The Libation Bearers — Second Episode

The planning scene. Orestes explains to Electra and the chorus what Apollo commanded at Delphi: avenge your father or suffer things too terrible to describe. He names the threats Apollo made against those who do not perform the blood-duty: disease, madness, the persecution of the Furies. Then he lays out the practical scheme — he and Pylades will enter the palace as Phocian travellers with news that Orestes is dead. Clytemnestra, thinking herself safe, will receive them. Aegisthus must be killed first; then Clytemnestra.

Electra's role ends here. She disappears from the play as the men begin to act. This is not Aeschylus's failure; it is the play's realism. In the world of the second play, Electra cannot do what Orestes is about to do. She is witness and partner to the decision; the killing belongs to her brother and to Apollo who commanded him.

The nurse Cilissa appears — the woman who actually nursed Orestes as a baby, who changed his swaddling-clothes, who knows the difference between public and private grief. She is weeping. The false news of Orestes's death has reached the household, and her grief is real: Clytemnestra, she says, was glad in private even while weeping publicly, but the nurse's grief is genuine. The chorus intercepts her. She has been told to fetch Aegisthus with his bodyguard; the chorus persuades her to change the message. He should come alone. She agrees.