The leading characteristic of the
Choephori is the
tre-
mendous importance of those invisible and
supernatural allies who assist the vengeance. Zeus, Apollo, Hermes,
Hades, the spirit of Agamemnon, are felt throughout as if they were
present with the human agents. This is the significance of the
prolonged scene at the tomb, which forms more than one half of the
play. It is not properly a suspension of action, but rather a
dramatic prelude, emphasising the greatness of the issues involved
in the action to come. It brings out the heinousness of the crime
which calls for retribution, the appalling nature of the divine
mandate to Orestes, and the supreme need of arousing and marshalling
those superhuman forces which alone can secure the victory. The
human strategy, as subsequently developed, is not especially
skilful. The story told to Clytaemnestra by the pretended Phocian,
who mentions the death of Orestes as a bare fact casually learned
from a stranger, was not well fitted to find ready credence with the
astute woman whose fears had just been quickened, as the
conspirators knew, by a warning dream,—even if they
assumed that she had missed the meaning which her dream at once
conveyed to Orestes. And that Clytaemnestra did, in fact, suspect
the ‘Phocian's’ story appears from her wish that
Aegisthus should bring his body-guards. But then again the old nurse
of Orestes was hardly the safest person to whom a message of such
critical moment could be entrusted. The gods indeed justify the
maxim of Pylades; they are the worst enemies of the guilty.
From the moment when the two ‘Phocians’ enter the
house,
the swiftness of the concentrated action is
unchecked, save by that brief pause in which the tragic interest
culminates,—the dialogue between Clytaemnestra and her
son. She holds the same place in the retribution which she held in
the crime. Her death is the climax; it is by her Erinyes that
Orestes is driven forth to seek refuge with Apollo. The fate of
Aegisthus is a subordinate incident
1. Though Clytaemnestra's longest speech is
limited to twelve lines, and her whole part to forty-six, Aeschylus
has been marvellously successful in continuing that sense of horror,
hard to describe or to define, which she produces in the
Agamemnon. When she welcomes the strangers, there
is in her language a ghastly reminiscence of another welcome which
she had given beneath that roof; they will find, she tells them,
‘warm baths, a couch to give rest from toil, and the
presence of just eyes’; this is a house in which
travellers arriving from a long journey
find—‘what is fitting
2.’
The
attitude of the Aeschylean Orestes is illustrated by the nature of
the command which he obeys. In the play of Sophocles the oracle
briefly directs that he shall take the just vengeance without the
aid of an armed force. But in the
Choephori he speaks
of reiterated admonitions from the god, full of explicit threats as
to the penalties which await him if he
refuses to act.
Spectral terrors shall haunt him in the night; leprous ulcers shall
rise upon his flesh; his whole body shall be shrivelled and blasted
with torturing disease; he shall be an outcast, under a ban cutting
him off from human fellowship and from the altars of the gods.
Oracles of such a tenor plainly intimate that the task prescribed
was one from which even a brave man might recoil. Apollo's purpose
is to make Orestes feel that disobedience is the greater of two
evils. It is dreadful to shed a mother's blood, but worse to leave a
father unavenged. In the
Choephori Orestes is indeed
resolute; not, however, because the duty before him is simple, but
because the god's messages have braced him to perform it.
Once—at the moment when a mother's claim to pity is
presented in the most pathetic form—he does
hesitate;— “
Πυλάδη, τί δράσω;
μητέρ᾽ αἰδεσθῶ κτανεῖν”
3; But Pylades reminds him of the god's word. It will
presently be seen how marked is the contrast here between Aeschylus
and Sophocles.
The
Electra of Aeschylus appears to have no sister living. She performs
the errand which Sophocles assigns to Chrysothemis, by carrying her
mother's gifts to the tomb; she could not refuse, for she is
virtually a slave
4. Turning to the real slaves,
her companions, she appeals to the common hatred which unites
them
5, and
asks what prayer she is to make. The Sophoclean Electra would hardly
have sought advice on that point; yet the question is in place here,
since her action, if contrary to the queen's orders, might
compromise her unhappy escort. The heroic fortitude and bold
initiative of the Sophoclean Electra are qualities which Aeschylus,
with his different plan, has not desired to portray; but he has done
full justice to her steadfast and affectionate loyalty. And with
regard to the actual mechanism of the plot, she is, in one sense,
even more important with Aeschylus than with Sophocles. It rests
with her alone to decide whether the young stranger is her brother,
and, if she is convinced, to aid his plan within the house. The
latter service is assigned by Sophocles to the old man, who could
also have established the identity of Orestes, if there had been
need. When the ‘recognition’ has been effected,
and the prayers at the tomb are over, the Aeschylean Electra can be
dismissed from the scene. Orestes directs her to go in, and watch
events in the house. She does not speak after verse 509, and is not
seen after verse 584; that is, she appears only in the first of the
three ‘acts’ into which the play may be divided.
The part of Aegisthus is notably brief, even allowing for the
indifference with which his fate is treated. He merely passes across
the scene; fourteen verses are all that he has to speak. The part of
the Nurse is a masterpiece in its kind. And we note the happy
inspiration by which Pylades is made to break silence
once—at the supreme moment—as the voice of
Apollo.
Nearly a third of the play is lyric. The Chorus have their
share
in the action; at the outset they are the counsellors of Electra;
they persuade the Nurse to help the plan; and they send Aegisthus
forward to his doom. But their function is, above all, to interpret
the sense of reliance upon divine aid. ‘Justice may delay,
but it will come,’ is the burden of the choral song;
‘the sinner shall suffer’ (“
δράσαντι παθεῖν”); ‘even now, Destiny is
preparing the sword.’ And when, at the close, a dark cloud
gathers over Orestes, it is with unwavering faith that the Chorus
commend him to Apollo, though no human eye can pierce the gloom
which rests upon the future.
No one
of the three Greek plays on this subject takes its name from
Orestes, though his deed forms the central interest. Aeschylus calls
his play the
Choephori, because that title suggests
the claim of the murdered father—as
Eumenides expresses that of the mother slain by a
son—and therefore suits the link in the trilogy. On the
other hand, if the story was to be treated in a single play, the
antecedents of the vengeance became especially
important. Electra, the daughter who, remaining at home, had been
faithful to her father's memory throughout the interval between the
flight and the return of Orestes, was the character best fitted to
supply the needful background. Thus far, Sophocles and Euripides had
the same motive for describing their subject by her name.
The
Electra of Sophocles. |
