G.S. Rosseau - Dream and Vision in Aeschylus' Oresteia

Trustees of Boston University
Dream and Vision in Aeschylus' "Oresteia"

Author(s): G. S. Rousseau
Source: Arion, Vol. 2, No. 3 (Autumn, 1963), pp. 101-136
Published by: Trustees of Boston University
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DREAM AND VISION IN AESCHYLUS'
ORESTEIA
G. S. Rousseau
SPURIOUS PAIR OF LINES APPEARS IN

a
the manuscripts of the Eumenides which elucidates the whole
Oresteia. These Unes occur at the beginning of the play when
warns the Furies in a dream of the ex
Clytaemestra's ghost
traordinary powers of sleep:
evSovcra y?p (f>prjv opupLamv Xap,7rpvv Tai,
iv f?p>?pa 8c jtxotp airpocTKOTros /?por*w.
In sleep the mind is illuminated with eyes,
But in dayUght the destiny of aman cannot be seen.
(Eum. 104-5 y
This statement is a conscious paradox which challenges our
natural intuition that waking reason is more enlightening to a
man than are his dreams. It attributes to the visions seen in dreams
substantial authority. But an immediate problem arises: how
broadly ought "sleep" and "daylight" to be taken? For if each is a
a
metaphor of larger realm of experience than the physical act of
dreaming at night and cogitating in the day, then the statement
immediately becomes more difficult to understand than it seemed
at first glance. To expUcate it would be to illustrate all the
possible meanings which the author of the statement attaches to
sleep; meanings which transcend the activities of the mind during
sleep, the physical act of dreaming, and which bring to the notion
of and "dream" a of
"sleep" metaphoric system meanings.
Aeschylus, a poet of dreams, does this very thing. For him
dreams contain a of meanings, both the nar
complex including
rower and broader mentioned above. are not
possibilities They
the stories or which we in
remember
just fragmentary episodes
the Nor are dreams in limited to the
morning. Aeschylus sig
nificance we for: as an indication of man's
today value
which them
desires, wishes, and frustrations.2 knows this
repressed Aeschylus
of dreams, as do all the Ancients from the time of Homer.
meaning
Such an of dream, for occurs in the form of
anxiety type example,
a brilliant simile in the Iliad,3 and clearly indicates that the author
is well aware of the nightmares which come to men in sleep and
express frustration. In Aeschylus such nightmares expressing
frustration are even more common. In addition to the anxiety
revealed in a dream, Aeschylus gives much weight to the veridical
a culture which
prediction made by dreams. As a member of
beUeved strongly in the revelation of warnings, predictions, and
oracles as made known through dreams, Aeschylus naturally
places faith in the objective truth which the dream tells, truth
which we today reject. We will recall, for example, how Cly

102 DREAM AND VISION IN AESCHYLUS' ORESTEIA
taemestra in the Choephoroe summons her

oneiropoloi to disclose
to her the meaning of her dream of giving birth to a serpent,
suckUng it, and later becoming the victim of its bite in which it
draws blood mixed with milk from her breast.
Besides these two well known usages of dreams, Aeschylus
understands more, and it is when we have
something precisely
dismissed his literal understanding of dreams that we begin to
him as a great poet and visionary.
appreciate Aeschylus under
stands by dreams something far less tangible than what dreamers
remember. He knows, for the of dreams,
example, insubstantiaUty
their elusive and fugitive quaUty. He can grasp the shapelessness
of dreams; Uke smoke ascending in the air, formless figures, color
less shadows, here one moment to be the next. The
only gone
Argive elders in the Agamemnon know this insubstantiaUty of
dreams when they speak of their own old age:
... so extreme old its now its
age, foUage withering, goes
way
on three feet, and no stronger than a child he wanders,
a dream phantom appearing in dayUght. (Agam. 79-80)
Aeschylus also knows the disordered sequence of events which
the dream He knows that in a dream confusion is ex
captures.
by the complete absence of logic, and that events seem
pressed
to take in a strange and order. Time seems to be
place haphazard
sees the events
completely distorted. The sleeper just as they
are presented to the mind no matter how juggled the order seems
to be. Even in visions other than those which are to
presented
the trance-Uke visions such as Cassandra
sleeper, experiences,
Aeschylus marvelously grasps the distortion of time.
Sometimes, dreams a world of mere chaos to
suggest Aeschylus.
His Prometheus, when men conducted
telling how primitive them
selves, describes these creatures of the human race as
early
the shape of dreams, dragging through their long Uves and
handUng all things in bewilderment and confusion.
(Prom. 448-450)
Later on in the same play, the daughters of Oceanus ask the fire
giver why he helped this primitive race, extending Prometheus'
notion of primeval man to their own gloom for present humanity
and making the residue of this ancient chaos in their own society:
What succor in creatures of a day? You did not see the
feebleness that draws its breath in gasps, a dreamUke feeble
ness by which the race of man is held in bondage, a blind
prisoner. (Prom. 448-450)
Man is described as an irrational creature, living all his days in
confusion, unaware of the arts (r?xvai), and unskilled in using his
mind to rescue himself from the state of chaos.
At times, the brute fury of the gods is felt in such violent emo
tional stirrings in the Aeschylean world that the terror of ex
perience itself is Ukened to a dream, as when the daughters of
Danaus in the Suppliant Maidens compare their obsessive fear of

G. S. Rousseau 103
the Egyptians who are chasing them to a "black dream:"

Alas, father, to the sea he leads me: Uke a
a dream, a black dream,
spider, step by step,
cry, o woe, cry! (Supp. 885-889 )
Intense fear is a common emotion in characters and
Aeschylus'
their agony even to themselves appears not infrequently to be too
painful to be true.
The unacknowledged are also
impulses which the psyche feels
revealed to Aeschylus most tmly in dreams. These are the irra
tional tendencies and impulses towards frustration, longing and
sexual passion, which the spirit endures in waking Ufe but cannot
un
always reveal with impunity. These impulses are present but
seen. shriek in the as she dreams that a ser
Clytaemnestra's night
pent is biting her breast is a clear but unseen gesture of the sting
ing guilt she feels after committing the murder of Agamemnon.
These are a few of the responses which Aeschylus the poet
makes to dreams. Some of them, were common to his contempo
raries. Others would have been understood without a
scarcely
careful study of his poetic art. For his response is ultimately de
termined not by his culture, but by a poetic sensitivity to the
strangeness of the seen world. We may say he is using the term
"dream," but the statement would be incomplete without showing
that he means far more than veridical truth, and that his Atossa,
for example, in the Persians (176 ff. ), dreaming of two women,
one Doric and the other Greek, both coming into strife, and the
strife ultimately turning into Persian Wars, is but a small case in
point. For by "dream" Aeschylus means something poetical and
elusive, some unifying principle of art, such as "light" is for Dante
in the Divina Commedia or "clouds" are in the for
Tempest
Each of these artists uses his central whether
Shakespeare. image,
it be light, clouds, or dreams, for the purposes of achieving a
structured system.
tightly metaphoric
Considerations of as a of dreams have not been
Aeschylus poet
the source of much criticism in recent years, numerous
although
scholars have to the of dreams and visions in
pointed appearance
his plays.4 Most important among these critics is E. R. Dodds,
who in a brilUant study of Greek irrationaUsm, devotes an entire
chapter to dreams, inwhich he traces ancient attitudes to dreams
from Homer to Early Roman Times.5 Although Dodds' primary
intention is not to illustrate the poetic use of dreams in any of the
artists he mentions, his cultural investigation sheds much Ught on
in so far as it reconstructs for us, in the atti
Aeschylus particular,
tudes toward dreams in the middle of the Fifth-Century.
Dodds begins by citing Professor H. J. Rose's three categories
which summarize the entire of dreams in Ancient Greece:
scope
the or veridical dream; the shamanistic dream
objective experi
ence in which the soul of the sleeper wanders far away from the
confines of the flesh, gathers important information and news, and

returns to the body to inform it of its findings; and, finally, the

or symbolic dream in which the truth is revealed but
allegorical
can neatly be relegated to the first
disguised.6 Aeschylus' dreams
and third of Rose's categories, the shamanistic dream experience
we re-examine
being completely absent from his extant writings. If
Rose's first and third category as it applies to Aeschylus, it be
comes immediately clear that these two categories merge into one,
for all of Aeschylus' veridical dreams are disguised.
Yet even with Rose's classification of Greek attitudes towards
dreams, we find that Aeschylus' dream examples do not quite fit.
For his dreams seem to overlap Rose's categories, and frequendy
to fit into no at all. And even after we have com
appear category
partmentalized the dreams which appear in Aeschylus' plays, and
noted how near to or distant from Greek types these are, there
seems to be something yet unexplained, something that has to do
with his poetic art alone. It is for this reason that any treatment of
dreams other than a poetical consideration quickly proves unil
luminating. Perhaps no other European poet with the exception
of Dante and Wordsworth has ever found this strange magical
quaUty in dreams and the sleeping world, or as Aeschylus himself
says, a sleeping state which is eternally "illuminated with eyes."
In this essay I shall Umit myself only to a consideration of certain
dream in the Oresteia.
passages
I. AGAMEMNON
The first mention of dreams in the Oresteia ismade at the outset

of the Agamemnon, when the Watchman on the roof la
palace
ments that he has not been able to sleep for a whole year.
And when I keep to my couch that is restless at
a couch which no dreams
night and drenched with dew,
look upon?for instead of sleep, fear stands beside
me, that Imay not close my eyeUds firmly in sleep. ( 12-15)
In the confused of the Watchman's statement, his anxi

syntax
ety is revealed. His yearning for dreams is a type of response of
the poet to sleeping experience which we did not mention in the
introduction. It is a sweet and fanciful attitude to consider dreams
as a distraction of the mind from imminent evils and cares. Of
course, this dream reference is trivial and we mention it be
only
cause it is the first occurrence in the trilogy. It does strongly
the Watchman's anxious emotional state and his
emphasize long
ing for reUef from the anxiety he has been suffering for one long
year. His wish for dreams also sets the mood for the first part of
the Agamemnon. The time is night, the exteriors of the palace are
and all that can be seen is a black expanse and some stars.
quiet,
But we know that the quiet sight before our eyes is deceptive,

G. S. Rousseau 105
even though the Watchman has no inkling of what is happening

inside the palace. A horrid event is about to take place as soon as
Agamemnon arrives home. The Watchman's wish for dreams is
about to be fulfilled, for out of the depths of the night bright bea
con-signals will come, but they will bring "dreams" of no sweet
and nature.
distracting
The first significant dream passage in the trilogy, and there
are over two dozen such passages, is one which admits of a rich
occurs in the first chorus when the Argive
metaphoric activity. It
elders tell of their old age (79-80). They know the time is out of
joint and feel the burden of some vague and terrible event that is
about to take Even ten years when went to
place. ago, Argos
war, these men were too old to fight. Now they are Uke dry,
withered leaves (<j)vXXa$o<s as Uttle
KaTaKapipopivrjs,79), left with
physical substance in them as the of dreams," if dreams
"shape
have at all. Their sentiment conveys to us their sense of
shapes
the insubstantiaUty of old age as reflected in the metaphor of crisp
and shriveled foUage. For in this image of themselves as weak
dream phantoms, there is an ironic dualism: these Argive elders,
white with age, are as insubstantial as dream figures, and yet are
beUeved by the audience precisely because of their wisdom and
the clear intuition they have of the strange way inwhich the deU
cate relations between and men have become strained in
gods
this family.
Part of the startUng effect of the elder's remark is that it comes
so suddenly, without any preparation. Up to this point,
they have
been telUng of the origins of the Trojan War, the gathering of the
forces, and the compassionate response of the gods to the shrill
cry of the birds as the battle ten broke out. now,
years ago Only
at the dream in do return to the present.
passage question, they
Fear has prevailed upon them to such an extent that their sense
of time is distorted. But fear also enables them to transcend the
usual Umitations of insight. For while their own apprehension of
the present has blunted their sense of the normal flow of time, it
has, on the other hand, impelled them to express in the terms of a
vision the unheard, and unseen behind
unspoken, reaUty Cly
taemnestra's masks.
deceptive
Similar to the Watchman, these Argives lament the absence of
sleep and the sweet world of dreams that sleep brings (of course,
sleep is not always sweet, as we will see in the Choephoroel ) :
Instead of sleep there trickles before the heart
the pain of remembrance. ( 179-180 )
Pain described as a substance slowly oozing,
is metaphorically
. . .
drop by drop (orafei irp6 /capSta?), which suggests a wound
that never stops aching. The true force of the verb or??<o, to
"trickle," is the gruesome manner in which it describes the slow
and process of torment: this is no fear that comes,
agonizing

a stinging goad, as the

pricks with gadfly that pricks Io, and then
is gone. On the contrary, it keeps plaguing its victims who are
already sUghtly guilty for the knowledge they have. And although
there may be reUef between each successive "drop" of this tor
ment, the respite is negUgible in comparison with the overall ter
ror of constant In fact, the sense of fear of the future is so
pain.7
oppressive to the elders that it has distorted their own logical
ordering of all the events of the song and influenced the jagged
manner in which they speak. They tell their story by fits and
starts, with Uttle flow or continuity in the connection of thought.
But this dreamUke world is a result of fear accumulated over a
long period of time, and does not dull their visionary power to
see the unseen. They boast of their authority to tell (/cupto? elpu
Opoelv) in dance and song of the very foreboding present:
I have the power to tell of the auspicious command
men in
ruUng the expedition, the command of
authority; for still from the gods the age that has
with me breathes down me
grown upon persuasiveness
of song to be my warlike strength. ( 104-106 )
Professor H. J. Rose currently points to the displacement of
a term usually appUed to
metaphor here: strength (?Xktj) is
soldiers, but the chorus use it to describe their own narrative
valor, especially the gestures of song and dance (molp?) which
have a rather cathartic effect on them.8
In view of their to narrate the distant the
alleged strength past,
elders' statement of the dreamUke quaUty of their existence must
be understood as poetic reflection. It is the strange feeling they
have of knowing fully well by intuition and yet not being able to
tell it. They must keep what they know muted. Thus the meta
of dream is transferred from their own to their
phor age present
anxiety. In the subtle transference and double appUcation of the
their own intellectual are affirmed. This is not
metaphor, powers
nor even of wise men. These men
any Greek chorus, any group
have a very definite character and emotional background of feel
ings, both of which Aeschylus is perpetually trying to clarify in
this song.9
This first significant appearance of dreams in the play shows
the relevance of the words which Clytaemnestra's ghost warns the
Furies of in the Eumenides, and which were recalled at the onset
of the essay: the sleeping, unseen world is continually deceiving
to those who would accept it at face value. One might look at
these old men and think them not capable of distinguishing be
tween the rays of the sun and the Ught of the moon, and yet then
is no less than a revelation to us both and
song dramatically poeti
These are of a class of men in every
caUy. Argives symboUc age,
old and wise men, whose external countenance is a to the
disguise
wisdom of their years. command from us
They respect merely by
the poetry of their lofty language. These men not only sense most

G. S. Rousseau 107
acutely the psychological tension of the present moment, but un

derstand the variety of interpretations which an act committed to
the past can admit of: they know that not all men in Argos will
consider Agamemnon's allegiance to his country rather than his
immoral in view of past circumstances, Zeus'
daughter especially
command to the Lord of Mycenae to fight. But their own moral
sense tells them that erred and will have to suffer
Agamemnon
for it.10
In this song?and as a vision it retains many of the quaUties of
a dream: a distorted time sense, more than concrete im
usually
and a clear sense of the of the vision seen?
agery, fugitiveness
Aeschylus implicitly suggests the connections which dreams draw
between the state of sleeping and waking, for the dream seems to
of each. crime may to
capture something Agamemnon's appear
have been erased from the minds of most Argive citizens, but we
know after this first song how potently the memory of it abides in
these wise men. For it is by memory that knowledge of the past
is retained. And now, despite Time's habit of blemishing the past
with stains which make it difficult to interpret ancient deeds, the
elders are more aware than ever of the of memory.
truly power
The awareness is so shocking to them that it must be expressed
in an equally startling poetic statement. This is precisely what the
"dream phantom" passage does: after long breaths telling of dis
tant wars, this personal reflection in which the voice of the elders
sees its own position endangered, is like a cold blast of wind.
There is no reUef from memory any more than there is from the
present mood of chaos in the house. In the palace they see
Clytaemnestra joyous as she prepares sacrificial feasts. But behind
the and of sense the manner in
joy stirring blazing pyres, they
which the organic order of men and gods has been disturbed.
The mental agony caused vague confusion is
by overwhelming.
Even in the sheer exhaustion from the physical act of wild song,
dance, and there is no relief. Relief can come
rhythmic gesture,
only from Clytaemnestra who knows the news. With this inmind
entreat her to tell them the and become a "healer of
they report
the
anxiety" (irai^v rijcrSe p,ep?pvr)<s, 99).
The elders end their narrative of the Trojan War on a dim note
of foreboding:
What followed (m 8' evOev)next I did not see, neither do I tell,
but the crafts of Calchas are not urffulfilled. (248-249)
The ra S' ?vOcv, "the rest," could not be more ominous. It
phrase
includes not only the terrible aspects of Iphigenia's slaughter, but
the consequences of the crimes which are yet to be worked out
in the These last words are (ctSov, etSwAov,
present. visionary,
and the mantic rexvî of Calchas). For even in ignorance, they
know the destructive quaUty of the "emotion" that accompanies
fear. The elders do not know what will happen in the next few

hours when arrives. The song is a muted

Agamemnon expression
of the disorder that has existed in the house all these years, ever
since the between man and the were disturbed.
harmony gods
The next important dream passage in the Agamemnon ismore
rhetorical than has announced as vic
poetic. Clytaemestra Argos
tor, but the elders are cautious not to beUeve her news until they
are more evidence: ask,
given they
It is to persuasive visions of dreams that you

pay heed?
to which Clytaemestra, offended, impoUtely answers:
I would let no one seU me the mere fancy (doxa) of a
slumbering mind. (274-275 )
By doxa Clytaemestra means the vision or fancy that a dreamer

sees in his sleep. She is unjustifiably offended by the elders' ques
tion because it seems to mock at her abiUty to differentiate true
from false. The irony of her reply Ues in her own unforeseen future
(although she thinks she knows what will happen). For it is pre
cisely through the medium of dreams of the symboUc-veridical
type that her doom will be announced to her in the Choephoroe,
and when it comes, she will be too bUnd to understand it. Her
remark foreshadows the power which dreams will assume in the
later parts of the trilogy as time creatively becomes worked out
by the poet. For dreams do not occur as isolated of ex
fragments
perience in the trilogy; each dream is related to the others no
less than are the other of the cosmos which
parts organic Aeschy
lus beUeves in.
In this between and the chorus,
interchange Clytaemnestra
Aeschylus hints at the usefulness of objective dreams to his dram
matic scheme. Such a and answer as the above are an
question
of the "Uteral" manner in which the dream can be em
example
ployed. It serves to unify the dramatic plot, for from beginning to
end the story of blood, revenge, and the eventual restoration to
normalcy of a single family isworked out through a unifying prin
ciple of complex dreams.
When we consider the psychological basis of Clytaemnestra's
rejection of messages coming through dreams, only her vain and
boastful character can explain it. For every Greek, as Dodds has
shown, knew and strongly believed that dreams revealing truth
were sent divine
by messengers, especially gods.11 Clytaemnestra's
denial of a cultural habit is a microscopic but important indica
tion of her own displacement from the position she should hold:
instead of being timid, withdrawn, and quiet, she is a viperous
and creature.
man-counseUng (avSpo?ovXov)
The next mention of dreams is purely poetic, and illustrates an
aspect of the texture of Aeschylus' poetry. It is the moment when
the chorus reflects on the effects of Helen's on Menelaus.
escape

G. S. Rousseau 109
They play the role of the interpreters of his behavior and say:
Woe, woe for the house, woe for the princes! Woe
for the bed and the husband-loving steps! One may
see the silence of forsaken ones, a silence without
honor, without reviling, without belief. Through

longing for her who is beyond the sea, a phantom
will seem to rule the house. The grace of beautiful
statues is hateful to the husband, and in the blank
gaze of the eyes, all the charm of Aphrodite is gone.
Appearing in dreams fancies of mourning are present,
a joy that is vain; for a man, when
bringing fancying
that he sees what is dear?outside of his arms the
vision is gone, not to return
again, accompanying
the winged ways of sleep. (410-426)
seems to a
Lonely Menelaus be Uke living creature turned into
a dream
phantom, unable to face the waking truth that beautiful
Helen will never again return. How splendidly Aeschylus cap
tures the dreamer's agony of
awaking and suddenly finding that
the phantom is gone! It is just as when the speaker of Baudelaire's
Le Cr?puscule de Matins awakes in the early hours of the dawn,
stretching his arms to the Uttle evil dream figures which still seem
to be
hovering about his bed. In the gesture of arms always out
stretched, Aeschylus delicately captures Menelaus' sexual longing.
His pain is the remembrance of the "bed and the
husband-loving
steps."
Aeschylus does not present us with a Menelaus tormented pri
marily by the hubris of his wife, as Homer does (Iliad, 2.589),
although this is surely part of his anguish. The focus is rather on
the loneliness of the Argive prince himself. He fancies that he sees
Helen in every room of the house in the form of a phantom?
whenever he confronts the members of the household, whenever
he stares at his room. His frustration seeks relief in in
sleep fancy
ing that Helen will return and beg him for forgiveness. Such wish
fulfillment once again stresses the deep sense Aeschylus has of the
motivational aspects of dreams. Yet the most
noteworthy aspect
of the art of this passage is the poetry itself. The Unes flow with
a
pearl-l?ce smoothness. The texture is diaphanous. If read aloud,
the soft cadences and alliteration are striking. Nothing in the de
scription is forced, not the sUghtest detail. There is not a single
trace of sentimentality, nor do the
Argives miss the mark by over
sympathizing with Menelaus.
The elders also capture the of Menelaus'
Argive hunger "eyes."
This is one example among many of
striking eye imagery in the
Agamemnon. Since perception by the eyes is intimately associated
with visionary experience,
Aeschylus treats eye imagery as a leit
motif. Shortly after commenting on Menelaus' blank gaze, the
chorus, who has entered,
addressing Agamemnon, just sensibly

warns him to take cognizance of the deceiving couple waiting for

him joyously in the palace:
But if anyone is a good judge of a flock, he cannot
be deceived by the look in a man's eyes which, while
a loyal mind, blandishes into
pretending to come from
watery friendship. (795-798 )
Eye imagery is no less striking here than in the case of Mene

laus. It recalls Iphigenia's pitiful glare to her sacrificers, "arrow
Uke:"
And letting fall to the ground her saffron-dyed garment,

she smote each one of the sacrificers with a pitiful
shaft from her eyes, clearly standing out as in a
. . (239-242)
picture.
or the chorus' later description of the "soft shaft" emitted by
Helen's eyes, which seems to kill and petrify the gazer by its mild
sensuality:
At first, I would say, there came to the city of IUum
a spirit of windless calm and a
gentle delight of
wealth, a soft shaft of the eyes, a heart-stinging
flower of desire. (737-743 )
In each of these some of "seeing" the
passages, aspect captures
essence of an emotional state, sometimes even sums up a whole
as in the case of Helen. is a
character Eye imagery part of larger
system of visual and Ught images. Especially important among
these is color: light set against darkness is one of the most frequent
images in the drama. Blazing torches come through the black
night, up to the very last processional scene in the Eumenides.
The Herald who reports to Clytaemnestra her husband's return
calls Agamemnon "fight in the nighttime" (<?(5?eV cvcj>p6vi).Cly
taemnestra herself the of the to the
compares leap beacon-signals
"shining moon" (SUrjv </>aiSp??o-e?^?) coming over the hill.
EarUer in the play, the chorus compares the harmful effect of
a "terrible bright light" a gruesome
sinning to (<??>calvoXaparis),
image: the overly brilUant color suggests that if seen reaUty were
ever unmasked, the horrid effects of human disgrace before the
gods would be blatantly apparent. This wide array of Ught im
agery in the Agamemnon is directly related to dreams. For in
visions, color seems to be exaggerated with bright Ughts con
set in contrast to dim ones?not so much in the actual act
stantly
of dreaming, but in the poetry of dream and vision. Readers of
medieval literature will recall how careful Dante is to distinguish
the bright and dim Ughts at every point along the way. Aeschy
lus' Ught imagery is poetically and theatrically effective. Nearly
half the scenes of the Oresteia take place in darkness and gloom.
And when the action does take place in dayUght, the color is ex
orbitant, as the bright red carpet which Agamemnon treads on,

G. S.Rousseau 111
or the brilliant purple robes of the Athenians and Furies at the

finale.
The next relevant to our discussion the lan
passage employs
guage of vision rather than making any explicit reference to
dream. Agamemnon, on the loyalty of his wartime
reflecting
friends, particularly Odysseus, asserts his understanding of men:
tSo)? Xeyoip. av, ev
y?p eêirlo-rapAiL
opuX?as /caro7rrpov, e?8a)Xov ava??,
SoKOvvras eivai Kapra 7rpevpLcv ?<s?p,oi.
With knowledge [I speak]?for I am well acquainted
with the mirror, intercourse?I may pronounce the
image of a shadow those who seem most devoted to me.

(838-840)
The Karo^rpov, the "mirror, intercourse," stands in
phrase o/u?ta?
contrast to ctSw?ov o7a<x?, the of a shadow." The first half
"image
of the line affirms an understanding of the intimacy existing
among men, while the second negates the sincerity of any such
intimacy and calls the knowledge of this state dreamUke. Coming
from Agamemnon the remark is highly ironic since we know that
he does not understand the falsity of his wife. She deceives him
face to face, to in every and
"eye eye," gesture fawning compU
ment, and even with all this glowing hypocrisy Agamemnon
yields to her and treads the carpet.
The dreams which Clytaemnestra claims to have experienced
during Agamemnon's absence reveal further psychological subtle
ties of the sleeping mind. In trying to persuade Agamemnon of
her loneliness during the ten years, the queen tells of her night
mares:
. . . and in my I would be awakened the
dreams, by
faint rushings of a gnat, and hear it trumpeting,
since I saw there things befalling you more than
could have passed in the time that slept with me. (891-894)
Her sleep was so light that an insect buzzing overhead could
distract her. The distortion of time, as it appears to the dreamer,
is made known by the quickness in which all of Agamemnon's
misfortunes seem to take a few seconds.
place?in Clytaemnestra's
language is exaggerated in the passage partly in order to lavish
on her husband an Oriental-like gush of compUments, and
partly
to lend credibility to the sheer horror of her nightmares: she tells
how Agamemnon's body appeared in her dream to have wounds
pierced through it with "more holes than a fishnet," and died as
many deaths as the "triple-bodied Geryon" with one death for
each body. Such dreams are strong wish fulfillments. Clytaemnestra
herself informs the chorus after the murder how she killed Aga
memnon: not with one, nor two blows, but with three (1386).
Her Ukening of his body to a "fishnet" is a transference made in
dreams of the net-Uke garment which she uses to entangle his
body. Lattimore has carefully listed and explained the different

kinds of nets in his Introduction to the Oresteia, and by now the

point is common knowledge. I point to the net image because it
shows how the dream mirrors the wishes, tensions, and desires of
waking Ufe. With waking Ufe being as terrible as it is for this

family, in which every relationship both among the men them
selves and in their relationship to the gods is strained, is it any
wonder that they all suffer from troubled sleep and dreams? In
fact, Clytaemnestra's long speech to Agamemnon (855-913)
marks such a smooth transition from the waking to the sleeping
world that the two seem to converge at this point. Everything she
has seen in the dream, she will enact. Everything enacted is but
a
deeper expression of the psychological pain that accompanies
the dislocation of men with gods.
As Clytaemnestra ends her deceitful speech to Agamemnon, she
seems to be possessed:
In aU things else, my heart's unsleeping care shaU
act with the god's aid to set aright what fate
ordained. (912-913)
She claims that the murder planned is not the work of her mind
alone: Zeus, to whom she now offers a
prayer of
accompUshment,
shares the deed with her. After committing the act, Clytaemnestra
teUs the chorus that she is "possessed" and that she is only the
physical phantom-shape of the ancient fierce spirit of revenge who
forces her to murder:
You are confident that this deed is mine; do not

say that I am Agamemnon's wife. But appearing in
the shape of his dead man's wife, the ancient
fierce . . . takes on him. . .
spirit vengeance (1497-1503)
The thrill of both these statements is the way in which Cly

taemnestra herself becomes the demon" We
"avenging (?Xao-roip).
must, I think, understand Clytaemnestra Uterally at both places:
she feels herself to be an incarnated spirit who acts not only in
accordance with her own will but as she is commanded.
As soon as Clytaemnestra has made her prayer to Zeus (973-4)
the chorus renews its cry of fear for the future of this family in
the of "unclear dreams" and music:"
imagery "haunting
Why is it that this dread so persistently hovers

before my heart, flitting back and forth; and that
an unbidden and unhired chant
prophecies tome,
and I cannot it as dreams without clear mean
spurn
and let reassuring trust settle on the throne
ing,
of my spirit. (975-983)
These Unes begin a "song of fear," as Fraenkel caUs it. The
dread (Seipia) is felt to be chanted to their heart, as if the Binding
Song of the Furies in the Eumenides had already begun to work

G. S. Rousseau 113
its effect on the old Argives. They also compare the song to a
"dream" which is unclear in the veridical meaning which it re
which the cannot ward off. The frustration ex
veals, yet spirit
pressed in the image of the dream is obvious enough, but the close
of music and dreams offers a further sub
proximity metaphoric
tlety. Haunting and filmy dreams function metaphorically
music
as a kind of counterpoint in which one supplements the other:
the chant the essence of fear in terms of elements of sound,
grasps
the dream in terms of a visual screen that plagues the mind.
The lyrical use of dream imagery throughout the first part of
the Agamemnon (1-1034) clearly mutes any suggestion of the
veridical nature of dreams. of the veridi
Clytaemnestra's rejection
cal nature of a dream must have struck a ironic note
particularly
to an Athenian audience which knew all too well the myth of the
House of Atreus. Every detail and nuance would be grasped by
the mind before it was seen by the eye. And even to a modern
audience, less acquainted with the details of Clytaemnestra's
dreams, the moment is highly ironic. This avowed negation of the
is but an aside. For the of the are
queen "atmospherics" play
being set in this first half, and the single action of Agamemnon
the however marvelous from the of view of
treading carpet, point
dramatic is but a to the murder.
spectacle, prelude
Dream as poetic imagery clarifies the confusion that takes place
before a great deed. For the upset of this family is so enormous in
that it extends even to the realms of the subcon
consequence
scious. And in the poetry itself, the fear described seems greater
than we could ever imagine if expressed in the terms of waking
reaUty. In this sense, the dream bridges the gap between the seen
and unseen world, and shows the tensions of each
psychological
state to be an
part of organic whole.
In the Cassandra scene the notion of vision is moved a
up
notch. For whereas the elders' are self-created in
visionary songs
darkness and of the future, Cassandra's trance is dic
ignorance
tated Her vision is one extension of the broad varieties
by Apollo.
of dream experience in the trilogy. The mood of anxiety and the
fear that arises in the Ufe of a people when it is in disharmony
with the gods and even with itself is what these early dream
to. With Cassandra, we are shown how the dis
images point
harmony affects the life of a single Trojan girl, who, as E. R.
Dodds states, "is more of a than a medium,"12
rightly clairvoyant
and through whom Aeschylus reflects certain essential fifth
notions of madness, divination, and trance.
century
11. cassandra's scene
"Find out all about dreams, and you will have

found out all about insanity."
(H. Jackson, quoted by Ernest Jones)

114 dream and vision in aeschylus' oresteia
most creation is a mad Cas

Aeschylus' inspired prophetess,
sandra. She is the character in the Oresteia who understands
only
the meaning of her prophecies, and in doing so is rendered the
most tragic personality of the trilogy.
In attempting to understand why Aeschylus dramatizes her
trance-Uke state at such scene takes one fifth
length?the nearly
the lines of the Agamemnon?it is essential to relate "vision" to
"dream." For waking visions and hallucinations both have in gen
eral the same origin and psychological structure as dreams. Both
tend to reflect traditional culture-patterns. Both usually represent
the time sequence in a distorted form and are structured about
concrete visual
images.
Notions of vision in the ancient world differed substantially
from ours. We think of visions as the of mystics,
experience
or fools. But the Greeks tended to reverence a man
epileptics,
who saw "visions," and at once set him above the common masses.
Socrates is an excellent example. We like to think of him as an
incarnation of reason and dialectic. But readers of the
Symposium
will recall how he is frequently engrossed in his own private
visions: while going with Aristodemus to Agathon's banquet, he
is left behind on the road as he ponders some matter (ioyKparn
7T<t)? tov vovv Kara ttjv 6S6v 174d). in
eavT<j) irpO(T?xovTa Commenting
the Phaedrus on such visions and sudden epiphanies of insight,
Socrates says, "our come to us of mad
greatest blessings by way
ness, provided the madness is given to us by divine gift." As
Dodds warns us, the great and teacher of wisdom does
visionary
not mean that madness is more desirable than
waking sobriety,
sickness able to soundness, but rather that truths
preferr great
come to man in forms of experience where he least expect
might
them. We can be sure that would have subscribed to
Aeschylus
Socrates on this matter.
For Aeschylus himself is a type of visionary. Not a mystic, for
this would contradict one of the few facts we know about his
was never initiated to the Mysteries,
biography, namely that he
but a poet who himself feels the compelUng power of visionary
means
experience. The purpose is not to redeem this Trojan girl by
of catharsis in vision. This is never hinted at by Aeschylus. Such
a notion of catharsis through vision is largely a product of nine
Romanticism which has carried over into this
teenth-century
Hans as he a vision the
century: Castorp, experiences by pond
where his nose bleeds, is suddenly transported to his childhood
and are at this moment annihilated for him and
days?time space
he remains in this state on the mountain for seven
super-human
years. But in the case of Cassandra, the possibiUty of redemption
is absent, and Socrates' assertion of the of madness" is
"blessings
relevant here only from a strictly dramaturgic point of view: Cas
sandra is the most tragic figure of the trilogy precisely because
she is made to suffer such mad visions. wants us to
Aeschylus

G.S.Rousseau 115
understand her brutal suffering nonetheless as proper penalty for

committing a crime against Apollo. When Apollo set himself to
overpower Cassandra, the maiden Afterwards she
Trojan agreed.
broke her To act in such a manner towards the greatest
promise.
of Greek gods is no less hubristic from Aeschylus' theological point
of view than to kill a daughter or husband. Her punishment is just.
It may be unfortunately painful, and the tragedy of her suffering
far greater than that of any other character. But in a world where
are held to be sacrosanct, a crime committed an
gods against
Olympian divinity cannot go unpunished.
Aeschylus' dramatic intention in the scene does not deny his
own view of the cosmos as an whole. One
theological organic
surmize that he demonstrates Cassandra's agony to
might only
criticize Apollo. Such a notion is far from the poet's mind. In the
world view, mortals and divinities are related a
Aeschylean by
very deUcate bond. Should any unfavorable experience destroy
the balance of the relationship, the whole order is disrupted. Such
a disturbance is what results from Cassandra's of
exactly rejection
Apollo. Aeschylus' purpose in the scene is accordingly to show
both the stark effects of such disorder and the tragic suffering of
the victim upon whom the angry god sets his wrath.
To achieve this end, resorts to every dramatic and
Aeschylus
poetic device he knows. Most striking among these is the way he
dramatizes Cassandra's demeanor and tor
exhausting spiritual
ment. From the moment she sets foot in Cassandra knows
Argos
that something terrible has happened to her. Only later in the
vision does she suddenly realize that she will die, and this knowl
edge is even more tormenting than the ugly truth revealed in her
vision of death, and other mis
Agamemnon's impending every
fortune that will overtake the house. To have made Cassandra the
mere vehicle of possession and robbed her of an of
understanding
her message would have reduced the and
greatly pathos humanity
of the scene in the Agamemnon, and the tragic veracity of the
whole play.
The scene is a in dramatic It moves in
masterpiece technique.
different tempi and rhythms, Uke a contrapuntal arrangement of
sounds in which the chorus grows more and she less lyrical. Not
unlike a phantasmagoria, the images presented are not
logically
ordered but rather and incalculable?a screen.
spontaneous filmy
Cassandra is in when
sitting Agamemnon's traveling-carriage
orders her to come down and go into the house.
Clytaemnestra
She makes no reply; she is as silent as Prometheus when being
nailed down to the wind-beaten cliffs. As soon as
Clytaemnestra
leaves, having become disgusted with vain attempts to persuade
her husband's concubine, the inspired prophetess not only utters
words, showing that she is not a true barbarian, without speech
and cultivation of the tongue, but prophesies the whole fate of the
house: net, bath-tub, death blows, the
Clytaemnestra's oozing

ii6 dream and vision in aeschylus' oresteia
blood of Agamemnon, and the rage of the Furies. With her extra
sensory perception, Cassandra can still smell the stench of older
blood shed on the portals of the palace?blood of the babes of
roasted, and served Atreus.
Thyestes slaughtered, by
In divining the truth of the future, Cassandra uses language
which is largely drawn from Orphic imagery and the tradition of
the secret cults. Eduard Fraenkel analyzes specific words and
shows that their usage here syntactically corresponds with Orphic
Even with a less technical of Cassandra's
fragments. knowledge
language, it is possible to detect the sustained tensions of the play,
tensions in of and calm and
expressed metaphors sleep waking,
storm, freedom and slavery, which we noticed in the first part of
the
Agamemnon.
She warns the chorus to keep the "bull away from the cow"
Tov There is a inversion here:
(a7rcx rrjs ?obs ravpov). powerful
Clytaemnestra is the bull, and Agamemnon the cow. Usually in
Aeschylus the female is dominated by the male and enslaved. Cas
sandra, for is a slave to and in this passage
example, Agamemnon,
treated by Clytaemnestra and the elders as some dumb creature
caught within the toils of her fate. The enslaved woman in
an animal, as Io (cow), at least treated
Aeschylus is, if not Uterally
as one.
Cassandra also alludes to herself as a sore and un
nightingale,
the from the chorus, who not
happy, taking up image although
she has to say, consider her to be Uke the
understanding anything
forlorn bird in the Tereus story. The poetry of the chorus is set in
lyrical language:
. . . about a tuneless
yourself you cry aloud tune,
like a one, who insatiate of cry,
tawny lamenting
alas, with melancholy mind bewails with 'Itys,
Itys' her Ufe that has woe flourishing on either
side, a nightingale. ( 1140-1145 )
Dante's childUke Pilgrim in the Purgatorio also glimpses into

the future at the early hour of the morning, when the swallow
sings her sad song?again it is the story of Tereus and Philomela:
Nell' ora che comincia i tristi lai
la rondinella presso alla mattina,
f orse a memoria de' suoi
primi guai,
e che la mente nostra, peregrina
dalla carne, e men da'
pi? pensier presa,
alle sue vision ? divina:
quasi
(At the hour when the swallow begins her sad
unto the morn, in memory
lays nigh perchance
of her former woes,
and when our mind, more of a wanderer from the
flesh and less prisoned by thoughts, in its

G. S. Rousseau i \.y
visions ismost prophetic; )

(IX, 13-19, trans. Temple Classics, Wicksteed)
The awareness in Dante is that which comes in dreams,
sleeper's
at the hour just before waking, when the spirit extends itself to
and, as Freud maintains, is the hour when most
past myths,
use the imagery
dreaming takes place. Both Dante and Aeschylus
of allusion and myth in similar passages to illustrate that dream
a
ing does not always take place in void but through the channels
of memory, as the Pilgrim knows when he hears the swallow in
of her first
"memory wrong."
Aeschylus' choice of the Tereus story is not haphazardly made.
Bird imagery is a central part of the metaphoric scheme of the
Oresteia. of woe and seizure and eventual en
Symbolic suffering,
slavement, it appears in the first chorus when the "eagle," king
of birds, swoops down on the hare and ruptures her pregnant
belly; such imagery is found also in this portion of Cassandra's
vision when the prophetess tells how she will meet with death, "as
a bird, twittering and ( 1316 ).
fearing the bush."
Light and musical imagery are also present in this trance. When
Cassandra to grow more rational than she was at the
begins begin
ning, speaking in propria persona, she tells us that her oracle will
be:
. . . as a fresh wind . . . and blow towards the

bright
sunrise, so that like a wave there shall surge
toward the light a far greater woe than this .. . (1180-1183)
This "fresh wind" recalls the way Helen came sailing into Troy,
as the a
"temper of windless calm." Wind which is soothing but
destructive and deceitful is contrasted here with the earlier and
sustained of storms and When
image gales. Agamemnon changes
his mind and decides to slaughter Iphigeneia, the psychological
shift is described as a "gale veering in its course." The wildness of
this image ismagnificent! It captures the profound sense of cosmic
disorder. As a recurrent strain of it lends a tone of primi
imagery,
tive fierceness to the poetry and makes the Elements seem fully
animate. At the end of the Eumenides, the wind calms, and it "no
longer is hurtful." By looking to "light," Cassandra prophesies

as savior and for future men.
Apollo hope
Cassandra hears distant voices, the "choir of Furies voices that
never sing in tune." This choir of voices predicts the spirit-chilling
Binding-Song of the Furies in the Eumenides. These demons will
chant a tune which is so dissonant and hurtful to the ear that
Cassandra fears the sound of it now. Cassandra knows that this
hideous song which will try to bewitch and petrify Orestes' mind
will be awful when it comes.
As Cassandra becomes less possessed by her visions and gains
a degree of control over them, the scene seems to diminish in
dramatic The calms down. But the calm is mo
intensity. frenzy

Il8 DREAM AND VISION IN AESCHYLUS' ORESTEIA
mentary, and Aeschylus saves the former dramatization of mad

ness from turning into cool rationaUty, when suddenly Cassandra
seems to suffer the effects of a new fit, just as
fiercely painful as
the first one, and not unUke the attacks of epilepsy which come
upon the characters in Dostoevsky's novels (Mishkin in the Idiot,
or Smerdyakov in the Brothers Karamazov) :
Ah! but see this evil, see!
Now once again the pain of grim, true prophecy
shivers my whirUng brain in a storm of things
foreseen. Look there, see what is above
hovering
the house, so small and young, imaged in the
shadow of dreams .. . ( 1214-1218)
This time, however, dreams have no multitude of meanings, as
when the choms watched Agamemnon walk the carpet; the
"shadow of dreams" is as clear to Cassandra as rays of
ApoUo's
Ught, telUng her the truth of the future. In the simile of the
"shadow of dreams," visions and dreams are connected. All former
references to dreams are recalled with sudden of the man
irony
ner in which truth has come to be seen:
Clytaemnestra's rejection
of the sleeping world, the Argives' metaphor of phantasmal
dreams to express feebleness, and their later use of dream
imagery
as of confusion. Now Cassandra uses the same dream
symboUc
image with an inversion of its usual meaning in the earUer parts of
the in the "dream shadow" she sees a vision
Agamemnon: bright
. .
of Thy est es' children "holding out their vital insides ."By in
version, the simile avows the truthful nature of dreams and fore
shadows the enormous veridical which the dream will as
powers
sume in the Choephoroe.
The dramatic shift from Cassandra's relative calm to this re
newed spasm is typically Aeschylean. There is no warning in the
or action; a sudden trance comes, and the dramatist
poetry just
does not detract from its horror by modifying its onset, or even
toning its pain down in the sUghtest way.
The first section of the Agamemnon illustrates Aeschylus' bold
use of
language and the way he will even abuse language if neces
sary. The metaphoric daring of the Herald's speech (636-674) is
an of this abuse. Cassandra's is no less auda
example language
cious. In the mouth of a prophetess who speaks only the truth,
Aeschylus reveals subtle metaphoric distinctions which he could
not make otherwise. In to a monster, "the
likening Clytaemnestra
female, of the male," Cassandra calls her an
slayer "amphisbaena"
a terrible type of chimera which sailors, when pass
(?pL<f>L(T?awa),
ing the rocks of Scylla, would talk about in dread. The word Uter
ally means going (?aiVw) both ways (ap.<f>U),and probably refers
to an ancient serpent with head and tail alike. Here it refers to
and Orestes, both of whom are called and
Clytaemnestra serpents,
who act from deeper psychological motives than are seen on the

G. S. Rousseau 119
surface. The image of a snake with a "double bite" is sufficiently

horrid to describe Clytaemnestra.13
In a moment of torment Cassandra reveals her secret.
deepest
She tells how Apollo wooed her and made her a prophetess, how
she later retracted her a curse on her
promise, thereby bringing
self: she would be a prophetess beUeved by no one, neither
parents nor friends. Why did she accept and then rebuff? She
does not say, nor does Aeschylus expUcitly tell us. The personal
to under
psychology underlying this moment ( 1203-4) is difficult
stand, and no scholar has a answer.
yet produced satisfactory
a seer, she is still a Trojan girl, with a social background,
Although
so far as she knows the truth about
family, and personal tragedy in
everyone except herself. Not until she finds herself in the house
hold of Atreus does she "see" she will die. Her first great cry of
oTOTOTOTol, is itself an of her revelation
pain, expression visionary
at the moment:
O woe, woe, woe! alas! Apollo, Apollo! ( 1072-1073)

She invokes Apollo first because he has brought her to this final
doom. The scene is in this a "vision" from the start.
way very
Cassandra tears off Apollo's trappings: scepter, fillets and gar
ments. At first she seems to act
voluntarily:
Why then inmockery of myself do I keep these

trappings, this scepter, and these fillets of
divination around my neck? I will at least destroy
you before the moment of my death. Go to perdition;
now at least, as you Ue on the
ground, I requite
you. (1264-1267)
But a moment later, she remembers that ApoUo has brought her
to this doom, and attributes the act to him:
See, Apollo himself is stripping me of my

... ( 1269-1270)
prophetic garb
Apollo's gesture is fierce and brutal. It dramatically represents

Cassandra's mental anguish during these last minutes of suffering
at the block.
Throughout this vision, Cassandra does not speak with her own
mind. She utters the visions as soon as the images and objects of
the future cross her mind. There is no logic or order in the suc
cession of images other than a poetic one: the poetry becomes
gradually less frantic until Cassandra seems completely in control
of herself as she remembers what she said in the first part of the
scene.
The dramatic effect of her trampUng her garments exemplifies
use of as well as as
Aeschylus' gesture pure, language gesture.
Gilbert Murray stresses the importance of physical gestures and

stage devices (repart?a) in Aeschylus' drama, and I think this

moment alone would corroborate his sound
completely judgment.
After on these fillets, Cassandra seems to be
trampling prepared
to endure the moment of death. But no. She shrinks from the
house twice, thereby drawing to herself in a physical gesture ad
ditional pity. By the dramatic force of such gestures, we are likely
to feel ill towards Apollo. Some scholars have even asserted that
in the poignancy of this last moment, Aeschylus intends criticism
of Apollo. The answer to these scholars can only be made in the
Eumenides, when face to face with the greatest god of Aeschylus'
time, we will be able to
judge
for ourselves. In the immediate scene,
the poet is concerned with as as he can,
dramatizing, powerfully
Cassandra's personal tragedy. If Apollo is the vehicle and cause
of Cassandra's as indeed he is, such is ancil
misery, knowledge
lary. For the gods are as they are, and if disturbed in the slightest
can be fiercer to man than he ever dreamt. Cassandra erred
way,
and for her sin she must pay retribution.
To the very end of her vision the elders are blind. They under
stand her words when they relate to the past, but the future is
still an unraveled riddle to them. In her last words, Cassandra
invokes the Sun and prays to him with hope that he will exact
vengeance for her Her prayer uttered, she final
misery. speaks
words of gloom in a moment of almost Sophoclean quietness:
Alas for the state of man: when there is success,
a shadow turn it; but when there is misfortune,
may
a wet with one dash blots out the picture.
sponge
And this I pity far more than that. ( 1327-1330)
The distinction is between degrees of gloomy fate: if a man is
fortunate, a shadow is to turn his Ufe to misfortune; if
enough
unlucky, a wet sponge does the job. The second fate is the worse,
for the first man has at least enjoyed fortune some time during his
Ufe, as Cassandra once did in Troy, but the second is insignificant
all his days. Pindar, in the eighth Pythian Ode (95-96), holds a
similarly pessimistic and gloomy view of human Ufe:
Creatures of a what is
day, anyone?
What is he not? Man is the dream of a shadow ...
but the poet goes on to say that

... when a of sunshine comes as a of
gleam gift
heaven, a radiant rests on men and a
Ught
gentle life.
Cassandra's "gift of heaven," the art of prophecy, brought no joy

to her life.
The dramatic movement of the scene, from to calm and
frenzy
wisdom, does not to Cassandra's own emotion. She
approximate

G. S. Rousseau 121
is no more now to her imminent death than she was a

resigned
few moments ago. But she knows the absence of any alternatives
in her own case and that the will of a god is absolute. The truth
this girl has come to understand in these last moments ( 1327-30)
makes her the more tragic: finally, she sees the insubstantiaUty of
her own Ufe.
The dramatic effect of such a reversal in Cassandra is calcu
lated to shock the spectator. By seeing Cassandra eventually quiet
and more rational than before, the of visions is
strange power
In effect, we see two Cassandras in the scene: first
emphasized.
the Cassandra of mad lateranda calmer
ecstasy
possession,
who tries to chorus the to the of her
visionary explain meaning
and even make them see the visions rovaSe
apparitions, (?pare
robs Sopot* ?(j>r)p?vov<s veovs). As in a dream, time has become con
fused for her. It moves backwards and forwards, as the chorus'
first The vision on has not been a reve
song. presented stage only
lation of Aeschylus' dramatic boldness in the form of gesture to
the audience; it is a revelation through vision to Cassandra. For
in no extant source is there that
pre-Aeschylean any suggestion
Cassandra prophesied her own death outside the palace. This
nuance in the myth is an invention. With such fore
Aeschylean
learned on the Cassandra reveals more than
knowledge spot, any
other character the disorganization which exists in the family of
Agamemnon.
III. CHOEPHOROE
"So ist der Aufbau das Dramas dadurch bestimmt

da? das ein sich Entscheiden ist."
Sp?v
(Bruno Snell, Aischylos u. das Handeln
in Drama)
In the movement from the first part of the Agamemnon (1
1034) to Cassandra's scene, the dream moves in a direction from
semblance to That is, it becomes less and less unseen, and
being.
eventually turns into action. The first expUcit use of veridical
dreams ismade in the Choephoroe. The dream ismade to apply
to waking Ufe and affect the dreamer. By such a
metamorphosis
of a dream, from semblance-Uke to clear enactment, the
reaUty
Agamemnon and the Choephoroe are tied together in an ascend
order.
ing
Clytaemnestra's dream in the Choephoroe is the source from
which all the action proceeds. The mood of the play is set by the
first song of the chorus as they come to the tomb of Agamemnon,
singing the queen's dream, without referring to any details of the
event:
Terror, the dream diviner of this house, belled

clear, shuddered the skin, blew wrath from sleep

a in obscure watches, a voice of fear

cry night's
deep in the house, dropping dead weight inwomen's
inner chambers. And who read the dream mean
they
ings and spoke guarantee of god told how under the
earth dead men held a grudge still and smouldered
at their murderers. (32-41 )
Theallusion is to Clytaemnestra, and the entire passage is
wrought in the language of fear. It suggests to the audience why
the Ubation offerings have been sent, but is also masterful in dis
guise, for not a word ismentioned about the snake drawing milk
and blood, not a name, neither nor
single Clytaemnestra Agamem
non. Every hint is subdued and muted. Until brother and sister
meet, and the chorus of maidens reveal the details of the dream,
the atmosphere is latent with different possibiUties of interpreta
tion. Of course, the audience knows that the dream refers to
Clytaemnestra's nightmare and would thus react all the more in
tensely to the queen's guilt, revealed by her shriek in the night.
The dream is tied to the Agamemnon in that it attempts to reveal
the anxiety and frustration of the waking world as reflected in
But it also manifests itself in a new in "action."
sleep. way:
There is double irony in the dream interpreters' mistake. At
first, they confuse the Uteral (Orestes is the snake) with the meta
phoric (the snake as a symbol of Agamemnon), and this mistake
of the is mentioned the maidens at
oneiropoloi intentionally by
the outset of the play. The second irony lies in the interpreters'
bUndness to Orestes' feigning to be dead, for he is "very much
aUve." Orestes his dead father revenge and
represents seeking
corresponds to the symbol of the snake. He is the first member of
this family to see the future clearly as soon as he hears it:
If this snake came out of the same whence I came,

place
if she wrapped it in robes, as she wrapped me, and if
its jaws gaped wide around the breast that suckled me,
and if it stained the intimate milk with an outburst
of blood, so that for fright and pain she cried aloud,
it follows then, that as she nursed this hideous thing
of prophecy, she must be cruelly murdered. I turn
snake to kill her. This is what the dream portends. (543
550)
Now during Aeschylean Athens, Delphi was the most important
single location where men could learn of disharmony in the rela
tion of men to the gods, and even more important in this case,
between man and man in a single family. Aeschylus is the first
poet to connect Orestes with Delphi. Apollo is Orestes' patron,
and has ordered him to avenge his father's murderer. In order to
arrange the plot so that Orestes and Electra meet, Aeschylus
needs the dream machinery to serve his plot, and as a means by

G. S. Rousseau 123
which Clytaemnestra will send her daughter to Agamemnon's

tomb. The purpose of the dream, in addition to offering the audi
ence a clear indication of Clytaemnestra's feeling of guilt after her
crime, is tomislead the house.
The chorus of maidens is careful not to divulge the true source
of the dream. There may be a hint in their language that they
know of Delphi's share in the nightmare. They call the inmost
room a not to
/auô?, which applies only Clytaemnestra's bedroom,
but which is figuratively expressive of the oracular adytum: the
sanctuary and subterranean grotto of Apollo at Delphi was also
a minor circumstances
commonly
called /?vô?. The of the dream,
the hour at which it comes the hour
(aoipowKTos, early morning,
when oracles were and its location, its real
given), give away
Even with their the dream turns out
meaning. misinterpretation,
to be far more significant for Clytaemnestra (karta mantis) than
any of the oneiropoloi think.
Had the dream not come from Apollo at Delphi to Clytaemnes
tra?and it is essential here to remember that the prevalent beUef
in Aeschylus' day was that of dreams sent by a god?its meaning
might have been less entangled and correctly read by the in
terpreters. But Aeschylus wants the dream to be compUcated
and deceptive. The symboUsm of this dream is no more difficult
for the audience to interpret than Atossa's dream in the Persians;
the notion of a snake to breast and drain
coming Clytaemnestra's
ing milk and blood from it was stock imagery: Stesichorus had
used it in his own Oresteia. Clytaemnestra's dream in Aeschylus is
part of Apollo's plan by which he will enable Orestes to atone for
In this sense, dream is representa
Agamemnon. Clytaemnestra's
tive of the curse beginning to work in action (Sp?to) in the House
of Atreus. It will force Clytaemnestra to be caught in her own
"snares."
Orestes' of himself as "snake" and murderer is most
recognition
important. Even when the dream is represented to him in a dis
guised and allegorical form, he can instantly see through it. Hav
ing grown up in a foreign land, removed from the vices of the
family, Orestes is not directly part of the cluster of sinners. He
inherits the task of avenging his father, but aside from this, he is
pure. Both brother and sister are distinguished from the former
pair of sinners by the purity of motive through which they act.
But the psychological entanglement existing between Clytaemnes
tra and her two children adds another dimension to their resolu
tion to act. insists that Electra, an "unmarried
George Thompson14
woman," feels most bitter towards her mother on this account.
Lattimore15 asserts that Orestes acts not an external
against
enemy, but against a part of himself, through a phihs-aphilos com
plex. These dissatisfactions of both brother and sister are certainly
Yet to out these discontents as "the" reason, su
present. single
so, overlooks the creative out of time and the
perlatively working

way in which the psychological distortion becomes rectified. To

interpret Orestes' psychological disposition only within the con
text of the Choephoroe detracts from the organic structure of the
trilogy. Orestes is frustrated and filled with anxiety before he ever
comes back to Argos. He bitterly laments
having been changed
from a status to that of a But chooses
prince's beggar. Aeschylus
not to locate Orestes' as the source of his action in
past anxiety
the present play. He acts because Apollo commands him, and
Apollo, a god of "hope," commands him because Agamemnon's
murder must be avenged and this House of Atreus purified. Of
course, and present motives are of a emotional
past part single
state of mind. But Orestes' as a result of
experience separation
from his mother must not be so emphasized that it takes prece
dence over the Orestes we see on
stage.
When Orestes has finally cornered his mother in the palace and
threatens to murder her, she bares her breast, and cries:
Hold, my son. Oh take pity, child, before this breast

where many a time, a drowsing baby, you would feed and
with soft gums sucked in the milk that made you strong.
(896-898)
Even when her destruction is near, deceit is
Clytaemestra's
flagitious. For if the comic nurse tells us anything, it is that she
took Orestes away from his mother to nurse from the day of his
birth. No pity is intended to be felt for the viper who lies to her
son in the moment of death, entreating him to spare her as both
"son" (t?kvov) and "child" (viral) in the same breath. When Cly
taemnestra bares her breast, Orestes hesitates and cries out to
Pylades for advice:
Pylades, What shall I do? Be ashamed to kill my

mother?
This moment of hesitation reveals a of Orestes' inner
large part
conflict with respect to the horror and the necessity of the mother
murder. Aeschylus intensifies the dramatic effect of the moment
by Clytaemnestra's gesture: her appeal to her son by means of a
sexual gesture of motherhood and femininity is appalling in view
of the opposite role she plays during the rest of the drama.
Up to this point in the Choephoroe, Orestes has been resolved
to act and revenge his mother, and with a Uttle support from
Pylades, he commits the deed. The torment that afflicts him is
revealed not only at this moment when he asks Pylades what to
do, but by the broken quaUty of his speech.
From the first moment we see Orestes, his is indica
language
tive of a man tormented by the thought of murdering his mother.
In the early part of the play, he seems to be speaking to himself
more than to anyone. His description of the monsters that will
overtake him if he does not obey Loxias' command sounds Uke the

G. S. Rousseau 125
a
soliloquy of possessed man. He tells Electra and her maidens
how Apollo
... of the that come out of the
spoke angers
ground from those
beneath who turn men; of sicknesses
against spoke
ulcers that ride upon the flesh, and cUng, and with
wild teeth eat the natural tissue, how on this disease
away
shall grow in turn a leprous fur. He spoke
of other ways again by which the Erinyes might
attack, brought to fulfillment by my father's blood.
For the dark arrow of the dead men underground
from those within my blood who fall and turn to call
upon me; madness and vain terror in the
night
on one who sees clear and whose move in the dark,
eyes
must tear him loose and shake him until, with all his bulk
degraded by the bronze-loaded lash, he lose his city.
(278-290)
There is not a trace of self-restraint in the poetry of these Unes.
The loose syntax of this description is intended by Aeschylus. Al
though the text of the passage ismildly corrupt, Orestes' visionary
is meant to be transmitted. He is a mo
eloquence undergoing
mentary hallucination. Professor H. J. Rose calls the description
the result of a "hypnagogic vision," borrowing from Dodds and
Freud, who used the term for self induced visions in which the
individual see everything in exaggerated visual images.16 Gil
bert Murray detects this strain of madness in Aeschylus' Orestes
throughout the Choephoroe:
. . . there is that in the hero's character which makes it easy
for him to go mad. In the where we see him
Choephoroe,
before the mother-murder, he is not normal. His is
language
strange and broken amid its he is a
amazing eloquence;
haunted man.17
This "haunted" of Orestes is present, as in this
quality speech,
but not until the murder itself does the full power of vision over
take Orestes. Throughout the palace scene he is controlled and
shrewd. He reveals to as and
nothing Clytaemnestra, planned,
fools her in his disguise as amessenger
perfectly reporting his own
death. He seem to conceal the anxious tension that
may prevails
upon him as he debates with himself over the gravity of the deed
he is to commit. Yet as soon as he does the murder, he loses con
trol, and all the previous tensions which were in fact devouring
him become revealed in the visions he sees.
Greater meaning is endowed to Orestes' vision by the increased
with which the action moves. There is a relentless inter
speed
change between mother and son for over thirty Unes. With the
exception of four rather banal Unes (918-921), the dialogue
seems to gravitate to Orestes' final words to his mother before he
murders her with her lover, Aegisthus:

Too true a prophet was your dream fear. (929)
The dream has finaUy come true, and the single "action" of the
play is completed as Orestes approaches the house with his victim.
Cassandra's vision of an exile home to avenge the murder
coming
of his father, and dream?both have become as
Clytaemnestra's
concretely present as the garment with which Agamemnon ismur
dered. The fear of the Argive elders in the Agamemnon is now
no "shadow of a dream," but a clear
reality. The Argives' original
fear was expressed in poetry; now action itself replaces fear: the
difference is that then it was hidden in the subconscious, but now
asserts itself in violent action.
After the murder is committed and the palace doors are swung
Orestes orders an attendant to the with
open, display garment
which he murdered Clytaemnestra. It is the same "net" which the
queen used to entangle Agamemnon. This death net has been
seen twice, and twice has been held up to the audience to ob
serve. Yet in each case the circumstances are different,
quite
although the dramatic spectacle (eKirXnizisTcparw^?) created by
pointing to it as the death symbol is the same. Whereas Clytaem
nestra boasted herself to be the "avenging demon" (?Xaarwp),
Orestes proclaims his own purity (dike), and fears the complete
madness which will overtake him in a few moments. He compares
the loss of his reason to a "charioteer" who turns his horses
gradual
round a curve and finds that do not this
suddenly they obey?at
moment the charioteer sees the crash in view.18 From the moment
he murders, Orestes and almost awaits the madness and
expects
visions to overtake him.
Unlike Clytaemnestra, he assumes full responsibiUty for his
deed, knowing that he has done the right thing:
But while I hold some grip still on my wits, I say pubUcly
to my friends: I killed my mother with full justice,
a mother stained with the murder of my father, and detested
by the gods. (1026-1028)
The chorus understands Orestes at his word, and thinks that he
has finally purified the house from its corrupted state:
You Uberated all the Argive city when

you lopped the heads of these two snakes with one clean
stroke. (1046-1047)
And at once he sees the Furies before him with "snakes" in their
heads:
Oh! see, see!

Women servants, come Uke
they Gorgons,
they wear robes of black and
are wreathed in a tangle
of snakes. I can no longer stay here. ( 1047-1050 )

G. S. Rousseau 127
The maidens do not understand the visions (doxai) which Orestes

sees and
implore him not to let fear (phobos) overtake him. But
the visions are too and he these creatures with
potent, imagines
snakes in their heads to be already preying upon him:
These are no fancies (doxai) of my afflictions,
for they are clearly the vengeful hounds of my mother.
(1053-54)
and amoment later, to the maidens,
You cannot see them but I can see them.
I am driven away and will no
longer remain here.
(1061-1062)
Thisis the terrible power of "vision" (doxa), uttered in the
simplest diction. These doxai, the fancies now appearing to Ores
tes, are expressions of the same guilt that Clytaemnestra felt when
she screamed in the night. In each case, the vision indicates most
strongly the brutal manner in which the normal relations of Ufe
have been distorted: friendship (philia), love (eros), trust be
tween men (pistis), close harmony between men and
gods?all
these ties, so necessary for Ufe, have been broken in the
family of
Atreus.
In the movement from the Agamemnon to the Choephoroe, a
new level of vision has been achieved. The ends in doubt in
play
one sense: the audience does not know Orestes' whether
future,
he will pay for the murder with his own life. But in another sense,
the play is very clear. This is in the relation between dreams and
vision. The knows that past dreams have now become
spectator
true, for the poet has drawn a subtle but clear line: both dreams
and visions partake of a divine nature in the foreknowledge they
have of truth to come.
From the point of view of dramatic construction, the dream
has as well. Dream has now come to serve as more than
changed
poetic imagery for the
poet. It is now "action." And whereas
dramatic time was severely distorted in the first
play, here it
begins to flow more steadily. Only in this play, when the dis
organization of Atreus' house begins to be reordered by the act of
these children, is the expectation of the audience that the se
quence of events will flow in logically ordered units of time
confirmed.
IV. EUMENIDES
Dream and vision are presented in still another version in the

Eumenides. First, the Furies which Orestes alone saw in a vision
at the end of the are shown on
Choephoroe stage, animate and
Not are these demonic
moving. only energies incarnated, but they
themselves are shown dreaming. Secondly, ApoUo, the great Greek
comes forth, and a few moments as well.
god, later, Athena,

With this array of divinities presented to the spectator on

a new of "dramatic vision" is Not
stage, concept crystalUzed. only
is Aeschylus concerned with the visions of the characters of the
trilogy; part of his artistic aim is to dramatize the gods who are
an of the cosmos in which the characters exist. In
integral part
Athena, and the Furies on the
presenting Apollo, stage, response
sought for by the dramatist is more than an appropriate thrill to
theatrical His intention is at once more intellectual and
spectacle.
optimistic: he wants to impress us with the immense power of the
own culture. In no way could
Olympian gods in his Aeschylus
have contrasted the differences between barbaric (Furies) and
civiUzed (Apollo) gods better than to bring them on stage in the
last play of this trilogy.
The play begins at the Temple of Apollo at Delphi. The Pythian
prophetess has just offered a prayer of blessing to the Olympian
pantheon outside the shrine. In her prayer, she subordinates the
gods of the pantheon to Zeus: Zeus is all encompassing, Zeus is
the highest ideal. She prays to the three Titan daughters: Earth
(Gaia), Law and Order (Themis), Phoebe (Phoib?) ; and Apollo.
The prophetess strikes a note of monotheism when she tells how
Zeus and Apollo are one?"Apollo is the interpreter of Zeus'
will."19
After the prayer, the prophetess retires into the temple and
returns almost immediately back outside. Horrified at the sight,
she cannot refrain from what she has seen:
telling
Things terrible to tell and for the eyes to see ...

... a
startling company
of women lying all upon the chairs. Or not
women, I think I call them rather gorgons, only
not either, since their is not the same.
gorgons shape
I saw some creatures in a once,
painted picture
who tore the food from Phineus, only these had no
wings, that could be seen; they are black and utterly
repulsive, and they snore with breath that drives one back.
From their eyes drips the foul ooze, and their dress is such
as is not right towear in the presence of the gods'
statues, nor even into any human house. (34, 46-56)
Aeschylus takes the utmost care to create first in "poetry" the

demons he will present to the audience in a few moments. The
not women, not
prophetess' description proceeds by negatives:
Gorgons, not Harpies. Such an account of the Furies in terms of
clear negatives adds to the final touch of the description: "from
their the foul ooze ..."
eyes drips
The prophetess is Uterally correct when she says that never
before have creatures Uke this been seen, nor knows what land
they come from. For the Erinyes (Furies) had not yet been fixed
in literature or art in any definite physical shape. Jane Harrison's

G. S. Rousseau 129
Prolegomena to the Study of Greek Religion presents a detailed

study of the genesis of the Furies, clearly showing how Aeschylus
is the first artist to incarnate them and bring them on stage.
boldness in these barbaric creatures suit
Aeschylus' considering
able for drama is not to be underestimated. In the Eumenides the
Furies contribute to the haunting atmosphere of initial darkness
which the poet is searching for. The effect intended when the
adytum is revealed at the end of the prophetess' speech (64) is
similar to the eerie mood produced at the opening of the Wal
in Faust?a sudden to the"underworld."
purgisnacht exposure
was the most sacred shrine in Greece and its
Delphi representa
tion on the with these creatures at its center, is
stage, sleeping
another of vision, a created of
aspect spirit place.
The dark adytum is revealed with Orestes surrounded by the
Furies. Apollo and Hermes are beside him. Apollo's first comfort
ing words to Orestes are typical of the hope and optimism which
the god symbolizes:
Iwill not give you up. Through to the end standing

your guardian, whether by your side, or far away,
I shall not weaken toward your enemies. See now
how I have caught and overpowered these lewd creatures.
(64-67)
The "lewd creatures" (at KarairTvaToi are subdued in
Kopai)
sleep, but not for long, for Aeschylus does not temper his dramatic
innovation of vision on the stage any more than he restrains his
boldly metaphoric language. He quickly proceeds to show the
audience these monsters and of all possible ways,
dreaming,
as comes to the Furies as
dreaming "dogs." Clytaemnestra's ghost
the external dream and to them, "You . . .
figure says sleep
(evSoiT ?v, 94). This kind of dream, in which an external dream
figure comes to the sleeper (who knows himself to be asleep), is
common especially in the Homeric poets. The
ghost of Patroclus
"You are Achilles," and so does the
says, asleep, shadowy image
to Penelope in the Odyssey.
Clytaemnestra's ghost pleads to the Furies:
Hear me. It ismy Ufe which depends upon this spoken plea.
Think then, o goddesses beneath the ground. For I,
the dream (onar) of Clytaemnestra, call upon your name.
(114-116)
Clytaemnestra wants to rescue her soul from the reproaches of the
other dead souls, who refuse to pay her any respect as a murder
ess. In order to save herself, the Furies must wreak on
vengeance
Orestes. He must be caught by the "pack." Clytaemnestra's ghost
these creatures as a "huntsman," since have let
castigates they
Orestes escape the "net." As the dream unfolds and the Furies

awake, the metaphor of the hunt is elaborately worked out. The

Furies bark and whimper in their sleep and warn each other to
catch the victim's scent.
warns the Furies that their chase is not real, but
Clytaemnestra
only the experience of a "dream:"
The beast you are after is a dream, but like the hound
whose thought of hunting has no lapse, you bay him on.
What are you about? Up, let no work's weariness
beat you, nor slacken with sleep so you forget my pain.
(131-134)
The are the first and the last in the sentence
emphatic words
(131, 134): dream (onar) and sleep (hupn?). Sleep and waking
function as metaphors expressing psychological tension no less
than in the Agamemnon and the Choephoroe, where the charac
ters are human. As the audience observes
Clytaemnestra's ghost
bidding these demons to awake from their dream world, the vast
background of the trilogy seems present. Only when the Furies
are animate and as are here, can the terror which
moving, they
they exert over the universe be felt with due gravity. When the
audience hitherto has heard references made to the Furies, by the
Argive elders, Cassandra, and Orestes, their grotesque quaUties
must be inferred from the emotion of fear suffered by the indi
vidual making the reference. Now the spectator can judge for
himself.
The gradual manner in which the Furies awake is as skillfully
managed by Aeschylus as the Cassandra scene. One by one, they
come to waking Ufe, each not certain of whether or not she is
still dreaming. One Fury asks the other:
You dream still? On your feet and kick your sleep aside.
Let us see whether this prelude is in vain. (141-142)
The word "prelude" (fypoipuov) has a double meaning here. It

may either refer to the chase which the Furies have undertaken in
their dream: they want to see if Orestes has escaped from the net;
or the word may refer to the future chase that will take place. In
either case, the dramatic intent of the Unes is to capture their
can differentiate the sleeping and
"twiUght state." None of them
waking state. We, the audience, with our habit by now of clearly
looking for the distinction between sleep and waking throughout
the Oresteia, are quick to respond to their perplexity.
Several of the Furies narrate the pain suffered in the dream.
One remembers her agony
so that it seems as if she were
vividly
still sleeping and experiencing the physical "lashings:"
The accusation came me from my dreams,
upon
and hit me, as with the goad in the mid-grip of his fist
a charioteer strikes,

G. S. Rousseau 131
but deep, beneath lobe and heart.

The executioner's cutting whip ismine to feel
and the weight of pain is big, heavy to bear. ( 155-161 )
This fury remembers the metaphoric goading which has pierced

her to the depths. She feels faint, and tells her sisters how she has
been "stung" by Clytaemnestra's words. The elaborated metaphor
of the chase (hunter and hounds) relates to the larger metaphoric
system of nets, snares, and yokes of enslavement. Although these
Furies are said to be "not women" by the Pythian prophetess, all
of their emotions coincide with Aeschylean notions of femaleness
and the unfortunate women in his
position occupy world-picture.
They are yoked beasts; they are continually suffering mental
pain; they can apply no reason to free themselves from their
condition. knows that such irrational monster-women
Aeschylus
will not stand a chance of defeating Apollo at the Athenian trial.
Zeus is not on their side, nor can they command to their benefit
the defensive weapons of reason (logos) and persuasion (peith?).
This dream is therefore essential in so far as it shows us the weak
nesses of the Furies before the Trial. To prepare the spectator in
such a manner is typical of Aeschylus' dramatic technique.
The next visionary moment in the Eumenides leaves the semi
dream world of the beginning of the play behind. It occurs im
mediately after the Furies awake, when Apollo warns the demons
to leave his sanctuary. Aeschylus represents Apollo in this speech
as adamant and cruel towards the Furies:
... The whole cast of your shape is guide

to what are, the Uke of whom should hole in the cave
you
of the Uon, not in oracular
block-reeking
interiors, like mine off your filth.
nearby, wipe
Out then, you flock of goats without a herdsman, since
no god has such affection as to tend this brood. (192-197)
Apollo ismore than angry. His language is bitter; his metaphors

are selected to intensify the horror of the nether world; in brief, he
detests barbarians. One might think that Aeschylus criticizes
Apollo for being malicious in his address to the Furies. But he
does no such thing. Apollo represents the light and health of
culture; the Furies the opposite. It is true that when Apollo is a
friendly god he is friendly, and vice-ver sa. But to think that this
case is an example of Apollo's wrath showing itself would be to
mistake the deepest tenets of fifth-century Greek religion and
culture. For the Greeks attained their magnificence of civilization,
while situated so near to the barbaric world?Gilbert Murray
pointed this out long ago. Every Greek sitting in the Theatre of
Dionysus would take pride and feel an emotion of achievement as
Apollo furiously banishes these unciviUzed creatures from his
temple.

Following his words of harsh reproval, the Furies are shock

ingly poUte. All they plead for is a chance to be heard, a "day in
court:"
My lord Apollo, it is your turn to Usten now. ( 198)

The dramatic effect of this gracious salutation is startUng. It is
perhaps ironic in view of the dog-Uke creatures we have just seen
dreaming, for in answer to Apollo's ruffled tone, they call him
"My lord Apollo." As the dialogue proceeds, the Furies are ob
served to reason more cogently than Apollo within their own
narrow scope. They can see
nothing but the bloodshed on Orestes'
hands, and never think of the variety of interpretations which a
deed may admit of it put to the test of rational inquiry. Apollo
reasons less well, even within his own that Zeus
private insight
is on his side. He puts forth silly arguments concerning the
supremacy of males in the act of procreation, and claims that the
ties of marriage are as binding as those of common blood. At the
end of the dialogue, both parties leave Apollo's temple and the
scene changes to the temple of Athena on the
AcropoUs.
At the beginning of the second scene, Orestes is at the feet of
Athena's statue as a He is a "shadow," blunted and
suppUant.
exhausted of the resolute and mad
(ap?Xvv r}8r?, irpodrerpip^p?vov),
dened Orestes of the Choephoroe. The Furies claim that they will
wear this down to a more state than he
palUd figure phantasmal
presently is. They call him "blood drained, chewed dry, by the
of death, a wraith, a shell," and their
powers begin Binding-Song,
which is calculated to paralyze Orestes' blood even further.
The song is a kind of magical enchantment. It claims to "bind"
the listener by the dissonance of its musical harmonies and the
of its medicinal It offers the audience an
quality metaphors. oppor
tunity to confirm Apollo's harsh attitude toward these demons.
For such a the Furies at their worst. haunt
song represents They
a man, prey on him, and drain his blood. Not even the
physical
appearance of the Furies, with bloody snakes rising from their
heads, approaches the paralyzing effect achieved in this song. It
states in clear terms the effect it has over mortals, and
proceeds
to haunt:
Over the beast doomed to the fire

this is the chant, scatter of wits,
frenzy and fear, hurting the heart,
song of the Furies
binding brain and bUghting blood
in its stringless melody. (328-333)
The gloomy and plaguing effect created by this Ephymnia recalls
the words of Electra's maidens as they sing the third chorus
(585ff.) of the Choephoroe, telling of the numberless dangers

G. S. Rousseau 133
which the earth breeds (-rroXX? ph y ? Tpe</>et

/ Seiv? Sei/xarojvax^)
"Blood" is the leitmotiv of the song and is followed through in
each strain. Mother Night ((5 parep Nv|) is invoked by the Furies
to aid them as they exact vengeance from Orestes. The song tries
to create the properties of a "dreamworld;" it attempts to delete
all reason and control from the spirit, thereby transforming the
listener into a trance. The mood of fear it creates is like the one
felt by the Argive elders at the beginning of the trilogy. This is a
world where violent and destructive forces loom overhead, and
the individual has no chance of escape.
After the song, Athena appears for the first time. With the
appearance of each new god, whether Olympian or Chthonian, a
unique kind of dramatic spectacle is envisioned by the poet. And
succeeding the dark and brooding song of the yet demonic Furies,
Athena's strength and wisdom must have been a relief and happy
revelation to the spectator. Athena speaks with the poise and
control of an impartial divinity, addressing both parties aUke
(iracri h' k KoivbvAeyw, 408). The Furies take up their case first,
but do not understand that Athena has a new idea in mind by
which Orestes' fate is to be determined. When Athena asks them
towhat place they will take Orestes, they answer:
A place where happiness is never allowed. (423)

This is Hades. The word order of the Une is calculated and it
would surely be remembered by the audience for its large vague
ness and horror; it does not mention Hades, but its generaUty
makes the lower world as a "place" seem terrible. "J?v" (to
xatpeiv) is a phrase which recurs throughout the play, and seems
to foreshadow the end. Athena does not allow the Furies to go on
at length. She quickly tells that both sides will and must have an
in court.
equal opportunity
The Trial scene, and the technical points of the debate, do not
directly concern us in a consideration of dream and vision in the
Eumenides. It is sufficient to say that Athena favors Apollo and
votes for him with her determining vote. But the dramatic vision
and conception of such a scene of reconciliation taking place on
stage is unique and only Aeschylus could have imagined it. The
Furies gradually succumb to Athena's mild and magic-Uke per
suasion. And with the avenging demons, now friendly and es
sential to the maintenance of law and order, the play ends on a
note of ritual joy in commemoration of the establishment of the
court of Areopagus. A processional scene with torches, brilliant
Ughts, and bright gowns, fixes the last scene in the mind of the
spectator. Athena prays for natural beneficence and the return of
fertiUty to the people and the state:
Let there blow no wind that wrecks trees.
I pronounce words of grace.

Nor blaze of heat bUnd the blossoms of grown plants, nor

cross the circles of its right
Let no barren sickness and kill.
place. deadly creep
Flocks fatten. Earth be kind
to them, with double fold of fruit
in time appointed for its yielding. Secret child
of earth, her hidden wealth, bestow
blessing and surprise of gods. (938-948)
This restoration to normalcy brings the "gentle wind" instead of

the "fierce gales" which have been prevaiUng for so long in the
House of Atreus.
The particular interpretation we give to this ending does not
detract from the integrity of Aeschylus' dramatic vision. Thomson
sees the end of the Eumenides as the final touch to an evolu
tionary process in a society moving from tribal statehood to a
considers the ritual end to be a vision of a new
democracy. Jaeger
poUtical harmony, marking the removal of the Peisistratids and
the estabUshment of a new Athenian poUtical order. Finley and
E. A. Havelock focus more on the cosmic and
psychological
restoration to and a state of in the
harmony normalcy relationship
between men and the gods. It is quite possible, and highly likely,
that all of these notions are included in Aeschylus' conclusion.
For Aeschylus is a poet of sufficiently large scope not to Umit his
art to a of human The
single aspect experience. poUtical, psy
and social components of life are important.
chological, equally
In the reconciliation of Apollo and the Furies, the delicate balance
between and lower world is restored. There can be no
upper
doubt that this Apollo of the Oresteia, while never explicitly
criticized, is too male and too rational for the balance to retain its
effective state. Apollo must be reduced in the authority he wields,
for only when cosmic order is perfectly in harmony will happiness
and exist men.
peace among
The restoration of cosmic order at the end of the Oresteia is not
a vision of permanent harmony, or anything of the sort. Aeschylus
knows fully well that the problems facing the House of Atreus
will reappear in future times. He knows that each generation will
have to meet for itself the crises imposed by psychological tension
between men and women, and even between the rational and
irrational parts of the human psyche. The difference now is that
as existed in
judgment of the crimes resulting from such disorders
the House of Atreus shall be brought before a court inwhich both
cases can be pleaded. Despite Aeschylus' tone of optimism, he
knows that the suffering of mankind will be repeated for time
immemorial, and that only by suffering itself can each generation
restore itself to health.
The return to harmonious order and peace is indeed distant
from the disorder which the Argive elders lamented in their first

G. S. Rousseau 135
to Zeus. Those and dreams, Cassandra's

song early apprehensions
visions, Calchas' veridical dream
prophecies, Clytaemnestra's
all this has come to pass. And more yet. For we have not been
a
conveyed into new world by prophecy alone, but by poetry and
dramatic art. The brave new world at the end of the trilogy is,
after all, Aeschylus' own bUnd dream, a vision itself.
NOTES
1. AU in Greek are taken from Gilbert
quotations Aeschy Murray's
lus' Tragoediae (Oxford, 1957, second edition). transla
The
English
tions of the Agamemnon are Eduard
Fraenkel's, the Choe
primarily
and Eumenides are Lattimore's. In each case I have
phoroe changed
the translation wherever it seemed necessary. I am gready indebted to
H. D. F. Kitto, R. P. Blackmur, and John A. Moore, all of whom read
the manuscript in its entirety, and made countless to me
suggestions
both in discussion and written commentary.
2. To take a major source, S. Freud, "every dream
is the fulfillment
of a wish," (The Interpretation of Dreams, trans. third
J. Strachey,
edition, 1955) p. 122.
3. Iliad 22. 199-201: "As in a dream one flees and another cannot
him, / neither can one stir to escape, nor the other follow, so
pursue /
Achilles could not overtake Hector in running, nor Hector him."
escape
4. Notable among recent discussions of this which mention
trilogy
dream or vision to any extent are: Pindar and Aeschylus
J. Finley,
(Harvard, 1954 ) ;E. Fraenkel, A Commentary of the Agamemnon (Ox
ford, 1950 ) ;H. D.
F. Kitto, Form and Meaning in Drama (Methuen,
1953); R. Lattimore, Introduction to the Oresteia (Univ. of
Chicago
Press, 1953); R. Lattimore, The Poetry of Greek Tragedy (Baltimore,
to be an essential
1958 ) who considers dreams part of the total struc
ture of the trilogy; J. C. Opstelten, "Pessimism, The Tragic Sense and
Fear: and Sophocles," in Sophocles and Greek Pessimism
Aeschylus
(Amsterdam, trans, from the Dutch by J. Ross, 1952), ch. ii, p. 24-41;
B. Snell, und das Handeln in Drama,"
"Aischylos (Philologus, Supp.
La crainte et V angoisse dans le theatre d'
xx, 1928); J. de Romilly,
(Paris, 1958) which is a very fine interpretation of the emo
Eschyle
tional range of feelings in Aeschylus' characters; for a complete list of
dreams in Homer and Greek cf. W. S. Messer, Dream in
Tragedy,
Homer and Greek Tragedy (Col. Univ. Diss., 1918).
5. The Greeks and the Irrational (University of California, Sather
Class. Lectures, 1951), iv, p. 102-34, "Dream-Pattern and Cul
chap,
ture-Pattern."
6. Primitive Culture in Greece, p. 151 E. R. Dodds, op.
(quoted by
cit., p. 104).
7. For this point I am particularly indebted to E. Fraenkel.
8. A Commentary on the of Aeschylus (Amsterdam,
Surviving Plays
1958), p. 12.
9. I wish to acknowledge Eduard Fraenkel's briUiant commentary
on the Agamemnon. It has not me in understanding these
only helped
and the first chorus in but at every point along the way
Argives general,
in my consideration of the Oresteia.
10. Cornford suggests that there is no such thing as "character" in
Aeschylus.
"A character in
Aeschylus should be thought of, at any given

DREAM AND VISION IN AESCHYLUS' ORESTEIA
I36
moment, as a state of mind, with no or of

single background margin
individual personality." (Thucydides Mythistoricus, p. 159 ). This seems
to me absurd : not to mention who is one of the most in
Clytaemnestra,
dividual in Greek drama, the Argive chorus is
personalities represented
with a definite character and moral sense (cf. Agam. 472ff, I
"may
neither be a destroyer of cities... nor
myself made captive..." ).
These Argives are certain that evil breeds evil: "But I differ from others
?it is the impious deed that breeds further . ." ( 757 ) ;
impiety. Agam.
here both the chorus and the poet (building on Hesiod and Solon [fg.
2D] ) speak out at once.
11. Op. cit. p. 104.
12.
Op. cit. p. 88, note 45.
13. Some critics have gone to absurd ends in inter
nearly reading
into Cassandra's of Clytaemnestra as
pretations usage amphisbaena.
(Cf., for example, Kenneth Burke, "Form and Persecution in the Ores
teia," Sewanee, 60 (1952) 386, for Clytaemnestra as "the repre
sentation of the ultimate worm,
vegetatively, non-verbaUy, dreaming
back upon itself in enrapt self engrossment." the verbal
circUng Surely
point made lies in the grotesqueness of Cassandra's word. And all she
means is that the "bite" is so stinging that this snake
anthropologicaUy
seems to have at both ends.
fangs
14. A Commentary on the Oresteia, note to Cho. 480.
15. Introduction to the Oresteia, p. xxvii.
16. Cf. Rose, Commentary, Une 280, and S. Freud, op. cit. p. 31,
"It is enough, however, to fall into a state of this kind for no
lethargic
more than a second (provided that one has the necessary disposition )
in order to have a hypnagogic vision."
17. The Classical Tradition in Poetry, p. 185.
18. Orestes is Uke the "immortal charioteer" in the Phaedrus (246b)
who drives a team of horses, one noble and the other and the
ignoble,
of the two breeds in managing them.
mixture gives him great trouble
He tries to hold on to his rational self, but he knows that it will not stay
fixed now that rational and irrational self are running side by side.
19. Eum. 19 Ato? S' earl Ao?ta? There is a sug
npo^rn^ irarp?s-
in this statement of Aeschylus' monotheism; the Hymn to Zeus
gestion
160-183) is even more definite to a monotheistic
(Agam. testimony
inclination, particularly of the type described by Heraclitus, DK Fg. 32:
ev to piovvov ovk ?OeXei #cat eOeXet ovopa
Go<f>bv X?yeaOai Zrjvbs
("One the only does not and does consent to be
thing, truly wise,
called name of Zeus"). From Eum. 19, and the general rev
by the
erence for ApoUo's in Aeschylean Greece (cf. K. Kerenyi,
infaUibiUty
Apollon [Eugen Diederichs, 1953] p. 33ff.), I fail to understand critics
of such as G. Thomson and Athens, p. 278, para. 1 ),
Apollo, (Aeschylus
who not assert that was the to criticism in the
only Apollo god subject
middle of the fifth-century, but even project this critical view to the
of the Oresteia. It seems to me that Aeschylus is
ApoUo impossible
to mock this great god who stood for everything associated with
trying
cultural health. M. Nilsson's view (History of Greek Religion, p. 201)
that in spite of some malcontent with the god retained his
Apollo,
enormous influence in Greece from the seventh to the fifth-century,
seems to me to be a far less view than Thomson's.
prejudiced


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Trustees of Boston University

Dream and Vision in Aeschylus' "Oresteia"

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SPURIOUS PAIR OF LINES APPEARS IN

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taemestra in the Choephoroe summons her

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the Egyptians who are chasing them to a "black dream:"

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returns to the body to inform it of its findings; and, finally, the

The first mention of dreams in the Oresteia ismade at the outset

In the confused of the Watchman's statement, his anxi

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even though the Watchman has no inkling of what is happening

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a stinging goad, as the

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acutely the psychological tension of the present moment, but un

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hours when arrives. The song is a muted

It is to persuasive visions of dreams that you

By doxa Clytaemestra means the vision or fancy that a dreamer

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honor, without reviling, without belief. Through

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warns him to take cognizance of the deceiving couple waiting for

Eye imagery is no less striking here than in the case of Mene

And letting fall to the ground her saffron-dyed garment,

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or the brilliant purple robes of the Athenians and Furies at the

image of a shadow those who seem most devoted to me.

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kinds of nets in his Introduction to the Oresteia, and by now the

waking Ufe. With waking Ufe being as terrible as it is for this

You are confident that this deed is mine; do not

The thrill of both these statements is the way in which Cly

Why is it that this dread so persistently hovers

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11. cassandra's scene

"Find out all about dreams, and you will have

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most creation is a mad Cas

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understand her brutal suffering nonetheless as proper penalty for

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Dante's childUke Pilgrim in the Purgatorio also glimpses into

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visions ismost prophetic; )

. . . as a fresh wind . . . and blow towards the

longer is hurtful." By looking to "light," Cassandra prophesies

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mentary, and Aeschylus saves the former dramatization of mad

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surface. The image of a snake with a "double bite" is sufficiently

O woe, woe, woe! alas! Apollo, Apollo! ( 1072-1073)

Why then inmockery of myself do I keep these

See, Apollo himself is stripping me of my

Apollo's gesture is fierce and brutal. It dramatically represents

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stage devices (repart?a) in Aeschylus' drama, and I think this

but the poet goes on to say that

Cassandra's "gift of heaven," the art of prophecy, brought no joy

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is no more now to her imminent death than she was a

G.S. Rosseau - Dream and Vision in Aeschylus' Oresteia

G.S. Rosseau - Dream and Vision in Aeschylus' Oresteia