The Libation Bearers Analysis

Summary of Oresteia: The Libation Bearers/Cheophoroi
The Libation Bearers is the second play in the trilogy of Oresteia. The first play titled Agamemnon tells the story of how Clytemnestra had an affair and planned to kill her husband Agamemnon for many deeply rooted reasons, and accomplished it.
The second play starts with a nightmare. Years after Agamemnon’s death, Clytemnestra dreamt she laboured a serpent which she loved and cared for like a child. She offered the snake her milk but as it bore its fangs onto her teat, blood mixed with milk and its tongue fed on the pink mixture. The queen’s screams pierced through the darkness of the night and talked gibberish for hours until she finally ordered Electra, her daughter with Agamemnon whom

The serving women tell her that she should: speak blessings for her and all those who side with her, including her brother Orestes, though away from home and; ask for a warrior to avenge for Agamemnon’s death. And she did. Upon the mound Electra discovered a lock of hair similar to her own and assumed that Orestes had sent it to honour their father. Soon after, she found sets of footprints resembling her own which strengthened her belief that Orestes did come. Orestes and Pylades emerged from the shadows and introduced themselves. Being apart for many years, Electra doubted the identity of the man before him but Orestes proved himself genuine. He claimed that he was the answer to the prayers she offered—the warrior to avenge the death of their father, as he was foretold by the High Priestess at the Temple of Apollo, Pythia. Electra, the handmaidens, Orestes, and Pylades then planned the murder of Clytemnestra and Aegisthus. With this, truths unfold: the disrespect to their father’s corpse, desecrated and buried unsung and; the dream/prophecy of the queen the night before—Orestes interpreting the snake as him coming in vengeance. At the end, he ordered Electra to

Two shadows cast on the palace doors. Orestes and Pylades disguise themselves as travellers who bore news. Clytemnestra came only to be told that her son Orestes has met his end. She appeared sorrowed and headed to her chamber to grieve yet offered the two strangers hospitality. News soon spread in the house until it reached Orestes’s nurse at youth—Cilissa. She grieved for him like a mother to a son. She was then sent to get Aegisthus but before she could go, the housemaids told her to tell him to come home without armour and bodyguards. Shortly, Aegisthus arrived and gets murdered. Screams were heard and Clytemnestra went to its origins, wielding the same axe she used on Agamemnon, to find Aegisthus dead and his son Orestes—alive and intent to kill her. She pleaded for her life making Orestes hesitate and seek counsel from Pylades but killed her afterwards. The palace doors open to Orestes standing over the bodies of the previous rulers of the