Clytemnestra recognizes from Orestes’ dismissive comment (to¯ide d’arkounto¯s ekhei, ‘he’s had enough’ – a dismissal typical of the lack of concern with which Aegisthus’ death is treated in Aeschylus as opposed to in Homer) that her ‘most beloved’, philtat’, is dead. Orestes picks up both her terms philtat’ and androkme¯ta, ‘man-wearying’, as he asks phileis ton andra, ‘You love this man?’ Yet it is misleading to translate the verb phileis simply as ‘you love’, as it so often is. For the term implies in Greek a sense of mutual obligation and duty more than an affective or romantic tie. Orestes, by using the term, is emphasizing his reaction to her adultery as a social transgression – a crime against her husband (andra) and a failure of her obligations and duty to the household. So, he concludes with fine rhetoric, ‘Then you will lie in the same tomb. Never again betray the dead man [thanonta].’

Grene and Lattimore’s translation ‘never be unfaithful even in death’ (apart from adding the emphasis of ‘even’) misses the point of thanonta, ‘the dead man’, because it refers at one level to Aegisthus with whom she will ever lie in death – faithful to her adultery; but on another level it refers to Agamemnon, the other dead man, whom she will never again betray (with Aegisthus). Orestes’ remark recalls the servant’s riddle of ‘the dead are killing the living’, as Clytemnestra is killed for killing her man. Orestes’ comment, then, stresses the adultery as much as the murder as the reason for her punishment.

This is a piece of highly charged dramatic dialogue that is both fast and forceful. It is also an intricately layered exchange which situates the stage action of the confrontation of mother and son within a network of thematic structures. I have described at length the way in which Aeschylus develops a highly involved view of human action: here we can see how the language of dialogue at a moment of crucial dramatic action works to develop this sense of the complex nature of events.