after coming back home.
Taking into consideration Clytemnestras discourse on the excesses of the
Greek expedition against Troy, it should not appear surprising how repeatedly
she puts into question the legitimacy of Agamemnons power as the victor in
Troy. In this regard, the speech delivered by Clytemnestra shortly before the ar-
rival of Agamemnon in Argos, immediately before the carpet scene, is particular-
ly interesting. Here, Clytemnestra is full of sweet praises for Agamemnon. She
describes him with phrases such as (Ag. 599),
(Ag. 603), (Ag. 605). Yet, in these lines,
we can detect a rhetoric of appropriation of the words and , which
questions Agamemnons male authority as warrior and king. Thus, Agamemnon
is not entirely Clytemnestras anax, since she is a queen; he is not really safe with
the help of the gods, since he will stay alive only for a short while; Agamemnon
is not beloved by his city, since the people harbor hatred against their king
(Ag. 449 451, 456 457).
Interestingly enough, as the dramatic action progresses, in contrast to Cly-
temnestras rhetoric of appropriation of the words and , and to her at-
tempt to tackle the authoritative position of Agamemnon as the subject of power,
we are faced with Agamemnons normative use of the word and in the
carpet scene:
Ag. 918 919:

Ag. 925: , ,
Ag. 940:

Clytemnestra resists this appropriation of the words and . When, a few

lines later, in the same scene (Ag. 972), she addresses Agamemnon with the ex-
pression , she does not seem to use the word in the mean-
ing of vir fortis and rex. In the first place, Agamemnon is portrayed as an object
(: perfect victim ready for sacrifice), and not as a subject of power.
Therefore, we can hardly maintain that Clytemnestras appropriation of the
word allows a reading of this expression as a normalisation of asymmetric
gender distinctions. Moreover, it is hard to explain why Clytemnestra, who
strongly criticises the violence of the Trojan War, should seriously depict Aga-
memnon as a perfect warrior and a king without spot or blemish (cf. LSJ).
Yet, as D-P (ad loc.) and McClure (1997b: 135 137) argued, from her perspective,
what is not true for Agamemnon is obviously true for Zeus: the god is
(Ag. 973: , ).
There is more to say about the carpet scene and Clytemnestras criticism of
Agamemnons position as the victorious king at Troy. In lines 904 905, Clytem-
nestra expresses the desire that the phthonos would stay away, since many suf-
ferings have already been endured:
Of course, the opposite is true: the phthonos should not stay away; it must strike
Agamemnon, granting success to the murder plot against him. It seems plausible
at this point to link the phthonos mentioned by Clytemnestra with the suffering
and the kings conduct in Troy. Indeed, in the lines that immediately follow, Cly-
temnestra calls the Atreid the destroyer of Troy, and asks him not to put his feet
on the ground:
Ag. 906 907:

, ,
As Lebeck (1971: 75) has observed, Clytemnestras use of the word , in rela-
tion to Agamemnons description as the destroyer of Troy (), estab-
lishes a relation between the fall of Troy and the image, in the first stasimon,
of a foot that treads on grounds where it is not supposed to.Probably, then,
she is not praising Agamemnons military successes at all, but criticising his
heroic deeds instead.
Cf. Neustadt (1929: 261); Zeitlin (1965: 480); LSN: 78; McClure (1997b: 134), with extended
bibliography at n. 42.

66 Agamemnon
Line 939 of the carpet scene makes space for similar remarks. Again, Clytem-
nestras rhetoric of appropriation of a word related to phthonos seems like an elo-
quent echo of her criticism of Agamemnons role as king and as leader of the
Greek expedition against Troy:
When she asserts that the one who is not envied () cannot be enviable
(), she may be ironic. Nobody in Argos really envies Agamemnons po-
sition that seems certain, at least at this point in the play. Indeed, the chorus
has already taken distance from the success of the Atreids, since it may arouse
the anger of the gods (Ag. 471: ). Moreover, it has already
mentioned the painful wrath of the people against the Atreids (Ag. 450:
), who enforced their right to avenge the abduction of
Helen (Ag. 451: ).
Finally, in the exodos, the brief dramatic exchange between Clytemnestra
and the chorus about Helen (Ag. 1453 1467) can be read as a criticism of Aga-
memnons past in Troy. The chorus accuses Helen, as a woman, of being the
cause of the deaths during the Trojan War (Ag. 1453 1457); Clytemnestra answers
that she is not supposed to be held responsible for the deaths at Troy (Ag. 1464
1465: / ). As Conacher (1974: 328)
has pointed out, Clytemnestra, in her reply to the chorus, might be criticizing
Agamemnons military conduct and his power as victorious king: She means,
of course, to turn the blame back on Agamemnon. Moreover, refusing to see
Helen as a woman and destroyer of men, Clytemnestra tacitly implies that the
violence of the war against Troy has a male origin.
Following these remarks on Clytemnestras devastating balance sheet of the
war, and on her criticism of Agamemnons authority as king of Argos and victor
at Troy, I would like to stress that it is not just the character of Agamemnon that
exists, acts and suffers, in the context of war. Like him, Clytemnestra too is a
protagonist in the Aeschylean problematica polemologica. She is not just a
Similarly, cf. Blondell (2013: 130 131).

The quotation is from Winnington-Ingram (1983: 94) who assumes that only Agammenon is
a protagonist in the story of the Trojan War.
For the expression problematica polemologica, cf. Furiani (1990: 9). However, according to
my interpretation of Clytemnestras characterisation as queen, I do not share Furianis idea that
le figure femminili umane che si inseriscono nella problematica polemologica eschilea hanno
parte ovviamente ridotta rispetto a quelle maschili. On war and female characters in Aeschylus,

wife who has been abandoned during the long years of the war (Ag. 861 876,
887 894; Cho. 920), or a mother who has lost her daughter because of the war
against Troy. In other words, she is not just a female victim of male warfare. Ac-
cording to her representation of Agamemnons death as a compensation for the
violence of the Greek victory at Troy, she undoubtedly plays an active part in the
history of the Trojan War. How does all that affect the characterisation of Clytem-
nestra as queen, and our understanding of the play? I turn to this question in the
next section.
3 The voice of the other
Rule by men or rule by women

F. I. Zeitlin, The Dynamics of Misogyny
Female submissiveness is normative in the Oresteia

P. Burian and A. Shapiro, Aeschylus: the Oresteia
It has been observed that Clytemnestras criticism of the Trojan War and of Aga-
memnons military conduct is inappropriate in regard to her female status, and
represents an unequivocal violation of correct male speech. In support of this
critical position, it could be noted that in Aeschylus Agamemnon, as already in
Il. 6, war is not a business for women. Yet, as I argue at some length in this sec-
tion, the Agamemnon does not completely exclude the authority of Clytemnes-
tras female voice from its own discourse on war. First of all, Clytemnestra is de-
picted as a queen (Ag. 84: , 914: ). In
compliance with her public position as queen, she is allowed to wield power
in Argos in the absence of the male ruler. As the chorus explicitly states in its
cf. as well Marinis (2012) and his detailed analysis of the chorus emotional re-actions in the
Seven against Thebes.
Cf. e. g. Pomeroy (1975: 98 99); Bonnaf (1989: 157); Sevieri (1991: 29 31); McClure (1997;
1999: 73 80); McHardy (1997); Halliwell (1997: 130 134); Foley (2001: 208 209); Reynolds
(2005: 121). On Greek tragedy and the transgressiveness of female characters, cf. Shaw (1975),
and for an extended criticism of Shaw, cf. Foley (1982). On Greek tragedy and the trans-
gressiveness of female politics, cf. also Loraux (2002: 19 53). Taking the Electra of Sophocles as
a case study, Loraux argues that the main function of tragedy is the expression of grief, and that
tragedy, therefore, is eminently antipolitical: as Electras female act of mourning shows, the
place of mourning is on stage, not in the city-stage (p. 53). However, on the politics of mourning
in Greek tragedy, cf. Foley (2001: 21 55, 145 171), with extended bibliography, and for most
recent contributions Goldhill (2012: 109 133). On the representation of emotions in Greek tra-
gedy as strongly related to the political dimension of the staged plays, cf. also Goldhill (2003).

68 Agamemnon
first speech to Clytemnestra, it is legitimate to honour the power of a woman, if

her man has left the throne unoccupied during the war:
Ag. 258 260:

Moreover, a comparison with Penelope makes it difficult to point out the anom-
aly of Clytemnestras position as a ruling woman. In fact, the Aeschylean Clytem-
nestra does not differ so much from the Homeric Penelope. In Homer as well,
news have to be reported to queen Penelope, as long as her husband king is
abroad (Od. 16, 332 337). The anomaly of Clytemnestra in her role as queen
has, then, to be found elsewhere, namely, I would suggest, in her representation
as a woman who feels and thinks like a man (Ag. 11: -
). So we can speak, with reference to Clytemnestra, of womens ambig-
uous status between culture and nature (Ortner 1972: 28), i. e. of a liminal situa-
tion where a female is not excluded from the world of politics, but has actually
access to it through a process of acquisition of the dominant male habit and the
male political praxis. Seen this way, it is not by chance that Clytemnestra claims
for herself cognitive skills and public power (Ag. 277, 312, 594, 614, 912 913, 943,
1401, 1423 1424; cf. as well 258, 351, 483 485), that she uses war vocabulary
(Ag. 350, 612, 1377 1378; cf. as well 1235 1237), and ascribes to herself the qual-
ities of a warrior (Ag. 607 608, 613 614).
Second, the striking similarities we have seen between Clytemnestras and
the chorus criticism of the Trojan War shall prevent us from dismissing her
voice as simply transgressive. In fact, listening to her female voice invites us
to read Agamemnon as the drama of the other, that is to say as a play in
which the questioning of the authority of collective wisdom is carried out by out-
side characters: just as the chorus of old men is unfit to wage a war (Ag. 72 82),
so Clytemnestra, as a female, is excluded from fighting and from the world of
war. Line 348 in Clytemnestras first speech to the city of Argos supports
this interpretation:
Here, Clytemnestras need of justification for her female position might signal
her awareness that the powerful voice of men is precisely what cannot question
So Goldhill (1996) on the chorus in Greek tragedy and its dramatic function; the quotations
are from pp. 253 and 255 (italics mine).

dominant male values. Following this reading, I differ from McClure (1999: 75)
who assumes that Clytemnestra undercuts her mastery of masculine speech by
calling attention to her feminine gender she portrays herself as typically fem-
inine as a means of arousing the sympathy of her listeners. What matters here is
not the characters or the audiences or the readers sympathy with Clytemnestra.
What really matters is the authority and power of speech: who is saying what?
Thus, I maintain that it is important to take Clytemnestras public manner of
speech on the war seriously, in order to explore the complex way in which the
trilogy engages with the question of gender relations and male and female atti-
tudes towards violence.
In the light of these remarks, it seems reasonable to discuss Clytemnestras
public manner of speech according to a bipartite conceptualization of women as
the Same and the Other: Clytemnestra is speaking from the position of the Same
and the Other, since, as a female, she is legitimately taking part in the public de-
bate on the Trojan War. Here, we touch upon a crucial point for an analysis of
the political discourse of the trilogy with the passage from Agamemnon to Choe-
phoroi and Eumenides. As I will argue, in Choephoroi and Eumenides the charac-
ters attempt to undermine the verbal authority of Clytemnestras discourse on
the Trojan War functions as an important element for projecting the image of
a female usurper of male power on the queens figure, and, accordingly, for jus-
tifying matricide. In the light of this dramaturgical shift, we might ask whether or
not Zeitlins proposal (1978: 151 153) to read the Oresteia strictly as a matriarchal
myth (or as a myth where women rule through or after the killing of men) can be
applied without reservations to Clytemnestra. Zeitlins analysis is, of course, bril-
liant. It is certainly true that Clytemnestra only rules as a tyrant after the murder
of Agamemnon. Yet, it is also true that she speaks and acts as a queen before he
dies. This fact has an important consequence: Clytemnestra is not just a para-
digm of the radical other, i. e. the paradigmatic anti-model of the virtuous fe-
male gender behaviour. As a tyrant, she is clearly transgressive. However, we
can hardly say the same thing for her characterisation as queen and for her criti-
cism of the Trojan War. In other words, Clytemnestra as a female character does
not seem merely to transgress normative gender relations from the outset: she
For similar positions, cf. Gagarin (1976: 93 94) and Foley (2001: 209). We shall note that,
like Clytemnestra, also Cassandra questions the legitimacy of the Trojan War. She confesses that
she feels ready to die, having seen how her city and its conquerors are destroyed with the help of
the gods (Ag. 1286 1288). On these lines, cf. Vogel-Ehrensperger (2012: 186).
On this conceptualisation of women, notably in Latin literature, cf. Hallett (1989). On the
representation of the other in Greek tragedy as the self, cf. Loraux (2002: 49 53).

70 Agamemnon
does not act only in the role of a tyrant; she also acts in the role of a queen ca-
pable of a (at least in part) legitimate criticism of male behaviour.
There is more on Clytemnestras public way of speech and the supposed
transgressiveness of her female voice. When she is finished with her speech
on the Trojan War, the chorus answers her back that she has talked plausibly,
as a man would do:
Ag. 351: ,
The approval of Clytemnestras public speech by the chorus might simply be in-
duced by her female power of persuasion and manipulation. After all, at the end
of the first stasimon (Ag. 479 487), the chorus dismisses the legitimacy of fe-
male power and the reliability of female intelligence. According to the old
men of Argos, the female mind is childish (Ag. 479:
); women in power are too quickly pleased with supposed successes
(Ag. 483 484: / ); fe-
male ordinance is too persuasive (Ag. 485: ). Still,
the narrative of the chorus seems to be much more complex to me. As I intend
to show, speaking about the female mind and womens power, the chorus does
not validate a discourse of exclusion (i. e., woman: irrational, unfit to rule; man:
origin of rationality and power). Rather, it performs the limits of this gesture of
separation, leading us to ask ourselves how to deal with the female mind and
female public power.
When the chorus in Ag. 479 ff. questions the reliability of the female mind
and issues its vehement denunciation of female inability to rule, Clytemnestra
has already announced the fall of Troy and delivered her speech on the dangers
for the Greek army that might arise from the excesses of the Trojan War. After
initial scepticism about the news of victory, and doubts about Clytemnestras in-
telligence (Ag. 268: ; ; 274: -
; 276: ), the chorus,
as we have seen, acknowledges the value of Clytemnestras speech on the war
and praises her words, saying that she has spoken wisely, like a man (Ag. 351:
, ). In the first stasimon, which fol-
lows shortly after, the old Argives talk about the hybris of the war against
Troy, express their renewed doubts about the Greek triumph (Ag. 369 384,
461 474) and, in passage 483 487, utter their invective against female power.
In this part of the play, the unsteadiness of the chorus in its evaluation of Cly-
On this reading, cf. e. g. Pomeroy (1975: 98 99); McClure (1997: 117 119).
On line 485, cf. OSullivan (1989).

temnestras public speaking is quite striking, and certainly cannot be accidental.

We can assume that the chorus seems to fear that the Trojan War, as Clytemnes-
tra suggested, might indeed be saturated with hybris and that the conduct of
Agamemnon and his army could arouse the anger of the gods. The reason why
they treat her words as unreliable (Ag. 479 482) is the fear that she might be
right about the anger of the gods awaiting the Greeks. For the same reason
they deny her female capacity to rule (Ag. 483 487). A manipulation of words
seems to be at stake here, and not the notion that women lack intelligence
and are unfit to rule.
The plot development supports this line of interpretation. The next episode
begins with the entry of a new character, the messenger. Since he reports further
news about the fall of Troy and the wrongs committed against the conquered city
(Ag. 522 532, 577 579), the elders of Argos admit that they no longer doubt the
victory of the Greeks:
Ag. 583:
Clytemnestra responds immediately, reproaching the chorus. She points out that
she was the first to announce the destruction of Troy:
Ag. 587 589: ,

,

Moreover, she complains to the chorus for having been accused of female vulner-
ability to deception, claiming instead her strength of mind and her female ca-
pacity of commanding:
Ag. 590 596:

;
.

,

Clearly, Clytemnestras rhetoric of appropriation of the word does not con-

struct the female as an unreasonable being. In this sense, it differs consistently
from the chorus appropriation of the same word in lines 483 484 as a being
unable of right thinking ( / -
). However, the chorus, at least to some extent, shares the discourse on fe-
male intelligence and female command issued by Clytemnestra in this passage,

72 Agamemnon
and comments by saying to the herald that she has spoken plausibly, as the her-
ald himself can judge with help from skilful interpreters:
Ag. 615 616: ,

With the chorus might have in mind Clytemnestras long praise

of Agamemnon (Ag. 600 614), which, as we have seen, is quite ambiguous (cf.
pp. 24 26, 64). Taking into account that this praise of Agamemnon is, on a dif-
ferent level, a strong criticism of his authority, and that the chorus understands
its ambiguity (it claims that Clytemnestra has spoken plausibly for any skilful in-
terpreter), we can say that the chorus agrees with Clytemnestras words at least in
part. What is important is that these lines put an end to the long period of dis-
belief of the chorus. Now, when it recognizes that the queen has spoken plausi-
bly ( ), it also seems to admit implicitly that the queens
public way of speech asserts itself by authoritative force.
Against this background, I find it quite hard to conceive the chorus as
McClure suggests (1997: 115) in terms of an internal, male audience which eval-
uates and attempts to circumscribe Clytemnestras speech and reveals her devi-
ation from speech norms. We rather see, in the words of Griffith on Antigone
(2001: 136), that Agamemnon as well does not display any comfortable confirma-
tion of preexisting distinctions of gender, of predictable mannerisms of speech,
I differ from Goldhill (LSN: 33 42, esp. 39 ff.) who in the diction of Agamemnon marks a
clear dichotomy between showing (Clytemnestras female language based on visual signs: her
dreams, the fire signals from Troy) and saying (the male language of the chorus, based on
reliable words and rational proofs). We might note that the chorus admits to have heard from
Clytemnestra clear evidence for the Greek victory in Troy (Ag. 352 353:
/ ), thereby confirming what she had claimed,
namely that her speech is based on proof (Ag. 315: ), and
thus proving her defence of the rational capacities of her female mind as true (Ag. 277:
). On this issue, cf. for similar remarks Winnington-Ingram (1954:
24); on as a word meaning a proof of an argumentative kind, cf. Hesk (2000: 285 with
n. 112). On Clytemnestras way of speech as based on reliable words, cf. also the chorus in
Ag. 1047: . As Goldhill, McClure (1999: 74). I also do not
share the position expressed by Foley (2001: 210). If I understand her well, there is a con-
tradiction between the belief in dreams confessed by Clytemnestra in Ag. 891 894 and her
previous denial of her belief in visions (Ag. 274 275). Yet, these assertions can hardly be
compared. In line 275 Clytemnestra denies her inclination to trust dreams, since she knows that
Troy has fallen. In line 891 ff., instead, when she speaks about her fear of dreams, she is
remembering a past circumstance, when she did not know yet what was really happening in
Troy. For a further analysis of passage 891 ff., cf. McClure (1999: 79), who closely follows Foley,
and Walde (2001: 110 111); for lines 274 275, cf. Rousseau (1963: 108).

or of the natural divisions between male and female. Accordingly, the chorus
does not normalize gender relations. Rather, it constantly shifts between a mo-
ment of acceptance and a moment of doubt and hesitation on the authority of
Clytemnestras public way of speech, thereby putting into question the authority
of male public speech and behaviour.
There is even more to say about lines 615 616 and the chorus, Clytemnes-
tras and the heralds exchange on the Trojan War and on the female mind in the
second episode. In this scene, the messenger asserts the possibility of defining
reality through language. Unable to understand the fear of the chorus, the herald
asks the old men of Argos to explain it with words that have control over what is
real:
Ag. 543: ;
The chorus is not able to fulfill this demand. By now, the mind of the old men is
darkened by sorrow (Ag. 546 <> ), and
only silence can protect them against harm (Ag. 548:
). Why this refusal of the chorus to express its feelings with language?
Goldhill (LSN: 51 52) puts forward the hypothesis that under the power of Cly-
temnestra (548 50 make it clear that it is repression from the authorities), -
is both darkened and blind. This leads to silence, the denial of logos.
This suggestion raises some difficulties. Undoubtedly, this passage implies that
the chorus is tyrannised and afraid:
Ag. 548 550: Xo. .

K. ; ;
Xo. , ,
Still, we can argue that the chorus is also tormented by anguish, because it sus-
pects that the excesses of the Trojan War and of Agamemnons military conduct
will not go unpunished. From this point of view, it is not only the power of Cly-
temnestra that frightens the chorus and darkens its mind. A tergo there is also
the perturbing dread that Agamemnons punitive expedition against Troy will
arouse the anger of the gods. In this sense, it is not by chance that the messen-
ger, immediately before passage 548 550, asks the chorus where its fear for the
Greek army came from:
Ag. 547: ;
On the philological difficulties of line 547, cf. Dodds (1953: 11 12).

74 Agamemnon
Following this line of argumentation, when the messenger says that the war
against Troy is successful (Ag. 551: ) and, later on, that the cho-
rus has heard the whole story on Troy (Ag. 582: ), a tragic irony
is at work. Neither is it true that everything at Troy has gone as it should (over
the Greek victory hangs a cloud of violence and massacre), nor, as a conse-
quence, that it will in Argos (in fact, Agamemnon is going to be killed by Clytem-
nestra in the bath of their palace). Irony seems to be at work in the chorus reply
too:
Ag. 583 584:

If we consider that the herald misunderstands in a glaring way the chorus allu-
sions to the possible dangers awaiting Agamemnon and his army, it is not easy to
grasp what the chorus should actually learn from the messengers words. In
short, the chorus may give a sarcastic reply to the heralds enthusiasm about
the Greek victory at Troy and to his demand for a discourse that would have
the power to define reality ( ). The fact that the chorus does not
believe in the Greek success, and does not even credit, as the messenger does,
the chance to control reality through language, seems to be in sharp opposition,
on the other hand, to its valorisation, in lines 615 616, of Clytemnestras public
way of speech and of her criticism of Agamemnons position as the victorious
king at Troy.
In the next section, I discuss Agamemnons representation of his past in
Troy, explaining how it differs from the chorus and Clytemnestras representa-
tion of the war.
4 Agamemnon on the war against Troy
Agamemnon talks about the Trojan War in the welcome speech he delivers to the
city of Argos. I start my discussion with a brief examination of lines 832 833:
In this passage, Agamemnon praises the chorus because it does not envy a friend
blessed by fortune. Agammemnons self-representation as a lucky man reflects

his dangerous rhetoric of appropriation of the word . Probably, he is

not , and, therefore, hardly a lucky man. Indeed, as Kitto has no-
ticed (1956: 22), the expression might echo the chorus appropri-
ation of the adjective in Ag. 450 451, and suggests that people in
Argos foment painful wrath against him:
Ag. 450 451: -

Similar remarks suit passage 946 952 of the carpet scene:
Here, Agamemnon hopes that nobody will turn their punishing eye (
) against him while walking on the carpet: gods look favourably (
) upon those who make a gentle use of the
power that comes with victory ( ). Ostensibly, then,
Agamemnon considers the danger of divine wrath to be related to the waste of
the house goods, but not to the excesses of the war. Moreover, when he uses
the word in reference to the carpet, the wealth of the house rests
on the will of the gods. In contrast, when Clytemnestra, in this scene, uses
the words /dyed (Ag. 960) to name the red carpet, the wealth of
the Atreid house becomes a sinister symbol of the bloodshed in Aulis and
Troy:
Note also Agamemnons representation as a fortunate man by the herald and his rhetoric of
appropriation of as vir fortis and rex in Ag. 530: . On
this line, cf. Dawe (1963: 50) and Vogel-Ehrensperger (2012: 89 n. 386).
For the anger of people in Argos, cf. also Ag. 456 457. On passage 450 451, cf. p. 59.
For the word as victory, power of victory, cf. Il. 1, 509; 15, 216; 18, 308.
With D-P (ad loc.), Fraenkel (ad loc.), Dover (1977: 57 58), Kraus (1978: 61) and Meridor
(1987: 41 n. 22), I read as a genitive of origin dependent on . For as
dependent on , cf. Easterling (1973:11 n. 2); Neitzel (1977: 204 205).
On Clytemnestras rhetoric of appropriation of the words and as
naming blood and death, cf. Lebeck (1964: 38 41; 1971: 85 86); Lynn-George (1993: 7 n. 23);
McClure (1997b: 133). On Clytemnestras similar appropriation of the word , cf. Ag. 1383:

76 Agamemnon
Ag. 958 960: ;

,
The pun (dyes for fabrics) and (dyes of blood)

supports this interpretation. In this regard, one might consider the expression
in Pers. 317, where stands as a synonym for blood.
There is more to say about Agamemnons speech to Argos and his view of the
Trojan War. Agamemnon uses the word in order to justify the violence of the
war as determined by divine necessity:
Ag. 813 816:

Thus, it is not surprising that he hints at the destruction of Troys goods without
problematising the sack of the city, and that he describes himself as a victorious
lion, eager for blood:
Ag. 819 820: ,

Ag. 827 828:

Agamemnons rhetoric of appropriation of the word shows that his repre-

sentation of the Trojan War differs consistently from Clytemnestras discourse
on the facts in Troy. In the carpet scene, when Clytemnestra uses the word
in relation to Agamemnons entry in the Atreid palace (Ag. 910 911:
/ ),
she alludes to the punishment of the wars excesses (cf. p. 63).
, with Neustadt (1929: 263 264); Fowler (1967: 27); Petrounias (1976: 150)
and Ferrari (1997: 10 11) on this line. For the same rhetoric of appropriation of the words
and , cf. Orestes at Cho. 1012 1013 ( /
), with Neustadt (1929: 264) on these lines. On the carpet as symbol of the blood shed in
war, cf. n. 110.
On the violence of the Greek expedition against Troy as generated by divine necessity, cf.
also the herald in Ag. 524 528 and 581 582. On passage 525 528, cf. Kitto (1956: 15 16),
defending the transmitted text. On the verb (Ag. 525) as meaning the total
destruction of a city, cf. Connor (1985: 85 with n. 17 and 96 99).
Similarly on these lines, cf. Higgins (1978: 26); Foley (2001: 210); Vogel-Ehrensperger (2012:
106 107); Lawrence (2013: 83).

Finally, when Agamemnon appropriates the word as casus belli, he

does not question, as the chorus does, the position of women as a means of ex-
change between men and, accordingly, the legitimacy of the war he fought. The
chorus refers to Helen with an expression that problematises the expedition
against Troy as a war fought both because of a woman and for a woman
(Ag. 448 449: /). Agamemnon, instead, represents the
punishment of Paris crime as a righteous action. Thus, he states that his mili-
tary campaign was waged because of a woman ( ) and that the
gods were helping the Greeks to punish the arrogant abduction of Helen (-
):
Ag. 822 824:

,

In this context, Agamemnons rhetoric of appropriation of the adjective -

is particularly telling. By describing the crime of Paris as an arrogant act,
Agamemnon tacitly describes himself as a just punisher. Yet, the echo of lines
468 469 ( / ) is of course huge, and raises the
question of whether Agamemnon plays the role of an arrogant executioner or
not.
The authority of Agamemnons status as king and warrior is undercut by the
fact that Agamemnons, the chorus and Clytemnestras representation of the Tro-
jan War does not coincide. Yet, the text invites us to question both Clytemnestras
and Agamemnons discourse on war and power. I turn to this point in the next
section.
5 The misuse of power
There are no exceptions to the rule that everyone

thinks theyre an exception to the rule
Banksy
As we have seen, the chorus shares Clytemnestras criticism of the Trojan War.
Nonetheless, we can argue that it also expresses doubts about her representation
On Agamemnon talking about Helen as casus belli, cf. Earp (1950: 51) and Dawe (1963: 48).
On the legitimacy of the Trojan War as a war fought for a woman, cf. also the herald at lines
534 535.
On line 468 as referring to Agamemnon, cf. Di Benedetto (1977: 174).

78 Agamemnon
of Agamemnons murder as a compensation for the violence of the Trojan War.

Before the murder of Agamemnon, the chorus welcomes him as its victorious
king (Ag. 782: , , ), and admits that some citizen
of Argos plotted against him (Ag. 799 809). After Agamemnon is killed, the
old men of Argos question the many deaths in Troy (Ag. 1338 1342; cf. p. 58).
Yet, they see the victory at Troy as the fulfilment of a divine plan (Ag. 1335
1336: / ), and Agamemnon
as a man honoured by the gods (Ag. 1337: ). Moreover, in the exo-
dos, full of despair for the loss of Agamemnon (Ag. 1462 1463:
/ ), the chorus is fervently hoping that Orestes
will return and avenge his fathers assassination (Ag. 1646 1648); it speaks of
Clytemnestras death as an act of dike (Ag. 1535 1536:
/ ), it remembers Agamemnon as
the most kindly guardian (Ag. 1452: ); it repeatedly pro-
fesses loyalty to its dead king (Ag. 1491 = 1515: ;)
and mourns the heroic deeds (Ag. 1545 1546: ) of a divine
man (Ag. 1547: ). Furthermore, in the long lyrical-epirrhematic ex-
change of the chorus with Clytemnestra, this representation of Agamemnon as
rex and vir fortis corresponds to the projection of a negative image on Clytemnes-
tra as a woman and a wife plotting against the , i. e. her husband and vir
fortis. To Clytemnestra, who jubilates over the corpse of Agamemnon, the chorus
answers back that she utters insolent words about the man in power:
Ag. 1399 1400: , ,

Clytemnestra resists this criticism. In passage 1401 1406 she performs three dis-
tinctive speech-acts. She defends the reliability of her mind; she refuses, as we
have seen (cf. p. 12), to be identified as Agamemnons wife, defending the author-
ity of her female status as mother and queen; and she claims the justice of her
revenge:

,
,
For a detailed analysis of the welcome speech that the chorus delivers to Agamemnon, cf.
Harriott (1982: 9 13).
Cf. similarly the heralds description of Agamemnon as the most praiseworthy man of his
time (Ag. 531 532: / ).

, ,
, .
Yet, even after the death of Agamemnon, the chorus does not seem to be com-
pletely dismissing Clytemnestras rhetoric of explanation for the murder of the
king as a punishment for the violence of the Trojan War. When Clytemnestra,
during her last dramatic exchange with the chorus, recalls Iphigeneias sacrifice
again (Ag. 1555 1559), the old men of Argos assert that it is hard to judge wheth-
er it is worse to kill a daughter or to kill a husband and king, coming to the con-
clusion that, according to the law of Zeus, the ravager has to be ravaged, and the
killer has to be killed:
Ag. 1560 1564: ,

,

Interestingly enough, by stating that it is hard to choose sides between Clytem-

nestra and Agamemnon, the chorus moves again from a moment of acceptance
of the undisputed authority of the kings male power to a moment of doubt and
hesitation about the opportunity to validate power as merely masculine. Accord-
ingly, it seems to sum up in five words ( ) the un-
solvable conflict of Eumenides between the Erinyes (for the maternal authority)
and Orestes, Athena and Apollo (for the paternal authority). In this sense,
these uncertainties in the narrative of the chorus anticipate the dramatic situa-
tion of Orestes absolution in dubio pro reo and strongly affect the readers posi-
tion-taking within the text.
To conclude, it seems important to read Clytemnestras assertions at the very
end of the play, in Ag. 1656 ( ), 1659
( , ) and 1661 (
, ), against the background of the chorus narrative
of doubt and hesitation in regard to Agamemnons male power. Clytemnestra
speaks these lines while trying to prevent Aegisthus from using violence against
the old men of Argos. She states that there is enough suffering in the Atreid fam-
ily already, that she would accept a cure for it if there was one, and that anyone
might learn from her female words. Clytemnestras refusal to use violence
On the expression , cf. the extended discussion of Neitzel (1979a) and

Seaford (2003: 149).

80 Agamemnon
against the chorus is perhaps in relation to the reluctance of the old men of
Argos to deny legitimacy to Agamemnons murder as a compensation for Iphige-
neias sacrifice and the resulting wrong committed at Troy: why should Clytem-
nestra use violence against somebody who is not an enemy to her? In this per-
spective, line 1661 seems particularly interesting. Clytemnestras hint at the
possibility of learning from her ( ) recalls the words she ad-
dressed to the chorus in Ag. 1425 ( ).
Moreover, the expression points out the same rhetoric of appro-
priation of the word in line 348 ( ): os-
tensibly, her need to mark her female position suggests that acquiring knowledge
from her () is like recognizing the authority of the voice of the other.
What shall the chorus learn from Clytemnestra? The chorus might recognize pre-
cisely what Clytemnestra asked it to learn () in line 1425, namely that a
father cannot kill his daughter and break the bond between mother and daugh-
ter: killing a daughter does not belong to the sphere of sophronein, i. e. to acting
and talking in the right way (cf. above, I. 5). However, even though she is able to
teach the chorus a lesson about inter-familial violence, Clytemnestra is and re-
mains a dreadful figure, i. e. the murderess of Agamemnon. In Aeschylus, we
are confronted with the futility of understanding the mechanisms of violence:
comprehending the implications of violence does not protect against it. As the
blood story of the Atreid family shows, violence engenders more violence, and
its trace is indelible: the wrongdoer becomes the victim and vice versa. In the
chapter on Eumenides (cf. ch. 3, 4 5), I turn to this impossibility of marking
boundaries for the use of violence in the Oresteia.
In the next chapter I explore Clytemnestras characterisation as mother,
queen and wife in Choephoroi. As in this chapter, in the following one too, I dis-
cuss how the characters and the chorus constantly fail in their attempt to project
a negative image on Clytemnestra as an adulterous wife, and therefore as a
mother non-mother, a tyrant, a female whose mind is darkened, trying at the
same time to explain how this failure affects our interpretation of Orestes matri-
cide and our position within the text.
Accordingly, in contrast to McClure (1999: 99 100), I argue that in line 1661 there is more
than just the evidence for Clytemnestras bilingualism, notably her shift from a male way of
speech to a female one.
On Clytemnestra teaching the chorus about violence, cf. Freyman (1976: 71) who notes that
in lines 1658 ( ) and 1661 ( ) she is repeating the chorus
principle of the pathei mathos.

6 Conclusions
In sections one to five, we have seen that:

1. in discussing Clytemnestras characterisation as queen, critics do not allow a
validation of her public power. In fact, when critics say that Clytemnestras
power is transgressive, they are merely pursuing the same critical level that
leads them to suppress Clytemnestras maternity in favour of her character-
isation merely as the adulterous wife of her husband Agamemnon. Yet, as
the narrative of the chorus shows, the play engages with a constant problem-
atisation, and not merely with a condemnation, of the authority of her fe-
male public acts:
following the chorus, the tragic discourse of Agamemnon on the Trojan
War displays a positive evaluation of Clytemnestras public mode of
speech as queen and, accordingly, a valorisation of her female mind;
according to the chorus rhetoric of appropriation of the word in
Ag. 483, Clytemnestra as a woman is unable to rule, and her female
mind is unreliable. Such a usage of the word is in sharp opposition
to Clytemnestras rhetoric of appropriation of the same word and to her
claim to female rationality in Ag. 592, as well as to the chorus valorisa-
tion of Clytemnestras public speech in Ag. 615616;
when the chorus uses the words and the word to refer to the
legitimacy of the Trojan War and its cause, its use of language, as in the
case of Clytemnestra, problematises Agamemnons past in Aulis and
Troy;
despite the striking similarities between the chorus and Clytemnestras
discourse on the Trojan War, the chorus, after the murder of Agamem-
non, clearly expresses doubts about the legitimacy of Clytemnestras
rhetoric of explanation for the murder of Agamemnon as a punishment
for the wrong committed at Troy. The chorus represents the vengeance
for its dead king as an act of retributive justice (Ag. 1535:
). Nonetheless, in its last confrontation
with the queen, it ends up questioning Agamemnons warlike violence
(the sacrifice of Iphigeneia, the vengeance for Helens abduction) and,
at the same time, Clytemnestras explanation of the murder of Agamem-
non as an act of retributive justice for the violence committed at Aulis
and Troy (Ag. 1560 1564);
2. Clytemnestras rhetoric of appropriation of the word in Ag. 1661 mirrors
the same usage in Ag. 348, and claims the legitimacy of her position as a fe-
male subject capable of understanding what sophronein is.

Choephoroi
My reading of Choephoroi follows two distinct lines of argumentation. First, I
argue that Choephoroi tends to de-legitimise Clytemnestras rhetoric of explana-
tion for her killing of Agamemnon in Agamemnon, which is considered a central
step towards the justification of matricide. The essential feature of this discourse
is to be found in the attempt to project the image of a mother-echthros on Clytem-
nestra, that is to say the figure of a mother who does not give life to her children
(non-tokeus) and does not nurture them (non-tropheus). Along with this depic-
tion of Clytemnestra, the text of Choephoroi explores once again, and on a deeper
level, the mechanisms of suppression of Clytemnestras biological motherhood
that we have already seen at work in Cassandras representation of Clytemnestra
as a promiscuous wife and a bad mother.
My analysis proceeds again from the use of language by the dramatis person-
ae. In the first part of the chapter, I explore Clytemnestras characterisation as a
mother non-tropheus. In sections one to four, I discuss the rhetoric of appropri-
ation of the keywords , , , and by the nurse, Cly-
temnestra, Orestes and Electra; in section five, I sum up my conclusions. In the
second part of the chapter, I discuss Clytemnestras depiction as a mother non-
tokeus: in sections one and two, I focus on Orestes, Electras and the chorus
rhetoric of appropriation of the keywords , , , and
, and, in section three, I sum up again my conclusions.
Then, I discuss the characters failure to suppress Clytemnestras maternal
role of giving and nurturing life, and to reduce her female status to her marital
role as wife. In part three, I first explore Clytemnestras characterisation as a
mother-philos. In section one, I look at Orestes and Electras rhetoric of appro-
priation of the keywords , , , and . In section two to
six, I focus on Orestes, Electras and the chorus rhetoric of appropriation of
the keywords , , , , , , ,
and . In section seven, I sum up my conclusions. In the fourth part of the
chapter, I proceed to a close analysis of the text of Clytemnestras dream.
Here, I show that the functions of trephein and tiktein are not easily erased
from the plays portrait of Clytemnestra as mother of her children.
My discussion of Choephoroi aims to explain why the language of the play is
marked by the difficulty to define who a mother is, and where dike is when a
mother dies. Again, as in the case of my reading of Agamemnon, I claim that
Choephoroi can be read as an open text that calls into question the very mean-
ings it produces, as well as the readers position within the text.

I Clytemnestra as mother-echthros and non-tropheus

Clytemnestra is no longer truly thought of as a mother
F. McHardy, Revenge in Athenian Culture
1 The nurse on trephein
In her long speech (Cho. 734 765), the nurse insists upon how hard she had to
work to raise Orestes. Her memories are precise. She remembers being awakened
repeatedly by the cries of baby Orestes, as he had to eat, drink, or do a wee:
Cho. 750 753:

< >

Cho. 755 757:

These lines introduce a basic question in the context of the tragic discourse of
Choephoroi: what is maternal love, and therefore, what makes Clytemnestra a
mother? The answer seems obvious: a mother really is a mother if she nurses
her baby. Now, since according to the wet nurse Orestes was not raised by his
mother, Clytemnestra, despite her claim of having fed Orestes (Cho. 896 898),
cannot be considered his mother-tropheus. According to this reading, the nurses
revelations fit the narrative line that turns Clytemnestra into a bad mother, and
they contribute significantly to a conception of matricide as an act that, in this
case, is at least partly legitimate. We could object that the nurses revelations
simply mirror the practice, frequent in antiquity, of entrusting babies to wet
nurses, and therefore they can hardly be read as an attempt to undercut Clytem-
nestras motherhood. Yet, if we read the Oresteia as a play of words and not as a
document that reproduces a historical reality, I think it is interesting to explore
how the nurses assertions are in sharp opposition to Clytemnestras rhetoric of
motherhood, and how they affect the plays discourse on motherhood and ma-
tricide.
When the wet nurse speaks about her relationship with the little Orestes, she
never uses the verb . This omission might correspond to her status of non-
Cf. e. g. Goheen (1955: 132); Albini (1977: 81 82); Zeitlin (1978: 157); Margon (1983: 297).

84 Choephoroi
biological mother, who mothered and nurtured Orestes as he was a baby

(Cho. 749 750: ), but who has not given life
to him. On a closer reading, this emphasis on maternal care ( )
seems to redefine the terms of motherhood through the dichotomy of trephein/
tiktein, allowing us to draw some important conclusions. First, in the mother-
child relation the biological experience of pregnancy and labour (tiktein) is of lit-
tle or no importance in comparison to breast-feeding and mothering (trephein).
Second, it is not the biological experience of motherhood, but the task of moth-
ering and nursing that bonds mother and child in the first place. Lines 753 754
leave little doubt in this regard:

, ;
Here, the nurse appropriates the verb in the sense of nurturing, mother-
ing, and claims that the maternal duties of breast-feeding and taking care of the
baby, who has no intelligence, are an absolute necessity. The reason is clear. Car-
ing for a baby, unable to think (Cho. 753: ), is a sign of intelligence
(Cho. 754: ), and, as the scholiast suggests, of maternal care (-
). In line with this idea, I accept the transmitted text and read the
expression as by way of intelligence (LSJ; cf. Garvie ad loc.).
Thus, I maintain that the Greek means the way intelligence
would require it. Furthermore, I maintain that has to refer to the mother.
When the nurse says that an intelligent mother nurtures her child, she implicitly
admits that this is not the case for Clytemnestra. Accordingly, the nurses re-
The expression has posed some philological problems. Garvie (ad hoc.)
refuses LSJs reading as by way of intelligence: LSJ, s. v. II. I, render by way of
intelligence, i. e. in lieu of the intelligence which is lacking to the child. But the explanation
does not follow from the translation, which is itself dubious. If anything, it should mean, in the
way in which a mind would do it, or as if it were a mind, and this is nonsense. But why
should in the way in which a mind would do it be interpreted as as if it were a mind? Garvie
corrects the text in , as proposed by Thomson (1936: 111), arguing that what we
require is an antithesis between the baby who has no and someone else who does,
suggesting for passage 753 754 the following translation: that which has no reason must be
nurtured like an animal of course it must by the reason of its nurse. But why do we have to
refer to the nurse and not to Clytemnestra? Note that in referring to the nurse, Garvie
is following Thomson (1936: 111): In other words, since a baby has no wit of its own, it is
dependent on the nurses, just as an ox is dependent on the drivers. On the meaning of
and related terms in Aeschylus, cf. the detailed discussions of Yarkho (1972), esp. pp. 182 183 for
these lines in Choephoroi; Petrounias (1976: 237 243).

marks on contribute to the depiction of Clytemnestra as a mother non-tro-

pheus.
Following this line of argumentation, the nurses discourse on mothering
shapes a representation of motherhood that is radically different from Clytem-
nestras rhetoric of motherhood. As we have seen, in Agamemnon, when Clytem-
nestra speaks about the mother-child relation, she sees her daughter as exclu-
sively hers, as a duplicate of her maternal body and as the object of her
maternal love. Accordingly, she conceives the female mind as strictly connected
to the female power of reproduction. Conversely, when the wet nurse speaks of
her love for Orestes and maternal phronein, she does not take into account the
mothers body and her power of giving life: according to the nurse, love for a
child and maternal intelligence are limited to nursing or trephein.
Bearing in mind Clytemnestras and the nurses diverging discourses on
mothering and motherhood, it is remarkable that the nurse, while talking
about and maternal mind, compares the child to an animal (Cho. 753:
). Clytemnestra too assimilates her child to an animal, as she
speaks of maternal love in strict relation to the mothers ability to give life. To
express this assimilation, Clytemnestra uses, like the nurse, the word
(Ag. 1415 1418: / /). As their appropri-
ation of the word shows, the nurse and Clytemnestra see the child the very
same way: as a grazing animal. Yet, such a representation of the child does not
imply the same view on the maternal role for both of them. For Clytemnestra,
motherhood is the biological experience of giving (tiktein) and nurturing life in
utero (trephein); for the nurse motherhood is the cultural experience of nursing
and mothering. As Bacon (2001: 56) has aptly observed: The nurse describes
her maternal activities not in terms of nature but as exercising the crafts (cheir-
onaxias, Cho. 761) of laundress, fuller, and nurse in order to help an infant like a
beast (boton, Cho. 753) grow into a human being.
Further remarks on the expression and maternal intelli-
gence are possible. These words recall to mind the image of the -
, which in turn implies the imagery of the mother
in Ag. 265 (cf. p. 34). According to Clytemnestras rhetoric of appropriation of
the words and , a mother is a cheerful and reasonable being.
This is not the case in the nurses rhetoric of appropriation of the words
and : when she uses these terms to talk about maternal care and mater-
nal mind, she seems to insinuate that Clytemnestra is a wicked, unreasonable
woman since she did not take care of the childs hygienic and alimentary de-
pendence on his mother (obviously, from a historical point of view, having a
nurse was a common praxis in Athens, and therefore hardly a sign of wicked-
ness).

86 Choephoroi
The attempt to undermine the mind of Clytemnestra works as an important

element in her representation as a mother-echthros, and it is not just a feature of
the nurses speech. Similar remarks are possible also for Orestes and Electra.
Orestes emphasises with a rhetorical question the unjust disposition of his moth-
ers mind:
Cho. 996: ;
Electra asserts that Clytemnestra cannot be called a mother, since she has a
wicked attitude of mind towards her children:
Cho. 190 191: ,

I explore further Electras rhetoric of motherhood in relation to her criticism of

Clytemnestras mind at pp. 122 125. In what follows, I look at Clytemnestras
rhetoric of appropriation of the verb and at the differences inherent in
Clytemnestras and the nurses use of this verb.
2 Clytemnestra on trephein
Clytemnestra uses the verb in lines 908 and 928, first as she opens, and
then as she ends her stichomythic dialogue with Orestes. In front of her matrici-
dal son, Clytemnestra appeals to her faculty of trephein attempting to coerce
Orestes to have pity for his mothers life. However, there is more, in this appeal
of Clytemnestra. I begin with some remarks about line 908:
As Clytemnestra employs the verb , she does not refer merely to the ac-
tivities of breast-feeding and raising a child, as according to LSJ, Italie and Din-
dorf. In fact, we can assume that Clytemnestra is also pointing to the maternal
activity of nurturing the baby in the womb with maternal blood. We are in
My reading of line 908 relies on Demont (1978), who shows that in the Corpus hippo-
craticum, and already in Homer, means faire prendre corps. Cf. also Benveniste (1966:
293) who argues that means favoriser (par des soins appropris) le dveloppement de ce
qui est soumis croissance. For in the meaning of to rear in utero, cf. Sept. 752 755.
Furthermore, my use of the term activity to name maternal care is not accidental. Referring to
pregnancy, labour and mothering as activity, I maintain that we are talking about womens

the position to establish a continuity between Clytemnestras self-representation

as mother in Agamemnon and in Choephoroi. As in Agamemnon, according to her
rhetoric of appropriation of the words and (cf. 1, I. 2 3), in Choephor-
oi too, according to her appropriation of the verb , she repeatedly insists
upon the exclusive power of womens body to give and nurture life.
The polysemy of Clytemnestras appropriation of the verb returns in
line 928. Again, she appropriates the verb in the meaning of breast-
feeding, bringing up (cf. LSJ, Italie, Dindorf), and, as I assume, of nourishing
a child in the womb:
We cannot help but notice a striking difference in the double usage of this verb.
In line 908, in the active voice means I nourished you (in my womb) to
your benefit; in line 928 in the middle voice means I nourished him
(in my womb) to my damage. This is an important point. According to Clytem-
work, and I cannot accept therefore Beauvoirs (1949: 24 27) position, according to which giving
birth and breast-feeding are not activities, but natural functions. On raising babies as an activity
and unpaid work I shall mention Fouque (1994: 296 297) and Nancy Frasers brilliant essay on
state walfare, Whats critical about Critical Theory? The case of Habermas and Gender, now
reprinted in Unruly Practices (1989).
Accordingly, I differ from Simon (1988: 52) who maintains that Clytemnestras characteri-
sation as mother is ambivalent: the picture of Clytaemestras ambivalent maternity is also
consonant with her portrayal in The Agamemnon as the mother of Iphigenia. It is Iphigenia slain
who arouses her maternal assertion, not an evocation of Iphigenia as a babe or young girl whom
she tended and raised.
Obviously, if one reads as after I bare him, the main verb can only
mean to breast-feed; to raise up. Of course, nourishing in utero precedes birth. Yet, the Greek
admits the reading of and as referring, paratactically, to the two biological
activities of the mother (to give birth and to nourish (in utero) her baby). Indeed, as a participle
aorist, is not supposed to indicate an action prior to the main verb . Cf. e. g.
Smyth (1936): Ah me, this is the serpent I bare and suckled; Lloyd-Jones (1982): Ah woe, that I
bore and I reared this snake; Battezzato in Di Benedetto (1999): Ahim, un serpente questo
che io ho fatto nascere e ho nutrito; Burian and Shapiro (2003): Ah, you are the snake I bore
and suckled!; Steiner (2007): Weh mir, diese Schlange habe ich geboren und aufgezogen?;
Sommerstein (2008): Ah me, this is the snake I bore and nourished!. Similalry, in line 913
( ) the participle aorist is not supposed to
indicate an action prior to the main verb .
Cf. Untersteiner (ad loc.), who follows Porzig 1926. For the verb as expressing
the positions of the speaking person in relation to his actions, cf. also Moussy (1969: 60): Il ne
sagit plus alors de lintrt que le sujet prend laction, mais de celui que la personne qui parle,
la mre de lenfant, manifeste pour les soins dont elle souhaite que son fils soit lobjet.

88 Choephoroi
nestras discourse on the mother-daughter bond in Agamemnon, her relationship

with Iphigeneia is a symbiotic bond of philia. The same cannot be said for the
relationship between Orestes and Clytemnestra. For Clytemnestra, Orestes is
the beloved creature to whom she gave life (Cho. 928: ), but, at
the same time, he is also a snake she nurtured in her womb (Cho. 928: -
). The complexity of this mother-son relation mirrors a similar
complexity in the action of the son against his mother. On the one hand, Clytem-
nestra is an echthros of Orestes, and his matricide is therefore legitimate. On the
other hand, Clytemnestra is a philos of her son, and matricide amounts to a hor-
rifying act of violence.
There is an additional reason here to draw attention to Clytemnestra using
the verb also in the meaning of nourishing, bringing up in the
womb. In Eumenides, Orestes asks himself whether he stands in a relation of bi-
ological consanguinity to Clytemnestra or not:
Eum. 606: ;
The Erinyes answer him that his mother brought him up in her womb, and that
maternal blood ties mother and son together in a very strong bond of philia. In-
terestingly, the Erinyes, like Clytemnestra in Choephoroi, make use of the verb
:
Eum. 607 608: , ,

; ;
Apollos theory of patrilinear generation (Eum. 657 ff.) is in contrast to such po-
sitions endorsed by the Erinyes. According to his rhetoric of appropriation of the
verbs and , the formation and gestation of the foetus in utero does
I separate and (respecting the metrical caesura). Garvie (ad loc.) argues that this
is artificial. Yet, as I argue, the separation of and pinpoints the complexity of Cly-
temnestras and Orestes relationship. Read this way, I differ from Dumortier (1975a: 97 98) who
in glossing line 928 focuses on Clytemnestra merely in her role as wife and argues that she is
speaking as a killing wife: Lorsque lpouse meurtrire tombera sous les coups de son fils, il lui
souviendra de ses visions nocturnes: , 928. It is important
to notice that Orestes, like Clytemnestra, recognizes that his mothers body gave him life. On this
issue, cf. below pp. 144 146. I also differ from Zeitlin (1978: 158) who, if I am not wrong, argues
that Orestes repudiation of Clytemnestras motherhood mirrors Clytemnestras suppression of
her mother-child bond with him: The next step, paradoxically, will be her undervaluation, even
rejection, of the mother-child bond, as in the case of Electra and Orestes. Child, in response, will
undervalue and reject mother.

not mean a process of creation of life. Children are biological extensions of their
fathers, not of their mothers; it is the father figure that generates life:
Eum. 660:
Moreover, Apollo denies the elementary biological fact that a mother gives life to
her child by nourishing (trephein) him in utero:
Eum. 663 666:

,

We need to bear in mind that Apollo speaks these lines as the most important
performance in his defense of Orestes. We have to stress two important points.
First, we see how the position of the god, expounding a patrilinear theory of pro-
creation, is opposing both Clytemnestras matrilineal view of procreation in Aga-
memnon and in Choephoroi as well as the Furies defence of matrilinearity in Eu-
menides. In all three plays of the trilogy, then, theories of procreation play a
crucial role in the characters rhetoric of explanation of their deeds: Apollo ac-
quits Orestes because he is the son of Agamemnon and not of Clytemnestra;
in Agamemnon and Choephoroi, Clytemnestra is in need of a matrilineal theory
of procreation, in order to defend the rightneousness of the murder of Agamem-
non, and to defend herself against her matricidal son; in Eumenides, the Furies
defend blood kinship with the mother, in order to pursue Orestes. Second, Apol-
los suppression of the biological power of the mother in favour of the definition
of the father as the only genetic parent of the child is in line with the gods cul-
tural definition of the mother as the wife of the father for whom she has borne
children (cf. pp. 163 165). As Bacon (2001: 56 57) has aptly pointed out: The
father has the role of nature. In Apollos words, the parent is he who mounts
Accordingly, I differ from Winnington-Ingram (1983: 123 124): If the mother is not tokeus,
she is still trophos. It will be noted how often this root is found in earlier stages of the debate.
Am I of my mothers blood? asks Orestes (606). How then did she nurture you beneath her
girdle? replies the Coryphaeus. Apollo gives an answer, but leaves the fact untouched. The
mother carries the child, nourishes it in the womb, gives birth to it in pain, suckles it at the
breast: all these things remain untouched by Apollos argument. It is certainly true that Apollo
recognizes the mothers role as trophos of the child and denies her role as tokeus (Eum. 657 ff.).
Yet, as we see at lines 663 666, the god refers to Athenas example to state that a mother is not
trophos of his children. On this issue, cf. ch. 3, 3. For here in the meaning of nutrire in
utero, cf. Italie.

90 Choephoroi
(Eum. 660). Apollos ruling that the mother has the role of culture is part of the
trilogys insistence on the importance of cultural laws (xenia, marriage etc.).
To conclude, we might note that a comparison between the rhetoric of appro-
priation of the verb by Clytemnestra and the nurse shows that they use
this verb in quite a different way: Clytemnestra in the sense of nourishing in
utero, breast-feeding, bringing up; the nurse only in the sense of breast-feeding,
bringing up. Why this difference? How does it shape the Choephoroi and its vi-
sion of the maternal role? Relying on Loraux, we seem entitled to say that it
sheds the image of an unjust mother on Clytemnestra, i. e. the image of a mother
who, by claiming the power of her body to give and to nurture life, resists the
equation mother = wife of the childrens father. Thus, Clytemnestras asser-
tions about maternal trephein contribute to her representation as an echthros
of the Atreid family, and help to legitimate the action of the matricidal son. How-
ever, as I show later on (cf. pp. 113114), the implications of the nurses speech,
aimed at denying Clytemnestras maternal role of giving and nurturing life in
utero, expose their vulnerability: as a mother, Clytemnestra is a woman both tro-
pheus and tokeus in regard to her children. Therefore, the nurses speech does
not have just a normative function. It also introduces a doubt in the plays dis-
course on motherhood: is it true that a mother is neither tokeus nor tropheus of
her child? We have to consider that the nurses discourse is posing a question
about Clytemnestras maternal role. Read this way, as the nurse affirms that
she received Orestes from her mother (Cho. 750: ), we are
in the position to say that her use of the word is implicitly indicating
the difficulty to suppress the normative and emotive power of the word. Illustrat-
ing such a hardness to signify who a mother is, Choephoroi anticipates the dra-
matic situation in Eumenides and the conflict between Apollo and the Furies
about the mothers role (wife of the childrens father, or woman giving and nur-
turing life?).
In the following section, I explore the plays discourse on Clytemnestra as a
mother non-tropheus further, focusing on Agamemnons characterisation as a fa-
ther-tropheus.
Cf. Loraux (1990: 108): Parce que, au cur mme de la justice, il y a la droite filiation,
seule mrite le titre de Juste la mre qui sait ce que reproduction veut dire: que reproduire le
pre, cest en fournir une copie conforme sans que, sur lenfant, demeure la moindre trace de
celle qui la nourri et mis au monde (italics mine).

3 Agamemnon as father-tropheus
Immediately after the recognition between himself and his sister, Orestes, while
he is praying, addresses himself to Zeus in the hope of winning the gods help in
avenging the death of his father. He compares the position of Clytemnestra as the
killer of Agamemnon to the case of an echidna that kills the eagle in its coils:
Cho. 246 251: , ,

The fight between the eagle and the snake is a familiar motif in Greek literature.
We find it for the first time in Homer (Il. 12, 200 ff.), and it is mentioned by Aris-
totle (HA 609a45). In Aeschylus, the conflict between eagle and snake turns
into a metaphor for the inter-familial conflict in the Atreid household. As or-
phans (Cho. 249: ), Agamemnons children are exclud-
ed from the chance to inherit the property of their father (Cho. 250:
), and are like little eagles (Cho. 247 248: -
/ ) that are not old enough (Cho. 250: ) to bring the
prey haunted by their father to the nest (Cho. 251:
). On this account, Orestes murderous violence against his mother
can be read as the action of a son who intends to restate the authority of his fa-
ther as the one true tropheus of the family members.
The idea that the wealth of the house depends on the father figure reflects
the common social practice in Athens, according to which, notably, women
did not run properties (except, of course, for the epikleros). Still, this insistence
on paternal wealth may tell us much more. Saying that the fathers wealth main-
tains the family is like trying to re-define filiation as a social fact based on the
role of the mother as wife of her husband. In other words, it is not Clytemnestra,
as mother giving life and nurturer of her children, but Agamemnon, in his social
role as genitor by virtue of the laws of marriage, inheritance and succession, who
guarantees the preservation and the continuity of the family. In the stichomy-
On the imagery of the eagles as derived from the Archilochean fable of the eagle and the
fox, cf. Janko (1980). On the animal symbolism in this passage as mirroring the symbolism in
Agamemnon, cf. Fowler (1967: 55 56).
Cf. Cho. 1, 76 77, 126, 235, 237; 479 480; 487; 864 865. On the characters rhetoric of
appropriation of the word as head of the household, cf. also Eum. 654 (

92 Choephoroi
thia between Orestes and Clytemnestra, line 921 definitely points in this direc-
tion. According to his rhetoric of appropriation of the verb and the
word , he was not nourished in utero by Clytemnestras maternal blood
and nurtured by maternal milk, as Clytemnestra has claimed in Cho. 908 and
928; he was nurtured by the work of his father as aner, that is to say as husband,
miles and vir fortis:
Cho. 921:
Thus, we are able to recognize that the definition of the father as nurturer of the
family implies a struggle about what the word is supposed to mean in the
case of the mother. Where should we place maternal ? Is the mothers
womb in relation to her body and her faculty to give and to nurture life (as ac-
cording to Clytemnestras discourse), or is it the mothers social position in the
household as the wife nourished by her husband (as according to Orestes dis-
course)? Posing this question on Clytemnestras maternal role (woman giving
;) and sections 3 and 6 in the chapter on Eumenides. For a similar line of

argumentation, cf. Goldhill (LSN: 147): the redefinition of the role of the mother, the female,
asserts also the redefinition of the model of narrative towards its authorisation of/by the word of
the father. On in Greek as denoting the social and religious role of the man with children,
cf. Chantraine (1947: 235) and Strauss (1993: 24 28); on the role of the father figure in Greek
tragedy, cf. Caldwell (1970), esp. pp. 88 92 on the Oresteia, and the brilliant paper of Griffith
(1998).
Cf. Italie who assumes for the meaning of victum praebere. For a similar analysis,
cf. Sommerstein (1996: 267): the mother may nurture (trephein) the child (908, cf. 898), but the
father by his labour supports (trephein) the mother and everyone else (921): ultimately it is by his
efforts that the oikos can survive. In this regard, Orestes matricide seems to confirm the female
economic dependence on men, cf. Euben (1990: 93): It is also true that the trilogy can be
interpreted as commending the sexual division of labor. On the characters rhetoric of appro-
priation of the word as father-tropheus, rex, miles and vir fortis, cf. Cho. 345 349, 363 364,
430 435, 479, 505, 556, 572, 627, 808, 1070, 1072. For Agamemnons toils and his power as
victorious king and the source of the survival of the Atreid family, cf. also Cho. 301305.
Accordingly, I differ from Foley (2001: 231 232), who in her discussion of line 921 sees the
struggle on the definition of merely as a struggle for the supremacy of paternal ponos over
maternal gala: The sufferings of a wife in war are now trivialized by Orestes, who will not
accept an equivalence between the one who sits at home and the toil of the husband in the
public world (trephei de gandros mochthos hmenas es, 921; see also 919, which again stresses
the ponos or labor of the father in contrast to the activity of those inside). It is now the father who
is the provider of nurture (trephei) that is often the mothers special province (eutraphes gala,
898). This is not by chance: Foley (2001: 232 n. 109) does not consider the fact that Clytemnestra
appropriates the verb in Cho. 908 and 928 also as to nurture in the womb with maternal
blood: Clytemnestra does not accept Orestes claim. She insists on her nurture [milk], but now
sees that she has raised a snake (ethrepsamn, 928). As Foley, neither Sommerstein in his

life, or wife of the husband?), Orestes attempts to suppress Clytemnestras moth-

erhood and to represent her as dependent on her husband Agamemnon antici-
pate the conflict between the Furies and Apollo on the definition of bloodlines
and power relations as paternal.
Orestes attempt to redefine what is supposed to be in the case of his
mother constitutes the conceptual core of line 919 too, as he reproaches Clytem-
nestra for the slothful inactivity of women:
Cho. 919:
Two locutions are of fundamental importance here: vs. .

This polarity can be read as the essential dualism between the sexes: the male
toils of war are in contrast to female unproductiveness. Now, when Orestes
uses the verb to praise Agamemnons martial deeds and to denigrate
the indolence of women, he seems to redefine the Trojan War as a glorious
task, and therefore to wipe every criticism ( ) of the Troika ( -
) away. Thus, Orestes discourse on ponos and female indolence seems
to undermine Clytemnestras rhetoric of explanation of the murder of Agamem-
non as a punishment for the wrongs committed in Troy (cf. ch. 1, III. 2). On this
commentary on Eumenides (on Eum. 607 608) considers the meaning of nutrire in utero for
Cho. 908 and 928, and thus notes that Clytemnestra could have appealed to the stronger ar-
gument that she gave life to Orestes: Clytaemestra had claimed that Orestes had no right to kill
her, because she had nurtured him with her milk (Ch. 896 8, 908, 928; cf. Ch. 527 33, 543 6).
That, however, was not the strongest claim she could have made Now we are reminded that
she had nurtured him earlier still, before birth, with her blood. This attempt to redefine the
maternal will return in Eumenides with Apollos speech and its definition of the mothers
position in the family as the wife of her husband and, accordingly, with the expropriation of the
womb of its faculty of giving life; cf. pp. 162165.
Cf. Zeitlin (1978: 157) who brilliantly argues: Son must slay mother; father must be avenged,
but in so doing, sons alliance with paternal power and interests must simultaneously be seen as
repudiation of the mother. On the repudiation of motherhood as central step toward the legi-
timisation of paternal power, cf. Irigaray (1984: 100): Dimension quil faut renier en paroles et en
actes pour accomplir le salut de la famille et de la cit.
Cf. Loraux (1989: 56 57): Mais habilit pour la guerre, le citoyen lest dabord en tant quil
porte le nom du mle: anr. Et, tout naturellement, ponos sert marquer lopposition cardinale
qui, plus que toutes les autres peut-tre, fonde la socit grecque: je veux dire lopposition des
rles sexuels. Du ct du mle est le ponos: normative chez Xnophon, lide se fait simple
constatation chez lauteur du trait hippocratique Du rgime ou chez celui du Systme des
glandes, qui opposent le rgime viril, plac sous le signe de la fatigue et de lendurcissement,
la facilit du rgime oisif des femmes. On ponos, cf. as well Loraux 1982.
On the verb as referring to Agamemnons warlike toil in opposition to female
indolence, cf. Di Benedetto (1999: 44).

94 Choephoroi
account, we have two important points to stress. First, in the tragic machinery of
death, Orestes matricide can be seen as an act of retributive justice that with-
draws the authority of Clytemnestras discourse on the Trojan War in Agamem-
non, and aims to restore the fathers heroism and to rehabilitate his power as vic-
torious king. Second, as Goldhill (LSN: 143) has observed, through the
rehabilitation of Agamemnons ponos, the opposition of philos (= father) vs. ech-
thros (= mother) seems to take on military implications.
Electra and Orestes share the same view on ponos. In the speech she delivers
on the tomb of her father, during the first scene, Electra reproaches Clytemnestra
for the wastage of Agamemnons wealth. According to Electras appropriation of
the word , Clytemnestras wastefulness is in strict opposition to Agamem-
nons heroic toils:
Cho. 135 137: ,

,

Given this discourse of Electra and Orestes about Agamemnons martial deeds
and Clytemnestras indolence, it seems important to add to the opposition tre-
phein/tiktein the opposition trephein = ponos/tiktein as a constituent element
of the Choephorois discourse on motherhood. Following the ongoing analysis,
we have seen that the meaning of the verb in Choephoroi is gradually
narrowed and redefined. To Clytemnestra, means raising up in the
womb, breast-feeding, bringing up. To the nurse, it means breast-feeding, bring-
ing up; to Orestes and Electra, maintaining the family. In particular, as lines
135 137 and 919 921 show, for Orestes and Electra only the power bestowed
upon Agamemnon by his warlike ponos can guarantee the continuation of the
genealogical line, glory and prestige of the Atreid household.
Cf. Goldhill (LSN: 194): the initiation of Orestes, then, is not so much (though partly) into
his role within the oikos, of reasserting his , as also reasserting the role of the oikos with
regard to the wider society. Compare Kitto (1956: 56): When Orestes prays to Agamemnon
he is praying for the renewal of order, degree, in the state of Argos
as well as in the house of its King. Similarly, cf. e. g. Gagarin (1976: 99); Meier (1988: 147 148);
Strauss (1993: 77); McHardy (2008: 108).
In this regard, lines 354 360 are particularly interesting as well. Here, the chorus defines
Orestes as philos of his father philos (Cho. 354 355: /),
pointing precisely to Agamemnons position as the victorious king at Troy: Cho. 355 359:
/ / / .
On Electras and Orestes authorisation of the power of Agamemnon as genitor, victorious
king in war and head of the family, cf. also Fllinger (2007: 18 19).

In the next section, I look at further implications of Clytemnestras charac-

terisation as a mother non-tropheus.
4 Clytemnestra as mother non-tropheus and female tyrant
Clytemnestra, mother non-tropheus, is also depicted as an avid consumer of the

goods of Agamemnon, father-tropheus: after having set up a tyranny in Argos
with her love-mate (Cho. 267, 377, 537, 658, 664, 700), she squanders her hus-
bands patrimony (Cho. 136 137, 919 921, 942 945, 973 974). The motif of fe-
male tyranny expands on a theme that was already present in Agamemnon
(Ag. 1362 1365, 1638 1640, 1673). In Choephoroi, the tyranny set up by Clytem-
nestra has brought the Atreid house to a complete ruin (Cho. 262 263): Orestes is
dispossessed of his fathers wealth (Cho. 135 136, 249 250, 277, 301, 407 408;
cf. Eum. 754 756); Electra is forced to live in misery, as if she were a slave
(Cho. 135, 444 450). Agamemnons children will have the duty to prove them-
selves as saviours of their fathers house (Cho. 264: ). Ac-
cordingly, when Orestes, immediately before his first dramatic exchange with
Clytemnestra, uses the word in reference to her position as ruler, he appro-
priates the word in the opposite sense of as vir fortis and rex (notice
the juxtaposition of and ):
Cho. 664: ,
According to Orestes, an aner is someone who is able to command; a gune, on

the contrary, just misuses power. If this is appropriate, vesting Clytemnestra
with the image of a female tyrant means denying any righteousness to her action
as a queen, i. e. to her vendetta as a compensation for the violence of Agamem-
nons war against Troy. This seems to be quite clear at the beginning of the play
(Cho. 55 65). Here, the chorus first mentions the respect of the people of Argos
for Agamemnons royal authority, and the climate of fear established by the tyr-
Locus classicus for the stereotype of women as consumers of mens goods is Th. 590 602.
On this topic in Greek literature, cf. e. g. Loraux (1978: 61 63); Carson (1990: 140). Especially on
the passage in Hesiod, cf. Sussman (1978).
On male power, cf. Clytemnestras rhetoric of appropriation of the word in Cho. 672
673: / , . Fur-
thermore, on the construction of the male as the subject with the power of right thinking and
right acting, as well as on the construction of the female as being unable of right thinking and
right speaking, cf. Orestes, the chorus, the nurses and Aegisthus rhetoric of appropriation of
the words and in Cho. 626 627; 666 667; 735 736; 845; 849 850.

96 Choephoroi
anny of Clytemnestra (Cho. 55 59). Then, it expresses its criticism for Clytemnes-
tras abuse of power and wealth, and the necessity to punish the usurper of Aga-
memnon (Cho. 59 65). Following the chorus in this passage, Agamemnons
death represents a loathsome murder, plotted by an illegitimate ruler against
the sovereign king of Argos and victor in Troy. In what follows, I dwell in
more detail on some lines that attest the rehabilitation of Agamemnons heroic
career and power.
To begin with, lines 255 256 are particularly interesting. Orestes speaks
these lines immediately after the recognition with his sister, in the context of
the prayer he addresses to Zeus, in order to win the gods help in taking revenge
for the death of his father:
According to Winnington-Ingram (1983: 134), Garvie (ad loc.) and Goldhill (LSN:
135), Orestes is referring to Iphigeneias sacrifice. If we read, with Garvie (ad loc.),
of Ms instead of the correction , the article emphasises the
idea that Agamemnon has honoured Zeus with Iphigeneias sacrifice. Now, if
Agamemnon is depicted as the agent of Zeus (LSN: 135), Orestes use of the
word in Cho. 256, in opposition to in Cho. 255 and in emphatic
position at the beginning of the verse, seems to obliterate the horror of the fa-
thers action against his daughter and to restore Agamemnons heroic career at
Aulis and Troy. Thus, when Orestes uses the words and , he is dis-
playing a different rhetoric of appropriation from the chorus, in the parodos of
Agamemnon, and from Clytemnestra. As we have seen (cf. pp. 1618), Clytemnes-
tras and the chorus discourses in Agamemnon point to Agamemnons paternal
warlike violence against his daughter.
Similar remarks are possible about line 918 of the stichomytia, in the ex-
change between Orestes and Clytemenstra. Here, Clytemnestra urges her son
to recall his fathers faults:
Although critics persist in claiming that in Choephoroi Clytemnestra never men-

tions the sacrifice of her daughter, a reference to the events in Aulis seems to be
at work here. By referring to Agamemnon as pater and agent of violence, Cly-
Cf. Fllinger (2003: 96); for an opposite position, cf. Garvie. According to Garvie, in line 918
the word applies to sexual folly. Thus, Clytemnestra might be alluding to Agamemnons

temnestra, as in Agamemnon, might be criticizing him for his misuse of the pa-
rental role. Quite the opposite, Orestes silence about the sacrifice of Iphigeneia
and, as we have seen, his objection that a woman is nourished by the ponos of
her man (Cho. 919 921) seems to function as crucial steps towards a rehabilita-
tion of Agamemnons heroic career and a de-legitimisation of Clytemnestras ac-
tion against the conqueror of Troy and the killer of his own daughter. However,
Orestes discourse on the authorisation of the father as man of power and head
of the family is exposed to the danger of failing. How can a man, who kills his
own daughter, nourish his family?
The allusions to Iphigeneias sacrifice in Choephoroi help us to illustrate
some differences between the Homeric version of the Atreid myth and the Ae-
schylean reworking of it. Unlike the Oresteia, the Odyssey does not display a dis-
course that first calls into question and then rehabilitates the Trojan War. In this
sense, the paradigmatic perspective from which Orestes mythical biography is
told to the young Telemachus does not just rely upon the silence about Iphige-
neias sacrifice and Orestes matricide, but also upon the lack of a narrative in-
cluding a re-evaluation of the Trojan War.
Yet, although Choephoroi asserts both Agamemnons position as father-tro-
pheus (i. e. head of the family, king and warrior) and Orestes status as Agamem-
nons heir-in-law, there is no cure in the Oresteia for the carnage in Troy and the
blood shed by Clytemnestra. In Aeschylus, the Atreid family is trapped in a piti-
less fight against itself and Troy. In Agamemnon the seed of dissension remains
in the house (Ag. 154 155: / );
there is no escape from the persecution for Agamemnon, the one who killed
too many (Ag. 461 468); the Erinyes are bred in the family (Ag. 1190:
). In Eumenides, the law of the Erinyes always remains (Eum. 381:
). As we know, in Eumenides Athena will defend the necessity of war and
exalt the glory of warriors (Eum. 848 ff., 903 ff.). However, as I show in the chap-
ter on Eumenides (cf. section 6) the notion of war is problematized also in the
last drama of the trilogy.
relations with Chryseis and Cassandra. If that is not wrong, the same seems true for Clytem-
nestras use of as a hint to Iphigeneias sacrifice as well. Given that the word in Greek
properly describes a fault made by madness (cf. LSJ), it is important here not to miss a reference
to Agamemnons dilemma in Aulis, and to his loss of control over rational faculties (Ag. 220
223). On this topic, cf. ch. I. 5.
On the paradigmatic function of the Atreid myth in the Odyssey, cf. p. 14, with n. 31. On the
numerous passages of the Odyssey about the value of the Trojan War, cf. for example book 8
(Demodocos on Odysseus and the Trojan horse) and book 16 (when Telemachus recognizes
Odysseus, he also remembers the warlike deeds of his father).

98 Choephoroi
In the next section I explore Agamemnons characterisation as a father-to-

keus, after a summary of what I discussed in sections one to four.
5 Conclusions
In sections one to four, we have seen that:

1. according to the nurses speech about Orestes childhood, Clytemnestra did
not take care of her child, nor did she feed him at her breast. In particular:
in the nurses discourse on mothering, we are faced with an attempt to
separate the activity of trephein from the maternal agency of giving life;
for the nurse, who is not a biological mother, a mother feeds and brings
up her baby (trephein) but she does not give him life;
in the nurses discourse on mothering, there is no relation between the
mothers mind and her biological role in conceiving, bearing and raising
children;
2. according to Clytemnestras discourse on the maternal agency of trephein, a
mother nourishes her baby in the womb, feeds and raises him. Thus, the re-
lation between mother and child is shaped by a bond of consanguinity and
inviolable philia;
3. Orestes and Electras discourse on the authority of Agamemnons social role
as genitor is bound together with a discourse on female biological agency.
Agamemnon is a father-tropheus just on the condition that Clytemnestra in
her role as mother is non-tropheus of her children: it is Agamemnons war-
like toils and his position as king and warrior not Clytemnestras maternal
blood and milk that maintain the family and guarantee the survival of its
glory and prestige. This attempt to rehabilitate Agamemnons warlike hero-
ism implies a de-legitimisation of Clytemnestras discourse about the Trojan
War and about the authority of her action and speech as queen;
4. according to Orestes, Agamemnon did not sacrifice his daughter to fulfil his
warlike ponos, but to respect the obedience which is due to the gods. Such a
presentation of Iphigeneias sacrifice implies a rehabilitation of Agamem-
nons heroic career;
5. according to Orestes and Electra, Agamemnon is the king victorious at Troy,
and Clytemnestra is the usurper of his male power. Therefore, the killing of
Agamemnon is the killing of the king in power. Matricide is at least partly
legitimate.

II Clytemnestra as mother-echthros and non-tokeus
1 Agamemnon as father-tokeus and Clytemnestra as mother non-tokeus
Clytemnestra is not just the mother non-tropheus of her children, and the squan-
derer of Agamemnons wealth. According to her matricidal son, she is also a
mother non-tokeus. When Orestes speaks of her power to give life, using the
verb , the experiences of pregnancy and labour undergo a monstrous
transformation in his words. According to Orestes in the stichomythia with his
mother, Clytemnestra gave life to her son only to throw him out into misery:
Cho. 913:
What is worse, Clytemnestra is for Orestes a mother who bartered his own son in
a exchange of goods, making a source of profit out of him, in order to protect her
affair with Aegisthus:
Cho. 915 917: O.

K. ;
O.
This depiction of Clytemnestra as a mother non-mother corresponds well to her

characterisation as a wife betraying her man. As Zeitlin (1978: 157) has poignant-
ly phrased, Here in the Choephoroi adulterous wife is now fully equated with
hostile mother. Indeed, as an adulterous woman, she is an enemy of her chil-
dren and of her husband Agamemnon:
Cho. 906 907:

,
Cho. 991:
As Clytemnestra is a mother non-mother, so Orestes is not the son of his mother.

According to his understanding of the word , he is the son of Agamem-
non, while Clytemnestra has only carried the fathers children in her womb:
As Zeitlin, cf. Vernant (1996: 340): Lpouse coupable devient mre terrible; Patterson
(1998: 143): the mother who was once philos is now echthros (hostile, an enemy; 993), a clear
sign of the perverted state of this household. Now, as a hostile mother and adulterous wife,
Clytemnestra is an unrestrained woman hated by the gods (Cho. 46: , 525:
). Cf. the same depiction of Orestes by the Pythia and the Furies in Eum. 40:
, 151: . On Clytemnestras adultery, cf. also Cho. 599
600; 764; 893 895; 975 976.

100 Choephoroi
Cho. 992:
Orestes speaks this line in the context of the talk he delivers after the matricide,
beside the corpses of Clytemnestra and Aegisthus. Clearly, Orestes does not rep-
resent the mother-child relation in the same terms as she does. As we have seen,
according to Clytemnestras rhetoric of appropriation of the words , ,
and in Agamemnon, a mother is a cheerful being, of sound mind; the
child is a biological extension of his mother; a bond of philia ties relatives by
blood. Instead, according to Orestes rhetoric of appropriation of the words -
, and , Clytemnestras motherhood is a paradigm of aberration;
children belong biologically to their fathers; the bond of philia is also externally
defined (bond between wife and husband), and is normative in itself (philia has
to tie a wife to her husband: Cho. 906 907: / ,
).
Through the characterisation of Clytemnestra as genetrix of the fathers chil-
dren and as an adulterous woman, enemy of her own family, we are faced with a
process of normalisation of her maternal sexuality, and with an attempt to ex-
propriate her female body of its reproductive power. This is like saying that
Orestes discourse on adultery and child reproduction defines the proper social
role of a woman within marriage as being the wife of her husband from and for
whom she has borne children. Thus, Clytemnestras adultery threatens the social
position of the male in the family. As Goldhill has similarly noticed (LSN: 111;
2004: 36), refusing her role of wife through adultery, Clytemnestra stops being
a woman who gives birth to the children of her husband, the father-tokeus, be-
coming instead a bad mother, or a mother who escapes male control over female
sexuality and female agency of reproduction. This infringement of the female
Cf. similarly Foley (2001: 231): Orestes refuses to permit Clytemnestra to categorize Aga-
memnon (or, later, her children) as enemy, not philos and husband. Her children are not
exclusively hers but also her husbands. I differ from Podlecki who, in his edition of Eumenides,
notes at line 608 that the Erinyes claim that the mother nurtures her baby in the womb is
reminiscent of Orestes words in Cho. 992 993. As I argue in the case of Clytemnestra, and as I
will in the case of the Erinyes, their claim that the child is the fruit of the maternal womb echoes
Orestes words in Cho. 992999, insofar as it reverses them: for Orestes a child belongs bio-
logically to his father; but not for Clytemnestra and the Erinyes. On Orestes rhetoric of mo-
therhood in Cho. 992, his rhetoric of appropriation of the word and the difference
between Clytemnestras and Orestes discourse on motherhood, cf. Garvie (ad loc.): In a sense
Orestes reverses the charge brought by Clytaemestra against Agamemnon who sacrificed Iphi-
genia (Ag. 1417 f.).
My point about the verb and the position of the father as father-tokeus (namely that
the father is the only genetic parent, given the expropriation of the mother of his power of giving

function in the family and in the community of the fathers produces a fracture in
the social continuity of the family, making the revenge of Orestes imperative.
Following these remarks, we can see that the discourse of Orestes about the so-
cial function of women does not state merely the necessity of controlling female
sexuality. It also states the need to control the relationship between female sex-
ual pleasure and social reproduction.
Yet, the definition of the father as the only genetic parent of the children (to-
keus), in addition to his definition as the only guarantor of the familys survival
(tropheus), implies that he is not only responsable for the economic subsistence
of his family, but also for its biological continuity. We may conclude, then, that
the development of the language of familial relations (cf. LSN: 155) involves a
semantic shift in both terms and . Against this background,
there seems to be no discontinuity between Choephoroi and Eumenides. In Choe-
phoroi we face the attempts to suppress Clytemnestras maternal role as tokeus
and tropheus of her children, and to equate her role as mother with her role
as wife. Similarly, in Eumenides, the discourses of Apollo and Athena engage
with the definition of the civic ideology of motherhood, according to which
the mother is the wife of the father, for whom she has borne children, whereas
the father is the only genetic parent of the children and the tropheus of the family
through his political and economic prestige (cf. ch. 3. 3).
Electra follows the discourse of Orestes about Clytemnestras power of giving
life closely. In the speech she delivers on the tomb of her father during the first
episode, Electra affirms that Clytemnestra has sold her children in exchange for
sex with Aegisthus:
Cho. 132 134:

,

life) can be argued for the term parens as well. Cf. the brilliant paper of Thomas (1986) and
Loraux (1990: 127 n. 26): Yan Thomas me fait remarquer quil en va de mme pour parens, qui,
du vocabulaire de l accouchement, a t dtourn au profit des pres. On female sexual fidelity,
cf. Cantarella (2011: 335 336) and Cox (2011: 232 235), each with further bibliography.
Cf. Kitto (1956: 57): Marriage is the key-stone of civilised society, and if Clytemnestras
crime is not punished this key-stone is knocked away. On marriage and the social reproduction
of the polis, cf. Seaford (1994: 206 220); Cox (2011), with further bibliography at p. 243.
According to Goldhill (LSN: 149), in order to express the exclusive function of the father
figure as tropheus and tokeus, the chorus uses the words (Cho. 466): on the one
hand ponos refers to the economic commitment of the father as in verses 919 921, on the other
hand the adjective puts the notion of ponos in the context of the sphere of filiation.

102 Choephoroi
According to Electra as well, Clytemnestra is an adulterous wife ( -

) and therefore a mother non-mother who has given life to her children
only to make money out of them (notice the significant juxtaposition of
, ). Bearing in mind this representation of Clytemnestra, there
seems to be no relation of philia between mother and daughter. This suppression
seems to work as a redefinition of the causes of Clytemnestras maternal
wrath. In this respect, lines 239 242 are particularly interesting:

,
, ,

Electra speaks these lines on the tomb of her father, when she finds a ringlet and
speculates whether it belongs to her brother Orestes or not. Here, she gives ex-
pression to her love for Agamemnon, Iphigeneia and Orestes in opposition to
the allegation that her mother has good reasons to be an object of hatred. It
seems reasonable, then, to suppose that there is no bond of kinship fondness be-
tween Clytemnestra and Iphigeneia. Obviously, the suppression of philia between
Iphigeneia and Clytemnestra affects the way Electra appropriates the verb .
In fact, also Electra depicts the sacrifice of her sister as a pitiless act (Cho. 242:
). However, considering the background of Clytemnestras
representation as a mother-echthros, we have to assume that in Electras dis-
course Iphigeneias sacrifice can hardly represent, as for Clytemnestra in Aga-
memnon, the breach of the inviolable bond of philia and of consanguinity be-
tween mother and daughter.
Passage 239 242 deserves further attention. In her groundbreaking paper on
the images of corrupted sacrifice in Aeschylus Oresteia, Zeitlin (1965: 492) lucid-
ly observes that the loss of maternal feelings towards Orestes and Electra works
retroactively, we might say, in her attitude towards Iphigenia. It is helpful to ex-
pand on Zeitlins thoughtful remark. Clytemnestras lack of maternal feelings to-
wards Iphigeneia is linked to Orestes and Electras definition of the mother fig-
ure as an echthros of her family (because of Clytemnestra, Orestes is exiled;
Electra lives like a slave). I think this point has important consequences,
which I sum up in short:
On Clytemnestras representation as a mother full of relentless wrath, cf. Cho. 421 422:
/ . On these lines, cf. Petrounias (1976:
186, 202).

1) the definition of the mother figure as an echthros of the family implies a re-
definition of the principles on which philia between relatives is based. Fol-
lowing Electra in line 241, Clytemnestra is hated with good reason (
), but the same cannot be said for her father, her brother and her
sister Iphigeneia, who are of the same seed (Cho. 242: ). Accord-
ingly, we can take for granted the equation philos = homosporos. Now,
since obviously Clytemnestra as a mother cannot be of the same seed as
her children, she can hardly be bound to them through a relation of philia.
More than that, the equation philos = homosporos reveals the fact that con-
sanguinity only exists in connection to the father figure. Indeed, as Wilgaux
(2006: 343) has pointed out, in Greek this adjective implies a blood tie be-
tween father and children, according to the belief that sperm is made out
of blood. We may take these remarks a step further, and say that in Choephor-
oi consanguinity with the father figure (or kinship relations of social consan-
guinity) is made possible by a negation of the biological consanguinity with
the mother. In the speech delivered by Electra, when she finds a ringlet on
the tomb of her father, and speculates whether it belongs to Orestes or not,
lines 189 200 are consistent with this representation of bloodlines as pater-
nal. First, in lines 189 191, Electra states that Clytemnestra cannot be con-
sidered a mother, since she hates her children. Second, in lines 195 200, she
asks if the ringlet found on Agamemnons grave belongs to an enemy
(Cho. 198: ), or to a relative who shares the same blood
(Cho. 199: ). Again, if Clytemnestra is an echthros for Electra,
she is also non-suggenes. As Goldhill has similarly pointed out (LSN: 124),
Electras definition of the opposition philos vs. echthros through the criterion
of consanguinity affects her appropriation of the word in line 197
200:
Cf. also Sissa (1983: 130 139). On the blood of the Father as the foundation of social ties, cf.
Heritier-Aug (1989); Heritier (1996: 53 ff.). On the patrilinear organisation of the Atreid family, cf.
also Cho. 236: , 503:
.
On syngeneia as kinship of blood and on suggeneis as blood relatives, cf. Loraux (1987: 25
30), in particular p. 25: Syngeneia la parentela di sangue: in altri termini, la pi naturale di
ogni ralazione, che non ha bisogno di essere codificata per essere vissuta nellimmediatezza
dellesistenza quotidiana; Wilgaux (2011: 221): all the next of kin the suggeneis in so far,
precisely, as they share the same blood, regardless of whether it comes from the male or the
female side. On this topic, cf. also Musti (1963: 230 232); Littman (1979: 13), and for further
bibliography Wilgaux (2011: 229 230).

104 Choephoroi

,
,

Here, as she states that a blood kin can honour the tomb of her father along
with her (Cho. 199 200), she seems to imply that it is rather Agamemnon as
father and philos, instead of Clytemnestra as mother and echthros, to be a
blood relative of his children.
2) According to Orestes and Electras discourse on consanguinity with the fa-
ther figure and to their discourse on adultery and the inviolability of mar-
riage, we are in the position to conclude that their reprimand of adultery jus-
tifies the expropriation of the reproductive power of maternal blood, thus
transferring the agency of giving life from the mothers womb to the fathers
blood:
in marriage, the mother = the wife of the father-tokeus (therefore, male
control over maternal blood, female sexuality and female reproduction);
through adultery, the mother the wife of the father (therefore, no male
control over maternal blood, female sexuality and female reproduction)
However, this discourse of exclusion on Clytemnestras motherhood and wife-

hood (she is an adulterous wife and therefore a mother non-mother) is not entire-
ly successful. To begin with, two different readings are possible for lines 132
134. We can read the modal particle with : in this case, Clytemnes-
tra has clearly sold her children away. However, it is also legitimate to read it
with : in this case, it is as if Clytemnestra has sold her children
away. When language excludes and separates, the dynamics of categorisation
tremble: excluding (the mother) has always the meaning of including (her).
Orestes attempt to separate Clytemnestras role as mother from her role as
wife, that we have seen at work in his rhetoric of wifehood in lines 906 907
and 991 993 (cf. pp. 99 100), is fraught with the danger of failing too. Lines
991 993 are particularly interesting. Orestes says that his mother is an object
of abomination, set against her husband and the childrens father:
Relying on Rsler, I do not read, as Garvie does (ad loc.), lines 132 134 as a metaphor.
However, I differ from Rsler (2006: 14 15) who reads lines 132 134 just in one direction,
namely as a proof of the fact that Clytemnestra has sold her children, and therefore is lying, as
she affirms to have given Orestes to Strophius (Ag. 877 886). Rslers detailed analysis does not
comment the particle . On Clytemnestra, Orestes and Strophius, cf. p. 117.


,
, ,
Yet, as Orestes question in Cho. 994 illustrates, he does not know whether this is
actually true or not:
Again, the fact that we acknowlege by a gesture of separation and exclusion who
Clytemnestra is pushes us to question this very certainty. More than that, it im-
plies admitting the limits of a discourse on Clytemnestra as a mother non-moth-
er. Indeed, a positive answer to Orestes question ; (and, accordingly,
a reading of this expression merely as a rhetorical question) would pose further
problems rather than solve them. Even if we consider true that Clytemnestra is
an object of abomination, i. e. the bad wife of the childrens father, which kind
of is she supposed to be? Is she a moral eel, or a viper?
Cho. 994: ;
Echoing Cassandras questions in Ag. 1232 1233 ( /

; ), Orestes doubts about the monstrosity
of Clytemnestra as mother and wife undercut the authority of his discourse of
exclusion, insomuch as it becomes quite problematic to speak plausibly of the
mother as a monster. The text insists upon this difficulty to define Clytemnestra
as a mater monstruosa. In line 997 Orestes asks himself again how to name his
mother:
Lines 1026 1028 are consistent with Orestes difficulty to represent Clytemnestra
as an opprobrium:
,
,

For as hinting to Clytemnestra as well, cf. LSN: 100; Morgan (1994: 133), who also
underlines the striking similarities between Ag. 1232 1233 and Cho. 994 ff.

106 Choephoroi
Orestes speaks these lines in his last speech during his ultimate confrontation
with the chorus. Here, as in passage 991 993, Orestes once again describes Cly-
temnestra as a , i. e. as an object of abomination. Yet, his representation of
his own mother as a mater monstruosa does not have the power to suppress Cly-
temnestras motherhood, and to assess matricide as a legitimate act of violence.
Indeed, the litotes reveals Orestes caution in presenting matri-
cide as an act of undisputed justice. Thus, it opens up to the suspicion that the
killing of Clytemnestra might play as a highly problematic deed for him. This
problematisation of matricide implied in Orestes use of the word casts a
shadow of doubt on his rhetoric of appropriation of the words and
as well. To start with, how can a killer of his own mother claim to have
control over his mind? And moreover, what does it mean to be philos of someone
who killed his own mother? Here, Orestes rhetoric of appropriation of the word
seems to give us good evidence of how difficult it is to define who is a
philos and/or an echthros and, accordingly, to appropriate the word mere-
ly as the echthros of the children and their father.
However, if we are to follow Orestes and Electra on Clytemnestras mother-
hood and wifehood and their discourse of exclusion, matricide represents an act
of retributive justice for Agamemnons children against the murderess of their fa-
ther (Cho. 909: , 974: , 1028: ):
Cho. 144
Cho. 244
Cho. 497
Cho. 805
Cho. 884
Cho. 935
The enactment of this justice takes the shape of a struggle for Orestes and Electra
(Cho. 489: , 866: , 874: ), and will end with a victory
(Cho. 148: , 478: , 499:
, 868: ).
On this topic, cf. LSN: 115. The same line of interpretation can be applied to Cho. 100:
, , ; 552: ; 825 826: -/
; 833: . Here, Electra and the chorus use the word , meaning
the enemy of Clytemnestra and the supporter of the vengeance for Agamemnon. Now, how can
somebody, who helps children in their plot against their mother, be philos? On the difficult task
to distinguish philoi from echthroi in the Choephorois discourse on motherhood and matricide,
cf. Electra in Cho. 110: . Cf. as well p. 52.
For the imagery of victory in these lines of Choephoroi, cf. Poliakoff (1980: 253 255).

Yet, as I argue in the third part of this chapter, once more the play shows
how Orestes and Electras repudiation of Clytemnestras power of giving and
nurturing life, their definition of Agamemnon as father-tropheus and tokeus
and the definition of bloodlines and power relations as exclusively paternal
are in fact all elements of a discursive justification of matricide, which is always
exposed to the danger of failing. As in Eumenides, in Choephoroi is already pres-
ent the search for a definition of dike, which:
is deeply committed to a search both for paternal genealogy and for the au-
thorisation of the Father as the subject of power in the family (genitor, hus-
band) and in society (head of the family, warrior and king);
pinpoints the limits of a discourse on justice based merely on the law of the
Father.
This crisis in Orestes and Electras definition of blood ties and power relations as
only paternal destabilizes the plays discourse on kinship and power:
are blood ties and power relations maternal? (no, they are not: mother is ech-
thros, i. e. non-tokeus and non-tropheus);
are they paternal? (yes, they are: father is tokeus and tropheus);
are they only paternal? (no, they are not: mother is echthros, but still tro-
pheus and tokeus).
In the next section, I explore the implications of Agamemnons characterisation

as a father-tokeus further.
2 The father-tokeus and the estrangement between mother and son
In the third episode, Orestes arrives at Argos with Pylades, pretending to be a

stranger coming from Daulis in Phocis (Cho. 674), and claiming to be dead
(Cho. 682: ). Yet, during the dramatic exchange with his
mother, Orestes is not recognized by Clytemnestra. Why this disguise, and why
the failure of anagnorisis between mother and son? We obviously need a dis-
guise, or Clytemnestra would recognize her own offspring and, as we already
know from the Homeric tale, disguises never fail in Greek literature. However,
as Pontani observed (2007: 221), we can also argue that Orestes disguise and Cly-
temnestras failure to recognize her own son are direct evidence of the estrange-
ment between the two. What does it mean for a mother and a son, in the context
of a play about matricide, to be thought of as strangers? A look at Cho. 688 690
might help us to answer the question. Orestes speaks these lines to Clytemenstra,
pretending to be a stranger from Daulis:

108 Choephoroi
Cho. 688 690:

,
Orestes, using the verb ( ) in opposition to ,

seems to claim that between parents () only the father is not a
stranger to his son, in virtue of their biological bond ( ). Read this
way, as has often been argued (Cf. Garvie ad loc.; Lebeck, 1971: 126 127; LSN:
165 166), Orestes disguise as a stranger or his dolos may foreshadow Apollos
theory about the fathers role in reproduction, a bias which, strictly speaking,
is like a dolos or a misleading discourse on the mothers reproductive agency.
However, does Orestes succeed in his deceitful punishment of Clytemnestra,
as the chorus describes Orestes vendetta (Cho. 726: , 947: -
)? Of course, he does not. Clytemnestras motherhood remains
a fact, and her death is the result of a problematic act which has to be punished,
as the Erinyes persecution of Orestes clearly shows. Thus, despite the chorus
rhetoric of explanation of matricide as a necessary act ordered by Apollo
(Cho. 935 941), matricide represents a questionable deed, whose theological ne-
cessity and justice is hindered by the use of deception:
Cho. 946 956:

,

,

,
.

-

On the phrase and its different interpretations, cf. Garvie and Unter-
steiner (ad loc.). I follow Garvie, who refers it to Orestes vengeance.
Accordingly, I differ from McClure (1999: 100), who argues that Orestes use of dolos obeys a
divine order: through the figure of Orestes, whose task and speech represent a divinely sanc-
tioned form of dolos. In regard to Orestes dolos in Choephoroi, I also differ from Thalmann
(1985: 230), who assumes that Orestes is not using dolos against his mother. For Orestes dolos
against Clytemnestra, cf. Taplin (1977: 340 343); Konishi (1990: 176 180), and, in particular,
LSN: 206.

Reckoning with these lines about the relation between dolos and matricide, we
may begin to wonder: can Apollo really be the god who proclaims without deceit
( ), the god who has never lied in the past (Cho. 559:
, ) and whose prophetic art is always true
(Eum. 615: )? Again, as we have seen in the case of Cas-
sandras prophetic language (cf. p. 47), in the case of Apollo as well the Aeschy-
lean text might call into question the authority of the divine word.
In this regard, my observation is that deception structures the way the Atreid
family resorts to violence. According to Cassandra, Aegisthus and the chorus in
Agamemnon (Ag. 155, 1228 1229, 1519, 1636), and Orestes in Choephoroi
(Cho. 556 557), Clytemnestra murders Agamemnon by deceit. According to Cly-
temnestras discourse on Iphigeneias sacrifice, Agamemnon kills his daughter
with the help of dolos (cf. ch. 1, I. 4). According to the chorus discourse on
Orestes matricide (Cho. 726, 947, 955), for the Atreids the fulfilment of justice
goes hand in hand with the use of deception. We can pinpoint other analogies
in the chain of mutual murders in the Atreid family. In the eyes of Clytemnestra,
Agamemnon was guilty of dolos as he betrayed the inviolable bond of consan-
guinity and philia between mother and daughter by killing Iphigeneia (cf.
ch. 1, I. 4). In the case of Orestes, the matricidal son uses dolos as he attempts
to deny the biological relation of philia with his mother. I dwell upon the role
dolos plays in the narrative of the play in my analysis of the dream scene
(ch. 2, IV. 5), and in the chapter on Eumenides (cf. ch. 3. 4).
3 Conclusions
The discussion in sections one and two leads to the following conclusions:
1. like Cassandra, also Electra and Orestes make an attempt to separate Cly-
temnestras role as a wife from her role as a mother:
according to Electra and Orestes, Clytemnestra is an adulterous wife and
therefore a mother non-tokeus and an enemy of her children. This sup-
pression of philia between mother and children implies also a suppres-
sion of the blood connection between them. It establishes, then, a dis-
course about consanguinity with the father figure, and about social
kinship through marriage;
according to Orestes and Electra, Agamemnon, being the father, is the
only genetic parent and philos of his children;
2. by Agamemnons characterisation as the only tokeus of children, his author-
ity as father seems to be strictly connected to his power as the begetting one.
Thus, we notice that the tragic discourse on male social power is combined

110 Choephoroi
with a discourse on the power of reproduction. The father authority is insep-

arable from his genealogical prerogative of birth;
3. with the characterisation of Agamemnon as the only tokeus of his children,
and the denial of Clytemnestras agency of tiktein, the Choephorois discourse
on Clytemnestras role as mother and wife seems to be based on a perversion
of the parental structures, a point that destabilizes the authority of the fa-
thers definition as sole origin of life, and as the only subject of power in
the family and in society;
4. foreshadowing Apollos patrilinear argument on reproduction, Orestes dis-
guise as a stranger, or his dolos, might be read as an attempt to deny Clytem-
nestras maternal faculty of tiktein, and the bond of consanguinity between
mother and child;
5. according to the chorus, Orestes and Electra, matricide represents an act of
retributive justice that aims to instantiate the Father as the sole origin of life
and power in the family and in society.
III Clytemnestra as mother-philos

,
,
Od. 2, 130 131
1 The adulterous wife is still a mother

A woman is her mother
That is the main thing
A. Sexton, Housewife
In what follows, I argue that the characters depiction of Clytemnestra merely as

an unfaithful wife does not have the power to suppress her maternal bond with
her children, and to justify matricide and to instantiate the Father as the subject
of power in the family and society. First, lines 88 90 seem to jeopardize this dis-
course of exclusion. Right at the beginning of the play, the opening lines of Elec-
tras speech to the servant women are meant to win their help for the libations in
honour of her father. Yet, she is admittedly unaware of how to name Clytemnes-
tra, as she is about to speak in defence of her father: does she have to refer to
Clytemnestra as a wife () who should have been faithful () to
her beloved () husband (), or does she have to name her as her mother
( )?

Cho. 88 90: ; ;

, ;
In the following lines, Electra emphasizes her doubts. After her hesitation to
refer to Clytemnestra as the beloved wife of Agamemnon (or as her mother),
she is admittedly at a loss for words:
Cho. 91 92: ,

Later, she asks again what words she has to utter; finally, almost in a crescendo,
she asks whether it is better for her to remain silent on her fathers tomb, or not:
Cho. 93 97: , ,

, ;
,
,
As in lines 91 97, also in line 118, Electra admits that she does not know what to
say on the tomb of her father and asks the chorus for help:
Once again, Electra states her doubts. In line 122, she asks the chorus if her de-
sire for revenge is blasphemous:
Now, let us go back to passage 88 90. Like Electra, who uses the expression
in line 90, Orestes too, in the course of the play, refers to Clytem-
nestra as his mother:
Garvie prints lines 90 91 after line 97, according to Diggle. I follow the line-order in M. On
Electras uncertainty at the beginning of Choephoroi, cf. Tarkow (1979: 16 19). According to
Tarkow, the depiction of Electra as a character unable to talk and act is modeled on the
character of Menelaus in Agamemnon: Menelaus too is portrayed as relying on others to solve
his affairs (he is full of despair at the loss of Helen, but he does not do anything on his own to
win her back: he does not sacrifice Iphigeneia; he is not involved in the total destruction of
Troy). Regardless of whether this interpretation might be right or not, I argue that Electras
uncertainty is deeply involved with her reluctance to suppress Clytemnestras motherhood.

112 Choephoroi
Cho. 899: ;
It is exactly when he uses the word that Orestes interrupts his violent ac-
tion against Clytemnestra, and asks his friend Pylades what he is supposed to
do:
Cho. 899: , ;
Clearly enough, when it comes to the act of matricide, Orestes is at a loss for
words, and needs his friends help: his rhetoric of representation of his mother
as an echthros is not enough, at the crucial moment of the confrontation with
Clytemnestra, to kill her straight away. Why do we need Pylades? What does
he add to the plot? Pylades opposes a point of certainty, descending from the
force of divine words, to Orestes moment of doubt and hesitation:
Cho. 900 902:

, ;

When the murder of the mother seems to fail on the human level (son against
mother), Pylades employs a new hierarchy: gods are above humans, therefore
humans have to obey gods, therefore Orestes has to kill his own mother. Read
this way, the solution of Orestes struggle and of the suffering of the Atreid family
comes from the gods. That is why Orestes reluctance to kill his own mother ap-
pears to be a reference to the very first line of the trilogy (Ag. 1:
), as well as to the dramatic situation of Eumenides,
where Orestes will be acquitted with the help of Athena. However, on a closer
reading, Pylades himself does not speak of Clytemnestra as mother of Orestes.
Rather, he only discusses the son-mother relationship in terms of power rela-
tions: to kill Clytemnestra means to obey the gods, and therefore to respect
the hierarchy divine/human, whereas not to kill her means to disobey their or-
ders. The silence of Pylades on Clytemnestras motherhood introduces again
the idea that Orestes cannot kill Clytemnestra as his mother. Once more, the vio-
lence of matricide seems to consist precisely in this repeated attempt (by Py-
lades, the chorus, Orestes and Electra) to suppress a fact that cannot be sup-
In this context, it is important to note that Orestes talks about his violent deed in terms of
matricide only in this line, when he faces his mother; cf. Vogt (1994: 102); Seidensticker (2009:
229), with further bibliography on n. 75.

pressed, namely that an inviolable aidos exists between Orestes as son and Cly-
temnestra as mother whose breast fed him:
Clytemnestra Cho. 896 897: , ,

Orestes Cho. 899: ;
From this perspective, Orestes hesitation to commit matricide and Pylades en-
couragement to obey the gods and kill his mother both seem to anticipate the
outcome of the votes for or against Orestes in Eumenides and his acquittal in
dubio pro reo. In this interpretation, Orestes question
; threatens the authority of his discourse on Clytemnestra as a mother
non-mother and as a bad wife.
In the next section, I discuss Clytemnestras characterisation as a mother-
tropheus.
2 Clytemnestra as mother-tropheus
As we have seen (ch. 2, I. 1), according to the speech of the wet nurse, Clytem-
nestra cannot be considered a mother, as she did not feed or take care of her
baby Orestes. However, the nurses case demonstrates that any woman is able
to assume the duties of breast-feeding and mothering. It does not prove that
every woman who takes care of a baby can also replace the biological mother:
obviously, that role cannot be exchanged. It does not prove that Clytemnestra
has not breastfed her baby either. Thus, as Garvie has argued (ad loc.), there
is no reason to suppose that Clytemnestra is not telling the truth, when she
claims to have nurtured Orestes (Cho. 896 898). Moreover, the wet nurse contra-
dicts herself on the reasons why she had to take care of the baby all by herself.
Here, we should consider various points. First, it is not clear if Clytemnestra ac-
tually gives custody of Orestes to the wet nurse, relinquishing her duties as moth-
er. In line 750, the nurse says she took Orestes from his mother ( -
); in line 762, she reveals that she received the child Orestes from his father
( ). Now, the expression or from the
I read as in the paradosis instead of Portus correction and I

understand as a dative of person from whom. This use of dative is well attested in Homer
and in classical Greek (cf. Tucker, Verrall, Untersteiner ad loc.). Blass (ad loc.) defends
: indes der Gegensatz 763 fordert doch das vorher. Ho-
wever, his explanation is questionable.

114 Choephoroi
mother (Cho. 750) seems to suggest that Orestes had been living with his mother,
or even that Clytemnestra, through the nurse, had found a way of providing food
for her child. Second, if we follow the scholiast on line 762, it is unclear why
Agamemnon gave Orestes to the nurse. Did he want to protect him from his ter-
rible mother, or to save him from the danger of a possible political turmoil in
Argos (cf. Ag. 449456, 805809, 874 879, 938)? The Greek is full of uncertain-
ties. The dative , unlike the genitive that we would expect after -
, implies the idea that the child was received for as well as from the fa-
ther, as the fathers trust (Verrall ad loc.).
As in the case of the nurses speech, also the scene of Clytemnestras dream
invites us to question Orestes representation of Clytemnestra as a mother non-
tropheus. Lines 545 546 are particularly striking:
As we will see, when Orestes uses the words and in relation to the
image of blood in the maternal milk, he projects the image of a mother non-tro-
pheus on Clytemnestra (cf. ch. 2, IV. 2), denying that breast-feeding presupposes
a relation of philia between mother and child. However, Orestes words decon-
struct their own categories. When the matricidal son speaks about the alimentary
dependence of the son on his mother, he seems to anticipate Clytemnestras
words in Cho. 896 898:
, , , ,
,

On a closer reading, the expression picks up the expression -

, whereas the adjective refers to and the adjective
to the verb . As Orestes talks about Clytemnestras maternal breast,
like his mother, he is also unable to deny that it feeds the baby and unites moth-
er and child in a bond of philia. Thus, his attempts to suppress Clytemnestras
biological motherhood and to define his father as the sole condition of life
and power, which we have seen at work in his rhetoric of appropriation of the
words , and , are not successful in re-defining the relation
According to this interpretation, I differ from Segal (1985: 18): the Nurses lament at the
loss of one whom she nurtured, receiving from his mother (Cho. 750) it does remind us again
of the mothers rejection of the child she bore and of the destruction of the closest bonds of
blood in this family.

between mother and child as a relation between two enemies. Therefore, to Gold-
hills question (LSN: 180) is it possible not to declare the mother-son relation
? I am inclined to give a negative answer. As Orestes affirms,
when the recognition between his sister Electra and him takes place, Clytemnes-
tra is :
Cho. 234:
There is more to say about Clytemnestras representation as a mother-tropheus.

From the very start of Choephoroi, it is clear to Orestes that Clytemnestra
could actually murder Agamemnon, while remaining a mother-philos and tro-
pheus of her children:
Cho. 6 7: < > ,

As Lebeck (1971: 97) has observed The contrast of with ,

made striking by similarity in sound and position in the line, suggests the con-
flict which faces Orestes, a conflict which the commos explores: the rite of
mourning due his father, the debt of nurture owed his mother. Line 321 of the
kommos supports Lebecks remarks:
When Orestes, Electra and the chorus gather around the kings grave in order to
perform the kommos, and beg Agamemnon and the chthonic gods to help them
avenge him, Orestes is able only to intone a , i. e. a cry of future
glory. It is the chorus that asks Orestes a (Cho. 330), i. e. a cry of
mourning that conforms to justice. Again, it seems reasonable to explain
Orestes impasse with his resistance to put into words the sense of his impending
violence against Clytemnestra, on the one hand, and with his reluctance to iden-
tify himself as a matricidal son, on the other. It is not by chance, then, that the
chorus will keep silent about Clytemnestras motherhood in its reply to Orestes:
Cho. 386 389: -

I am following here Snearowski (1990: 50 59).

On the expression , cf. Lesky (1943: 39).

116 Choephoroi
The exhortation to matricide may succeed only if the very cause of Orestes con-
flict is removed namely, the maternal bond between Clytemnestra and her
son. In fact, we see that a) the suppression of Clytemnestras maternal
power to give and to nurture life, and b) her consequent characterisation as a
wife (), enemy of her husband (), and murderess of him (-
), are two key-elements in the chorus search for a discourse that would
justify matricide.
However, through the voice of the chorus, the text describes a movement
from a moment of acceptance (justification of matricide as the necessary killing
of a bad wife) to a moment of doubt and hesitation. Indeed, given that the cap-
tive women never speak of Clytemnestra in her role as mother, how is it possible
for them to speak of matricide as a legitimate action? This is a crucial moment
in the chorus representation of matricide as a necessary deed, and in its dis-
course of exclusion and separation of Clytemnestras role as mother from her
role as wife. Let us look at passage 306 313 at the beginning of the kommos.
Here, the chorus defines matricide as a fulfilment of Zeus plans:
Cho. 306 308: ,

,

Moreover, it claims that according to the lex talionis:

1) hostile words call for hostile words in response:
Cho. 309 310:

2) the one who kills has to be killed:
Cho. 312 313:

Cf. also passage 827 837. The chorus denies Clytemnestras motherhood as it exhorts
Orestes to see himself as the son of his father (Cho. 829: , ) and to
compare his matricidal experience to Perseus killing of the Gorgon (Cho. 831 833:
/ < > / ). For a similar discussion of line 829,
cf. Neuburg (1991: 58 59 n. 26). On Orestes repeating the experience of Perseus, cf. Roux (1974:
79); Petrounias (1976: 166 167); Sider (1978: 23 24); Zeitlin (1978: 158 159); Rabinowitz (1981:
176 177); Loraux (1986: 90 92); ONeill (1998: 222); Bacon (2001: 55 56). On line 829, cf. also
Rabel (1980) and Vogt (1994: 102).
Cf. Eum. 154 where the Furies ask how matricide and the defence of the matricidal son
could be defined as just acts: ;

Yet, as a matter of fact, the hostile words of the chorus, namely its discourse on
Clytemnestra as a murderous wife, and its representation of matricide as a nec-
essary act do not succeed in denying her motherhood, and in justifying matri-
cide. As we know from his very words, Orestes is tied to his mother by an invio-
lable bond of aidos (Cho. 899: ;). So the attempt to turn
Clytemnestra into a mother non-tropheus is not successful and the same can be
said for the attempt to turn her into a mother non-tokeus. I turn to this point in
the next section.
3 Clytemnestra as mother-tokeus
As we have seen, when Orestes uses the verb in Cho. 913 (

), he is reproaching Clytemnestra for being a bad mother,
or a mother non-mother (cf. p. 99). However, according to her, Orestes has not
been sold off. He was sent to Strophius, a friend of the Atreid family, for fear
of political turmoils in Argos (Ag. 874 879). Interestingly enough, like Clytem-
nestra, also the Argive elders and Agamemnon mention this danger (Ag. 449
456, 805 809, 938). Moreover, when Orestes himself mentions the name of Stro-
phius (Cho. 679), he seems to confirm the account of the events of his childhood
that had been given by Clytemnestra in the Agamemnon (Ag. 877 ff.).
Lines 983 989 too seem to pinpoint the failure of Orestes to undermine Cly-
temnestras power to give life. Orestes speaks this passage in the context of the
speech he delivers on the corpses of Clytemnestra and Aegisthus. He hopes that
one day the sun will witness the justice of his matricide:

, ,
,
, ,

On as referring to a discourse of exclusion and separation of Clytemnestras status

as wife from her status as mother, cf. p. 48. On the inviolable bond of aidos between mother and
child, cf. Winnington-Ingram (1983: 141): Orestes is to act within a society for which the parent is
a supreme object of aidos.
Cf. the similar situation for Telemachus in Ithaca (Od. 16, 418 447).
Cf. Pontani (2007: 207 208): the name of Orestes host represents not only one of the
threads connecting the second play of the trilogy to the first, but also the only
(Cho. 667) to Orestes entire tale. Similarly, cf. Mejer (1979: 118).

118 Choephoroi
Yet, as Goldhill (LSN: 248) has similarly pointed out, Orestes does not deny Cly-
temnestras maternal power of reproduction, or her role as mother. As we know,
it is Apollo who denies it. In this respect, some questions arise. How does the
matricidal son appropriate the words and in Cho. 988 989? Do
we have to maintain that here, with the word , Orestes is referring to Cly-
temnestra as his mother non-mother, and as an adulterous wife, as he clearly
does in line 986 ( )? Or should we rather assume that he is
talking about Clytemnestra as the murderess of her husband, and as his moth-
er-philos and tokeus at the same time? Furthermore, given this possible shift in
Orestes use of the word , how are we supposed to understand his defini-
tion of matricide as an act of dike ( )? Does matricide
simply represent the killing of a bad wife, as in Apollos discourse in Eumenides,
or is it rather the killing of a mother giving life, as the Furies maintain? The dif-
ficulty to establish a fixed meaning for in line 989 reflects the reluctance
on the part of Orestes to murder his own mother in Cho. 899 (, ;
;), putting into crisis his representation of Clytemnestra
as a bad mother and an adulterous wife.
This reading of passage 983 989 fits to passage 197 201 as well, which we
have already read as an attempt to deny consanguinity with the mother (cf.
pp. 103104):

,
,
.

Here, Electra relies on the gods to decide about the childrens consanguinity with
their mother, and about the characterisation of the mother figure as an ech-
thros. This reference to the necessity of a divine ruling on the mothers func-
tion in kinship relations foreshadows the coming controversy between the Fur-
According to Garvie (ad loc.), with line 201 the speech begins again with the finding of
the new evidence. Therefore, it can be objected that Electra is not referring to the gods as the
ones who know whether consanguinity exists between the mother and her children. However, in
passage 201 204 Electra is not providing any new evidence, but lamenting instead the mise-
rable fate of her family. In this sense, it can plausibly be argued that Electra in line 201 relies on
the gods for the decision on maternal consanguinity.

ies, Apollo and Athena. It also shows that Electra, as a daughter, is unable to af-
firm or to deny her consanguinity with Clytemnestra, and therefore to speak
plausibly of her mother as an echthros. As Goldhill (LSN: 124) has aptly observed:
the opposition / is not sufficient to answer Electras incertitu-
de it cannot, as suggested, (197). The suspicion arises that killing
Clytemnestra might in fact imply, as the chorus claims, to break the biological
bond of consanguinity between mother and child (Cho. 1038:
) and to incur into a miasma (Cho. 1017: -
). It is worth commenting that the Greek in verse 1038 expresses a relation
of consanguinity between mother and child: the controversy on Orestes acquit-
tal will be primarily about the bond of blood between mother and child (cf. sec-
tion 3 in the chapter on Eumenides). Hence, I have the impression that Wilgaux
(2006: 342; 2011: 221 222), in his important papers on social and natural kinship
in ancient Greece, has forgotten Orestes trouble, when he writes that terms re-
ferring to maternal blood are extremely rare in Greek.
There is even more to say about the plays denial of the maternal bond that
ties up Clytemnestra with her children. Some remarks on Electras rhetoric of ap-
propriation of the verb in line 419 of the kommos point out the difficulty
to deny the maternal role of Clytemnestra:
According to Italie, when Electra uses the verb , Clytemnestra is represent-

ed in her function as mother giving life. The distinction between echthros (the
mother non-tropheus and non-tokeus) and philos (the father tropheus and tokeus)
is not enough, then, to eliminate the assimilation of the reproductive agency of
mother and father from the text. In Greek this assimilation is expressed by the
plural probably something more than a polished replacement
of the colloquial genitive singular , and not just a periphrasis for
Clytemnestra and Aegisthus.
Again, in the kommos, the chorus rhetoric of appropriation of the verb -
in line 329 330 confronts us with the same impasse:
Cf. Italie who quotes this line for in the meaning of gignere de matre. The verb
has to refer to Clytemnestra also because in line 422 Electra talks about Clytemnestra
as her mother. On this point, cf. Freyman (1976: 66 with n. 3). For here as referring to
Clytemnestra, cf. also Fllinger (2007: 20).
For these readings, cf. Lesky (1943: 87); Young (1971: 308); Amigues (1982: 33).

120 Choephoroi
According to Goldhill (LSN: 142), the genitives and , depend-

ent on in line 330, may refer to the possible separation of biological and
social definitions of paternity. This is hard to deny, since in Greek the word
defines the social and religious functions of a man with children. Howev-
er, I think that these lines are open to an alternative interpretation. The genitive
, in juxtaposition to , seems to define motherhood and father-
hood respectively on the basis of male and female reproductive power, and thus
to assimilate the mother and the father in their respective role as genetic parent.
It is important to maintain that here has to refer also to Clytemnestras
motherhood. Indeed, the verb occurs repeatedly in the Oresteia in refer-
ence to Clytemnestra, since this verb is used primarily for the mother. Again,
the attempt to deny Clytemnestras maternal role through the dichotomy of philos
(father-tropheus and tokeus) vs. echthros (mother non-tropheus and non-tokeus)
does not seem to function. Rather, the boundary between motherhood and fa-
therhood seems to be thin and faint.
The conclusions we have drawn for line 329 hold true for line 385 of the kom-
mos as well. In this case, Orestes uses the dative plural in order to refer
to both mother and father:
Orestes language, as in the case of the chorus, is unable to suppress easily the
motherhood of Clytemnestra.
The assimilation of the mothers and of the fathers reproductive agency, im-
plied in (Cho. 329) and (Cho. 385) returns at
lines 681 682, with the expression :
Cf. Chantraine (1947: 245 246). As in the Oresteia, also in Pindars odes the verb is
referred primarly of the mother; cf. Segal (1986: 177 with n. 24). For here as referring to
mother and father, cf. Italie who quotes in the meaning of parentes.
For as referring also to Clytemnestras motherhood, cf. Lebeck (1971: 118). Accor-
dingly, I differ from Lesky (1943: 67) and Schadewaldt (1970: 264 n. 52) who refers it only to
Agamemnon. Italie does not quote this line.

Orestes speaks these lines to Clytemnestra, while, under the guise of a stranger
from Daulis, he affirms he has been told to report the news of Orestes death to
his parents. Coming from Orestes, the occurance of the verb ( -
) refers to both Agamemnon and Clytemnestra and sounds like a reminder of
the atrocity of his impending matricide. This may become clearer by consider-
ing that , in strict relation to , foreshadows the dramatic
situation of Eumenides: here, the definition of kinships relations through mar-
riage, and the negation of consanguinity between mother and child become
the object of a judicial controversy between the Furies, Orestes, Apollo and Athe-
na.
As for Orestes, also for Electra Clytemnestra is a mother-tokeus. Interestingly
enough, Electra, like Clytemnestra in Agamemnon (Ag. 1417 1418:
, /), uses the word to express her mothers power
to give life:
Cho. 211:
Electra speaks this line on Agamemnons tomb, in the context of the speech she
delivers after having found a ringlet: she represents Clytemnestra as a mater
monstruosa and asks herself whether the ringlet belongs to Orestes or not. Yet,
as her representation of Clytemnestra as a mother giving life () shows, Elec-
tras rhetoric does not have the power to deny Clytemnestras motherhood entire-
ly. This might explain why in the kommos, when she begs paternal help to get her
revenge, she speaks of Clytemnestra as an enemy, not as her mother:
Cho. 142 143: ,

, ,
The reluctance of Electra is emphasised in the text through the juxtaposition of

the words in lines 140 141 ( /
) and in lines 142 143 ( /
, ). Electra uses the word in order to normalise the role of Cly-
temnestra as a mother, implying that she is supposed to be the faithful spouse
of her husband and nothing more. Yet, as we have seen in Cho. 88 90 (cf. pp.
110 111), she is not able to use the word to name her mother as the object
of her revenge. When it comes to the killing of her mother, Electra keeps signifi-
Cf. Italie who quotes this line for in the meaning of parentes.
On as a hint to Clytemnestras motherhood, cf. Lebeck (1971: 109).
For in the meaning of castus here, cf. Italie. For as referring to female
sexuality, cf. Goldhill (LSN: 117); Carson (1990: 142 143).

122 Choephoroi
cantly silent about Clytemnestras motherhood. Her silence corresponds to the

repetition of the word to refer to Agamemnon:
Cho. 139: , ,
Cho. 143: , ,
It is particularly relevant to notice that Electras use of the word in lines

139 and 143 is closely related to her demand to be more than her mother
in lines 140141. Given that for Electra being depends on her father,
with the word she seems to consider Agamemnon the administrator of
her sexuality. However, there is more to say about Electras use of the word
in the expression , and about its reference to
female sexuality. I face this issue in the next section.
4 Maternal sophronein
In lines 140141, as we have seen, Electra makes a wish to be more than

her mother is, i. e. to be more of sound mind, shameful (LSJ) than Clytemnestra.
What can we plausibly say about Electras rhetoric of appropriation of the adjec-
tive ? In the first place, we see that Electras questions about her
mothers state of mind are clearly related to Clytemnestras deviant sexuality: it
is exactly because Clytemnestra is an adulterous wife that she might not be
. In fact, Electras construction of her mother as a paradigmatic instance
of the female as not presupposes a normative discourse on female sex-
uality: since she has no shame, she is not reasonable. Now, a comparison be-
tween Clytemnestras rhetoric of appropriation of the verb in Aga-
memnon and Electras appropriation of the adjective points to a shift
in the use of these words. According to Clytemnestra, a mother is endorsed
with , since she gives life to her child. Therefore, for Clytemnestra,
the female mind is bound together with female reproductive agency (cf. ch. 1,
I. 5). On the contrary, Electras discourse does not link the female mind and fe-
male reproductive agency together, and, what is more, it criticises her mothers
state of mind because of her deviant sexual behaviour. This is an important
point. Electras discourse on her mothers state of mind paves the way to the Eu-
menides discourse on fatherhood and paternal authority. As we will see in the
chapter on Eumenides, in the last play of the trilogy the father figure is conceived

as the origin of life and rationality, given that the mother is understood as an
irrational being that plays no role in the reproduction of children.
However, it is remarkable that Electra uses the expression
as she is praying, looking for help in avenging her fathers death. In this
context, her wish to be more (i. e. of sound mind, shameful) than her
mother, obviously, cannot be fulfilled. Her failed achievement is indicative:
it demonstrates how difficult it is to define a coherent discourse, capable of jus-
tifying matricide.
The line of interpretation I am following for passage 140 143 can be applied
to line 88 as well (cf. pp. 110111),
; ;
Here, Electra is searching for reasonable words that might help her to win sup-
port from her father in the revenge on Clytemnestra. Nonetheless, her quest is
doomed to fail: as a daughter desiring the death of her mother, Electra cannot
act and speak in a reasonable way. In fact, Electras language in these lines prob-
lematises her representation as mourning daughter for her father. Surely, Elec-
tras funeral rites are not corrupt (unlike the rites performed by Clytemnestra).
However, the similarities between Clytemnestra and the mourning Electra (she
is as unreasonable as Clytemnestra is), shed a negative light on the supposed le-
gitimacy of the rites she is accomplishing for her dead father. Therefore, we
end up with two reading options: either Electra is non- like her mother,
or, when she uses the word , she is simply constructing a negative dis-
course on Clytemnestras state of mind. I am inclined towards the second possi-
bility. The absence of Agamemnon from the stage supports this choice. Electra
uses words to construct a negative characterisation of Clytemnestra, and to
deny the reliability of her female mind. Yet, she does not have any words that
might make Agamemnon appear again, legitimatising her discourse of revenge.
Electras discourse on Clytemnestra and her maternal mind echoes the Homeric paradigm
of female mind. The Homeric epos, as we know, does not envisage the adjective .
However, as Zeitlin has shown in her brilliant paper Figuring fidelity in Homers Odyssey (p. 44,
n. 56), Penelope embodies the prototype of fidelity precisely because she is , that is to
say able to keep a good mind, a good sense (e. g., Od. 24, 196 198).
Similarly, cf. Lebeck (1971: 103): on the lips of Electra the traditional pity of this prayer
is sacrilege; Rademaker (2005: 112): Clytemnestra also lacked in that sense, be-
cause she insisted on revenge for Iphigenia. And Electra herself is as unprepared to accept this
type of as were Agamemnon and Clytemnestra.
For, I differ from Hame (2004) who sees in Electras mourning a clear evidence of the health
of the Atreid household, when it was run by Agamemnon.

124 Choephoroi
Despite Orestes statement towards the end of the kommos about Agamemnon
not being dead, even if he is a dead person (Cho. 504:
) as a matter of fact the king is and remains dead, and as
such he is not able to help his daughter to kill her mother. Surely, we could object
that putting Electras and Clytemnestras mind and their use of language on the
same level is misleading. Electra is struggling for a proper use of language (in
fact, she asks how she could pronounce reasonable words); in Agamemnon, Cly-
temnestra admits that she has spoken shamefully:
Ag. 855 857: , ,

Ag. 1372 1373:

We have to consider two points here. First, even though Clytemnestra admits that
her way of speech is transgressive, her rhetoric of explanation for the killing of
Agamemnon still has a certain legitimacy, as I argue in the first chapter. Second,
it is precisely the struggle of Electra for a proper use of words that can be inter-
preted as a sign of weakness in her discursive suppression of the motherhood of
Clytemnestra. In this sense, her language destabilizes the legitimation of matri-
cide, as well as the definition of Agamemnon as father and subject of power.
Orestes struggles for a proper use of words too, when, at the beginning of the
kommos, he asks himself which words he is supposed to utter to refer to his fa-
ther:
Cho. 315 318: ,

;
Yet, despite his search for a proper language, and the request for paternal sup-
port, Agamemnon will not help his son to plot against the bad mother Clytem-
nestra: he is and remains dead. Again, the absence of Agamemnon from the
On lines 855 857 as paradigmatic for Clytemnestras bilingualism and transgression of

correct linguistic behaviour for women, cf. McClure (1999: 77 78).
The expression seems to recall by contrast the Homeric expression
in Od. 23, 97.
The same can be said for Orestes certainty in Eumenides that his father will help him
during the trial (Eum. 598, 647 648). For Orestes asking the help of his father, cf. also Cho. 489:

stage performs something that is hardly accomplished with words, namely the
definition of an authoritative discourse both about Clytemnestra as a mother
not giving life, and about Agamemnon as father and subject of power in the fam-
ily and in society.
In the next section, I discuss Clytemnestras reaction to the news of Orestes
death, exploring further her characterisation as a mother-philos of her child.
5 Clytemnestra as mother-philos and the death of her son
The third episode, as we have seen (cf. ch. 2, II. 2), attests the biological estrange-
ment between Clytemnestra and Orestes: when he deceptively announces his
own death, Orestes takes for granted that the father figure is the only genetic pa-
rent of children. Furthermore, if we consider true the nurses assertions about
Clytemnestra being actually pleased for Orestes death (Cho. 737 740), we
have to suppose that Clytemnestra is lying, when she expresses her grief at
the death of her son (Cho. 691 699). In fact, unlike the case of the nurse, who
really loved Orestes, in the case of Clytemnestra we might detect that she dis-
turbingly pretends her maternal feeling. From this point of view, the text of Choe-
phoroi seems very easy to read. The nurse tells the truth; Clytemnestra lies. As
Pontani (2007: 208 209 with n. 17) has similarly observed:
Clytemnestra is not a mother;
Orestes does not commit matricide, rather he kills an adulterous wife, mur-
deress of her own husband, the king of Argos;
if we see matricide as the killing of an adulterous wife and a mother, we are
stating a complexity in Choephoroi that the Aeschylean text does not display.
There is much to object to this interpretation. As we have seen, according to Elec-

tras and Orestes rhetoric of appropriation of words such as , ,
, and , Clytemnestra is an adulterous wife and a bad
mother. Yet, Orestes and Electra lose control over these words, giving rise to a
discourse on Clytemnestra as a mother, at least in part, philos. I maintain that
it is important to examine Clytemnestras reaction to the news of the death of
her son against the background of her depiction as a mother-philos. As such,
, ; 495: , . Arguing
that Agamemnon in the kommos cannot help Orestes, I differ from Sewell-Rutter (2007: 160):
The presence of the father Agamemnon, a presence very strongly felt in this part of the drama
(315 18, 332 5, 434 7 and passim), helps the young man steel himself for an atrocious deed.

126 Choephoroi
her despair in reaction to the alleged (but de facto false) report of Orestes death
is not surprising:
Cho. 694 695:

According to Michelini, Clytemnestras rhetoric of appropriation of the word

in these lines is a sound evidence of her adulterous love for Aegisthus,
and of her fake maternal feelings for Orestes. Quoting Michelini (1979: 156
157): She claims to be bereft of dear ones (philoi), presumably through the
deaths of two children. But the word philos is awkwardly ambiguous She sub-
stituted for her proper husband a man who should have been an echthros
(enemy), thus estranging her remaining philoi, Agamemnons living children.
The potential irony of 695 becomes actual very soon after, when Klytaimestra
contradicts herself, boasting that she will consult Aigisthos on this matter,
since she has no lack of philoi (717). The paradox of exchanges and confusions
in love and hate is Klytaimestras unresolvable dilemma; it appears at the last in
Orestes words (907 908).
I do not agree with these remarks, for two different reasons. First, we have to
distinguish between specific discourses on motherhood in this drama, and take
them equally seriously. Therefore, Orestes words in lines 906 907 can hardly be
read as a confirmation of Clytemnestras hypocrisy in lines 694 695. According
to Orestes rhetoric of appropriation of the word (cf. ch. 2, II. 1), Clytemnes-
tra is first and foremost a female betrayer of her husband in the first place, and
thus the echthros of the Atreid family and a mater monstruosa. According to her
rhetoric of appropriation of the word , instead, her adulterous love
(Cho. 717: ) does not eliminate her maternal love for her chil-
dren (Cho. 695: ). Hence, Clytemnestra does
not dissimulate her love for the wrong man behind her rhetorical love for her
children. Rather, she manipulates the word by speaking of herself as a
woman and as a mother: when she expresses love for her dead child, she
hides her feelings for Aegisthus (and, therefore, she is deprived of any friends);
when she speaks about her feelings for Aegisthus, she hides her love for her
dead children (therefore, she has friends). So, an explanation for the apparent
On Clytemnestras sincerity, cf. e. g. Dawe (1963: 53 54); Lesky (1972: 126); Otis (1981: 76
77); Rosenmeyer (1982: 240 241); Winnington-Ingram (1946: 59; 1983: 216 218); Margon (1983:
297); Garvie (ad loc.); Konishi (1990: 181 n. 69); Kppel (1998: 221); Di Benedetto (1999: 430 n.
122); Untersteiner (ad loc.); Fllinger (2003: 96 97). On her hypocrisy, cf. e. g. Bennett Anderson
(1932: 306); Zeitlin (1965: 491; 1978: 157); Conacher (1987: 119 120); Pontani (2007: 222).

anomaly of Clytemnestras speech in lines 694 695 does not seem to be found in
the context of her sincerity or hypocrisy. Rather, we should read her reaction by
taking into account Orestes and Clytemnestras different rhetoric of appropria-
tion of the word . Furthermore, the similarities between the chorus expres-
sion in Ag. 1429 and Clytemnestras expression -
in Cho. 695 display the continuity in her representation as an outraged
mother in both Agamemnon and Choephoroi. This should prevent us from seeing
a hint of hypocrisy in her self-depiction as a mater dolorosa. I would go even
further, and say that this alleged hypocrisy is again the result of a critical level
that manipulates Clytemnestras maternal pain into an excuse for sex. That said,
there is no point in assuming that the consistency of the text has to be saved,
and that lines 691 699 have to be spoken by Electra. Certainly, these lines
would make sense even on the lips of Electra. We can imagine her too, lamenting
the curse of the house, expressing despair and hopelessness to get a revenge on
her evil mother. However, this reading would simplify the text, erasing the tex-
tual evidence for the complex characterisation of Clytemnestra as a mother
and as a wife in the play.
Taking for granted that Clytemnestra is, at least in part, a philos of her son,
Orestes revenge, despite Electras, the chorus, and his own rhetoric of the jus-
tice of matricide, does not fulfil dike. Rather, it turns out to be a highly ambig-
uous act (Cho. 931: ), an act of justice out of unjust things
(Cho. 398: ) and a violent accomplishment that oppos-
es dike to dike, Ares to Ares (Cho. 461: , ), causing a
necessity for further retaliations (Cho. 313: ). Again, the tragic
Cf. Goldhill (LSN: 168 169) who notes that Clytemnestra, enemy of her son, offers ho-
spitality, without knowing it, to Orestes: a xenos, coming from Phocis (Cho. 674, 688 690, 700
703). Thus, Orestes is forced to enter a relation of xenia, and therefore of philia, with his mother
in order to kill her: yet by the laws of hospitality, Orestes as places himself in a relation of
(705, 708) to Clytemnestra a relation that he will transgress.
On this discussion, cf. McDonald (1960).
On this reading, cf. LSN: 183. Further elements in the text pinpoint the ambiguity of Orestes
violence against his mother. The chorus stresses the ambivalent character of Orestes matricide
as an act of dike and an act against dike when it refers to Clytemnestras death with the
oxymoron (Cho. 830) on Aeschylean oxymora, cf. Walsh (1984: 65 79) and
Seaford (2003). Similarly, as has been often observed, ruptures in the metereological and en-
vironmental equilibrium of nature underline the problematic aspects of Orestes violent action
against his mother (nature: Cho. 260, 281, 585590, 1009; wind: 186, 202, 271 ff., 591 592; light:
5153, 536 538). On this topic, cf. Peradotto (1964); Dumortier (1975a: 114 118). In particular on
the winds motif, cf. Rousseau (1963: 117, 134); Zeitlin (1965: 499 501); Scott (1966); Borthwick
(1976:7); Conacher (1996: 140); for the imagery of light, Fowler (1967: 64 65) and Petrounias

128 Choephoroi
text re-writes itself, questioning the characters discourse on Clytemnestra as a

bad wife and a bad mother. In the next section, I bring further arguments in sup-
port of my thesis.
6 Divine command against the mother and human suffering for the mother
In Cho. 930, at the end of the stichomythia with his mother, the matricidal son
asserts that Clytemnestra killed the one who she ought not to, and therefore
that she has to experience/to suffer a pain that she was not supposed to:
According to this verse, the necessity of a violent act against Clytemnestra seems
to vanish and Orestes yearning for matricide (Cho. 299: ), caused by the
fear that nothing would be worse than disobeying Apollos oracle (Cho. 269
296), seems like a daring theological deceit. Indeed, given that according to
her matricidal son Clytemnestra has to suffer a pain that she does not deserve,
how shall we understand Orestes firm belief that Apollo would guarantee the
fulfilment of the act he ordered?
Cho. 269 270:

With his assertion that his mother suffers undeservedly, is Orestes perhaps ques-
tioning the validity of the matricide ordered by Apollo?
More can be said about Orestes casting doubt upon the divine necessity of
matricide. Orestes himself seems to be aware that the necessity of Clytemnestras
death does not come from a divine order in the first place. As we can easily guess
from lines 297 298, he has to trust Apollo, but, at the same time, he has to com-
mit matricide with or without the trust in the divine authority of the oracular re-
sponse of the god:
(1976: 245 254). On line 931, cf. Higgins (1978: 31). For a review of metaphors of light in Homer,
tragedy and Platon, cf. Tarrant (1960).
For a different and interesting analysis of the compelling ambiguity of Apollos oracle, cf.
Goward (1999: 66 67). On this topic, cf. also Roberts (1984: 70 72). On the divine necessity of
Orestes matricide, cf. also the chorus in Cho. 790 796, 949 952 and Eum. 203. On the divine
necessity of Orestes matricide, cf. e. g. Wilamowitz-Moellendorf (1914: 205); Reinhardt (1949:
112 119); Fritz (1962: 122 129); Schadewaldt (1970: 278 284).

;
,
I would like to raise some questions on this point. In line 438 (

<> ), is it legitimate to say that Orestes desire to die, after
having killed his mother, foreshadow the pain felt by the hero after the matricide
(Cho. 1016: )? I will not attempt any psy-
chological interpretation. However, if we are to take seriously Orestes expres-
sion of pain for Clytemnestras death, his firm resolve to die after matricide, and
his statement that matricide is a theological necessity but nonetheless must be
committed also in absence of the trust in an oracular command the text of Choe-
phoroi seems to mark a difference between Orestes, the chorus and Pylades ap-
proach to the killing of the mother. For the chorus and Pylades, matricide has a
divine dimension: it has to be committed because Apollo orders it. This is true for
Orestes as well: the order of the god has to be obeyed. Yet, for Orestes, matricide
has also a human dimension: it has to be committed one way or the other, even
in the absence of the trust in a divine order; yet, to murder the mother means to
engender suffering and to arouse a desire to die. Thus, Orestes pain illustrates
how hard it is to bridge the distance between the human and the divine
world. In Aeschylus poetry, humans suffer not only because of the gods, but
also in spite of them.
Still, Orestes kills Clytemnestra. The brutality of such an action against a
mother on the part of her own son is pinpointed by Clytemnestras representa-
tion as a vulnerable woman. The woman, who tries to arm herself against
her son (Cho. 889: ), will be showing
her breast to Orestes. Now, does she really get the axe, and if so, why and
when does she lay down the weapon? The text seems to keep silent on the mat-
ter. However, despite these uncertainties, it seems open to the chance that a
fundamental difference between the male and the female use of violence is in
place. Clytemnestra might try to kill Orestes, but in the end, she does not; she
On this issue, cf. Brown (1983: 16 17) who discusses at length why we should refrain from
such interpretations of this line.
Cf. Sommerstein (2008: xii) who suggests Clytaemestras failure to get hold of an axe or
other weapon to defend herself and/or Aegisthus, so that she is killed unarmed and in cold
blood. For the discussion on Clytemnestras weapon, cf. Davies (1987); Sommerstein (1989a);
Prag (1991); Fllinger (2003: 71 74). For the iconographic tradition of this scene, cf. Goldman
(1910: 135 137); Prag (1985: 19, 24, 88 91, 96, 106 107, 141).
Accordingly, I differ from Rsler (2006: 19 20) who assumes that Clytemnestra does get the
axe.

130 Choephoroi
will be killed by him. On the contrary, Agamemnon does not know whether he
should sacrifice her daughter or not, but in the end he will decide in favour of
Iphigeneias death. Orestes initially hesitates to kill his mother, but finally he
does. Thus, a father and a son both kill kindred (a daughter, a mother). A mother
cannot do it. Clytemnestra kills her husband and the father of her daughter; she
cannot kill her own son and, more than that, she cannot deny the philia with
Orestes, even after having been killed by him:
Eum. 100:
This could be the reason why Orestes, Apollo and the Furies display a different
rhetoric of appropriation of the word (the mothers rights, the justice due to/
of the mother, the legitimacy/justice of matricide cf. Eum. 230 231; 491 492;
612 613; 785 = 815). And, in turn, this might also be the reason why the
whole tragic conflict of Eumenides takes place, along with a search for a justifi-
cation both for the suppression of Clytemnestras motherhood, and for the def-
inition of blood ties and power relations as based on the law of the Father.
7 Conclusions
In sections one to six, we have seen that Orestes and Electras construction of
Clytemnestra as a mother-echthros, i. e. a mother non-giving and non-nurturing
life, and their search for an authoritative definition of the father figure as tro-
pheus and tokeus is not completely successful in the end:
according to Orestes, Clytemnestra did actually feed her baby;
according to Electra, there is a bond of consanguinity between mother and
child;
Electras criticism of Clytemnestras mind is exposed to vulnerability;
Orestes and Electras language is not successful in denying Clytemnestras
maternal power to give and to nurture life. As a mother, Clytemnestra is
and remains (Cho. 234: -
). Matricide, then, is a problematic act of dike;
the chorus pushes Electra and Orestes to the act of matricide by suppressing
Clytemnestras motherhood, and by projecting the image of an adulterous
wife against her husband and the childrens father on her. However, the
pain of the matricidal son for the death of his mother tells us that matricide
is and remains a highly problematic deed.

IV Shall I kill the mother? The reality (of the metaphors) of son and mother 131
IV Shall I kill the mother? The reality (of the metaphors) of son
and mother
In what follows, I take a closer look at the text of the dream, in order to explain
why Orestes decision to kill his mother puts into crisis his own representation of
Clytemnestra as a bad mother. My contention is that the dream-text confronts us
with the failure of Orestes in decision-making (murder of the mother non-tro-
pheus and non-tokeus as revenge due to the father-tokeus and tropheus).
1 The blood of the mother, once again
Queens in Aeschylus tend to dream. Atossa dreams in the Persians (Pers. 176
214); Clytemnestra dreams in the Choephoroi (Cho. 523 539). Clytemnestras
dream is perhaps one of the most famous scenes of the Oresteia. She dreams
about giving birth to a serpent, wrapping it in swaddling clothes, and offering
her own breast to feed it on blood and milk. This dream has all the features
of a nightmare. It disturbs; it terrifies (Cho. 35: ; 524:
; 535: -
; 929: ). Something strikes Clytemnestra
with horror; not least a chromatic hallucination the whiteness of the maternal
milk stained by the redness of her mothers blood:
Orestes Cho. 532: ;

Chorus Cho. 533:
As far as I can tell, almost nothing has been said in the scholarship about this
particular image. Where to begin? From the mothers menstrual blood which
gives life. I suspect that, as in Ag. 1417 1418 (ch. 1, I. 2 3), this is the issue to
look at once again.
According to the studies of Heritier (1996: 154 157), the African tribe of the
Samo, the Accadian physicians and the ones of early modern Europe all prescri-
bed sexual abstinence for lactating women. The reason was not fear of unwel-
On the image of the serpent in western culture, cf. Sancassano (1997).

As far as I can tell, only Segal (1985: 18), Sommerstein (1996: 248), Walde (2001: 118), and
Ceu Fialho (2010: 113) has written some brief remarks on the image of blood and milk in
Clytemnestras dream. Friedmans and Gassels compelling psychoanalytic analysis of the dream
scene (1951: 425 427) focuses on the meaning of Clytemnestras breast, but it is silent on her
milk mixed up with blood. Fowler (1967: 56 57) and Petrounias (1976: 165 166) only discuss the
animal symbolism.

132 Choephoroi
come pregnancies, but rather the idea that the flood of semen during copulation
might move menstrual blood up to the breast and cause milk to curdle. Thus, re-
spect for a dietary order between mother and child denies sexual intercourse to
the lactating woman. As the cases studied by Heritier, also the dream scene of
Choephoroi and the image of blood in maternal milk may tell us something
about both the dietary regimen for mother and child, and female sexuality. In-
deed, the traces of Clytemnestras blood in maternal milk might be a sign of
her perverse sexual intercourse (she is the adulterous woman par excellence);
the image of the milk tainted with blood might be the sign that Clytemnestra
cannot nourish the baby Orestes. Lines 532 533 are in favour of this interpre-
tation. The son-serpent bites the maternal breast as a monster would:
Cho. 532: ;
Yet, according to the chorus, the blood in Clytemnestras milk seems to spurt out
of her breast with the feed of milk, not from a wound caused by the bite of her
serpent-son:
Cho. 533:
We could, of course, make it easier, as the scholiast does: = -

. Yet, in classical Greek with instrumental function (with the milk) is not
It could be objected that Clytemnestra did not have sexual contact with Aegisthus while she
was breastfeeding (Orestes is Agamemnons son). Therefore, the image of blood in the milk
cannot hint at Clytemnestras adultery. It is obviously true that Orestes is the son of Aga-
memnon; therefore, that he was born before the adultery took place. Yet, dreams do not re-
present facts as they take place in reality. The confusion between what is real and what is not is
precisely what characterises dreams. In this sense, in regard to the image of blood in the milk as
a sign of Clytemnestras adultery, Clytemnestras dream mirrors what happens in reality (she is
Aegisthuss mistress) as well as what did not happen (the adultery did not take place when
Orestes was born). The confusion between dream and reality recurs also in the case of the image
of blood in the milk as a sign of Orestes dietary dependence from his mother. The image of the
baby-serpent that suckles at the breast of his mother mirrors what did happen in reality, at least
according to Clytemnestra: Clytemnestra did breastfeed her son (Cho. 896 898). Yet, at the same
time, the image of the baby-serpent does not mirror what did happen in reality: Orestes is not a
serpent, neither is Clytemnestra; there were no wound and no blood in the actual suckling. On
Clytemnestras dream and the fuzzy boundaries between dream and reality, cf. pp. 143 145. It is
worth commenting that the dream that Zeus sends to Agamemnon is based on the ambiguity of
what is real. Aeschylus, then, is looking at the miglior fabbro. Still, Aeschylus is always anti-
homeric. With the dream of Homer we smile, while we do not with Aeschylus dream. On this
topic, cf. Maiullari (2006).

interchangeable with (instead of milk). Furthermore, there is no reason

why should not be understood as an indication of place. Also the fol-
lowing translation seems to render the Greek in passage 532 533:
Orestes And how was the udder not harmed by the abominable thing?
Chorus Of course not! He drew from the udder a clot of blood in the milk
There is more to be said. It is worth commenting that in Greek medical tra-

dition milk and blood are supposed to share the same nature (cf. Demont 1978:
364 375), and that maternal womb is thought to be connected with the breast
(cf. Hanson 1992: 40 with n. 55; King 1998: 3435, 143, 218). Thus, it seems
more suitable to suppose that the image of blood in maternal milk confronts
us with a similar situation as the Samos beliefs studied by Heritier: the trace
of blood in Clytemnestras milk might be thought of as the traces of her mothers
menstrual blood rather than the generic blood of a wound. Dumortier (1975: 23)
seems to hint at something similar. On the expression in Choe-
phoroi, he writes: Plus curieuse est lexpression , grumeau ou
caillot de sang Elle se retrouve souvent dans le Corpus hippocraticum. On sig-
nalera en particulier au livre II des Maladies des Femmes,
(112), o il sagit de caillots de sang durcis qui tombent de la matrice. Au
mme livre (165) lauteur parle de caillots contenus dans la matrice. Moreover,
the expression seems to confirm as well that blood flows into
milk with the feed, and not necessarily from a wound. According to Verrall (ad
loc.), the clots of blood are caused by the venom of the serpents bite. Devereux
(1976: 197 198) follows Verrall and suggests that Orestes might be assimilated to
an Erinys: as the spit of an Erinys, the bite of Orestes too is venomous and causes
blood to coagulate. However, despite being clear in the text that the serpent bites
the breast, no venom is mentioned, as Garvie (ad loc.) observes. Therefore, it is
hard to assume that blood coagulates because of some venom coming from the
serpents bite. Rather, we can suppose, as in the cases studied by Heritier, that
blood is flowing into the milk with the feed, having already coagulated because
of the sexual intercourse of the lactant Clytemnestra. To sum up, I conclude that
the dream episode confronts us with an uncertain situation: the serpent bites
Clytemnestras breast, but blood seems to spurt out of the nipple with the
milk of the feed, and not from the wound caused by the bite of the serpent.
Further pieces of evidence in the text seem to support these remarks. When
the dream develops into Clytemnestras memories, the baby Orestes, according to
Cf. Tucker and Untersteiner (ad loc.).

134 Choephoroi
her, does not have his little teeth yet, but leans instead on the mothers breast
with his gums:
Cho. 897 898: ,

Then, how could the blood in Clytemnestras milk possibly come from the wound
of a bite? It can be said that in line 545 the expression makes
clear that the son-serpent bites the maternal breast (cf. Garvie ad loc.) and that
the blood of a wound on the breast spots milk with red stains. Both the reference
to the pain of Clytemnestra (Cho. 547: ), and the definition of the
serpent as a monster with teeth (Cho. 530: ) seem to support this conjec-
ture. Yet, in Greek the verb , referring to feeding, denotes the
babys act of sticking its lips and gums on the maternal nipple (cf. Tucker ad
loc.). This is not all. As Orestes repeats what the chorus has asserted in
Cho. 533 ( ), it remains unclear if
blood is spurting out of a wound or, instead, is flowing into the milk with the
feed:
Cho. 546:
This moment of uncertainty in the presentation of the events does not allow us to
apply a clear and sharp explanation for the violence of Orestes against his moth-
er, and for the mothers pain. Finally, contrary to what Devereux (1976: 199) sug-
gests, in line 103 of Eumenides cannot be read as a reference to the
wound in Clytemnestras breast. In Greek, is a generic word; as such, it
might recall as well the wound on Clytemnestras throat, which is mentioned
by the servant who having found that Aegisthus was killed asks for Clytem-
nestra:
Cho. 884:
It seems important to me to maintain that the blood in Clytemnestras milk is not

due to the bite of her serpent-son, but rather to his suckling during the feed. As a
proof of the corrupted alimentary relation between mother and son, and of Cly-
temnestras deviant sexuality, the image of maternal blood within maternal milk
is meant to deny the motherhood of Clytemnestra. Yet, we can also read this
image in the opposite direction. If milk is to trephein what blood is to tiktein,
the disgusting mixture of maternal blood and milk in Orestes feed is a visual
sign of the failure to separate the maternal functions of tiktein and trephein. Ac-
cordingly, it requires on our part consideration of the role of Clytemnestra as

mother-tropheus and mother-tokeus. To conclude, the image of blood clots in the

milk denies and affirms at the same time Clytemnestras maternal power to give
and to nurture life. By this interpretation, we might have found a plausible ex-
planation for the expression : it authorises and de-
stabilizes the characters repudiation of Clytemnestras agency of giving and nur-
turing life, and therefore, the plays construction of blood ties and power
relations as based merely on the law of the Father tropheus and tokeus.
In the next section, I expand on the image of milk mingled with blood in Cly-
temnestras dream.
2 The maternal continuum, once again
It is seems important to read passage 1388 1392 of Agamemnon in close relation

to the image of Orestes feed of blood and milk in Choephoroi. These lines in Aga-
memnon describe the perversion of the process of insemination (cf. pp. 42 43).
In Choephoroi, the presence of a blood clot in the mothers milk attests that Cly-
temnestra is not able to feed and to bring up her own child. Thus, in her case, the
biological stages of creating and preservating life are turned upside down from
the very beginning right to the end: her corrupted conception is followed by an
equally corrupted breast-feeding. Yet, the image of blood and milk in Clytemnes-
tras dream suggests something more than the continuity between Agamemnon
and Choephoroi. In fact, it indicates that things between mother and daughter
might not be what they are between mother and son. Devereux (1976: 206), in
his analysis of the dream scene, annotates: I know of no Greek mention of
baby girls who nursed violently and painfully but admit that girl babies are sel-
dom mentioned. This may perhaps mean that girls owe a lesser debt than boys to
their mothers. I do not agree with Devereux. As we have seen, according to
Clytemnestras rhetoric of motherhood and maternal revenge in Agamemnon,
there is a bond of philia between mother and daughter, and a biological symbio-
sis that runs through the same female blood. In the case of Clytemnestra and
Orestes, instead, the female blood does not tie mother and son in a bond of phi-
lia. Rather, the traces of maternal blood in Clytemnestras milk are a visual evi-
dence of the fact that Clytemnestra cannot nurture her own child. Seen this way,
the corrupted act of breast-feeding in the dream episode confirms the represen-
Similarly, cf. Foley (2003: 113): Greek art and literature by men had relatively little interest
in the birth and parenting of young daughters.

136 Choephoroi
tation of Clytemnestra as a mother non-tropheus, which we have seen at work in

the nurses speech.
This depiction of Clytemnestra as a mother non-tropheus corresponds to the
representation of the mother-son relationship as a bond of death. If the traces of
blood in milk are an evidence of Orestes frustrated desire to be nourished by his
mother, then the shedding of Clytemnestras blood becomes a surrogate for this
desire: as the scholium to line 548 suggests, hunger for milk on the part of
Orestes turns into hunger for blood and death. As Segal has aptly pointed out
(1985: 18), the topic of Orestes frustrated desire for food appears also in the Aga-
memnon. In the second stasimon, he is depicted as a lion cub that loves the ma-
ternal breast (Ag. 719: ), but has not been raised by maternal milk
(Ag. 718: ).
In the light of these remarks, I shall stress more clearly the differences that
pertain to the relationship between mother and daughter, and between mother
and son. According to Clytemnestras rhetoric of motherhood, her relation with
Iphigeneia is featured by biological identity and philia. Her relation with Orestes,
by contrast, is featured by philia and violence: a legame fisico e misterioso del
sangue e del latte (Setti in Untersteiner, p. 443). The text supports this reading.
First, according to Orestes rhetoric of appropriation of the words and
, the milk of Clytemnestra does not feed her son; perhaps, for Clytemnestra
as mother and for Orestes as child, maternal milk is a warranty of life:
Clytemnestra Cho. 898:

Orestes Cho. 545 546:

Second, according to Orestes rhetoric of appropriation of the verb , Cly-

temnestras blood gives birth to a monster, so perhaps her maternal blood gives
birth to her child:
Cho. 543:
Cho. 548:
Taking into consideration the familiar triangle of Clytemnestra (mother), Orestes

(son) and Iphigeneia (daughter) and the violence of/against children (killing of
Iphigeneia, matricide), we have to bear in mind, once again, the maternal con-
For as looking ahead to Orestes, cf. Knox (1952: 23); Grethlein (2013: 84). For the
representation of cubs as dependent of maternal milk, cf. Ag. 141 142 (
/). On food and blood in ancient Greek culture, cf. King (1995).

tinuum and Clytemnestras maternal body as the condition of life. This might
help us to understand why the search for an authoritative discourse on Agamem-
non as father tokeus (i. e. as genetic parent and origin of life) and tropheus (i. e.
head of the family, husband, warrior, king and origin of power) always results in
exposing the anxiety and vulnerability related to the suppression of a matter of
fact: the mothers body gives and nurtures life.
In the next section, I discuss the dream of Clytemnestra once again, trying to
explain why Orestes attempts to suppress her motherhood and to represent kin-
ship and power relations as based on the law of the Father is constantly fraught
with the danger of failing.
3 Clytemnestras dream and metaphorical motherhood
If reality is realisation, then the dream of Clytemnestra realises the tragic reality
of Orestes as the result of a disturbing oneiric suggestion that ties and assimi-
lates the child to its mother. Finding a confirmation in the text is easily attained.
According to the chorus metaphorical rhetoric of appropriation of the verb -
in its report of the dream, Clytemnestra gives birth to a serpent. In a similar
way, according to Orestes metaphorical appropriation of the verb and
its interpretation of the dream, the matricidal son absorbs his mothers snake na-
ture:
chorus Cho. 527:

Orestes Cho. 548 550: , ,

,
Relying on Goldhill (LSN: 156) on passage 548 550, Orestes is the baby-serpent
of his serpent-mother: , then, suggests more than the simple
identification of Orestes with the animal; it also implies Orestes as
(-/-), as the object of Clytemnestras rearing.
Now, when Orestes sees the snake in Clytemnestra, he fails to recognize the
mother who gave life to him. This failure of anagnorisis indicates that the son-
snake (Cho. 549: ), in this image avenger of the father, denies
the filial relationship between mother and son. Now, we have to draw some
conclusions.
The snake is usually associated with the dead. On this point, cf. Rohde (1925, index snake)
and Bock (1936: esp. p. 321 with n. 1 and n. 2). In this sense, as Sancassano has similarly pointed

138 Choephoroi
First, after the episode of the nurse as a replacement for the activity of tre-
phein, it is the dream scene that shows Clytemnestra as a snake mother with cor-
rupted trephein and tiktein. Second, we might stress the metaphorical character
of Orestes matricide, and the impossibility for him to murder Clytemnestra as a
biological mother: through the assimilation of Orestes to the mother-serpent and
his reification in the form of a serpent, the son does not kill his mother; it is pre-
cisely a baby monster that kills his monster mum. Who, then, kills whom? What
are we talking about when we mention the matricidal experience of Orestes? As
Kristeva (2000: 218) puts it: Oreste, matricide sil en est. Finally, we might even
doubt that it is appropriate to speak of the violent death of a mother by the
hands of her own son. Rather, given that Orestes is forced to become a snake
like his mother in order to kill her, it is Clytemnestra, broadly speaking, that
kills herself, and not Orestes:
Cho. 923: , ,
out (1997a: 90), the image of Orestes as a serpent links the matricidal son to his dead father, and
characterises Orestes as the avenger of Agamemnon. Therefore, the motifs of blood and milk in
Clytemnestras dream may be read also as a hint at the votive offers for the dead Agamemnon.
On this matter, cf. Walde (2001: 118).
Here, I shall mention in reference to the question who kills whom? the extremely inter-
esting discussion by Hammond (2009: 59 60) on the characters constant attempt to construct
Orestes as something or someone different from himself: Clytemnestra herself (Cho. 923), Fate
(Cho. 911), Agamemnons death (Cho. 927). Moreover, the negation of matricide that operates in
this line is even more powerful, if we read verse 923 with line 922 ( , ,
) where, according to Clytemnestras rhetoric of appropriation of the words and
, Orestes is not a snake, but her child. On the reversibility of Clytemnestras dream, cf.
Kitto (1956: 50): he must himself become a serpent, like his mother; Vidal-Naquet (1977: 153):
Mais la relation quil a avec sa mre est rversible, Clytemnestre est elle-mme un serpent;
Winnington-Ingram (1983: 135): He will be a snake as Clytemnestra was a snake; Walde (2001:
116): Die Hauptfunktion des Traumbildes besteht darin, da es als zwischen Mutter und Sohn
aufgestellter Spiegel fungieret. Cf. also Whallon (1958: 273); Vellacott (1977: 115); Rabinowitz
(1981: 177); Sevieri (1995: 15). Thus, I disagree with ONeill (1998: 221): On the other hand, in her
nightmare, Clytemnestra denies her snaky nature while acknowledging to herself that the son
from her womb is a serpent. One might also note that for the captive women, Orestes is like his
mother. According to the chorus, Orestes victory over Clytemnestra can only succeed if he
becomes, like his mother, an Erinys and a being devoted to wrath (Cho. 40 41, 402 404, 454
455, 646 651), who will share the same disposition to anger with her. For Orestes assimilation
of his mothers nature, cf. also Cho. 527 533, 541 549, 831 ff., with Ag. 1232 ff., Cho. 249, 994,
1047 1050 and Eum. 128 for Clytemnestra. For a general discussion on the mother-child relation
and the representation of the mother as a mater monstruosa as a central step in the constitution
of the male subject, cf. Irigaray (1984: 103 104).

In the context of these remarks, Orestes interpretation of the dream of Clytem-

nestra (Cho. 528: ; 550:
) lets her dream become true: Orestes is the baby-snake, and as
such he kills his mother-snake. This is like saying, as Loraux (1990a: 250) has
observed in her article on metaphors in the Oresteia, that le travail des mots
tende vers la ralisation des mtaphores. However, at the same time, Orestes
interpretation of the dream denies it exactly by fulfilling it: the baby-serpent
kills his mother-serpent; yet, Clytemnestra kills herself.
There is more to say. The position of Orestes killing his mother like the snake
of the dream indicates that, in the case of Clytemnestras death, we can detect a
dramatic equivalence between the tragic word (Cho. 515: , 521:
, 527: , 528: ) and
the tragic action (Cho. 512: , 513: , 553: ,
). This should not be surprising. Indeed, it is impossible for
Orestes to kill Clytemnestra without using the logos at the same time, i. e. without
using words as a means to interpret her dream (Cho. 528:
; 550: ). In other words, Orestes
does not kill his mother after having interpreted her dream. Rather, he kills
her (Cho. 550: ) with his words as he identifies himself in the oneiric re-
ality of Clytemnestra, and reifies himself in the form of a serpent born out of
the woman-serpent ( / ). It is not by chance
that Garvie (ad loc.) translates as I am her killer. When Orestes says I
am her killer, language turns him into a snake and he becomes istantly, not
in the future, the matricidal son. In this sense, contrary to what has been ob-
served, Orestes is not always killing Clytemnestra, even though in Greek ,
like in Ag. 126, is a timeless present. There is a precise moment in time
when the matricidal son kills his mother, and it is coincidental with Orestes use
of the verb . According to this analysis, Orestes interpretation of the
dream of Clytemnestra seems to make it clear that Orestes matricide is first of
all a matricide of the logos, which, of course, will become reality (the present
tense occurs in the place of the future, and indicates certainty). So
This temporal consequentiality is supposed by Andrisano (2004: 47): Del sogno tragica-
mente premonitore del serpente si fatto interprete secondo il suggerimento del Coro lo stesso
Oreste, che ne ha tradotto in azione il significato profondo.
Cf. Hammond (2009: 58): the verb is in the present tense: I kill her, I am killing
her; there is a form of time in which Orestes is even now (or, is always) killing Clytemnestra.
Accordingly, I differ from Devereux (1976: 203): Orestes Interpretation of the Dream (540 ff.)
seems, from the literary point of view, heavy-handed and unnecessary: Athenian audiences were
not slow-witted. On the interpretation of Orestes matricide as a matricide of the logos, cf. Lanza

140 Choephoroi
in the murderous experience of Orestes we can see both a mise en discourse of

the turn to violence against Clytemnestra, and a performative act (Orestes words
are his act of matricide).
However, we should not follow too closely Orestes representation of the
mother-child bond as a relation between two monsters. In the case of Orestes,
the truth about Clytemnestra is the result of a construction operated by his
own rhetoric of motherhood. Indeed, his mother may be a serpent, but still, kill-
ing her means killing a friend:
Cho. 899: ;
Again, Orestes discourse of exclusion and separation (you are a serpent, not my
mother) implies inclusion and connection (you may be a serpent, but still you
are my mother).
In the following section, I focus on Orestes definition of Clytemnestra as a
mother non-mother further.
4 Orestes and Apollonian logos
Clytemnestras representation in the dream as a serpent-monster and the repudi-

ation of her maternal function will continue in Eumenides. As Clytemnestra does
not give birth to her son but to her snake-monster baby, so according to Apollo
the mother is meant to be a mere receptacle of the male seed; instead, it is the
father who is thought of as the childs only genetic parent (cf. ch. 3. 3):
Eum. 660:
The act of denying that the maternal womb is the origin of life becomes the heu-
ristic act of the Father/Gods logos. In the case of the father, the logos establishes
a biological supremacy over the role of the mother, who therefore becomes infe-
rior. In other words, the logos states the exclusive agency of the Father of repro-
ducing semen and ideas.
(1995: 42) who speaks about the murder of Clytemnestra as un matricidio verbale. On the
present tense as occuring in the place of the future and as indicating certainty, cf. Smyth (1980:
421 422).
I am paraphrasing Heritier (1996: 11). It is precisely in this sense that the logos makes
female biology (passive materiality) the evidence for male metaphysics (life of the sperm =
creativity of the logos); cf. Sissa (1983: 92 96).

Let us try to refine the terms of the discussion. If fatherhood is only possible
by means of the logos, the reason is that the logos itself of Apollo is the outcome
of a point of departure from the the mothers body. This point of departure in-
dicates that any production of logos proceeds from a metaphorical violence
against the mother, in the sense of a rhetorical appropriation of female reproduc-
tive modalities by the male and, with Sissa, of a negation of the ontological in-
commensurability of the mothers blood. Consequently, the logos might delib-
erate only by means of an absence, i. e. the recognition of a deficiency: the lack
in the womans body of sperm/life/cognitive faculties. This might explain the rea-
son why the mother as said by Apollo is in herself a foreign host to a foreign
guest, i. e. a stranger to a stranger (Eum. 660: ). Following this line of
interpretation, not only the logos of Orestes, but also the one of Apollo confronts
us with a case of verbal matricide, which unfolds through a process of definition
of the maternal body in terms not of what it is, but of what it is not:
Orestes: the body of a serpent;
Apollo: the bleeding body for the father
We can find other analogies between the logos of Apollo and the one of Orestes.
The latter too is engendered by a re-definition of the mother as both rationally
and biologically foreign to the son: what Clytemnestra is not able to realize
about her dream (or perhaps she does when it is too late: Cho. 887: , -
) is exactly the logos of Orestes in its suppression of Cly-
temnestras biological motherhood, i. e. Orestes identification in the serpent de-
livered by his mother. Therefore, for Clytemnestra the logos of Orestes creates a
hiatus between the signs of her dream and their meaning: only her son, by an act
of rational interpretation, is able to restore the semantic connection between
them. In this sense, verse 887 indicates that Orestes logos is inhabited by a fig-
ure of death which Clytemnestra as mother is not able to recognize and under-
stand.
In the next section, I show how Orestes metaphorical construction of his
mother as a serpent and his repudiation of Clytemnestras motherhood risks fail-
Cf. Derrida (1972: 100): Il faut donc procder linversion gnrale de toutes les directions
mthaphoriques, ne pas demander si un logos peut avoir un pre mais comprendre que ce dont
le pre se prtend le pre ne peut aller sans la possibilit essentielle du logos.
I am borrowing the phrase ontological incommensurability from Sissa (1983: 92): in-
commensurabilit ontologica.
I am following Cohen (1994: 15) on Othello: a figure of death inhabits dialogue in a
determining way that has been ignored.

142 Choephoroi
ing. My discussion aims to show that the most metaphoric word () is also,
necessarily, the most real.
5 Orestes logos and biological motherhood
Mutter, ich
bin verloren
Mutter wir
sind verloren
Mutter, mein Kind, das
dir hnlich sieht
P. Celan, Die Gedichte aus dem Nachlass
As we have seen, the dream scene displays the monstrous nature of Clytemnes-
tras motherhood, and the estrangement of the child from his mother. However,
the tragic text constantly re-writes and corrects itself. When Clytemnestra de-
mands piety to her son in the name of the breast which fed him (Cho. 896
898), she is in fact repeating and reversing the oneiric moment of breast-feeding
the serpent: so the logos of Orestes, which metaphorically defines Clytemnestras
motherhood as a relationship between two snake-monsters, wretchedly collap-
ses. In front of the breast of his mother, who is still alive, the feeling of aidos seiz-
es the matricidal son with a turmoil of doubts. And the doubts will perhaps
never leave Orestes. Thus, after matricide, his logos gets lost, having deceived
the one who has killed with deception, according to Clytemnestra (Cho. 888: -
).
Logos and dolos, then. How exactly may the logos of Orestes be deceitful? By
denying a matter of fact, that is Clytemnestras motherhood. When Clytemnestra
finally understands her dream (Cho. 887: , ),
and recognizes it as true (Cho. 929: ), she re-
alizes the impending reality of her death:
Cho. 922: , ,
The logos of Clytemnestra explains what actually happens: the serpent in the
dream, namely her son, will kill her. The same cannot be said for Orestes. He
also understands Clytemnestras dream as an expression of a reality he will
Cf. e. g. Albini (1977: 83); Goldhill (1984a: 172); Vogt (1994: 102 with n. 18); ONeill (1998: 222);
Saxonhouse (2009: 56 57). Clearly, if Orestes seeks to get rid of Clytemnestras maternal breast
through matricide (cf. Delcourt 1959: 150 ff.), he fails.

have to face, which is the necessity of matricide. However, in his case, the logos
does not produce the reality of matricide. It seems rather to deny the very reality
it names (we do not have a son killing his mother, but a baby-serpent killing his
mother-serpent). Thus, in the case of Orestes, the logos engenders an escape
from the very reality it names. The text mentions on two different occasions
the urgency for Orestes to find an escape from his condition of matricidal son:
Cho. 1038:
Cho. 1062:
To escape from reality: in order to use the logos and kill his mother, finally
Orestes will be able to speak only about what his mother is not (a serpent),
and about what for the others are mere visions (the Erinyes of the mother).
Yet, that is still the maternal reality he lives in (Clytemnestras monstrous moth-
erhood) at the margins of what is real in any case (Clytemnestras motherhood):
Cho. 1053 1054: ,

Cho. 1061: ,
Then, it might be not easy at all, for Orestes or for the reader, to find out who
Clytemnestra is in her dream a mother and/or a serpent? Where shall we
place Orestes matricide? On the level of what is real (Clytemnestra as a biolog-
ical mother), or of what is a dream and metaphorical (Clytemnestra as a mother-
serpent)? What is real to Orestes? As Goldhill (LSN: 182) has poignantly put it,
how can we disclose the distinction between metaphor and non-metaphor in
the text? On the one hand, the meaning of Clytemnestras dream is quite
clear to Orestes (Cho. 542: , 554:
which echoes the chorus in Cho. 121: ): he is the ser-
Now if Orestes logos is barely able to find out the principles of distinction between me-
taphor and non-metaphor, in the text of the dream the serpent is the first deconstructor of the
logos (Hartman 1981: 8). Accordingly, in the words of Aeschylus we might have found an
explanation for the difficulty in reading him: there is theatre in the Oresteia when words begin to
revolt against the dramatic logic of realizing metaphors on stage. Here, I am using and somehow
inverting an analysis by Artaud (1964: 38): il ne peut y avoir thtre qu partir du moment o
commence rellement limpossible et o la posie qui se passe sur la scne alimente et sur-
chauffe des symboles raliss. On the difficulty in defining what the mother names and means,
cf. Derrida in Glas 133b with Hartmans discussion (1981: 81 83). For a different and interesting
interpretation of Clytemnestras dream, cf. Goward (1999: 66), who points to the fact that Cly-
temnestras representation in the dream as a serpent underlines the multiple meanings of
matricide as an act of retributive justice and an act that has to be punished itself.

144 Choephoroi
pent-baby, and as such he is going to kill his serpent-mother (Cho. 549 550:
/ ). Here, the serpent metaphor of mother and
baby equals to the non-metaphor of Clytemnestra as a mother and Orestes as
a son. On the other hand, the killing of Clytemnestra as a mother-serpent is
not possible without Orestes killing her as his own biological mother. Here,
the serpent metaphor of mother and baby is not equal to the non-metaphor of
Clytemnestra as a mother and of Orestes as a son.
These digressions on the fuzzy boundary, in the text of the dream, between
reality and metaphor and, therefore, on the problem of defining who is Clytem-
nestra are not far-fetched. When Orestes uses the expression
(Cho. 892), he does not tell us whom he is looking for. Again, who is Clytemnestra
to Orestes? The mother who gives life, the mother monster, the mother of his
dreams, the mother-dog, the mother dead, the mother alive? I suggest that
Orestes, in order to know (with the help of the logos) who is Clytemnestra,
has necessarly to accept her as his human mother, that is to say he is forced
to undertake an act of restitution.
Orestes act of restitution is identical to his acknowledgement that the ma-
ternal womb is the condition of life, and that the maternal body is the origin
of language: he has to give back to Clytemnestra what is properly hers, i. e.
he has to recognize that his mother generates life and at the same time is the
point of departure for the use of language. Here, I paraphrase Muraro (2006:
49): Si tratta di pensare che lorigine della vita non separabile dallorigine
del linguaggio, n il corpo dalla mente. In what follows, I take into consider-
ation how we might trace this theme in the text of Choephorois dream, arguing
that Orestes words cannot escape his mothers body.
When Orestes uses the logos to interpret the dream of Clytemnestra
(Cho. 528: ; 550:
), the matricidal son claims that the mothers body gives life:
Cho. 543 545:

Exactly this operation undermines the foundation of Orestes logos, that is to say
the possibility for it to work without the body of the mother: in order to kill Cly-
On the act of restitution between mother and child, cf. Muraro (2006: 131 132 n. 1).
As Muraro, cf. Fouque (1994: 306 307).
It is interesting to note that the word can be used both for the womb and for the
mother, cf. Loraux (1991: 49), with further bibliography at n. 102.

temnestra with his logos, Orestes must return to her maternal body and make her
womb, which is already the condition of life, the condition of his logos as well
i. e. the condition ( ) of his interpretation of the dream and of his verbal con-
struction of Clytemnestra as a serpent-mother. Accordingly, we see how Orestes
logos is indebted to his mother too: by reproducing a logic of signs that singles
out the estrangement of the mothers body from any process of generation of life,
Orestes logos does not have the power to efface the matter of fact that the moth-
ers body is the origin of life and the condition of logos. This is the reason why
the separation from the maternal origins, which we have indicated as the neces-
sary requirement for the functioning of Apollos and Orestes logos, marks the
failure of Orestes logos and gives birth to his monsters his own monsters,
the Erinyes. As Kristeva (2000: 219) puts it: lorsque cet accs la symbolisation
fait dfaut apparat alors le versant lugubre dOreste.
The implosion of Orestes logos brings us back to Orestes question at the be-
ginning of the drama. If we read, with Verrall, verses 1048 1050 as an interrog-
ative sentence ( / / -
/ ;), they might be repeating verses 10 12:

; ;
The text established by Verrall allows me to ask some questions. Given that both
before and after matricide Orestes does not know what is real, is a chronological
reading of the text of Choephoroi, which fulfils a telos for the narrated events,
still possible? What is the justice of dreams (Ag. 491: ), what
is the justice of the son (Cho. 529: ), in what sense is the dream
of Clytemnestra for Orestes (Cho. 541)? I have no prompt answers.
However, thinking about the dolos of Orestes logos, and the incapacity of
Orestes logos to define who Clytemnestra is, it seems to me quite problematic
to speak of the dike of Orestes matricide.
In the next chapter, I look closely at the dispute between the Furies, Apollo
and Athena in Eumenides. I argue that, as in Agamemnon and Choephoroi, also in
the last play of the trilogy the Aeschylean text confronts us with the difficult task
of defining who a mother is, and with the danger of withdrawing the authority of
maternal power. Again, as I claim, this affects the way we discuss matricide,
Orestes acquittal and, finally, the readers position within the texts discourse
Cf. Derrida (1972: 100): Le logos redevable un pre, quest-ce dire?. On the mother as
condition for rationality, cf. ch. 3. 1.

146 Choephoroi
on blood ties and power relations (do we have to understand kinship and power
as maternal and/or as paternal?).
6 Conclusions
In sections one to five on the text of the dream, we have seen that:
1. as in the case of the speech of the nurse, also in the case of Clytemnestras
dream and of the image of maternal blood in maternal milk, the text of Choe-
phoroi seems to outline an attempt to separate the mothers functions of tik-
tein and trephein and to mark the failure of this separation;
2. Orestes logos interprets metaphorically Clytemnestras dream as the repudi-
ation of her own biological motherhood: Clytemnestra as a mother-serpent
does not give life to a child, but to a serpent. Clytemnestras violent death
represents the murder of a monster;
3. Orestes logos does not have the power to delete Clytemnestras motherhood:
Orestes kills his mother;
4. the heuristic faculties of Orestes logos operate on the borderline between
reality and metaphors. His metaphorical interpretation of Clytemnestras
motherhood as a relationship between a serpent-mother and its baby is de-
ceiving. Even if she is a serpent, Clytemnestra is still his biological mother:
in order to kill her, he has to use deception;
5. for Orestes, the maternal body of Clytemnestra is the first step to access the
logos and (mis)use it;
6. the difficulty to define Clytemnestra challenges the characters attempt to
represent her merely as a mother-echthros, destabilizing the notion of dike
in close relation to the violence of matricide.

Eumenides
The Eumenides is a drama preoccupied with beginnings, with origins
F. I. Zeitlin, The Dynamics of Misogyny
;
Ag. 1109
In the previous two chapters I argued that in Agamemnon, as in Choephoroi,

every attempt to project the image of an echthros of the Atreid family on Clytem-
nestra (as a bad and evil-minded mother who does not take care of her hus-
bands children, an adulterous wife, and an usurper of king Agamemnons
power) is constantly exposed to the risk of failing. In my reading, the last play
of the trilogy confronts us with the same issue as well. On the one hand, Apollo,
Athenas and Orestes discourses proceed with the dramatic disestablishment of
the power of Clytemnestra, both as mother and queen. This process implies the
authorisation of the power of Agamemnon as father tropheus and tokeus. On the
other hand, the positions endorsed by the Erinyes challenge the validity of this
depiction of Agamemnon as the unique genetic parent of his children, and as
source of the economical and political prestige of the Atreid household.
Read this way, Eumenides destabilises the construction of blood ties and
power relations as based merely on the law of the Father. I hope my discussion
Cf. LSN, 147: this authorisation of narrative, however, by the situating of its origin in the
word of the father can also be questioned . It is in the dynamics of this tension between the
authorisation of the word of the father and its undercutting questioning by the Erinues that the
trial of Orestes and the ending of the trilogy will be constituted; LSN: 252: Can the logos of
Apollo in its claim for the singleness, linearity of the relation father-child exclude the further
linearity of the relation mother-child? Can the establishment of the discourse of paternity (the
word-of-the-father) as the word of truth by its derivation from a fixed and single origin avoid in
this proof the suggestion of its own unstableness?; Winnington-Ingram (1983: 124): When the
votes are counted, they are found to be equally divided; and this verdict not only corresponds to
the balance of argument, but is a sign that Orestes has been confronted with an intolerable
dilemma, subjected to contradictory claims both based upon the blood-tie and backed by the
law of the vendetta. Thus, I differ from Zeitlin (1978: 149 151): For Aeschylus, civilisation is the
ultimate product of conflict between opposing forces, achieved not through a coincidentia op-
positorum but through a hierarchization of values. Through gradual and subtle transforma-
tions, social evolution is posed as a movement from female dominance to male dominance, or,
as it is often figuratively phrased, from matriarchy to patriarchy . Similarly, on the victory of
the male over female, of the father figure over the mother figure, of new gods over ancient gods,
of law principles over blood feuds in the Eumenides, cf. de Beauvoir (1949: 165); Thomson (1966:
45 46); Millett (1971: 115); Pomeroy (1975: 97 99); Reinhold (1976: 30); Vellacott (1977: 121);
Cohen (1986: 139); Fouque (1994: 298 299); Rosenbloom (1995: 116); Flashar (1997: 100); Pat-

148 Eumenides
will help us overcome the preconceived representation of Aeschylus poetry as

an authorisation of violent separations, exclusion and hierarchies.
1 The Erinyes and maternal sophronein
bisogna essere folli

per essere chiari
P. P. Pasolini, Le ceneri di Gramsci
To begin with, we might ask: who are the Erinyes? As an occurrence of their
name shows in tablets inscribed in linear B (e. g., KN Fp 1. 8; V 52), they are god-
desses belonging to the oldest era of the Greek religion. According to Hesiod
(Th. 185), they arose out of blood drops in the context of Uranos castration,
whereas in Aeschylus they were born from the night in a distant time
(Eum. 69, 321 322, 745, 844, 877, 1033). Their Hesiodic genealogy might explain
their connection with the punishment associated with inter-familiar murders
(cf. Il. 9. 454, Erinyes of the father; 9. 571, 21. 412, Erinyes of the mother; 15.
204, Erinyes of the brother; Od. 2. 135, 11. 280, 17. 475, Erinyes of the mother).
However, their functions transcend the mere vengeance of violent crimes. They
punish perjury (Il. 19. 86 ff.; Op. 803 ff.); they send Ate to human beings (Il. 19.
86 ff., Od. 15. 231 ff.), they execute curses (Il. 9. 454 456, 571 ff.) and fulfil justice
(Aj. 1390; Heraclit., B 94 DK).
In Agamemnon too, the Erinyes have several different functions. They punish
offences against hospitality (Ag. 55 ff., 746 ff.); they prosecute adultery
(Ag. 1192 ff.); they act as a legitimate instance of killing (Ag. 1432 ff., 1580 ff.),
and as avengers of bloodshed (in war: Ag. 461 ff.; in the family: Ag. 1119 1120,
Erinyes of the children). In Choephoroi, they are associated with murders within
the family (Cho. 283 ff., Erinyes of the father; 924 ff., 1048 ff. Erinyes of the moth-
er); in Eumenides, they are represented as avengers of bloodshed (Eum. 316 320,
337 340), and as maternal ghosts of vengeance (Eum. 210, 496 498).
Now, how do the Erinyes manifest themselves in Eumenides
; (Eum. 408)? As the Pythia reports, they are frightening, supernatural be-
terson (1998: 84); Helm (2004: 50 51); Baltrusch (2007: 160); Markovits (2009: 431). On the
teleology of the Eumenides and feminist and Marxist critical positions, cf. Goldhill (1986: 39
56).
Cf. Dodds (1973a: 6 8; 18; 21 n. 37; 38 42); Sewell-Rutter (2007: 78 89); on the origins of
the Erinyes, cf. Lloyd-Jones (1990: 203 207).
Cf. Brown (1983: 13 14 with n. 5 and n. 6; 1984: 267 276); Sewell-Rutter (2007: 90 109).

Eumenides 149
ings fearful to look at (Eum. 34: , 52: -

). They are dark and without wings or feathers (Eum. 51 52:
/ ); they snore and groan with terrible sighs (Eum. 53:
) in their sleep; they leak loathsome drops
from their eyes (Eum. 54: ). This is just
a partial depiction. In fact, they are so dreadful that the Pythia can only say
what they are not. As Prins has noticed (1991: 178), she only describes them
by a negation of vision, as we infer from lines 48 49:
We can push Prins remark a step further. For the Pythia, seeing the Furies is
something more than a mere negation of vision. According to the prophetess,
seeing the Erinyes is like seeing the unknown:
Eum. 57:
Clearly, the Pythia does not see the Erinyes as Orestes does. Orestes knows who
they really are, and he knows it very well, as line 1054 of Choephoroi indicates:
These divergences between Orestes and the Pythia in their experience of the Fur-
ies seem quite important. What turns out to be an encounter with an estranging
force for the Pythia, for Orestes amounts to the visualisation of a knowledge that
proceeds from his own experience of killing, and, therefore, from his madness. I
would even say that for the crazed Orestes seeing the Erinyes is precisely what
validates the divine law of the pathei mathos: once he has killed, he is aware
of what is triggered by violence, and therefore he is able to see and to know
what, according to the Suda, is or faceless.
On lines 51 52 and the meaning of and , cf. Maxwell-Stuart (1973: 82 83).

I am expounding on Brown (1983: 18 22), who argues that Orestes sees the Furies because
he is mad. This is certainly true. However, Orestes does not simply see the Furies; he recognizes
them, he knows who they are. Now, Orestes knows who the Furies are not because he is mad, but
because he is a killer. Further, I shall notice that the case of Orestes who, as a crazed man and as
a murderer, sees and recognizes the Furies, recalls to mind the depiction of Clytemnestra,
immediately after the murder of Agamemnon. Orestes kills his mother and understands very well
what violence implies. By contrast, Clytemnestra kills Agamemnon and violence blinds her.
Indeed, after the murder of Agamemnon, her eyes are injected with blood (Ag. 1428).

150 Eumenides
The basic divergences in Orestes and the Pythias vision of the Furies (the
former, for what they actually are and what he knows; the latter, for what
they are not, and what she does not know) represent a crucial step in the Aeschy-
lean treatment of violence and knowledge. If, as I claim, in the case of Orestes,
we can speak of a realisation of the law of pathei mathos, then knowledge comes
to humans through the use of violence, and inevitably manifests itself through
suffering and alienation. The text supports this reading. Because he has to mur-
der his mother, Orestes is taught in suffering (Eum. 276:
). Moreover, he knows the right time for many things (Eum. 276 277:
/ ). Finally, he is a fugitive,
a wanderer banished from his land (Ag. 1282: -
); closely chased, and dragged away by his mothers Erinyes (Cho. 1062:
; Eum. 139: , , 338 339:
/ ), he has to leave (Cho. 1050 = Cho. 1062:
). Now, we might observe that the Aeschylean speculations on vi-
olence are fundamentally optimistic: in the world of the Oresteia at least in the
case of Clytemnestra and Orestes the use of violence occurs together with a
process of learning which shows that violence always involves pain for its
user, and not only for its victim.
Taking into consideration the fact that the Erinyes bestow painful knowl-
edge, I find it difficult to adopt a critical level that considers Apollo and Athena
as divine agents of knowledge, wisdom and civilisation, in opposition to the Fur-
ies as enemies of social order, knowledge and wisdom. In this regard, the sec-
Cf. Eum. 102: ; 122:

; 153: ; 202: ; 256:
; 268: ; 281: ;
326 327: -/ ; 425: . ; 427: ; 463:
; 493: ; 587: ; 595:
; 599: .
I read with Sommerstein (ad loc.) instead of as in MS.
Consider for example Lattimore (1972: 88): Apollo stands for everything which the Furies
are not: Hellenism, civilization, intellect, and enlightenment; Dodds (1973a: 40) who speaks of
the new world of rational justice; Gagarin (1976: 83) who points out that the limited and
ineffectual knowledge of the first two plays is replaced by a broader and more powerful wisdom
in the third; Winnington-Ingram (1983: 172): Athena represents a higher level of the divine
purpose than the Furies , being a goddess of wisdom , with its social progress, its intellectual
activity, and its creation of harmony in many forms; Saxonhouse (2009: 53): Orestes comes to
Athens for his trial searching for the civilized world . And Apollo, along with the virgin
goddess Athena, stands here at the foundation of the city of the Athenians . The order they
establish is predicated, however, on denying the forces of nature and replacing them with
reason.

Eumenides 151
ond stasimon of Eumenides is of central importance. Here, the Erinyes claim that
their punitive actions against the murderers of parents represent a work of dike,
and that the suffering of their vengeful interventions is a means to acquire so-
phrosune:
Eum. 511 521: ,

,
.

As has been observed (cf. e. g. North 1966: 48 49, Sommerstein ad loc.), line 521
( ) constitutes a reformulation of the principle of pathei ma-
thos. What seems of particular interest to me is that here for the Furies the chance
to learn sophrosune through pain is related to the prohibition to kill a father
(), or a mother who gives life to her child (). Thus, for the Furies,
not only the fathers, but also the mothers genealogical authority of birth is
linked to the authority of knowing how to speak and act in the right way (-
). All this defines a continuity between Clytemnestras and the Furies rhet-
oric of motherhood. Clytemnestra, in Ag. 1425, uses this verb as much as the Fur-
ies do. As we have seen, also for her, learning sophrosune implies understanding
that the maternal authority of birth presupposes an inviolable bond of philia be-
tween a mother and the creature of her womb (cf. ch. 1, I. 5).
This appropriation of the verb is not a minor detail. The link es-
tablished by Clytemnestra and the Erinyes between the learning of sophrosune
through the knowledge of pain, on the one hand, and the acknowledgement
of the mother as the condition of life, on the other hand, compels us to look
at cognitive processes as necessarily related to the mothers body. As Goldhills
analysis has disclosed (LSN: 215, 228 231, 241 245, 266, 276 278), the search for
authority in the Eumenides occurs as a search for the origin of birth and, accord-
ingly, for the origin of logos (words, truth) in the father. Nonetheless, this inquiry
On this passage, cf. p. 156.

Accordingly, I read in Eum. 521, as in Ag. 1425, in the meaning of sapere. Thus, I
differ from Italie who quotes in Ag. 1425 for the meaning sapere but Eum. 521 for the
meaning prudentiam discernere.

152 Eumenides
also amounts to accounting for the mothers mind-set and her reproductive
power. In what follows, I dwell at some length on this point.
The positions endorsed by Apollo about the female mind are in sharp oppo-
sition to the Furies and Clytemnestras understanding of maternal sophronein.
For Apollo, the Furies are nothing but furious, mad and savage beings:
Eum. 67:
As Benardete has noticed (2000: 66), this Apollonian representation of the Furies
as a bunch of mad women might be considered as strictly linked to Apollos dis-
course on marriage, and on the social status of a woman (with children) as wife
of her husband (Eum. 211 224). For Apollo, a god who is entirely on the side of
the Father and his law, the Furies, in their defence of maternal blood ties, can
hardly represent an instance of knowledge. Yet, Apollos discourse seems to
proceed towards a simplification of what knowledge is supposed to be. The Fur-
ies teach human beings the law of the pathei mathos or of
by sending to murderers a song with no lyre (Eum. 331 333: /
, -/ = Ag. 990 991: /
), i. e. a chant of insanity (Eum. 329: , ), of derange-
ment and of mind-destruction (Eum. 330: ). If I am not
completely wrong, it is like saying that murderers might reach a stage of knowl-
edge by losing control over their minds. Whereas Apollo defines the Self through
identity, and therefore through the exclusion of insanity from the activities of the
logos, the Furies, according to their use of the verb , refrain from a
fixed sense of identity (Self as the Same) and handle differences (Self as the
Other). We might even say that in Aeschylus madness is compulsory, as the Fur-
ies understanding of sophronein and the case of Agamemnons dilemma illus-
trate (cf. ch. 1, I. 5); or at least, as revealed by the condition of Orestes after
the matricide, a compulsion towards the danger of losing ones mind. In this
sense, the tragic thought does not define logos as the governing instance of
the mind, and therefore, Greek tragedy does not conceive logos in opposition
On passage 211 224 and the meaning of , and , cf. Kells (1961).
For the Erinyes as defender of maternal blood ties, cf. Eum. 208:
; 210: ; 261 263: /
, ,/ ; 545:
; 652 654: /
/ .

Eumenides 153
to madness. Following this interpretation, das Denken in Gegenstzen, as

Reinhardt (1949: 150) labels the Aeschylean way of thinking, does not feature
the Furies discourse on sophronein. The Furies are not the opposite of Apollo
and his logos; the logos of Apollo does not exclude the knowledge coming
from the Furies. Rather, the knowledge of the Furies is a legitimate aspect of
the logos itself. Indeed, as the law of pathei mathos originates from Zeus
(Ag. 176 178), the lesson that the Furies impose on murderers emanates from
the same god too:
Eum. 334 335: -

-

According to these remarks, we can detect a difference between Apollos and Cly-
temnestras assertion that the Erinyes are a force of evil:
Apollo Eum. 71:

Clytemnestra Eum. 125: ;
For Clytemnestra, the Erinyes do harm, since this is the task allotted to them by
Moira. Accordingly, Clytemnestras use of the word occurs within the frame-
work of knowledge through suffering as a divine law coming from Zeus. In-
stead, when the word is used by Apollo, there is no hint of the fact
that the Erinyes do evil as a means to impart knowledge to human beings. Keep-
ing silent about the Olympian origins of the Erinyes activity of doing harm,
Apollo seems to undermine their authority of knowledge, logos and truth. Yet,
Apollos discursive strategy appears too simple. As Orestes acquittal in dubio
pro reo shows, the clash between Apollos positions and the claims of the Erinyes
does not conclude with the acknowledgement of the father figure as the origin of
life and logos. Thus, we might notice that part of the discourse of Eumenides pla-
ces a) the origin of knowledge in suffering, and b) the origin of life and knowl-
edge in motherhood. That said, I distance myself from a whole tradition of
Cf. Foucault (1961: iii): Les grecs avaient rapport quelque chose quils appelaient
Mais le Logos grec navaient pas de contraire. Cf. also Derrida (1963) in his essay Cogito et
histoire de la folie.
Cf. Derrida quoted after Lyotard (1990: 278): Maternit Place pour la pense, ds lors que
ne dcidant de rien, elle suspend. Quappelle-t-on pense en latin? Etre en suspens (pendere),
en souffrance (Cf. La fine del pensiero, Agamben). Cf. also Fouque (1994: 286): Le mot muet de
chair qui a hant toute ma grosesse dclenche la rverie autour des penses latantes dune
gnalogie femelle, dune gnalogie de la pense.

154 Eumenides
studies on the opposition of sex/gender (nature/culture), which essentially as-

sumes that la confezione del corpo della madre sia separabile dai suoi signifi-
cati culturali. Cio, che la madre non pensi. Such studies, at least on the Ore-
steia, have dismissed the body of the mother, and it is not by chance that they
insist on the depiction of Clytemnestra as a woman whose mind is darkened.
However, as I have argued with my remarks on Clytemnestras rhetoric of appro-
priation of the verb in Ag. 1425, with my analysis of Electras rhetoric
of appropriation of the words and in Cho. 88 and 140, and as I
finally hope to have clarified with my discussion of Orestes logos in Choephoroi,
as well as with the discussion of the Erinyes rhetoric of appropriation of the verb
, in the Oresteia the discourse on Clytemnestras motherhood does not
confirm the validity of these dichotomies. Rather, it compels us to question hir-
archies violentes (Derrida).
So far, I have discussed the implications of the act of seeing the Furies, and
of the interrelation between seeing them and knowing them. To conclude, there
is a further aspect to outline. I start with the beautiful and delicate Corbett lec-
ture delivered by Henrichs on 26. 11. 09 at Cambridge University: The Epiphanic
Moment: Sight and Insight in Ancient Greek Encounters with the Divine. Hen-
richs argues that revelation (), sight () and recognition (-
) structure the epiphanic moment. As key-examples of this understanding
of epiphany as a divine revelation through sight and insight, he quotes the ap-
pearance of Athena in Il. 1. 194 200 and Od. 16. 155 163, the manifestation of
Dionysos in h. Bacch. 1 4, 6 10, 14 18, and, finally, the omen of the eagles
and its interpretation by Calchas in Ag. 104 125. In all these passages the vo-
cabulary of epiphany (, , , , ) clearly supports
the idea that epiphany occurs in both myth and cult when a god reveals his
presence or manifests his power to a mortal or group of mortals, who see or
recognize the god. Now, in Homer and in the parodos of Agamemnon the
encounter with the divine entails the certainty of recognition (I see you = I rec-
ognize you; I know who you are). However, in the case of the Furies in Eume-
nides, there is no place for both seeing and recognizing, as two simultaneous
Cf. Muraro (2006: 132 n. 1).

Cf. Henrichs entry for epiphany in OCD. See also Redfield (1975: 176): When Eurycleia
recognizes the scar, Penelope fails to notice, for Athena turned aside her noos (ixi. 479). Noos
is linked to recognition and responsive understanding: we might say that vision takes in the look
of a thing, noos its meaning. Ideein and noesai are not, therefore, two separate acts; rather, the
noos further forms perceiving consciousness so that what is perceived is a world of recognized
meanings. On this topic, cf. also Lesher (2009: 14 17); for epiphany in graeco-roman art, cf.
Platt (2011).

Eumenides 155
acts, one implying the other. The Pythia, as we have seen, does not know what
she is looking at, as she sees the Furies; and the same goes for Athena as well:
Eum. 406 408:

, .
;
Eum. 410 412: ,
,

Eum. 932 933:

These passages suggest the idea that, unlike the Homeric gods, the Furies do not
exist only to the extent that they are seen by someone; on the contrary, they exist
whether they are perceived or not. This allows me to conclude that in order to see
the Furies and be able to recognize them one requires an awareness of pain that
is associated with acts of violence. This is the reason why Athena sees the Furies
without being able to recognize them: only the one who has committed murder
can. Thus, Athenas awareness is absolutely different from Orestes and the rea-
son is that only by experiencing violence and pain does human knowledge be-
come attainable. In this regard, Aeschylus poetry remains profoundly Homeric.
The idea that humans have to suffer in order to achieve knowledge is clear, in the
opening of the Odyssey:
Od. 3 4:

In what follows, I further discuss the suffering that the Erinyes dispense to
human beings, focusing on the relation between the vengeful actions of the Fur-
ies and their memory.
2 The Erinyes, their painful memory and female genealogy
As Athena asserts during her exchange with them, while they are lamenting the
violation of their old privileges, the Erinyes are ancient goddesses endowed with
wisdom:
Obviously, the audience, unlike the Pythia and Athena, sees the Furies. Thus, we might
notice a gap between the sight of violence in theatre and the sight of violence by the characters
in the play. On Athena seeing the Furies, cf. the beautiful pages of Easterling (2008: 227 230); on
the Furies being revealed to the spectators, cf. Brown (1982: 26 28) and Whallon (1995).

156 Eumenides
Eum. 849 850: ,

Here, when Athena appeals to the Furies wisdom (), she might be try-
ing simply to soothe their anger or perhaps to call attention to their authority as
goddesses of wisdom (Eum. 838 = Eum. 871: ). After all, as Som-
merstein comments on line 838, age and wisdom are indeed correlated. Relying
on Sommerstein, we presume that Athena conceives an ancient wisdom originat-
ing from the vengeful power of the mother figure. Being endowed with this dan-
gerous and maternal wisdom, the Erinyes may act as protectors of the city of Ath-
ens, or as its potential destroyers. In what follows, I elaborate on how the text of
Eumenides supports this reading.
The idea of a wisdom proceeding from the Erinyes is stated elsewhere in the
trilogy. The chorus in Choephoroi describes them as , or deep-think-
ing (Cho. 651). In Eumenides, as we have already seen, the Furies assert that they
dispense knowledge through suffering (Eum. 521: ). Fur-
ther, they claim that they govern the (Eum. 535 536) or, ac-
cording to Sommerstein (ad loc.), sophrosune. Here, two points are particularly
relevant:
in Eum. 535 536, the Furies mind and their sophronein are mentioned, as in
Eum. 513 521, in close connection with the respect owed to parents
(Eum. 545: ); in Cho. 651, the Furies
mind is closely related to the necessity to take revenge for the shed of ma-
ternal blood (Cho. 649 651: );
any behaviour marked by the Furies sophronein is a consequence of the rev-
erence due to the unalterable dictates of dike (Cho. 646:
; Eum. 543: ).
Being agents responsible for the prohibition to shed parental and maternal blood
and, accordingly, for the defence of dike and sophrosune, the Erinyes act as pro-
tectors of the city of Athens. On the contrary, in case of a violation of this pro-
hibition, they act as the destructive vengeful forces of the mother figure. Follow-
ing this line of interpretation, the Erinyes admonition to conduct a life according
to the Delphic doctrine of nothing to excess (Eum. 529:
) seems to be based precisely on the notion that the ordered justice
of life in a civic community is a reflection of the ordered justice of life in the fam-
For as expression for matricide, cf. Loraux (1990a: 252). For this
connection in passage 513 521, cf. p. 151.

Eumenides 157
ily. From where, then, are we supposed to begin? I propose to start with the Eri-
nyes and their memory.
The Erinyes, ancient goddesses of wisdom, are or mindful
of committed wrong acts (Eum. 382 383). Two explanations for the presentation
of the Furies as can be put forward. Like Zeus, they are -
or upright witnesses (Eum. 318). The act of witnessing is closely re-
lated, as the case of the Muses demonstrates, to the function of remembering the
past. Furthermore, they may not forget evil, since justice needs time to set its
laws in motion (Ag. 58 59: ). Yet, the memory of the Furies
is something more than just an activity of recalling the past. As has often been
observed, by remembering past evil, their memory eliminates the dividing barrier
between the present and the past. Obviously, in the case of the Furies, ruling out
that barrier is like ruling out the dividing line between life and death. From this
perspective, the riddle of the dead killing the living, or the living killing the dead
in Cho. 886 ( ), sounds like rephrasing
the Erinyes agency of reversing present evil into past evil, and vice versa: blur-
ring the borderline between the present and the past, the Furies memory marks
time in tautological cycles, letting past events become present (Ag. 67 68:
/), according to what has been allotted (Ag. 68:
). Thus, the memory of the Erinyes guards the knowledge of the
telos, which is unknown to mortals.
This characterization of the Erinyes as supernatural beings, who do not for-
get evil, and grant wisdom and knowledge, takes us back to the Zeus hymn in the
parodos of Agamemnon. Just as the wisdom coming from the Furies is tied up
with memory, suffering and pain, so the wisdom and knowledge coming from
Zeus is a legacy of a recollection of past suffering:
Ag. 176 181: -

,

In what follows, I follow Simondon (1982: 224 225).

For a reading of verses 67 68 as a tautology, cf. LSN: 15: Here the language is again
tautologous, a summation of the present which merely asserts its existence in terms of itself,
juxtaposed to an expression of the future which joins a sense of end (not forgetting the
religious overtone of teleitai) to its own fated moment, that is, which simply asserts the teleology
of teleitai!. For an association of these verses with the Erinyes and their memory, cf. Simondon
(1982: 233 234). For general remarks on blurring the borderline between past and present in the
Agamemnon, cf. Grethlein (2013: 88 94).

158 Eumenides
Quite recently, Wians, in his beautiful pages on knowledge in Agamemnon, has

alluded to a certain pessimism in the Aeschylean idea of acquiring knowledge
through past sufferings. Personally, I do not perceive any poetic hopelessness
in the formulation of the pathei mathos doctrine in Agamemnon and Eumenides. I
would rather emphasise a different point that has been neglected by scholars, as
far as I know. The question would be: is there a connection between the memory
of the Furies (along with the suffering, the wisdom and the knowledge inherent
in it) and the chance of an ordered life in the community of Athens, as expressed
by the Furies in?
Eum. 520 525

.

-
;
It has been observed that the word in Eum. 521 does not refer to pain, but
to compulsion: in the case of the Athenian state machinery, it is hard to imagine
that the acquisition of sophronein has to pass through a process of suffering and
pain. I do not necessarily concur with the critics on this remark. In my opin-
ion, we can easily assume that the city of Athens, in order to preserve civic life,
has to protect itself from pain. A look at Lorauxs research on stasis invites us to
opt for this interpretation.
In the book La cit divise. Loubli dans la mmoire dAthnes, Loraux asks
why, in the famous lines 858 to 866, towards the end of Eumenides, we find a
reference to civil war. A possible reason lies in the representation of stasis
in the Oresteia as violence that is engendered inside the family by the Erinyes
Cf. Wians (2009: 182 194), who labels Aeschylean thought as poetic pessimism. Wians
maintains that Aeschylus poetry is essentially pessimistic since humans are not in the position
to understand the events they are involved in. However, Clytemnestra understands her dream
quite well, and, after the murder of Agamemnon, she seems to understand the necessity to find a
way out of the use of violence (cf. pp. 7980).
Cf. e. g. Di Benedetto (1999: 102103).
Cf. Loraux (1997: 34 35). The primary literary model for the Aeschylean representation on
stasis is Homer (Od. 24, 473 486).

Eumenides 159
wrath (Ag. 1117 1120), as well as in the conceptualisation of the polis as a com-
munity that includes all families. Since the origin of violence is inter-familial and
the city represents the whole of all families, the Erinyes wrath, which strikes the
life in the family, is meant to strike as well life in the polis with a series of mutual
crimes. Therefore, when Athena soothes the Furies wrath and assigns them the
duty to preserve her city from evil and from the suffering of civil discord, the
memory of the Furies dispensera prventivement les citoyens davoir se rap-
peler les maux quils se sont infligs dans la stasis. As Loraux suggests, the
Erinyes memory works as oubli du politique comme tel: they cast the shadows
of civil discord, a basic element of the political functioning of the polis in itself,
into a moment of repression, negation and forgetting. We can also add some
remarks on the memory of the Furies in its relation to stasis. Their memory re-
minds the citizens of Athens of the dangers that may arise from maternal venge-
ful wrath. Indeed, the Furies express their grudge for the abuse of their ancient
laws (specifically, of the duty to respect the inviolability of the mothers body giv-
ing life) and threaten the city of Athens with stasis (Eum. 778 792 = 808 822;
837 846), when Athena decrees the acquittal of Orestes. It is legitimate to
argue that the preservation of the community life in the polis would never
imply the disrespect for the rights of the mother figure. Again, I contend that Ae-
schylus poetry is not based on separations and exclusions. Precisely because
the respect for the inviolability of the mothers body is a necessary condition
for maintaining the delicate balance of the political order in the polis, the painful
memory of the Erinyes protects the city of Athens by redeeming female geneal-
ogy from oblivion.
In what follows, I hope to demonstrate that the characters rhetoric of appro-
priation of keywords such as , , , , and
supports the analysis I have put forward in this section.
Cf. Loraux (1980: 237). For a detailed discussion of the Greek vocabulary of stasis and the
natural interrelation between violence in the family and violence in the polis, cf. Loraux (1987).
Cf. Loraux (1997: 38 40; quotation p. 38).
In Agamemnon as well maternal revenge requires maternal memory (Ag. 155). On this line
and the semantic correspondences between Ag. 155 ( ,
) and Eum. 382 383 ( ), cf. pp. 4042.

160 Eumenides
3 The legitimacy of words
The juridical controversy among the Furies, Athena, Apollo and Orestes concerns
the blood shed by the mother:
Eum. 612 613:

, ,
Eum. 681 682: , ,

In these lines, according to Orestes and Athena, the enforcement of dike depends
on maternal blood. Therefore, the conditions for the possibility of democratic
justice are isomorphic with a process of normalisation of the mothers blood
and its reproductive power. Yet, to value maternal blood means much more
in Eumenides. I assume that, in order to define the blood of the mother, we
have to opt for an interpretation of the origins as coming from the mother
and/or from the father figure, along with the play of differences that this entails.
Accordingly, I maintain that defining maternal blood is like engaging in an irre-
solvable conflict regarding the authorisation of genealogy and power as mater-
nal and/or paternal. Just as the Odysseys inquiries into the term are not
over by the return of Odysseus to Ithaca, and by the enactment of peace con-
tracts, in Eumenides too the search for a definition of the words and
We might recognize in the phrase the rhetorical topos of the definition of

the nature of the deed disputed at the trial (orismos). On this topos and Orestes trial, cf. Glau
(1998: 312). On the lawsuit between Apollo and the Furies, cf. Eum. 224:
; 243: ; 433: ; 434:
; 468: ; 472: ;
483: ; 573: , ; 581:
; 582: , ; 639:
; 709: ; 729: ; 734:
.
I do not share the critical view according to which the biological bias of Apollo and Athena
does not have a central importance in the plays discourse on dike in relation to Orestes
matricide. Cf. Dover (1957: 236): Athenas somewhat illogical reason for voting in favour of
Orestes and, quite recently, Leo (2010: 53): In any case, the most important thing, in my
opinion, is the fact that the physiological argument used by Apollo does not carry determining
weight in the dispute. Orestes is acquitted of matricide, in the first instance, on exceptional
grounds and through the special grace of the protecting divinity of Athens, in this way putting an
end to the continuous succession of assassinations and installing a newer form of application of
justice. This is why the trilogy does not conclude with the acquittal of Orestes, but rather with
the efforts Athena makes to integrate the Erinyes into this budding order. On critics interpreting
the argument of Athena as an illogical and/or frivolous argument, cf. Hester (1981: 266 with n. 2).

Eumenides 161
is not concluded with the acknowledgement of Agamemnon as the only ge-

netic parent of his children and as the head of the Atreid household. Read this
way, the tragic discourse of Eumenides seems to indicate that the paradox of
Orestes desire for vengeance with regard to the emotive term , the need
for redefinition of that term (LSN: 144) risks turning into a tragic aporia.
We might advance some objections to this line of argumentation. The play
ends:
1) with the acquittal of Orestes;
2) with the Furies promising the city of Athens rightful prosperity and civil con-
cord, according to a life in respect of sophrosune (Eum. 996 1002);
3) with the Furies being acknowledged their new civic status as metoikoi, and
therefore being included in the civic life of the city of Athenes (Eum. 1011,
1018, 1028 1031);
4) with the triumphant procession of torchbearers who wish for a time of peace
and prosperity for the city of Athens (Eum. 1032 1047).
Yet, the Aeschylean trilogy is not a utopian play: it does not stage a success, rath-
er the conflict that is inherent in the enforcement of the law of dike. Indeed,
At line 1028 it is not clear if the Furies or the propompoi wear the purple clothes, typical for
the metoikoi. I follow Headlam (1906: 272 274); Bowie (1993: 27) and Bacon (2001: 54) who
argues that the Furies are wearing them. For further bibliography, cf. Bacon (2001: 54 n. 14).
Arguing for the inclusion of the Furies in the civic life of the city of Athens, I differ from Dolgert
(2012: 271, 277 278) who maintains that they are excluded and expelled from public life. Dol-
gerts analysis is based on the meaning of in Eum. 1004, p. 278: But this word, normally
translated as chamber, thalamos, has a number of different meanings, including bridal chamber,
grave, and netherworld Athena may thus be saying that she will lead the Furies to their grave,
to Hades, which implies that the Furies are being killed or at least buried alive. This is obviously
not the case: (cf. Sommerstein ad loc.) is terminus tecnicus for the adobe of chthonic
dieties. On the incorporation of the Furies into the civic life of Athens, cf. Rechenauer (2001: 88
92).
On the enforcement of the law of dike in Greek tragedy, cf. Wohl (2009: 137) on Antigone:
Tragedy, in staging the conflict of laws as an aporia, a conflict without resolution, itself be-
comes the enactment of justice But the justice it enacts is itself aporetic. It cannot be fixed or
localized in a simple moral. Surprisingly, Wohl brilliantly challenges a reading of Antigone
which reduces the discourse of the play to a simple moral, but follows this reading for the
Oresteia. Cf. Wohl (2009: 124 with n. 11): This is a depressingly familiar strategy in Greek tragedy:
otherwise irresolvable conflicts can be resolved by charting them onto gender difference, with its
unambiguous and seemingly incontrovertible hierarchy of male over female. The end of the
Oresteia is the most notorious example; there, the traumatic legal and political crises of the first
two plays are finally resolved by appeal to the manifest priority of the father over the mother. I
suspect that Wohl takes this critical path because she does not consider the characterisation of
Clytemnestra in her role as mother and the discursive struggle in the Aeschylean trilogy for the

162 Eumenides
Orestes is acquitted in dubio pro reo and the Furies, despite their appeasement,
remain Furies (cf. section four below). Yet, we should notice that Clytemnestra
does not attend the trial. Why, then, should we take the confrontation between
Apollo and the Furies as an inexhaustible judicial dispute on maternal or pater-
nal authority of birth and origins? For the following reasons:
1) Clytemnestra does not attend the trial because she has been killed already;
2) the Furies act as her legitimate voice (Eum. 131 139);
3) Orestes, Apollos, Athenas and the Erinyes rhetoric of appropriation of
words such as , , , , and in their ex-
cited dispute on the role of mother and father pinpoints substantial differen-
ces among their discourses on genealogy and authority. Given that Orestes is
acquitted in dubio pro reo, these differences make us wonder whether we
have to assign the authority of birth and origins to the father figure and/
or to the mother figure.
Let us begin with a discussion of Apollos rhetoric of appropriation of the word

. Apollo uses this word right at the beginning of the play, while he prom-
ises his help to Orestes, and asks Hermes to support the matricidal son:
Eum. 89: ,
Here, the word indicates a blood relative. Therefore, it hints at fatherhood

as a bond of consanguinity between father and children. Now, for Apollo consan-
guinity with the father suppresses consanguinity with the mother. We do not
have to search long for textual support to this view. When Apollo speaks of Cly-
temnestras maternal body, that body does not tie up mother and children in a
validation of the repudiation of her maternal power. In other words, reading Aeschylus, she
forgets the mother figure, the mother-child bond, and accordingly, Orestes acquittal in dubio pro
reo. For scholars who do not read the Oresteia as utopian play, cf. Euben (1982: 31); Porter (2005:
302 with n. 5).
On this dispute as discourse, i. e. as logos, cf. Eum. 201: , 215:
, 227: , 303: ,
, 420: , , 428:
, 583: , 590: , 592: , 642:
, 662: , 675:
, , 710: .
On Apollo first speech I shall mention the brilliant article of Pelliccia (1993: 69 103) who
discusses at great length the oracular character of Apollos language (in particular in regard to
in line 64 and in line 88). On , cf. also Vogt (1998: 42).

Eumenides 163
bond of consanguinity. Rather, it becomes for Apollo (as for the characters in
Choephoroi) an object to be destroyed:
Eum. 84:
Eum. 579 580:

Similarly, in Apollos speech in defence of Orestes (Eum. 660 666), the gods
rhetoric of appropriation of the verbs and and the word
links consanguinity to the father and not to the mother. The father as Apollo
maintains gives life (Eum. 660: ; 666:
) and Athenas case provides an incontrovertible proof for
this discourse:
Eum. 662:
Eum. 664:
Indeed, she has not been nourished by the blood of her mothers womb:
Eum. 665:
According to Apollo, the fathers genealogical authority of birth eliminates the

consanguinity with the mother. For this reason, it legitimises the definition of
blood ties as based both on the law of the father-tokeus and on the mothers po-
sition in the family as wife of the childrens father. The text supports this read-
ing. In this regard, passage 622 637 is particularly interesting. The Erinyes speak
lines 622 624 to Apollo and Orestes, during their exchange about paternal and
maternal consanguinity, immediately before the jurors cast their votes. Here, the
Erinyes use the words and to refer to the killing of Agamemnon as
the violent action of a mother against a father:
Note that Apollo, the god who seeks to destroy the mother, is also the god who has taken
control over the oracle of Delphi, breaking the maternal genealogy in the succession of its power
(Eum. 1 18). As son and prophetic interpreter of his father Zeus (Eum. 19), Apollo maintains that
his oracles have always been ordered by Zeus father (Eum. 616 618). This is why, according to
him, to defend the matricidal son is like obeying the will of Zeus (Eum. 620 621; cf. as well
Eum. 640). In sharp opposition to Apollos defence of the will/oracles of the father/his father, we
find the Erinyes definition of Apollos oracular power as a violation of justice (Eum. 162 168).
On passage 162 168, cf. Pattoni (1994: 101 ff.).
Cf. Millett (1971: 114): Apollo legislates, finding Clytemnestra, in taking the life of Aga-
memnon, husband king and father, guilty of a very grave crime indeed.

164 Eumenides
Eum. 623 624:

;
Yet, Apollo corrects the Furies, arguing that Clytemnestra is the wife of her noble
husband, the victorious king in Troy:
Eum. 625 627: ,

,

Eum. 631: ,
Eum. 636 637:
,
Orestes follows Apollos line of argumentation on the social definition of the

mother figure as the wife of her husband, and on the validation of power as ex-
clusively paternal. In exactly the same way as in Choephoroi (cf. ch. 2. II, 1 2), for
Orestes Clytemnestra is not his mother giving life, but a wife who killed the child-
rens father. Orestes rhetoric of appropriation of the words and in
Eum. 602 ( ), in the exchange with the Fur-
ies after Apollos entrance on stage, seems clear enough to me on this point: by
killing Agamemnon, Clytemnestra has killed the childrens father ( ),
i. e. her husband and the man with power (). I would push the similarities
between Orestes and Apollos discourses even further. Right at the beginning of
the play, in his first speech, Apollos rhetoric of appropriation of the word
in Eum. 66 ( ) seems to echo Orestes and
Electras rhetoric of appropriation of the word (cf. ch. 2, II. 1). The Furies
are labelled as echthroi, since their rebellion against the violation of the female
genealogical rights is for Apollo an illegitimate act against the law of the Father
and philos.
Following this line of argumentation, closure can partially be found only by
Apollos divine authority (Orestes is acquitted in dubio pro reo), because only di-
vine authority can mediate the relation between the mothers body, as the bio-
logical source of life, and the laws of social organisation through marriage.
Lines 658 659 of Apollos famous speech on paternal genealogy point in this di-
rection as well:
Here, as Apollo speaks about the mothers agency of giving life, claiming that a
mother is not the one to be called ( ) the genetic parent of the child

Eumenides 165
( ), motherhood is turned into the symbolic construct of a patriar-

chal discourse, established by all instances of the law of the Father engraved in a
maternal body: an empty vessel whose function is the reproduction of the fa-
thers children and the perpetuation of the community of the fathers (
). However, this very idea of suppressing what is a mat-
ter of fact, namely that the community of the fathers needs the mothers body in
order to reproduce itself, is nothing more than a pure speculation. In fact, when
Apollo denies the biological power of the mother, he makes use of an optative.
There could be he says a father without a mother:
Eum. 663:
Obviously, the opposite is true: there cannot be a father without a mother. Again,
we see how the plays discourse of separation and exclusion of the mothers
functions (not the woman giving life, but the wife of her husband for whom
she has borne children) inevitably implies a discourse of inclusion (woman
with a child = wife of the husband and the childrens father and mother giving
life).
In her speech in defence of Orestes, Athena is re-enacting the biological bias
of Apollo against the mothers reproductive power. Following Athena, genealog-
ical authority belongs to the father figure. Therefore, Clytemnestras maternal
role in the familys system has to be identified with that of the wife of her hus-
band and ruler of the house:
Eum. 736 740: ,

, ,
, .

In linking the pair - (Eum. 736 738:

) with the pair - (Eum. 739 740: -
/ ), the Greek in
Eum. 739 gives good reason to accept Athenas equation between mother and
wife of the husband and of the man with power. Yet, her discourse of exclusion
risks failing as well. As Loraux (1985: 64) has lucidly shown, Athena, as a virgin
Cf. Zeitlin (1978: 168), and for similar critical positions duBois (1988: 70 71); Bacon (2001:
56 n. 19). On Apollos bias and its relation to the presocratic medical tradition, cf. e. g. Blass
(1936); Peretti (1956); Rsler (1970: 77 87); Kember (1973); Hester (1981: 266 267); Kraus (1983:
201 202); Fllinger (1996: 49); Bonnard (2004: 119 144).

166 Eumenides
and warlike goddess, resembles Iphigeneia, and recalls the connection between
the young girl and the world of war. Thus, Athenas praise of fatherhood seems to
be still haunted by the memories of the fathers warlike violence and of the
mothers relationship with her daughter. Some questions arise. Is Athena entirely
on the side of the father? Does her discourse on the father figure have the power
to suppress de facto maternal genealogy?
However, if we abide by Athenas rhetoric of appropriation of the keywords
, , and , and with her representation of the mother as the
wife of the husband, further remarks seem possible. Athena praises the male in
all respects, except where marriage is concerned:
Eum. 737: ,
Line 737 has been explained in several ways. Podlecki (ad loc.) maintains that
Athena refuses marriage because she is a virgin. Sommerstein (ad loc.), following
Goldhill (LSN: 259, 280), refers to her liminal position of androgynous goddess in
regard to gender relations, and beyond them. These interpretations seem to be
corroborated by a further remark: Athena refuses marriage, since as a goddess
she seems to have immortal blood and to be bloodless . As I argued in
the chapter on Choephoroi (cf. 2. II, 1), in the human world, marriage defines
the mothers position in the social organization of the family as mother of the
fathers children, therefore symbolising the maternal blood being expropriated
of its reproductive agency, as well as that same agency being transferred from
women to men. Gods get married too, and humans, cherishing the joys of mar-
riage, reiterate a divine praxis that guarantees a just life in the community of the
fathers. Yet, as the case of Athena shows, a goddess might accept the authority of
paternal genealogy and, at the same time, refuse marriage: for a divine being
which seems to have immortal blood and to be bloodless , power relations
are not based on real blood, or on the denial of the power of mothers blood to
give life. Therefore, Athenas rejection of marriage may emphasize her liminal po-
sition precisely by outlining the fundamental difference between human and di-
On the absence of real blood in divine bodies, cf. Vernant (1989: 26): In the human body,
blood is life. But when it gushes out of a wound then blood means death. Because the gods
are alive, there is undoubtedly blood in their bodies. Yet, even when it trickles from an open
wound, this divine blood cannot tip the scales toward the side of death. A blood that flows, but
that does not mean the loss of life in short, a immortal blood, ambroton haima is it still
blood? Since the gods bleed, one must admit that their bodies have blood in them, but it must be
immediately added that this is so only on the condition that this blood is not really blood, since
death is not present in it. Letting blood that is not blood, the gods simultaneously appear to
have immortal blood and to be bloodless .

Eumenides 167
vine body (having real blood or not) and between human and divine power re-
lations (paternal genealogy with or without marriage).
Orestes appropriates the words , and exactly as his de-
fenders do. For him, the name of Clytemnestra is synonymous with mother giv-
ing life:
Eum. 463:
Yet, we do not have to wait long for Orestes repudiation of Clytemnestras ma-
ternal agency of giving life. In Eum. 606, during his exchange with the Furies
on the issue of consanguinity with the mother, he asks them if he is truly of
the same blood as his mother or not:
What Orestes does not question, as he confesses to having killed his mother, is
his own view of Clytemnestra as an unreasonable being. In Eum. 459 460 he de-
scribes his mother as a , an expression usually translated as
black-hearted, black of heart, black-souled (cf. Sommerstein, Podlecki ad
loc.), and therefore an expression that tends to associate Clytemnestra with
the Erinyes, who are repeatedly described as daughters of the mother-night
(Eum. 321 322, 745, 844, 877, 1033). However, there is more to the Greek -
and to this association of Clytemnestra with the mother-night. The ad-
jective is a composite of the terms and , and the lat-
ter, as we know, designates not only the soul or the heart but the mind as well. It
is important to bear in mind this meaning. Clytemnestras characterisation as a
black-minded mother reminds us of the image of the mother-night, and of the
implied image of a cheerful and reasonable mother in Ag. 265 (
with the pun ), which we discussed in the chapter on Agamem-
non (p. 34):
Now, when Orestes refers to his mother by using the phrase

, he seems to be re-appropriating the word and the maternal
image in Ag. 265. As for Cassandra, for the nurse and, to a certain extent, for
Electra (cf. pp. 48 49, 85 86, 122 124), for Orestes as well the word ap-
plies not to a reasonable and kind being, but to a creature whose mind is dark-
ened and misused.

168 Eumenides
Unlike Apollo, Athena and Orestes, the Furies do not frame a discourse that
instantiates the Father as the origin of birth and power, and that defines blood
ties and power relations as based on the law of the Father. Instead, they chal-
lenge such discourse on the supposed supremacy of father over mother:
Eum. 640:
As Clytemnestras rhetoric of appropriation of the words , ,

and in Agamemnon and Choephoroi indicates, also the Erinyes rhetoric
of appropriation of the words , , , , and related
terms draws attention to the role of the mother as the condition of life, to the
consanguinity between mother and child and to the importance of the maternal
blood as the element that binds together mother and child in an inviolable bond
of philia:
Eum. 230 and 261:

Eum. 271:
Eum. 304:
Eum. 514:
Eum. 605:
Eum. 607 608: , ,
;
Eum. 653:
Line 514, in the second stasimon, is revealing of Clytemnestras function as a

mother-tokeus. The Furies use the participle in sharp opposition to
their own use of the word in Eum. 513:
Clearly, according to them, the power of tiktein or giving life also belongs to the
mother. As the Furies usage of the words , , , ,
and related terms shows, their discourse on the mother-child relation seems to
elucidate the fundamental differences between being a mother and being a fa-
ther. I would like to summarise the criteria for these differences. Quoting Irigaray
(2000: 151):
whether one can conceive a living being in ones own body or not;
whether one procreates within oneself, or outside oneself;
whether one can nourish another living being from ones own body, or only
through ones own labour.

Eumenides 169
In the next section, I turn to the Erinyes incorporation into Athens city life. My
contention is that the narrative of Athenas persuasion and of the appeasement
of the Furies anger does not endorse the authoritative validity of the male model
of justice. On the contrary, it demonstrates that the justice of Athena, who is en-
tirely on the fathers side, necessitates the Erinyes dike as well. In this particular
regard, as Sourvinou-Inwood (2003: 236) has aptly observed, Eumenides invites
the reader to wonder how the Erinyes would be dealt with. Accordingly, I also
contend that questioning dike in Eumenides leads to questioning the authorisa-
tion of blood ties and power relations as based merely on the law of the Father.
4 Athenas persuasion, the Erinyes and/or Eumenides
Cos vanno le cose cos devono andare

chi c c e chi non c non c, chi stato stato e chi
stato non
Consorzio Suonatori Indipendenti
In consideration of my remarks in sections two and three of this chapter, can we

assert that Eumenides expresses the anxieties of a myth of matriarchy, and that it
promotes a patriarchal discourse whose misogyny is counteracted by the institu-
tion of the Erinyes cult? When, towards the end of the play, the Furies express
their benign auspices for the city of Athens (Eum. 956 967), their wish for vir-
gins to have husbands places the function of women into a patriarchal model
according to which the female becomes a woman only through and by marriage:
Eum. 959 960:

In this sense, the domestication of the Furies by Athena seems to privilege the
defence of paternal consanguinity and social bonds through marriage and patri-
lineal heritage. A denial of maternal blood kinship is promoted in favour of the
civic self- reproduction of the polis (mother = wife of the husband and father).
Cf. Burian and Shapiro (2003: 22 24).

Cf. Johnston (1999: 261 264). However, I differ from Johnston insofar as she does not
consider that the validation of blood ties as paternal grounds the definition of the father figure
as the origin of birth and power in the family and in society. As I hope to have shown in the
previous two chapters, it is not simply the repudiation of motherhood and maternal consan-
guinity that authorises social kinship and the power of the father figure. Rather, it is precisely
the suppression of maternal consanguinity and the related re-definition of consanguinity as

170 Eumenides
Nonetheless, do the Furies truly renounce defending the inviolability of maternal

consanguinity? To answer this question, we have to consider the dramatic situa-
tion that follows Athenas appeasement of the Furies through persuasion. After
having been propitiated by Athena, the Erinyes promise to desist from stirring
up civil dissension (Eum. 976 986). Yet, as the goddess reports, they will not ac-
tually cease to punish the faults of ancestors and to wield power, in order to fulfil
the rule of dike and therefore to pursue wrongdoers:
Eum. 910:
Eum. 934 935:

Eum. 952 955:
, ,

Moreover, as Rabinowitz (1981: 184) has noticed, in her attempt to persuade the
Furies to abandon their vengeful violence (Eum. 794: -
; 885: ), Athena only
talks about the acts they are not supposed to perpetrate, without mentioning
the fact that they will not actually reiterate those actions:
paternal that validates the position of Agamemnon as genetic father and subject of power (in the
family: genitor, husband; in society: head of the family, king and warrior). Accordingly, I also
differ from Zakin (2009: 184) who reads the conflict between Apollo and the Furies as a conflict
of maternal blood kinship over paternal social kinship, but omits that Apollos discourse on
paternal social kinship (mother = wife of the husband and father) is grounded a) in a discourse
on paternal consanguinity, i. e. in the definition of the father figure as the only genetic parent
and the sole origin of life and b) in the repudiation of maternal consanguinity (cf. pp. 163 166):
Whereas Apollo privileges married love (217) over either kindred blood (213) or the right of
nature (218), the Erinyes had allied themselves with the motherblood that drives them (230),
invoking not only kinship but also one transmitted through the maternal line. On maternal
consanguinity and maternal power in the family system, cf. Clytemnestras discourse on mo-
therhood at pp. 24 27.
Cf. Burian and Shapiro (2003: 20 21); Easterling (2008: 232 233), with further bibliogra-
phy.
I read as in M. Therefore, I take in the meaning of more
ready to weed out. Sommerstein corrects and argues that in
the meaning of to weed out does not fit the context of Athenas speech, who, in this passage, is
talking about blessings. However, it seems important to retain and to read
as to weed out: it is clear evidence that Athena is aware of the power of the Furies
to curse wrongdoers and to benefit righteous men.

Eumenides 171
Eum. 800 802:

, ,

Eum. 829 831: .
,

Eum. 887 889:

If we agree that the power of Athenas persuasion does not affect the Erinyes
concern for justice which is primarily to be conceived as the punishment of
inter-familial violence we are finally in the position to conclude that fear and
respect for the inviolability of the mother-child relation, and in fact of any
blood tie, install the guarantee of an ordered and peaceful civic life in the city
of Athens. Thus, as Harris (1973: 156) pointed out, through the Furies incorpora-
tion into the community of Athens the justice of Zeus has a mothers face en-
graved upon it. Harris remark illustrates a relevant fact: the ordered life in
the polis of Athens might depend strictly on the actions of female forces and
on acknowledging the respect that is due to the mother. How can we blindly
rely on an interpretation of Aeschylus poetry as mysogynist? What if we rather
read the Oresteia as a tragic play that emphasises the dangerous differences in-
herent to sex and gender relations? In what follows, I dwell at some length on
these issues.
It has been observed that the Oresteia, moving from Agamemnon to Eume-
nides, reaches its conclusion by settling the conflict between the sexes. The re-
lease from pain and misery is provided by Athenas power of persuasion: the
words of the goddess transform the Furies, violent creatures who curse the
city of Athens and its habitants, into agents of lasting concord and social cohe-
sion. This emphasis on change and transformation raises some questions. Not
only will the Furies continue to carry out their punitive functions, as I have al-
ready discussed; it is also uncertain whether Athenas persuasion would guaran-
Cf. similarly Saxonhouse (2009: 56): But Aeschylus does not ignore what is lost in this
process of building up the city. As the old gods protest their suppression, the powerful images of
the earlier plays in which the familial ties of birth could not so easily tossed aside remain.
Cf. Buxton (1982: 109): In Eumenides, at last, frank and open peitho brings about re-
conciliation and soothes the hurts of the past. Similarly, cf. Winnington-Ingram (1983: 168 169);
Seaford (1994: 105, 132, 386); Mitchell-Boyask (2009: 27 33). On the critics emphasis on the
Furies change and transformation, cf. also Easterling (2008: 230 233), with further bibliogra-
phy.

172 Eumenides
tee a state of permanent civil concord or not. There is a crucial issue we have to
contemplate: in Athenas persuasive language the boundaries between erotic
and rhetoric seduction are very blurred. Indeed, Athenas persuasion proceeds
through the eyes; the power of her language is associated with enchantment
and bewitchment:
Eum. 81 82:

Eum. 900:
Eum. 970 971:

To some extent, these passages seem to suggest a shift between the tricky and
dangerous human persuasion and Athenas mellifluous way of speech
(Eum. 886: ). Certainly, in Agamemnon
persuasion is a ruinous and sinister force of destruction, the daughter of Ate
(Ag. 385 386: / ). Of
course, the same cannot be said of Athenas political eloquence that does not op-
erate for the evil but for the good of the city. However, given that Athenas resto-
ration of an ordered life in the polis is achieved through a shifting persuasion, we
shall perhaps ask ourselves if her divine thaumaturgic operation against the Fur-
ies would really last forever. But there is more to say.
As has been observed, Athenas justice is enacted not only through language
(rhetorical persuasion), but also through political action (Eum. 927 928:
/ ), namely through the foundation of
the court of the Areopagus:
Eum. 483 484:

,
Eum. 704 706: ,
, ,

Considering that the court of the Areopagus is established once and for all, we
are in the position to say that institutional continuity is part of the solution of
the struggle in the Atreid family and in the polis of Athens. Yet, the Areopagus
Cf. Goldhill (LSN: 213, 280); Pucci (1992: 521 522); Rizzini (1999: 90 95 with n. 33); Re-
chenauer (2001: 67, 84 86); Markovits (2009: 438). Relying on these scholars, I differ from
Kambitsis (1973) who reads the expression merely as a proof that Athenas
power of persuasion has succefully transformed the Furies from agents of evil into agents of
marriage and therefore into agents of social cohesion.

Eumenides 173
cannot enforce the rule of justice: with Orestes acquittal in dubio pro reo
(Eum. 741: , 753: , 795:
), it seems rather to stand for a fracture at the very origin of the
democratic system, i. e. for a division marked by rhetorical dissension. As Loraux
(1990b: 91) poignantly remarks, Orestes acquittal in dubio pro reo reveals a sit-
uation extrme o le compte des votes est le mme de deux cts, ce qui signifie
pur danger, parce que le groupe des votants sest divis en deux, sans reste.
Again, how does the realisation of Athenas justice guarantee a state of perma-
nent civil concord, through the power of words and political action, as an-
nounced by the goddess to her citizens?
Eum. 927 928:

Whereas Athenas justice does not seem to establish a correspondence between

words and actions, the justice of the Erinyes is instead enacted by language, and
their words are action and realisation and, as such, true. In the speech Athena
delivers to the Furies, in order to smooth their anger, lines 829 830 are consis-
tent with this representation of the Furies justice:
Cf. also Loraux (1979: 3): Aux origines, la dmocratie est rupture. In this reading, the jurors
are 10 or 12; that means that 5 (or 6) vote for and 5 (or 6) vote against Orestes, and Athena adds
her vote in favour of Orestes. Whether Athena determines with her vote the equality of the votes
or not is a much discussed topic in the scholarship. On the so called calculus Minervae, cf. e. g.
Wilamowitz-Moellendorff (1914: 183 185); Friedman and Gassel (1951: 431 432); Costa (1962:
26); Thomson (1966: 55 56); Gagarin (1975); Vellacott (1977: 120); Hester (1981); Winnington-
Ingram (1983: 124 128 n. 110); Kraus (1983: 203 206); Conacher (1987: 164 166); Meier (1988:
129); Podlecki (1989: 211 213); Loraux (1990b: 103 106); Seaford (1995); Flashar (1997: 100, 105);
Kppel (1998: 266 268 with n. 134 136); Vogt (1998: 43 44); Manuwald (2000: 80 81); Re-
chenauer (2001: 63 64); Porter (2005: 305 306 with n. 19); Saxonhouse (2009: 53 54); Leo
(2010: 53); Lawrence (2013: 97). On Orestes acquittal in dubio pro reo and the danger of civic
discord inherent in it, cf. also Porter (2005: 306 307) who notes that only gods, not humans, are
persuaded by Athena: In terms of who controls the conversation and who is persuaded, in
this play gods both do the controlling and, in the end, are the ones persuaded. It is worth
commenting that the acquittal of Orestes in dubio pro reo brings back Orestes hesitation to kill
his mother on the stage. As Orestes does not know what he has to do (shall he kill his mother or
not? Cho. 899), so the jurors are divided in their judgement pro or contra Orestes, i. e. pro or
contra the legitimacy of matricide as an act of dike. The division of the jurors poses Orestes
question once more: shall I kill the mother or not?

174 Eumenides
Here, according to Athena, precisely the Furies words give rise to the violence of
relentless discord in the community of Athens. Hence, we might come to a two-
fold conclusion:
1) Athenas realisation of democratic dike, i. e. her (Eum. 243), de-
spite her discourse on institutional continuity, seems to be temporary, pre-
cisely because her order of justice is unable to set the destructive power of
the Furies justice aside. In fact, the Furies can obey to Athena (
) they do not have to;
2) Athenas realisation of justice is temporary, insofar as it cannot suppress the
power of the Furies and the authority of maternal genealogy as a key-factor
for an ordered life in the community of Athens.
A discussion of the similarities between the assertions of the Furies in the second
stasimon (Eum. 526 530) and the assertion of Athena in her last speech before
the casting of the votes (Eum. 696 697) might reinforce these conclusions. The
Furies, who defend the doctrine of the virtuous means (Eum. 529:
), refuse anarchy and despotism (Eum. 526 529:
/ / ), as a way for humans to live to-
gether. Quite the same, as Kramer has aptly pointed out (1960: 33 34), Athena
suggests that the people of the city of Athens shall live in a system that is neither
anarchic nor despotic:
Eum. 696 697:

Mirroring the model of justice envisioned by Athena, the Erinyes become the
ministers of her dike. Above all that, they truly guarantee her order of justice.
As Athena states, a necessary condition of living together in justice, free from an-
archy and despotism, is the reverence for what arouses fear:
On the Erinyes words as actions and realisation, cf. Neustadt (1929: 248); Detienne (1967:
58 60). Athena is aware that the Erinyes are goddesses of realisation. Indeed, consider her
attempt to question it in Eum. 430: .
Similarly, cf. Kramer (1960: 34 35): In Aeschylean myth the major powers at work in the
feudal realm of retribution Zeus, the Furies and the Fates, Persuasion, Dike, Nemesis are at
work also to uphold Athenas altar of right.
Similarly, cf. Cohen (1986: 139): Thus, as Athena makes all too clear, fear (681 710) and
force underline the transformation of the social order. As Cohen, cf. Manuwald (2000: 81 with n.
24 and n. 25). Assuming that lines 698 699 refer to the Furies, I differ from Costa (1962: 29) who
glosses: Moreover, the nature of the authority to be respected and feared has altered and

Eumenides 175
Eum. 698 699:

;
Again, we find the working of Athenas justice to be strictly constrained by the

Furies punitive functions, along with the fear and the dangers inherent to
them. Athenas justice would not even exist without the fear of the Erinyes
and their authority. This is the reason why they have not been defeated, as Athe-
na deliberately points out while trying to appease the Furies:
Eum. 795:
Taking for granted that the Furies have not been either defeated, or transformed
by Athenas persuasion or by her enactment of justice, how can we interpret their
contention that Athena has deceived them?
Eum. 845 846 = 879 880:

The Furies speaks this passage to Athena, when the goddess, after the votes have
been counted, tries to soothe their anger. The Furies use of the word
brings us back to the situation in Agamemnon and Choephoroi where deception
is embedded again and again in a discourse on the reproductive agency of moth-
er and father (cf. ch. 1, I. 4; 2, IV. 5). The Furies lament that they have been de-
ceived, as they realize they must lose their ancient privileges as a direct conse-
quence of Athenas attempt to soothe their wrath through language:
Athena Eum. 836:

Furies Eum. 845 846:

Given that the Furies ancient privileges consist of the defence of parental blood,
and, even more importantly, of the defence of the blood tie between mother and
child, Athenas persuasive discourse or logos can be easily understood as a repu-
diation of the inviolability of the maternal blood and of its power to give life.
Read this way, the Furies contention that they have been deceived by Athenas
logos indicates how difficult it is to use language for constructing a concept of
motherhood based on female biological powerlessness. Indeed, Athenas persua-
sion is incapable of depriving the Furies of their punitive functions.
become more rational: it is the Areopagus as a legitimate power to punish wickedness which is
, and not the Erinyes as inflictors of supernatural punishments.

176 Eumenides
Saying that the Furies do not change, by the time they are incorporated in
the civic life of Athens, is like saying that they remain, as in Agamemnon, min-
isters of Zeus law of drasanta pathein or who does, suffers. Therefore, we
should consider if, moving from Agamemnon to Eumenides, it is plausible to
track an evolution in the order of justice established by Zeus. I turn to this ques-
tion in the next section.
5 Zeus, his Erinyes and the Trojan War
As has often been observed, Zeus justice works in Agamemnon through the pu-
nitive actions of the Furies:
Ag. 56 59:

Ag. 461 470:
-

, -
-

-

Ag. 748 749: ,

As Winnington-Ingram (1983: 158 161) and Wians (2009: 190) have noticed, the
enactment of Zeus justice through the actions of the Erinyes is mentioned in
Agamemnon in close relation to the Trojan War. In Ag. 56 59 and 748 749,
the Erinyes are sent against Troy; in Ag. 463 470, they punish the bloodshed
in Troy. In regard to the representation of the Trojan War in Agamemnon, and
to its relation to the justice of Zeus, Zeus reason for allowing Agamemnon ulti-
mately to die, having originally sent him to Troy as an Erinys (Ag. 40 59) in
order to fulfil divine justice, has been debated at length. In response to this ques-
tion, scholars have called attention to the ambivalent nature of Zeus justice.
Cf. e. g. Lloyd-Jones (1956: 65 67); D-P (1957, xi-xvi); Grube (1970). For a detailed criticism
of the ambivalent nature of the justice of Zeus, cf. Golden (1961).

Eumenides 177
How do we take a stance on these critiques? Passage 461 470 that I quoted be-
fore is revealing on this point. The chorus claims that the gods do not fail to turn
their punishing eyes against those who have killed too many. Further, it says that
the Erinyes will put to death those who have been fortunate even without justice,
and finally that all this descends from the order of Zeus justice. Seen this way,
Zeus is able on the one side to send the Atreid to Troy, and on the other to let him
die, all without appearing responsible for an inconsistent understanding of dike:
Agamemnon dies, since as a human being he fell for hybris, turning the respon-
sibility for the destruction and the many dead upon himself. We could perhaps
maintain that Agamemnons hybristic behaviour and, accordingly, the violence
of the war against Troy result from the justice of Zeus as well. However, why
would Zeus want human beings to transgress the laws of dike? And more impor-
tantly, what textual evidence do we have in support of this hypothesis? Lines
355 369 might be helpful. Here, the chorus reports that Zeus has caused total
ruin and subjugation for Troys inhabitants, without any regard of their status
and their age:
Ag. 355 361:

,

Further, the chorus claims that the origin of the violence can be traced back to
the power of Zeus stroke:
Ag. 367 369: ,

Relying on this passage, critics have often observed that the violent character of
Zeus justice applies as indiscriminately to wrongdoers as to their victims. Yet,
one can discern some shifts in this representation of Zeus justice. In the follow-
ing lines, the chorus abandons this rhetoric of explanation very quickly, realizing
that the wrongs committed in Troy were not the work of divine justice, but a con-
sequence of Agamemnons violent action (cf. p. 59, n. 102):
Cf. Kitto (1956: 6 8); Lawrence (1976: 103); Cohen (1986: 133). On the violence of the justice
of Zeus, cf. also Willink (2004: 47 49); Martina (2007).

178 Eumenides
Ag. 369 372:

Moreover, Calchas words in the parodos seem to suggest as well that Zeus does
not promote, but rather punishes the violence of the Trojan War. The prophet an-
nounces the coming victory of the Greeks in Troy (Ag. 126: -
), delineating it as a result of the action of Moira (Ag. 130:
), and yet, at the same time, warning the Greek army
of future punitive actions of the gods:
Ag. 131 134: -

We are finally in a position, then, to stress two main points in the representation
of the Trojan War in relation to the justice of Zeus:
the chorus hints at the loss of many lives during the war should be read as a
critique of the military excesses of the Greek expedition. It does not suggest
that the old Argives conceive the justice of Zeus as an indiscriminate com-
pulsion;
following the chorus discourse, Agamemnons victory is a glorious event,
but, according to the order of dike established by Zeus, also an ambivalent
act of gigantism that sooner or later will be punished by the Erinyes. As
Lloyd-Jones has lucidely observed (1971: 90): In Aeschylus Zeus never pun-
ishes the guiltless.
Now, it seems problematic to assume that the Oresteias discourse on Zeus con-
cept of justice moves from an older understanding of dike as punitive justice or
brute force of vengeance to the new characterisation as civic justice achieved by
political persuasion. Thus, in Agamemnon and in Eumenides the Erinyes are
represented as enforcers of Zeus justice, that is to say as agents responsible
for the violent punishment of the blood being shed. Undoubtedly, peitho in Eu-
menides represents the power of words that should guarantee, under the super-
vision of Zeus Agoraios, the continuity of the judicial institutions of the linguistic
community of Athens:
For scholars holding to the idea of a progressive transformation of Zeus justice, cf. Porter
(2005: 301 n. 1).

Eumenides 179
Eum. 973 975: ,

Yet, the question remains: is this shift in the organisation of the system of justice
meant to be definitive and permanent? The language of Aeschylus seems to warn
us not to jump to hasty conclusions. Indeed, the plain similarities between the
Furies rhetoric of appropriation of words such as , and and the
use of the same expressions by the chorus of Agamemnon appear to indicate
that the level of stability of an order of justice ensured by a judicial apparatus
(the Areopagus) and its laws (the prohibition of shedding blood in stasis:
Eum. 858 863) can be easily subverted by the large margins of instability that
come along with a persuasive legal discussion (Athena is able to persuade the
Furies, but they still remain Furies). This is the reason why civic justice might
slide into a mechanism of justice by which the violence of wrongdoers is punish-
ed by further violence. The chance that the Furies would comply with the laws of
Athens informs the very impossibility to reach a perpetual understanding by
means of laws and political persuasion: despite and because of Athenas persua-
sion (and of the power of Zeus Agoraios), the Furies are able to act as Furies. In
fact, violence in Eumenides does not function only as a disruptive force, com-
pletely outside the civic system, but also as a constructive element, even in
the innermost aspects of the life in a community: in the discourse of the play,
violence has the peculiarity of rejecting civic dialogue while, at the same time,
empowering the law, in order to safeguard peace through communication and
rhetorical persuasion. So, in representing violence as in and outside the linguis-
tic life of the community, the plays discourse outlines the limits of an approach
to violence according to categories of exclusion and separation (civic order = no
violence). Now, let us turn to the language of the play again.
In Agamemnon, when the chorus uses adjectives and verbs related to the
word , most of the time it is referring to the violence of Zeus justice as com-
pulsion and punishment of evil:
Ag. 130:
Ag. 182:
Ag. 385:
With the hint to Zeus in Ag. 367: .

180 Eumenides
The concept of Zeus justice as compulsion is stressed clearly. The gods make
their move against those who have been impious, namely those who transgress
the laws of dike out of an excess of wealth:
Ag. 381 384:

These lines look forward to the second stasimon of Eumenides:

Eum. 538 544: ,
,
-
.

Here, the Furies use the word in the same way the old men of Argos do, as
underlined by the repetition both of the expression , and of the
image of injustice as a violent kick against dike itself. There are further similar-
ities between these two passages. According to the Furies use of the word ,
justice always reaches its fulfilment (Eum. 544: ). According to
the Argive elders and their rhetoric of appropriation of the verb , the jus-
tice of Zeus is realisation (Ag. 369: ). Now, this infallibility of
the Furies and Zeus justice seems to rely on its own immanence: as the chorus
says in Agamemnon, and the Furies later repeat by using the same verb (),
Zeus and the Furies justice never vanishes (Ag. 1563;
; Eum. 381: ).
There is more to say. As Di Benedetto has noticed (1999, ad loc.), passage
1008 1017 in Agamemnon and passage 550 565 in Eumenides present a striking
parallelism as well. According to the chorus in Agamemnon, the justice of Zeus
hits those who own a huge fortune. Following the Furies, justice strikes a fortune
that has been amassed illicitly. As far as I am concerned, I find it important to
ask how we are supposed to place the Furies criticism of an exorbitant wealth,
first with Orestes assumption of the inherited paternal power in Eum. 455 458,
754 758 and second with Athenas praise of military success in Eum. 397 401. I
turn to this question in the next section.
Cf. Ag. 781: ; 1485 1487: , / /

; Eum. 312 320:
; 382: ; 952953: .

Eumenides 181
6 The son, the father and the war against Troy
With his discharge from the accusations of matricide, Orestes is consequently

recognized as head of the Atreid family and member of the city of Argos:
Eum. 754 758: , ,

.
,

These lines deserve particular attention. Orestes retrieval of his own role of head
of the Atreid household is characterized in terms of a regained control over the
fathers patrimony. The expression seems to imply a con-
nection to the criticism of the Trojan War as expressed in Agamemnon. As we
have seen in chapter 1, III. 1, when the chorus of Agamemnon uses words related
to the semantic field of wealth (Ag. 382: , 471: , 1008: -
, 1012: ), it is giving voice to its own doubts about a fortune that
Agamemnon has amassed without compliance with the divine laws. Orestes
rhetoric of appropriation of the word , instead, is clearly constructing a
positive discourse on Agamemnons heroism, and his acquisition of an enor-
mous fortune.
The rehabilitation of Agamemnons heroic career, as a crucial step of a jour-
ney at the end of which the matricidal son will be able to redeem his own iden-
tity in the Atreid family and in the community of Argos, also seems to be the cen-
tral motif of line 455 458. In these lines, Orestes ascribes genealogical authority
of birth to his father Agamemnon, and puts paternal genealogy in close relation
to paternal military merits and success:
Eum. 455 458: , ,

, ,

Here, what seems quite interesting to me is that the acknowledgement of Aga-

memnons genealogical power of birth and the praise of his warlike prestige
are immediately followed by a negative representation of Clytemnestras mind:
Eum. 459 460:


182 Eumenides
According to Orestes discourse, the acknowledgement of paternal authority goes

along with a criticism of the maternal mind. From lines 631 632 we draw similar
conclusions. Apollos words on Agamemnons warlike venture are cautious. The
god challenges the significance of Agamemnons military value, as he says that
the Atreid has accomplished his military duties for the most part successfully:
Eum. 631 632: ,

Still, as for Orestes, for Apollo too Agamemnons toils are in sharp opposition to
Clytemnestras perverse mind. As a murderous woman who ought to kill the hero
of the Trojan War, Clytemnestra would never welcome Agamemnon with sensi-
ble and kindly words (Eum. 632: ). This pervasive irony in
Apollos use of the word allows us to remark that in Eumenides, as in
Choephoroi (cf. pp. 122 124), the construction of Agamemnon as father under-
mines the perception of Clytemnestra as a reasonable being.
As in the case of Orestes, also in the case of Athena the words she uses in
relation to the sphere of wealth lead to a positive discourse on Agamemnons ac-
cumulation of a fortune during the war. Athena uses the word in the
context of a speech which is meant to extol the value of the war against Troy.
She heard says the goddess a cry of help from the Scamander, as she was tak-
ing possession of the land that the Greeks gave to her as a part of the conquered
goods:
Eum. 397 401:

, ,
,
,

Taking for granted that Orestes, Athena and Apollo appropriate the narrative of
the Trojan War as an argumentative strategy in favour of the justice of matricide,
it stands to reason that the people who did not vote for Orestes do not condone
the rehabilitation of Agamemnons warlike authority, which is causally linked to
matricide. This is like saying that a part of the jurors, with the silence of their
vote, refuses the patrilineal extremism of Athenas and Apollos logos, destabiliz-
ing the patriarchal model of genealogy and power promoted by them. By vot-
I am borrowing the expression patrilinear extremism from Loraux (1990: 109): extrmisme
patrilinaire. On the silence of the jurors and their civic dissent, cf. also the thoughtful remarks
of Gurd (2004: 106).

Eumenides 183
ing against the acquittal of Orestes, they seem in fact to turn their voting right
into an act of resistance against the power of Athenas juridical persuasion.
This situation of division among the jury shows that, against Athenas assertion
in Eum. 675 ( , ), words and their discourses do
not have the power to (re)shape the act of naming, and consequently power re-
lations between people (the father isto mother; the mother isto father, etc.): it
is always possible to vote/act against what is said to be just. In this sense, the
votes against Orestes underline once again the difficulty of changing things in
a enduring way, and of ensuring permanent freedom by means of language
(i. e., political persuasion). Put simply, the votes of the jury might deliver some
concrete evidence of a potentially dangerous disagreement within the juridical
system of the (divine) law of the Father. After all, it is safe to maintain that
the jurors disagreement with the order fixed by the justice of Athena replicates
a corresponding disagreement on the part of the Furies. Therefore, we might de-
tect the continuity in the Agamemnons and Eumenides discourse on power and
violence. In Agamemnon, we have seen that:
according to the chorus and Clytemnestras discourses, the murder of Aga-
memnon is represented as a retaliation for the countless deaths in Troy, and
for the accumulation of an exorbitant wealth during the war (cf. ch. 1,
III. 1 2);
according to the chorus, the murder of Agamemnon represents a problematic
deed (cf. ch. 1, III. 5);
in Eumenides we have seen:

the chorus criticism of an excessive wealth, the problematisation of Orestes
acquittal, and therefore of the heroic career of Agamemnon, and also
Orestes retrieval of the kings legitimate power;
the acquittal of Orestes, in order to validate the heroic career of Agamem-
non, and the consent to Orestes regaining the legitimate power of Agamem-
non for himself (discourse of Apollo and Athena followed by half of the ju-
rors).
With the problematization of Orestes acquittal, Eumenides, like Agamemnon and

Choephoroi, dramatizes the failure to constitute the maternal subject of Clytem-
nestra through its experience of biological and political powerlessness (in the
family: wife of the husband and of the genetic father; in society: usurper of Aga-
memnons male power as king and warrior). In fact, in the trilogy, the characters
attempt to validate a discourse on exclusion and separation based on Clytemnes-
tras female role as mother and wife wretchedly collapses. A question arises:
Who is Orestes?. Surely, he is the legitimate son and heir of his father Agamem-

184 Eumenides
non, who has killed his mother to avenge his fathers murder; surely, he is not
only the son of Agamemnon, the genetic father and genitor, killed by Clytemnes-
tra, his wife and mother non-mother. Is Orestes also the son of his mother, then?
Because of such uncertainties over his origins (only son of his father? Son of his
mother? Son of mother and father?), Orestes remains in Eumenides, as in Aga-
memnon, an , i. e. a nomadic subject:
Ag. 1282:
It is through this depiction of Orestes as a nomadic subject, and through its abil-
ity to destabilize a discourse on blood ties and power relations as maternal and/
or paternal that Eumenides and the story of Orestes invite us to ne jamais cder
sur ce point, tenir constamment en haleine un questionnement sur lorigine, les
fondements et les limites de notre appareil conceptuel, thorique ou normatif
autour de la justice.
A last question, in conclusion: who gets off in the trilogy? Nobody, I would
say. By taking into account the ephemeral nature of Athenas justice, the depic-
tion of Orestes as a nomadic subject (from Agamemnon to Eumenides), as well as
the display of Zeus justice through the punitive actions of the Erinyes, and final-
ly the permanent problematization of a discourse on the father figure as condi-
tion of life and power, in the end we are left with the disturbing conjecture that
despite Orestes acquittal there might be no way out from violence.
7 Conclusions
My discussion in sections one to six has lead to the following conclusions:

1. in order to see the Furies, one has to know them; and for humans, the only
way to know them is to become a murderer;
2. violence, in the discourse of Eumenides, is something more than a destruc-
tive power:
I take the expression nomadic subject from Braidottis book title (1994). On an extended
analysis of this concept as referring to the post-modern subject as a subject without a linguistic,
national, cultural fixed identity, cf. esp. ch. 1.
Cf. Derrida (1994: 45). Cf. also Verrall (1907: 11): If we are thoroughly convinced that,
whatever principles or forms of justice we may adopt, we must allow, as men, for the possibility
of a case exactly balanced and therefore insoluble, then we are ready for Aeschylean deve-
lopment. Compared with this, what we think of Apollo, or even of Orestes, is matter, for the
moment, of no moment at all.

Eumenides 185
according to their own rhetoric of appropriation of the verb ,

the Furies teach wisdom to human beings by making them experience
pain and suffering as a consequence of the use of violence;
violence is both within (=condition of) and outside (=condition against)
the system of justice of the community of Athens: Athenas justice is ach-
ieved through political persuasion and, as such, establishes the Furies
agreement or disagreement from within the context of the laws of Athens
and, accordingly, it enacts their action as Furies or as Eumenides;
3. Eumenides functions as an open play: despite and because of Athenas jus-
tice, the Furies do not cease to be Furies and to defend maternal genealogy;
4. a chronological reading of the trilogy seems problematic:
as in the Agamemnon, in the Eumenides as well the Furies are agents of
Zeus justice, and as such they punish bloodshed;
the Furies criticism of excessive wealth picks up the criticism of Aga-
memnons power expressed by the chorus in Agamemnon; despite Athe-
nas, Apollos and Orestes rehabilitation of the kings heroic career, his
paternal power is not undisputed;
5. according to the characters rhetoric of appropriation of keywords such as
, , , and , the authority of birth belongs
to the father figure (Apollos, Athenas, Orestes discourse) or to the mother
figure (Furies discourse). However, against the background of Orestes ac-
quittal in dubio pro reo, Eumenides destabilizes its own discourse on
blood ties and power relations, leaving the reader, like Choephoroi has
done before, with the disturbing question Who is Orestes?, and thereby pro-
voking a mise en abme of the notion of dike in relation to the violence
against the mother;
6. despite Apollos and Athenas positions on the role of the mother as wife of
her husband, democratic justice in Eumenides is not isomorphic with exog-
amous marriage, and with a process of normalisation of the reproductive
agency of maternal blood through the definition of the mother as wife of
her husband. Indeed, with the acquittal of Orestes in dubio pro reo, the
play problematizes the definition of the father figure as the origin of birth
and power according to the law of marriage (genitor, husband, head of the
family, king, warrior). Therefore, democratic justice is established in the nor-
malisation of the violence perpetrated against the mother, and against her
power to give life (acquittal from matricide) only insofar as it puts it into
question.

General conclusions
My stance is straightforward. I argue that each and every endeavour to repudiate
the biological motherhood of Clytemnestra i. e. the blood connection with her
children in order to justify matricide inevitably fails in the trilogy. In each of
the three plays, we notice the characters and the chorus attempt to deny the sta-
tus of Clytemnestra as a mother, by superimposing on her the portrayal of an
adulterous wife, usurper of Agamemnons male power, and therefore the
image of a mother non-mother, a female whose mind is darkened. Nevertheless,
Clytemnestras maternal function of giving and nurturing life can never be sup-
pressed; consequently, matricide is necessarily a problematic act.
With these observations in mind, I conclude that the Aschylean discourse on
motherhood and wifehood does not function by exclusion and separation (you
are a bad wife and a female tyrant, therefore you are not a mother); rather, it
functions by inclusion (you may be a bad wife and a female tyrant, but you
are a mother all the same).
Because of this difficulty in defining Clytemnestra throughout the whole tril-
ogy, and therefore in justifying matricide, the very notion of dike is destabilised
in relation to the paternal authority of Agamemnon; a situation obliging us to
ask ourselves whether kinship is actually maternal and/or paternal. In this
sense, the Aeschylean work does not just settle for a mere condemnation of
the female character of Clytemnestra, based on her words and actions. It rather
commits to the complicated task of dealing with her female authority as mother,
wife and queen to the reader. Hence, it is the story of Orestes that teaches us that
punishing a female act of violence against the law of the Father, and acquitting
the legitimate son who has taken revenge is a performance of dike. From this per-
spective, Clytemnestra is a bad mother and the adulterous wife and murderess of
Agamemnon. Yet, we learn something else as well from the narrative of the play:
that no justification of violence can ever be unconditional, on the part of both
the reader and the characters of the play. Therefore, we might say that the
story of Orestes informs us that:
the maternal criticism of the fathers warlike and inter-familial violence on
the part of Clytemnestra and the Furies, as well as their claim to the inviol-
ability of the mothers body and of the blood connection between mother
and child, are both necessary conditions in order to have peace and justice
in the context of family and society;
maternal sophronein establishes (democratic) justice.
To put it simply, violence against women in the poetry of Aeschylus is un/justi-

fiable.

General conclusions 187
Having read the Oresteia as a play that promotes an inexhaustible discourse

of inclusion, it is my contention that it displays a conception of the Self in terms
of a constant and inescapable attention for and respect of the Other and of the
differences related to it. An Other whom it is our responsibility to appropriate
while reading Aeschylus.

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Index of Names and Subjects
adulterous wife 1, 4 f., 18, 21, 23, 28 f., 31, genetic (parent) 1, 9, 19, 27, 47, 53, 89,
36 38, 40 f., 43 46, 49, 71 f., 186 100 101, 109, 120, 125, 137, 140, 147, 161,
adultery 2, 18 f., 23, 28, 36, 51, 54 170, 183 184
Aegisthus 2, 5, 14, 18 20, 23, 26 28, Foley 1, 4, 9, 11, 13 f., 19, 26, 34, 36, 41, 47,
30 f., 35 f., 38 f., 41, 43, 45, 48, 51 54, 52, 54, 58, 60, 63, 67
70 Fraenkel 2, 10, 16 f., 19, 24, 27, 30, 32 f., 37,
Alastor 2 f., 26 33, 35 39, 42, 49 f., 53, 66
anagnorisis 26, 56
Apollo 1, 4 9, 11 f., 14, 16 20, 22, 24, 27 Garvie 3, 7, 15, 19, 23, 27, 30, 32, 37, 45,
29, 36 40, 47 49, 59 f., 64, 70 52 f., 58
Argos (dog) 53 genetrix 19
Athena 1, 4, 8 10, 13 17, 19 f., 22 29, 31, genitor 1, 8, 10, 13, 17, 24, 26, 38 f., 44
33, 35 40, 64, 70 Goldhill 1 7, 11, 13 16, 18 20, 22, 25 f.,
34, 37 40, 43, 46 f., 56, 58 f., 61 64
blood 1 3, 5 8, 10 14, 16 26, 28 f., 32 LSN 1, 5, 7, 11 13, 15, 19 f., 22, 24 27,
35, 38 f., 41 f., 44 46, 48 55, 57, 60, 33 f., 37 40, 46 f., 49, 56, 62 64
65 67, 71, 186
body 4 11, 13 f., 16, 18 22, 56, 60, 63 Hall 5, 9
65, 186 homosporos 22
Cassandra 1 f., 4 f., 9, 16, 18, 21, 24, 28, Italie 5 f., 8, 10 f., 23, 38 40
30 f., 33 46, 60
consanguinity 7, 14, 16 18, 21 24, 28 f., Lebeck 7, 12, 27, 33 f., 39 f., 42, 48, 50, 54,
35, 37 f., 40, 45 f., 49 56, 66
Loraux 2, 5, 7 10, 12 15, 19 f., 22, 27, 33,
de Beauvoir 1 35, 37, 44, 58, 60, 63
dike 1, 5, 10, 14 f., 18, 23 f., 26 28, 31 f.,
34, 37, 39, 46, 49 51, 54, 64 f., 69, 186 marriage 6 10, 14 f., 17 21, 23, 26, 28,
Dindorf 86 f. 35 f., 39 41
dog 15 17, 37, 39, 44 f., 63 McClure 1, 4, 27, 43, 53 f., 56, 58, 60 f., 63,
dolos 19 f., 27 29, 35, 61, 64 66, 71
dream 1, 12, 28, 33, 50 52, 54, 56 65 milk 11 f., 17, 33, 50 55, 57, 65
mother 1 65, 69, 71, 186
echthros 1, 7, 9, 13, 18, 21 23, 25 f., 31, genetic (parent) 44, 120, 164
37 39, 42, 45 giving life (mother-tokeus) 2 4, 8, 10,
Erinys/Erinyes 34 35, 40 f., 60, 79, 88, 97, 12 14, 17 23, 37 f., 40, 44
100, 108, 133, 138, 143 f., 170 f. mother-echthros 1 f., 5, 18, 21, 37 f., 43,
49, 65
Father 1 f., 6, 8, 18 f., 22 f., 26, 29, 37, 45, mother-philos 1, 29, 34, 37, 39, 44
49, 54, 56, 59, 186 non-mother 3 f., 18, 21, 23 f., 32, 36 38,
father-tokeus 17 19, 23, 26, 50 46, 59, 71, 186
father-tropheus 9 11, 14, 16 f., 26, 39 nurturing life (mother-tropheus) 1 f., 4,
8 f., 26, 40, 49, 54, 186

Index of Names and Subjects 207
Penelope 5 f., 8, 24, 42, 59 trephein 1 5, 8 f., 11, 13, 17, 53, 57, 65
philia 2, 5, 7, 14 f., 17 19, 21 f., 28, 33, 35, Trojan War 7, 9, 12 14, 16 f., 30 32, 35 f.,
38, 41 f., 46, 49, 54 f. 46 51, 53 f., 56 62, 64 f., 67 70, 72
philos, philoi 6 f., 13 15, 18 f., 22 f., 25, 28, Tucker 32, 52 f.
35, 38 f., 43 46
ponos 11 13, 16 f., 20 Vernant 4, 6 f., 18, 20
Pylades 26, 31 f., 48 Verrall 32 f., 38, 52, 64
serpent 6, 50 53, 56 65 Winnington-Ingram 1, 3 f., 8 12, 15, 19, 21,

silence 5, 11 13, 16, 20, 31, 36 f., 41, 64 23, 25, 27 30, 33, 36, 45, 47 f., 50, 54,
Sommerstein 4 6, 10 12, 15, 19 21, 24, 57, 63
32, 34, 48, 50 Wohl 1, 7, 12, 15, 34, 41
sophronein 2, 6 f., 10, 12, 21, 23, 41, 71 f.,
186 Zeitlin 1 f., 7, 11 f., 14, 18 f., 21, 35, 37, 42 f.,
Strophius 23, 36 45 47, 50, 56, 58, 60
Zeus 7, 10 f., 15, 17, 25, 28, 30 35, 38 f.,
Telemachus 16, 36 45, 48 f., 51, 56, 70
tiktein 1, 3 f., 13, 22, 29, 53, 57, 65

Index Locorum
Aeschylus Ag. 215 15

Ag. 215 217 30
Ag. 1 112 Ag. 215 225 30
Ag. 2 3 53 Ag. 220 223 97
Ag. 11 68 Ag. 221 48
Ag. 18 19 53 Ag. 223 36
Ag. 26 27 49 Ag. 224 227 16
Ag. 36 21 Ag. 224 228 16
Ag. 40 59 176 Ag. 225 226 59
Ag. 40 62 57 Ag. 227 16; 51
Ag. 41 59 Ag. 228 21
Ag. 55 ff. 148 Ag. 229 15
Ag. 56 59 176 Ag. 230 60
Ag. 58 59 157 Ag. 231 16; 51
Ag. 59 60 Ag. 231 234 29; 51
Ag. 62 59 Ag. 232 20; 22; 51
Ag. 67 68 157 Ag. 237 21
Ag. 68 157 Ag. 238 15; 20
Ag. 72 82 68 Ag. 239 15; 51
Ag. 84 55; 67 Ag. 240 241 15
Ag. 104 159 154 Ag. 242 22
Ag. 111 112 60 Ag. 244 16
Ag. 114 54 Ag. 245 15 16
Ag. 119 54 Ag. 247 20 21
Ag. 122 130 21 Ag. 258 260 49; 67 68
Ag. 126 139; 178 Ag. 205 227 15
Ag. 130 178 179 Ag. 206 208 16
Ag. 131 134 178 Ag. 206 225 30
Ag. 135 54 Ag. 208 20; 25
Ag. 140 34 Ag. 263 34
Ag. 141 142 136 Ag. 265 10; 33 34; 85; 167
Ag. 150 155 40; 41 Ag. 268 70
Ag. 151 40 Ag. 274 275 72
Ag. 154 155 97 Ag. 276 70
Ag. 155 109; 159 Ag. 277 68; 72
Ag. 176 178 153 Ag. 279 34
Ag. 176 181 158 Ag. 280 316 35
Ag. 182 179 Ag. 312 68
Ag. 199 16 Ag. 316 10; 13
Ag. 209 210 20; 51 Ag. 320 350 60
Ag. 210 211 51 Ag. 338 344 61
Ag. 211 5 Ag. 346 60
Ag. 211 213 16 Ag. 348 68; 80 81
Ag. 214 217 28 Ag. 350 68

Index Locorum 209
Ag. 351 34; 63; 68 70 Ag. 534 535 77

Ag. 352 353 72 Ag. 543 73
Ag. 355 369 57; 177 Ag. 546 73
Ag. 367 179 Ag. 547 73
Ag. 369 372 178; 180 Ag. 548 73
Ag. 369 384 70 Ag. 548 550 73
Ag. 381 384 57; 180 Ag. 551 73
Ag. 381 386 59 Ag. 577 579 71
Ag. 382 181 Ag. 581 582 57; 76
Ag. 385 179 Ag. 582 73
Ag. 385 386 172 Ag. 583 71
Ag. 402 59 Ag. 583 584 74
Ag. 427 431 58 59 Ag. 587 589 71
Ag. 433 436 58 Ag. 590 596 71
Ag. 448 449 59; 61; 77 Ag. 592 81
Ag. 449 451 59; 64 Ag. 594 68
Ag. 449 456 114; 117 Ag. 599 64
Ag. 450 66 Ag. 600 10; 13; 24
Ag. 450 451 75 Ag. 600 614 72
Ag. 451 59; 66 Ag. 602 10; 13
Ag. 452 455 58 Ag. 602 604 10
Ag. 456 457 59; 64; 75 Ag. 603 13; 64
Ag. 461 471 57 Ag. 604 13
Ag. 461 ff. 148 Ag. 605 64
Ag. 461 462 57 Ag. 606 10; 13
Ag. 461 464 59 Ag. 606 608 24; 25; 26
Ag. 461 470 176; 177 Ag. 607 10
Ag. 461 474 70 Ag. 607 608 54; 68
Ag. 461 468 97 Ag. 609 610 26; 42
Ag. 463 470 176 Ag. 611 614 11
Ag. 464 59 Ag. 612 10; 68
Ag. 468 469 77 Ag. 613 614 68
Ag. 469 58 59 Ag. 615 73; 74
Ag. 469 471 58 Ag. 615 616 71; 73; 74; 81
Ag. 471 66; 181 Ag. 699 716 57
Ag. 475 487 57 Ag. 718 136
Ag. 479 487 70 Ag. 719 136
Ag. 483 71; 81 Ag. 724 54
Ag. 483 484 70; 71 Ag. 734 57
Ag. 483 485 68 Ag. 735 737 57
Ag. 483 487 70 Ag. 735 749 57
Ag. 491 145 Ag. 746 ff. 148
Ag. 522 532 71 Ag. 748 749 176
Ag. 524 526 57 Ag. 749 57
Ag. 524 528 76 Ag. 753 754 84
Ag. 530 74 Ag. 773 781 57
Ag. 531 532 78 Ag. 781 180

210 Index Locorum
Ag. 782 77 Ag. 1117 1120 159

Ag. 797 34 Ag. 1119 1120 148
Ag. 799 809 78 Ag. 1121 1122 51
Ag. 805 809 114; 117 Ag. 1125 1126 45
Ag. 806 25; 34 Ag. 1129 48
Ag. 813 816 76 Ag. 1167 1169 52
Ag. 819 820 76 Ag. 1179 50
Ag. 822 824 77 Ag. 1188 1193 39
Ag. 827 828 76 Ag. 1189 43
Ag. 832 833 74 Ag. 1190 97
Ag. 849 850 30; 34 Ag. 1192 ff. 148
Ag. 855 857 124 Ag. 1212 47
Ag. 861 862 60 Ag. 1219 1226 39
Ag. 861 876 60 61; 66 Ag. 122 131 21
Ag. 874 879 114; 117 Ag. 1227 1230 48
Ag. 877 ff. 117 Ag. 1228 54
Ag. 877 886 104 Ag. 1232 105
Ag. 887 894 60; 66 Ag. 1232 1233 105
Ag. 891 894 72 Ag. 1235 1236 46
Ag. 896 10; 24; 54 Ag. 1235 51 52
Ag. 898 19 Ag. 1235 1237 68
Ag. 906 907 65 Ag. 1241 47
Ag. 910 911 63; 76 Ag. 1258 1259 45
Ag. 912 913 68 Ag. 1272 52
Ag. 914 25; 55; 67 Ag. 1277 1278 51 52
Ag. 918 919 64 Ag. 1279 1280 45; 50
Ag. 925 64 Ag. 1281 47
Ag. 938 114; 117 Ag. 1282 150; 184
Ag. 940 41; 64 Ag. 1283 46
Ag. 941 41 Ag. 1286 1288 68
Ag. 942 41 Ag. 1297 1298 51
Ag. 943 68 Ag. 1318 45; 50
Ag. 946 952 75 Ag. 1318 1320 45
Ag. 958 960 76 Ag. 1331 1334 58
Ag. 960 75 Ag. 1331 1342 57
Ag. 966 967 48 Ag. 1335 1336 58; 78
Ag. 972 64 Ag. 1337 78
Ag. 973 65 Ag. 1338 1342 58; 78
Ag. 990 991 152 Ag. 1362 1365 95
Ag. 1008 1017 180 181 Ag. 1372 1373 124
Ag. 1047 72 Ag. 1372 1376 23
Ag. 1072 1330 45 Ag. 1372 ff. 50
Ag. 1095 1097 39 Ag. 1377 1378 40; 68
Ag. 1102 1103 46 Ag. 1379 35
Ag. 1109 45; 147 Ag. 1383 75
Ag. 1109 1111 45 Ag. 1388 1392 42; 135
Ag. 1117 1118 51; 52 Ag. 1390 1391 43

Index Locorum 211
Ag. 1391 1392 42 Ag. 1491 78

Ag. 1392 43 Ag. 1495 48
Ag. 1397 1418 11; 12 Ag. 1497 1500 12
Ag. 1399 1400 78 Ag. 1497 1504 11; 35
Ag. 1401 39; 68 Ag. 1498 1499 12; 38
Ag. 1401 1406 39; 78 Ag. 1499 39
Ag. 1405 10; 12 Ag. 1500 12
Ag. 1405 1406 40 Ag. 1505 1508 36 37; 39
Ag. 1405 1406 35 Ag. 1509 1511 53
Ag. 1412 ff. 11 Ag. 1515 78
Ag. 1414 12 Ag. 1519 48; 109
Ag. 1415 1416 29 Ag. 1521 1524 27
Ag. 1415 1418 85 Ag. 1521 1525 38
Ag. 1415 ff. 36 Ag. 1521 1529 63
Ag. 1417 10; 12; 19; 32 Ag. 1523 10
Ag. 1417 ff. 100 Ag. 1523 1524 28
Ag. 1417 1418 10; 16 18; 22; 31 32; Ag. 1524 28
46; 48; 121; 131 Ag. 1524 ff. 36
Ag. 1417 1425 31 32; 49 Ag. 1525 10; 11; 17; 18; 19; 48
Ag. 1420 1421 35 Ag. 1525 ff. 11
Ag. 1421 1425 32 Ag. 1527 1529 18; 28
Ag. 1423 1425 32 33; 68 Ag. 1533 1534 43
Ag. 1425 10; 31; 32; 33; 80; 151; Ag. 1535 49; 78; 81
154 Ag. 1535 1536 49; 78
Ag. 1426 1427 32 33 Ag. 1543 1544 49
Ag. 1428 149 Ag. 1544 12
Ag. 1429 50; 52; 127 Ag. 1544 1557 12
Ag. 1429 1430 50 Ag. 1545 1546 78
Ag. 1432 1433 40 Ag. 1547 78
Ag. 1432 10 Ag. 1551 1559 37
Ag. 1432 ff. 148 Ag. 1551 ff. 11
Ag. 1434 1436 11 Ag. 1551 ff. 36
Ag. 1438 1447 10 11 Ag. 1552 1553 35
Ag. 1452 78 Ag. 1555 1559 33; 79
Ag. 1453 1467 66 Ag. 1556 1557 12
Ag. 1454 37; 49 Ag. 1557 10
Ag. 1455 1461 37 Ag. 1560 1561 33; 37
Ag. 1460 1487 37 Ag. 1560 1564 79; 81
Ag. 1461 49 Ag. 1563 180
Ag. 1462 1463 78 Ag. 1563 1566 37
Ag. 1464 1465 66 Ag. 1567 1576 35
Ag. 1468 37 Ag. 1580 40
Ag. 1468 1471 38 Ag. 1580 ff. 148
Ag. 1475 1480 35; 38 Ag. 1587 1604 35
Ag. 1481 1482 37 Ag. 1604 36
Ag. 1485 1487 180 Ag. 1615 1616 52
Ag. 1486 1487 37 Ag. 1619 1620 32

212 Index Locorum
Ag. 1625 1627 49 Cho. 197 201 118

Ag. 1636 109 Cho. 198 200 103; 104
Ag. 1636 1637 36 Cho. 201 204 118
Ag. 1638 1640 95 Cho. 202 127
Ag. 1643 1646 49 Cho. 211 121
Ag. 1646 1648 78 Cho. 234 115; 130
Ag. 1654 11 Cho. 235 92
Ag. 1654 1656 35 Cho. 236 103
Ag. 1656 79 Cho. 237 92
Ag. 1658 80 Cho. 239 242 102 103
Ag. 1659 79 Cho. 244 106
Ag. 1661 79; 80 81 Cho. 246 251 91
Ag. 1673 95 Cho. 249 250 95
Cho. 250 91
Cho. 1 92 Cho. 251 91
Cho. 6 7 115 Cho. 255 256 96
Cho. 10 12 145 Cho. 260 127
Cho. 35 131 Cho. 262 264 95
Cho. 40 41 138 Cho. 267 95
Cho. 46 99 Cho. 269 296 127 128
Cho. 51 53 127 Cho. 277 95
Cho. 55 65 96 Cho. 281 127
Cho. 76 77 92 Cho. 283 ff. 148
Cho. 88 90 110; 111; 121 Cho. 297 299 128
Cho. 88 123; 154 Cho. 301 305 92
Cho. 90 111 Cho. 301 95
Cho. 91 97 111 Cho. 306 313 116
Cho. 100 106 Cho. 313 127
Cho. 110 106 Cho. 315 318 124; 125
Cho. 118 111 Cho. 321 115
Cho. 121 143 Cho. 329 330 119
Cho. 122 111 Cho. 330 115; 120
Cho. 126 92 Cho. 332 335 125
Cho. 132 134 101; 104 Cho. 345 349 92
Cho. 135 137 94 95 Cho. 354 360 94
Cho. 139 122 Cho. 354 355 94
Cho. 140 141 121;122 Cho. 355 360 94
Cho. 142 143 121 Cho. 363 364 92
Cho. 140 143 123 Cho. 377 95
Cho. 140 154 Cho. 385 120
Cho. 143 122 Cho. 386 389 115
Cho. 144 106 Cho. 398 127
Cho. 148 106 Cho. 402 404 138
Cho. 186 127 Cho. 407 408 95
Cho. 189 200 103 Cho. 419 119
Cho. 190 191 86 Cho. 421 422 102
Cho. 195 200 103 Cho. 422 119

Index Locorum 213
Cho. 430 435 92 Cho.556 557 109

Cho. 434 437 125 Cho. 559 109
Cho. 438 129 Cho. 572 92
Cho. 444 450 95 Cho. 577 578 43
Cho. 454 455 138 Cho. 585 590 127
Cho. 461 127 Cho. 591 592 127
Cho. 466 101 Cho. 599 600 99
Cho. 478 106 Cho. 608 100
Cho. 479 480 92 Cho. 626 627 95
Cho. 487 92 Cho. 627 92
Cho. 489 106; 125 Cho. 646 138; 156
Cho. 495 125 Cho. 646 651 138; 156
Cho. 497 106 Cho. 658 95
Cho. 499 106 Cho. 664 95
Cho. 503 103 Cho. 666 667 95; 117
Cho. 504 124 Cho. 672 673 95
Cho. 505 92 Cho. 674 107; 127
Cho. 512 513 139 Cho. 679 117
Cho. 515 139 Cho. 681 682 120
Cho. 521 139 Cho. 682 107
Cho. 523 539 131 Cho. 688 690 107 108; 127
Cho. 525 99 Cho. 691 699 125; 127
Cho. 527 528 139 Cho. 694 695 52; 126 127
Cho. 527 533 93; 138 Cho. 700 95
Cho. 527 137 Cho. 700 703 127
Cho. 528 139; 144 Cho. 705 127
Cho. 529 145 Cho. 708 127
Cho. 530 533 131 134 Cho. 717 126
Cho. 536 538 127 Cho. 726 108; 109
Cho. 537 95 Cho. 734 765 83
Cho. 541 549 138 Cho. 735 736 95
Cho. 541 145 Cho. 737 740 125
Cho. 542 143 Cho. 749 750 83 84; 90; 113; 114
Cho. 543 93; 136 Cho. 750 753 83
Cho. 543 545 144 Cho. 753 757 83 85
Cho. 543 546 93 Cho. 761 85
Cho. 545 114; 134 Cho. 762 113; 114
Cho. 545 546 114; 136 Cho. 764 11; 99
Cho. 546 134 Cho. 790 796 128
Cho. 547 134 Cho. 805 106
Cho. 548 136 Cho. 808 92
Cho. 548 550 137; 144 Cho. 825 826 106
Cho. 550 139; 144 Cho. 827 837 116
Cho. 552 106 Cho. 829 116
Cho. 553 139 Cho. 830 127
Cho. 554 143 Cho. 831 833 116
Cho. 556 92 Cho. 831 ff. 138

214 Index Locorum
Cho. 833 106 Cho. 955 109

Cho. 845 95 Cho. 973 ff. 50
Cho. 849 850 95 Cho. 973 974 95
Cho. 855 857 124 Cho. 974 106
Cho. 864 865 92 Cho. 975 976 99
Cho. 866 106 Cho. 983 989 117 118
Cho. 868 106 Cho. 991 99
Cho. 874 106 Cho. 991 993 104; 106
Cho. 884 106; 134 Cho. 992 999 100
Cho. 886 157 Cho. 994 105
Cho. 887 141; 142 Cho. 994 ff. 105
Cho. 888 142 Cho. 996 86
Cho. 889 129 Cho. 997 105
Cho. 892 144 Cho. 1009 127
Cho. 893 895 99 Cho. 1012 1013 75
Cho. 896 897 113 Cho. 1016 129
Cho. 896 898 83; 93; 113 114; 132; 142 Cho. 1017 119
Cho. 897 898 134 Cho. 1026 1028 105 106
Cho. 898 136 Cho. 1038 119; 143
Cho. 899 5; 112; 113; 117 118;140; Cho. 1048 1050 145
173 Cho. 1048 ff. 148
Cho. 900 902 112 Cho. 1050 150
Cho. 906 907 99 100; 104; 126 Cho. 1053 1054 143
Cho. 908 86 87; 92 93 Cho. 1054 46; 149
Cho. 909 106 Cho. 1061 1062 143; 150
Cho. 911 138 Cho. 1070 92
Cho. 913 87; 99; 117 Cho. 1072 92
Cho. 915 917 99
Cho. 918 96 Eum. 1 19 163
Cho. 919 92 93 Eum. 34 149
Cho. 919 921 94; 95; 97; 101 Eum. 40 99
Cho. 920 61; 66 Eum. 51 54 149
Cho. 921 92 Eum. 57 149
Cho. 922 138; 142 Eum. 64 162
Cho. 923 138 Eum. 66 164
Cho. 924 46 Eum. 67 152
Cho. 924 ff. 148 Eum. 69 148
Cho. 927 138 Eum. 71 153
Cho. 928 86 88; 92 93 Eum. 81 82 172
Cho. 929 131; 142 Eum. 84 163
Cho. 930 931 127 128 Eum. 88 89 162
Cho. 935 106 Eum. 100 130
Cho. 935 941 108 Eum. 102 150
Cho. 942 945 95 Eum. 103 134
Cho. 946 956 108 Eum. 122 150
Cho. 947 108; 109 Eum. 125 153
Cho. 949 952 128 Eum. 131 139 162

Index Locorum 215
Eum. 139 150 Eum. 427 150

Eum. 151 99 Eum. 428 162
Eum. 153 150 Eum. 430 174
Eum. 154 116 Eum. 433 444 160
Eum. 162 168 163 Eum. 455 458 180; 181
Eum. 184 43 Eum. 459 48
Eum. 201 162 Eum. 459 460 167; 181
Eum. 202 150 Eum. 463 150; 167
Eum. 203 128 Eum. 468 160
Eum. 208 152 Eum. 472 160
Eum. 210 148; 152 Eum. 483 160
Eum. 211 224 152 Eum. 483 484 172
Eum. 215 162 Eum. 48 49 149
Eum. 224 160 Eum. 491 492 130
Eum. 227 162 Eum. 493 150
Eum. 230 168 Eum. 496 498 148
Eum. 230 231 130 Eum. 511 521 151
Eum. 243 160; 174 Eum. 513 521 156; 168
Eum. 253 43 Eum. 520 525 158
Eum. 256 150 Eum. 521 151; 156; 158
Eum. 261 263 152; 168 Eum. 526 530 174
Eum. 268 150 Eum. 529 157; 174
Eum. 271 168 Eum. 535 536 156
Eum. 276 277 150 Eum. 538 544 180
Eum. 281 150 Eum. 543 156
Eum. 303 162 Eum. 544 180
Eum. 304 168 Eum. 545 152; 156
Eum. 312 320 180 Eum. 550 565 180
Eum. 316 320 148 Eum. 573 160
Eum. 318 157 Eum. 579 580 163
Eum. 321 322 148; 167 Eum. 581 160
Eum. 326 327 150 Eum. 582 160
Eum. 329 152 Eum. 583 162
Eum. 330 152 Eum. 587 150
Eum. 331 333 152 Eum. 590 162
Eum. 334 335 153 Eum. 592 162
Eum. 337 340 148 Eum. 595 150
Eum. 338 339 150 Eum. 598 124
Eum. 381 97; 180 Eum. 599 150
Eum. 382 159; 180 Eum. 602 164
Eum. 382 383 42; 157 Eum. 605 168
Eum. 397 401 180; 182 Eum. 606 88; 167
Eum. 406 408 155 Eum. 607 608 88; 93; 168
Eum. 408 148 Eum. 612 613 130; 160
Eum. 410 412 155 Eum. 615 109
Eum. 420 162 Eum. 616 618 163
Eum. 425 150 Eum.620 621 163

216 Index Locorum
Eum. 640 163 Eum. 858 866 158

Eum. 622 637 163 Eum. 871 156
Eum. 623 624 163; 164 Eum. 877 148; 167
Eum. 625 627 164 Eum. 879 880 175
Eum. 631 632 164; 182 Eum. 885 889 170 172
Eum. 636 637 164 Eum. 900 172
Eum. 639 160 Eum. 903 ff. 97
Eum. 640 168 Eum. 910 170
Eum. 642 162 Eum. 927 928 172 173
Eum. 647 648 124 Eum. 932 933 155
Eum. 652 654 152 Eum. 934 935 170
Eum. 653 168 Eum. 952 955 170
Eum. 654 92 Eum. 952 953 180
Eum. 657 ff. 88 89 Eum. 956 967 169
Eum. 658 659 164 Eum. 959 960 169
Eum. 660 666 20; 89 90; 140 141; Eum. 970 971 172
162 163; 165 Eum. 973 975 179
Eum. 675 162; 183 Eum. 976 986 170
Eum. 681 682 160 Eum. 992 995 34
Eum. 681 710 174 175 Eum. 996 1002 161
Eum. 709 160 Eum. 1011 161
Eum. 710 162 Eum. 1018 161
Eum. 729 160 Eum. 1028 1031 161
Eum. 734 160 Eum. 1032 1047 161
Eum. 736 740 165 166 Eum. 1033 148; 167
Eum. 739 740 25; 165
Eum. 741 172 Pers. 176 214 131
Eum. 745 148; 167 Pers. 317 76
Eum. 753 172 Pers. 768 772 34
Eum. 754 756 95
Eum. 754 758 180 181 Sept. 752 755 86
Eum. 778 792 159 Sept. 766 771 35
Eum. 785 130
Eum. 794 170 Supp. 376 378 34
Eum. 795 172; 175 Supp. 640 34
Eum. 800 802 170
Eum. 808 822 159 Aristotle
Eum. 815 130 HA 581 b1 2 29
Eum. 829 831 171 173 HA 609a4 5 91
Eum. 836 175 Po. 1450b3 4 5
Eum. 837 846 159 Po. 1450a15 18 6
Eum. 838 156
Eum. 844 148; 167 Diogenianus gramm.
Eum. 845 846 175 Paroemiae 4, 2 3, 1 32
Eum. 848 ff. 97
Eum. 849 850 156 Heraclitus
Eum. 858 863 179 B 94 DK 148

Index Locorum 217
Hesiod Od. 16, 73 75 15

Op. 803 ff. 148 Od. 16, 155 163 154
Th. 185 148 Od. 16, 332 337 68
Th. 590 60295 Od. 16, 418 447 117
Od. 17, 300 327 53
Hippocrates Od. 17, 475 148
Mul. 1. 1, L 8. 12 22 Od. 19, 524 525 15
Mul. 1. 6, L 8. 30 29 Od. 20, 14 16 25
Mul. 1. 24 25, L 8. 62 68 22 Od. 20, 33 35 14
Mul. 1. 72, L 8. 152 29 Od. 21, 412 148
Mul. 2. 113, L 8. 242 29 Od. 23, 97 124
Nat. Puer. 14 15, L 7. 492 497 22 Od. 23, 97 99 15
Od. 24, 191 202 14
Homer Od. 24, 196 198 123
Il. 1, 194 200 154 Od. 24, 199 14
Il. 9, 454 148
Il. 9, 454 456 148 h. Bacch., 1 4, 6 10, 14 18 154
Il. 9, 571 148
Il. 9, 571 ff. 148 Pindar
Il. 12, 200 ff. 91 Ol. I 56 57 58
Il. 15, 204 148 Ol. XIII 10 58
Il. 19, 86 ff. 148 P. II 25 29 58
Il. 21, 412 148
KN Fp 1. 8 148
Od. 2, 113 15 KN V 52 148
Od. 2, 130 131 110
Od. 2, 135 148 Solon
Od. 3, 266 272 14 Fr. 6, 3 4 W 58
Od. 3, 309 310 14
Od. 8, 521 531 61 Sophocles
Od. 11, 178 15 Aj. 1390 148
Od. 11, 280 148 Ph. 1440 1441 62
Od. 11, 435 439 59
Od. 11, 439 14 Theognis
Od. 13, 379 381 14 Thgn., 153 158 58
Od. 15, 231 ff. 148


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Giulia Maria Chesi

The Play of Words

Blood Ties and Power Relations

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

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Agamemnon as father-tokeus and Clytemnestra as mother non-

General conclusions 186

Bibliographic References 188

Index of Names and Subjects 206

Index Locorum 208

The editions used are: Agamemnon, Denniston-Page (1957); Choephoroi, Garvie

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Aeschylus is the terror of systematizers

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we are not in the position to determine whether Clytemnestra either is or is not a

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This discussion produces several considerations about how we commonly han-

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relations in family and society, looking at Orestes matricide and Clytemnestras

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In this section, I explore Clytemnestras representation of Iphigeneias sacrifice,

1 Clytemnestra or Iphigeneias mother and Agamemnons wife

A discussion of Iphigeneias sacrifice, from the perspective of Clytemnestras

Cf. Hirsch (1989: 4).

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These different levels of explanation conform to the status of a woman with a

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Ag. 1397 1398:

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Critics, however, have often dismissed the complexity of Clytemnestras self-rep-

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Clytemnestras rhetoric of motherhood and wifehood can help us in two direc-

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Od. 16, 73 75: ,

The expression , is particularly important in regard to my

2 Mother, daughter and sacrifice

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chorus Ag. 224 227: -

Ag. 206 208: ,

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Ag. 211 213: ;

In Ag. 1417 1418, Clytemnestra enlightens us on the mechanisms of this conflict

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Eum. 660 661: ,

3 Iphigeneias silence and paternal violence

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animal violence of Iphigeneias silence is contagious. As Iphigeneia cannot

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Clytemnestra speaks this passage immediately after the murder of Agamemnon,