The physiology of matricide: Revenge and metabolism imagery in Aeschylus’ Oresteia

Abstract

This essay explores the bodily fluids imagery in Aeschylus’ Oresteia as a metaphor for the dynamics of crime and retribution, starting from one scene in the Choephoroe. Upon hearing of Orestes’ reported death, his nurse Cilissa starts recalling his infancy; among other things, washing his diapers. Such a graphic detail at such a climactic moment commands attention, especially since it recalls Clytemnestra dreaming a snake-Orestes in diapers. Throughout the trilogy, circulation of liquids within and outside the body manifests the cycle of life (wetness) and death (dryness): libations compensate for bloodshed, dust absorbs blood, war casualties are returned as dusty ashes in “urns,” referred to by the same word elsewhere used for Agamemnon’s bathtub. By contrast, it is murderous fluids that desiccate: Erinyes drip gory ooze to parch Orestes and sterilize the soil with poisonous rain, and, like Orestes, they are associated with the language of “spitting;” retribution is imaged as bodily discharge. Baby Orestes in Cilissa’s speech is the circular conductor of fluids: as he brings death to the one who gave him life, feeding him milk and cleaning his diapers converge (Choephoroe 760). Symptomatically, the nurse specifies that the process is beyond his control: babies cannot signal hunger, thirst, or full bladder. Infant metabolism, a closed loop stimulated by reflexes, symbolizes the emblematic vicious cycle of the Oresteia: the doer must suffer.