[6] The scene described above, in which Talthybius once
1
more saves Orestes by foiling the armed Clytaemnestra, must have been taken from some familiar literary source. It was essential for a vase-painter's purpose that his version of a story should be popularly known. What, then, was this source? Certainly not Aeschylus. Vase A is assigned on grounds of style to an earlier date than 458 B.C., the year of the Aeschylean
Oresteia
2
. But, even apart from this fact, it is evident that the scene has not been suggested by anything in the
Choephori. Clytaemnestra there calls, indeed, for an axe, when she hears that Orestes has slain Aegisthus (v. 889):
δοίη τις ἀνδροκμῆτα πέλεκυν ὡς τάχος· εἰδῶμεν ἢ νικῶμεν ἢ νικώμεθα
.But there is no time for her to obtain the weapon; at that moment Orestes confronts her. Her futile cry rather indicates that Aeschylus had in mind some earlier version which actually armed her with an axe at a similar crisis. And in Sophocles, too, we find that the axe is prominent. The murder of Agamemnon by the guilty pair is thus described (v. 99):
σχίζουσι κάρα φονίῳ πελέκει
. Still more significant is the passage in which Sophocles describes the axe itself as resenting the deed of which it was made the instrument (482 ff.):— οὐ γάρ ποτ’ ἀμναστεῖ γ’ ὁ φύσας σ’ Ἑλλάνων ἄναξ, οὐδ’ ἁ παλαιὰ χαλκόπλακτος ἀμφάκης γένυς, ἅ νιν κατέπεφνεν αἰσχίσταις ἐν αἰκίαις
.Some Roman sarcophagi
3
, on which the story of Orestes is treated, show three Erinyes sleeping at the tomb of Agamemnon. Among them lies the axe of Clytaemnestra,—a symbol, as with Sophocles, of the crime which calls for vengeance.
The
Oresteia of Stesichorus was popular at Athens in the fifth century B.C. There is a striking proof of this. Aristophanes, in the
Peace(775 ff.), has adopted some verses from the beginning of that
Oresteia
4
, without naming Stesichorus. He could reckon on his playful allusion to so famous a poem being at once recognised by an Athenian audience. Between the
Odyssey and Aeschylus, no other handling of the subject seems to have rivalled the work of Stesichorus in celebrity. In the epic
Nostoi, where the deed of Orestes was only one of many episodes, it would be treated, one may suppose, on a relatively small scale.
Now it is known that Stesichorus made Clytaemnestra kill her husband by wounds on the head,—probably, therefore, with the axe, as Sophocles describes in the passages quoted above. This appears from the nature of the dream which terrified the Clytaemnestra of Stesichorus just before the retribution. A serpent approached her with gore upon its head, and then changed into Agamemnon:—
τᾷ δὲ δράκων ἐδόκησε μολεῖν κάρα βεβροτωμένος ἄκρον· ἐκ δ’ ἄρα τοῦ βασιλεὺς Πλεισθενίδας ἐφάνη
5
.Such a dream would necessarily (according to Greek ideas) act upon her mind in the manner described by the Attic dramatists. In the
Oresteia of Stesichorus, just as in the
Choephori and in the Sophoclean
Electra, the guilty and terrified woman must have sent propitiatory offerings to the grave of her murdered husband. But, like the dramatists again, the lyric poet would make her send them by the hands of some one else; even her hardihood could not dispense with an intermediary in this case. Whom did Stesichorus choose as her emissary? It is a notable fact that Electra, who is unknown to Homer,
6
appears in the fifth century B.C. as a central personage of the story. And it seems that Aeschylus was not the first poet who had spoken of her. The earliest writer recorded as mentioning her is a lyric poet named Xanthus, who said that her original name was Laodicè, and that she was called Electra because she was so long unmarried (
ἄλεκτρος
); an etymology which points to a Dorian source (
Ἀλέκτρα
)
7
. Stesi
8
chorus, we are told, mentioned Xanthus as a lyric predecessor, and adapted much from him. The
Oresteia is especially named as a work in which Stesichorus was thus indebted to Xanthus
9
. How far, and in what sense, that statement is true, cannot now be known; but it is at least certain that Xanthus remained wholly obscure, while Stesichorus was widely popular. The introduction of Electra may be one of the points in which the Stesichorean
Oresteia was indebted to Xanthus: and the fact of her figuring in that poem would fully explain her later prominence. Let us suppose, then, that Stesichorus, like Aeschylus, sent Electra with Clytaemnestra's offerings to Agamemnon's tomb. Orestes, on his return, would hasten to make his offerings there—as is assumed by all the three Attic dramatists. At the tomb the brother and sister would meet and recognise each other, as they do in Aeschylus. We know that Stesichorus brought in the nurse, whom he called Laodameia
10
. Pindar makes a nurse save Orestes from the hands of Clytaemnestra, but he does not say that she carried him out of Argolis
11
. The Laodameia of Stesichorus may have done likewise—giving Orestes to the trusty Talthybius, who carried him forth, and in due time came back with him
12
. After the recognition of Orestes by Electra at the tomb, Stesichorus may have related the vengeance in the manner depicted on the Attic vases above mentioned. We know that Euripides was following Stesichorus in representing Orestes as defending himself against the Erinyes with the bow and arrows given by Apollo
13
. And the fact that the Stesichorean Orestes was pursued by the Erinyes shows that he slew Clytaemnestra as well as Aegisthus. Introduction to Commentary on Sophocles: Electra. Sir Richard C. Jebb. Cambridge. 1907.
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