Libation Bearers Language and Communication

Even though this quotation doesn't say anything explicit about language or communication, it actually sets up this theme in a way that will become very important in the rest of the play. Among his other duties, Hermes is the messenger god; typically, he brings messages from one god to another, or from the gods down to mortals. At the same time, he is also the god of travelers; he helps mortals along their way, and also helps the souls of dead people make their way down to the Underworld. Later in the play, Orestes will go to great effort to communicate with the spirit of his father. Here, by calling upon the god in his role as "Hermes of the Underworld," Orestes reminds of his role as an intermediary between two worlds. Thus, this looks forward to when Orestes later tries to pass a message across this divide.

Electra's dysfunctional family puts her in an awkward position when it comes to saying prayers for her dead father. Because her mother, the one who sent her to make the offerings, is also the one who killed Agamemnon, Electra realizes that she can't offer prayers on her mother's behalf without being insincere, thus making a mockery of true communication.

Here we see that the women of the Chorus are masters of the art of subtle communication. First, they make a sneaky reference to "those of kind intention" which actually turns out to mean Electra and "anyone who hates Aegisthus." Electra turns out to be pretty clever as well, when she guesses correctly that the Chorus hates Aegisthus too, as she indicates when she says, "Then I will make this prayer for me and you together." But we still think that the Chorus is doing something even sneakier here. Notice that the Chorus doesn't say one word about anything bad happening to Clytemnestra. Could this be a clever strategy to avoid alienating Electra by trying to get her to pray for her mother's downfall?

Just as in the first quotation from this section, Electra's words call upon Hermes to pass a message along to those beneath the earth. She also says that "my own words too call upon my father." Either way, this attempt at communicating with the dead is closely linked with the idea of revenge – if you think of revenge as a duty owed by the living to the dead.

Here, Orestes expresses doubt about whether the messages he utters can really reach his father. As he puts it, "Light is a state opposite to dark," so how can the two ever communicate? Still, he consoles himself with the thought that laments "are said to" be pleasing to the dead. But who says so? If the living and the dead really can't communicate (as Orestes at first suggests), then the common opinion that it is possible would just be a popular misconception. Is Orestes aware of this problem? If so, why does he keep trying to get a message to Agamemnon?

The Chorus asks why they should hide their true thoughts about the situation in Argos. Right now, when they are among friends (Electra and Orestes) they certainly have no reason to. If they were back home, of course, they would have to be much more careful about what they say. Clearly, the way in which one communicates depends upon context.

This is a striking self-contradiction on Orestes's part. In calling Agamemnon a "dead man without senses," doesn't he suggest that all of his earlier efforts to get into contact with his father's ghost were useless? Do you think Orestes is showing his true colors here? Or is he just trying to have things both ways – acting as if his mother can't contact Agamemnon, but he can?

This looks pretty sexist, doesn't it? First Aegisthus says that women are unreliable, and then the Chorus women themselves agree with him, saying that there's "nothing as strong in messengers as the enquiries one man makes for himself from another." But do you think the Chorus really believes this? Or could they just be playing into Aegisthus's own stereotypical thinking in order to get him to go face Orestes alone? Let's not forget that, in this case, Orestes, a man, is the one playing a trick on the inhabitants of the castle. What does this say about Aegisthus's implicit claim to have "a mind that has good eyes"?

What does it say about Clytemnestra that she is immediately able to understand the meaning of the House-Slave's riddle? On the one hand, she definitely seems pretty quick on the uptake, in general. But, on the other hand, it could also mean that she has already had this possibility on her mind. (She, after all, was the one who had the dream about giving birth to the snake, which drew blood from her breast.) When two people already have a shared understanding of what's going on, communication can take very subtle forms, including, as in this case, riddles. In this case, of course, the shared understanding was coincidental: the slave couldn't have assumed that Clytemnestra knew what he was talking about, right? Why do you think the slave presented the message in this form?

Orestes's command shows that language is not the only mode of the communication. One can also communicate through visual signs as, in this case, he wants to use the bloody robe in which Agamemnon was killed to communicate to the gods that what he has done was just. Depending on what edition of the play you're using, your text might be a little different here. In some versions of the play, there's an extra line (numbered 986 is most Greek editions) that makes it clear that the "one who watches over all this" is actually Helios, the Sun-God. Christopher Collard, the translator we're following, thinks that this line wasn't part of Aeschylus's original play, but got stuck in by somebody else at a later date. He is confident that Aeschylus meant to have Orestes refer to Zeus here. We discuss this issue in more detail under the theme of "Justice and Judgment."