Death is at Argos to meet Agamemnon in the shape of Clytemnestra, his scheming wife. To carry out what she believes is “justice” Clytemnestra feels she must kill Agamemnon because he killed Iphigenia, their daughter. She also feels it is justice because powerful men think they can get away with anything and not deal with any of the circumstances, so in this case, Clytemnestra believes she is the avenging justice that will give Agamemnon what he deserves. When Agamemnon returns to Argos, one of the first things he says is that he will promote growth and will “help it flourish” but if anything calls for “drastic cures” (834) he will “burn the cancer at the roots” (836). Clytemnestra’s justice starts begins to take concrete form when she hears this, as she feels nervous that Agamemnon might find out about her plan before she can put it into play. She persuades Agamemnon to walk on red tapestries, a right usually reserved for gods. Agamemnon protests, but Clytemnestra appeals to his ego and Agamemnon walks on the tapestries. By doing this Agamemnon further places himself in Zeus’ bad graces when he calls the gods “my accomplices” which makes it looks like Agamemnon is placing himself on a pedestal. Clytemnestra tells Agamemnon he like “Zeus when Zeus tramples the bitter virgin grapes for new wine” (971-972) which feeds Agamemnon’s pride as he believes that she is telling him that he godly. However, everything Clytemnestra says is double edged, as she really means that he sacrificed Ihphigenia the “bitter virgin grapes” for Cassandra, his “new wine”. After Agamemnon crosses the threshold, Clytemnestra prays to Zeus to “fulfill our prayers”, or to speed the killing of Agamemnon. The Chorus at this point knows that something terrible is going to happen, because the Furies are on the roof of the house. They also know that Clytemnestra’s planned murder will not be justice because “a man’s life blood is dark and mortal. Once it wets the earth what song can sing it back?” (1017-1020) meaning that the blood that soaks the earth will not cause plants to grow like water does, but will just cause the curse of the House of Atreus to fester. Clytemnestra’s twisted form of justice begins to appear more as revenge than as justice though when she sees Cassandra. Cassandra is the last living descendant of Priam, the king of Troy, and represents all the innocent victims and all the unfair lives of the survivors of Troy. Clytemnestra is extremely jealous of Cassandra, even though she’s been cheating on Agamemnon with Aegisthus for years. After Clytemnestra goes inside the house to seduce Agamemnon and then kill him, Cassandra starts to have visions of what is going to happen. She sees Clytemnestra kill Agamemnon and sees that in “the house that hates god, an echoing womb of guilt” (1088-1089) the killing will continue and the “soil [will be] streaming blood” (1091). Cassandra sees Clytemnestra killing Agamemnon in the bath and contemplates going in, because she realizes that Apollo brought her to Argos to die because she is “the last ember” (1174) of Troy, and that by dying she will be free at last. After Cassandra goes into the room, the Chorus follows and they find both Agamemnon dead and Clytemnestra covered in “great sprays of blood” and reveling in it “like the Earth when the spring rains come down” (1410-1412). Clytemnestra sees Agamemnon’s death as a gift from the gods, and feels reborn after committing the terrible act of killing him. When Clytemnestra kills Agamemnon, the sense of wrong and decay is the strongest in the entire Oresteia. By killing Agamemnon, Clytemnestra believes that there will be “no more grief” (1688) and that she and her lover Aegisthus “have too much to reap” out of their “mighty harvest of despair” (1689). What she does not understand though, is that by killing both Agamemnon and Cassandra, not pouring the required libations on his body and cheating on Agamemnon with Aegisthus, she has broken two of the gods’ laws; a marriage contract and a dead person’s rights, which makes it necessary for Orestes to follow the laws of the gods and kill Clytemnestra.
By killing his mother Cytemnestra, Orestes follows the laws of the gods but at the same time incurs the wrath of the Furies because they exist to revenge the dead person that was killed by a member of their family. Orestes has been in exile since before Clytemnestra killed Agamemnon, because Clytemnestra said that Orestes would be safer away from the palace in case something bad happened. Several years passes between the time in which Clytemnestra kills Agamemnon and Orestes goes back to Argos. Clytemnestra then has a dream that “she bore a snake” (Libation Bearers, 514) and when she “gave it her breast to suck” (518), “blood curdled the milk with each sharp tug” (520). Orestes rightly believes this means he will kill Clytemnestra, as he is the snake. What Clytemnestra does not understand is that in killing Agamemnon, she tries to give up the mothering and nurturing mannerisms that are central to all women. She instead distorts the feminine side of herself and the image of fertility and life in her body, the breast milk, turns into blood which symbolizes even more death and decay that Clytemnestra has spawned because of her flawed perception of justice.
After her terrible dream, Clytemnestra sends her daughter Electra to Agamemnon’s grave in a vain attempt to appease the gods, but the plan backfires on her when Electra meets her long lost brother Orestes and Orestes and Electra conspire to kill their insane mother. At first Orestes, unlike his mother, is wary of killing his mother, even if she did kill his father and a priestess of Apollo, the god that Orestes worships. Apollo however convinces Orestes to go to Argos to kill Clytemnestra by telling him that “the dead take root beneath the soil…and plague the lives of men” (283-284), and will continue to do so unless he kills his mother. Apollo also goads Orestes into killing his mother by telling him that the horrible Furies with “leprous boils that ride the flesh” (285) did “spring to life on [Orestes’] father’s blood” (288-289). Through his oracle, Apollo infers to Orestes that by killing his mother, he will be ending the root of the cancer that continued the bloodshed of the House of Atreus.
As Orestes finally reaches Argos and enters the palace to kill his mother, he experiences a few more doubts as Clytemnestra tries to sway Orestes into thinking that killing Agamemnon was just, and that she was just doing as any other mother would do by avenging her child. This is a last ditch effort to stay alive on Clytemnestra’s part, less than a few minutes after she learnes that Orestes is alive and in Argos, she asks for someone to “Hand me the man-axe…hurry!” (876). As soon as Orestes comes into the room, he displays Aegisthus’ dead body to Clytemnestra. Clytemnestra though, is past caring about whether Aegisthus is alive or dead, and uses every bit of her cunning to stay alive. She bombards Orestes with images of her fertility and motherhood, asking him if he had any respect for “the breast [he] held, drowsing away the hours” (884) and saying that “I gave you life. Let me grow old with you” (895). Both of these do not do much to sway Orestes, as it was not his mother that breast fed him, it was his nurse, and he hates her for what she did to Agamemnon. Clytemnestra pleads with Orestes not to kill her, and finally realizing, Orestes is “the snake I bore—I gave [him] life!” (914). With this revelation, Clytemnestra realizes that it is her fault Orestes is coming to kill her, as it was her murder of Agamemnon that engendered his Orestes’ hate and loathing of her.
Orestes is chased by the Furies, the terrible creatures that drink from the blood of their victims--the people who kill family members—all the way to the Oracle at Delphi where he seeks Apollo’s help in ridding himself of them. A priestess sees him at the feet of Apollo “his hands dripping with blood, and his sword just drawn and he holds a branch (it must have topped an olive)” and around him sees the sleeping Furies. Without his bloody sword, hands and the Furies that surround him, Orestes looks like another worshipper with his olive topped branch, but with his sword still bloody from his mother’s murder, he is polluted as well and is in great need of Apollo’s help. Apollo appears in the doorway of his shrine and tells Orestes to go to Athens to ask Athena to call off the Furies, who Apollo has put to sleep for the moment. Orestes leaves for Athens and the Ghost of Clytemnestra appears. Clytemnestra’s power is all but gone as she can barely rouse one Fury. The Furies awaken and rush to Athens for the trial where Orestes’ fate will be determined by Athena and jury. During the trial, the Furies argue that Orestes killed his own blood, and as such the Furies must perform their duty by killing Orestes and drinking his blood. Orestes argues back that he killed his mother because Apollo told him too, and that the gods’ laws are greater than anyone else’s. Through a vote with Athena as the tie breaker, Oretes is determined to be innocent. The Furies are insane with anger threaten Athena that they will curse the land to burn it sterile” (798) and by doing so, will have enacted their own Justice upon mankind because Athena did not allow them to fulfill their duty and kill Orestes. Athena stops the Furies here, and asks the leader if she would “vent your anger, hurt the land?” all for the sake of one man. Athena says that justice is not vengeance, it is fairness and truth, which are everything that Athena embodies, meaning that Athena is Justice, not that the Furies vengeance is justice. Athena displays her powers of mercy and forgiveness by offering the Furies a position not held by any god; they will be called the Blessed Ones, or the Eumenides. The leader accepts Athena’s proposition and can “feel the hate, the fury slipping away” while Athena tells them to “take root in the land” so that nothing will thrive without the blessings of the Eumenidies. This establishes that Athena’s brand of justice—mercy and compassion—is the true kind of justice as it does not foster more hate and corruption, but instead cultivates growth and abundance.
