The Libation Bearers

The Libation Bearers is the second play of Aeschylus’s Oresteia, following the murder of King Agamemnon. Years later his son Orestes returns in secret from exile and meets his sister Electra at their father’s tomb, where the two mourn and call on his spirit for help. Commanded by the god Apollo to avenge the killing, Orestes enters the palace in disguise and kills both his mother Clytemnestra and her lover, and in doing so takes upon himself the very guilt of kin-murder that he sought to punish. As the play ends the Furies rise to hound him, and the chain of vengeance turns once more toward its reckoning. This free PDF and EPUB presents Gilbert Murray’s verse translation.