Rebecca P-H’s Reviews > The Libation Bearers > Status Update

ποῖ δῆτα κρανεῖ, ποῖ καταλήξει μετακοιμισθὲν μένος ἄτης; well, Athens.

ok so the text of the Perseus strophe is definitely WAY too uncertain to ever base an argument on it. noted. Γοργοῦς isn't even in any of the manuscripts!!!

Zeitlin (rightly) makes much of the strophe about the Lemnian women but I feel like we're overlooking not just the Althaea strophe with the threat posed by a mother to her son but also the Scylla strophe about daughters as a potential threat to their fathers if allowed to grow up into women with ties outside their natal families... that's why Electra falls silent and exits the stage and never returns

ἆρ᾽ ἐξεγείρῃ τοῖσδ᾽ ὀνείδεσιν, πάτερ; / ἆρ᾽ ὀρθὸν αἴρεις φίλτατον τὸ σὸν κάρα;
moment of genuine uncertainty where the audience doesn't yet know whether the necromancy's working or not!!!

kommos time ❤️

I think it was Taplin who put a lot of emphasis on how Orestes ends this play in exactly the same position he was in at the beginning, an exile pushed out of his father's home and pursued by the threat of a parent's unavenged death? Anyway, he leaves Electra alone in the house with the bodies.