Orestes

Orestes avenges one parent by killing the other. That is the conflict Aeschylus refuses to simplify. Apollo commands the son to answer Agamemnon’s murder, while the Erinyes insist that Clytemnestra’s blood creates a new debt. Orestes can obey either claim only by violating the other.

What does Orestes do at Mycenae?

Agamemnon returns from Troy to his royal house and is killed by Clytemnestra and Aegisthus. Orestes later comes back in concealment, joins his sister Electra at their father’s grave and enters the palace to carry out the revenge Apollo has ordered.

He first kills Aegisthus. The harder encounter follows when Clytemnestra appeals to the bond between mother and son. Orestes hesitates and asks Pylades what he should do. Pylades has been silent throughout the play; his only spoken words remind Orestes of Apollo’s oracle and warn him against making an enemy of the god. Orestes accepts the command and takes Clytemnestra inside to die beside Aegisthus.

The vengeance restores no household. Orestes displays the robe used to trap Agamemnon and tries to explain the justice of what he has done. Then he sees figures whom the chorus cannot see: the Erinyes, dark-clad and wreathed with snakes. He leaves for Apollo’s sanctuary while they follow.

Mycenae, approached through the Nafplio destination, is therefore more than a royal address. It is the ground on which each killing claims to answer the last. Orestes departs from it neither as an unambiguous victor nor as a man whose duty is finished.

Why is Orestes tried in Athens?

Purification by Apollo does not persuade the Erinyes to abandon their claim. Orestes eventually reaches Athens and takes refuge at Athena’s image. Athena hears both sides and refuses to decide the case by personal command. She selects Athenian jurors and establishes a court for homicide on the Hill of Ares, the Areopagus.

The trial gives the older pursuit a civic form. Apollo argues for Orestes; the Erinyes prosecute him for the undisputed killing of his mother. Athena announces in advance that equal ballots will acquit the defendant. When the votes divide evenly, that rule releases Orestes.

His acquittal is not a finding that Clytemnestra’s death does not matter. Nor does it prove that Apollo’s order erased the maternal bond. The split vote makes disagreement part of the result. Orestes is permitted to return home because the court has reached its lawful limit, not because every obligation has been reconciled.

What remains on the Areopagus?

Orestes leaves Athens after promising a lasting alliance between his land and the city. The Erinyes remain furious. Athena must then persuade them to accept honours, worship and a home beside the court rather than blight Attica in anger at the verdict.

Pausanias later records a sanctuary of the goddesses beside the Areopagus, where Athenians know them as the Semnai Theai, the August Goddesses. The sanctuary is evidence of their Athenian cult, not evidence that a historical trial took place there. Its position nevertheless gives the myth a durable topography: court and avengers occupy neighbouring ground.

That arrangement defines what the trial achieves for Orestes. It ends the pursuit without pretending that vengeance has ceased to exist. He is freed only after his private inheritance of killing has been brought before other voices, counted in public and answered by a settlement that also gives his accusers a place.