Libation Bearers Exile

In this, perhaps the first line of the play (we don't know for sure because we only have fragments at this point in the manuscript), Orestes emphasizes the fact that he is an exile coming home to claim his birthright. Does he ever successfully claim it?

Here, the Chorus reveals that they are exiles too – enslaved when their cities were captured by the warriors of Argos. This means a major contrast with the Chorus of Agamemnon, the first play in the Oresteia, which is made up of old-school, dyed-in-the-wool citizens of Argives. What effect does it have on the play that the members of its Chorus are foreigners in Argos?

We've just seen how Orestes considers himself an exile and also how the women of the Chorus are exiles from their hometowns, now enslaved by the rulers of Argos. Now Electra completes the triple-threat of the play's good guys, by saying that she, too, is an exile. She, of course, is speaking in a more metaphorical sense, because she feels like an outcast in her own home. Why do you think Aeschylus wanted to emphasize the outsider status of his heroes (and heroines)?

Here, Orestes takes up the theme of himself and Electra as exiles. Orestes connects the notion of exile with being orphaned; as a result, he turns to Zeus, often known as the "father of gods and men" for help. This is not the only time in the play when Orestes will turn to Zeus as a surrogate father. Given Zeus's close connection with ideals of justice, this suggests that, even though Orestes is an outcast among men, his only true allegiance is to his own just cause.

Here, Orestes portrays madness as the ultimate discriminator between people: if you are mad, you are utterly outcast and exiled. He implies that the dead have the power to inflict madness on the living, if the living don't carry out their wishes. The irony, of course, is that, by the time the play is over, Orestes has carried out what he thinks are the wishes of the dead and still ends up crazy and outcast.

Here, Electra expresses a powerful variation on the idea of her and her brother's exile. This time, she makes it sound like the only place they can call home is the tomb of their father Agamemnon. For the play's original Greek audience, this would have had an added resonance because of the cultural concept of "hero-cult." In the ancient Greek world, the spirits of prominent individuals were sometimes worshipped after they died. These dead famous dudes were known as "heroes," thus, the practice of worshipping them is known by modern scholars as "hero-worship" or "hero-cult." These heroes were almost always associated with a particular location. Thus, when Electra says that "your grave is [your children's'] welcome," the Greeks would probably have assumed that she was addressing the spirit of Agamemnon present in that location.

Here, Orestes continues the same idea of himself and Electra as exiles. Once again, it is interesting to note that, even though their situations are literally quite different (Electra has been living in the house all along, while Orestes has been out of town), Orestes puts them both in the same category because they have lost their father and are alienated from their mother. Even though, here, Orestes makes their course of action look less settled than it did in some of the earlier quotations in this section, his invocations to the "underworld rulers" and the "Curses of the slain" make it pretty clear that he, too, plans to cast his lot in with the dead Agamemnon.

In his speech at lines 246-263, Orestes portrayed himself and Electra as both orphans and exiles. Here, the Chorus connects the same two ideas, calling Orestes and "orphan young colt" and employing imagery that indicates that he is far from home. At the same time, however, they indicate that he's on his way home.

Here, we see that Clytemnestra and Orestes disagree over what counts as exile. They don't disagree over the most basic objective fact that Orestes was sent away as a child to the house of Strophius the Phocian, a "fighting-ally" of Agamemnon. What they disagree about is the terms and conditions of this sending-away. Orestes says that he was "sold away"; it eventually emerges that he is using the idea of being "sold" as a metaphor for being kept away so that his mother could have an affair with Aegisthus. Does the play, or the trilogy as a whole (Clytemnestra talks about how Orestes got sent away in Agamemnon, line 880) shed any light on the objective facts of the matter? What difference (if any) would this make for our understanding of Orestes's revenge?

Here Orestes enters the most horrible phase of his exile; he is banished from the land he had hoped he was returning to. In fact, he's banished from all lands except for Delphi ("Loxias' holy ground") where he hopes he will be purified of the sin he has committed by murdering his mother. You could even say that he is exiled from his own senses, because the Furies are driving him insane. Why do you think Aeschylus wanted to end the play with Orestes plunged into a worse state of exile than he began with?