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PAEANIC MARKERS IN AESCHYLUS, CHOEPHOROI 150–63

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 January 2021

Steven Brandwood*
Affiliation:
Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey
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      Ἠλ. ὑμᾶς δὲ κωκυτοῖς ἐπανθίζειν νόμος,150
      παιᾶνα τοῦ θανόντος ἐξαυδωμένας.
      Χο. ἵετε δάκρυ καναχὲς ὀλόμενον
      ὀλομένωι δεσπόται
      πρὸς ῥεῦμα τόδε κεδνῶν κακῶν τ’
      ἀπότροπον, ἄγος ἀπεύχετον155
      κεχυμένων χοᾶν.
      κλύε δέ μοι σέβας, κλύ’, ὦ δέσποτ’, ἐξ
      ἀμαυρᾶς φρενός.
      ὀτοτοτοτοτοτοῖ⋅
      ἴτω τις δορυσθενὴς ἀνὴρ160
      ἀναλυτὴρ δόμων †Σκυθιτά τ’ ἐν χεροῖν
      παλίντον’ ἐν ἔργωι† βέλη ’πιπάλλων Ἄρης
      σχέδιά τ’ αὐτόκωπα νωμῶν ξίφη.

152–63 lectio dubia 154 ῥεῦμα Weil: ἔρυμα Μ κεδνῶν κακῶν τ᾽ Schütz: κακῶν κεδνῶν τ᾽ Μ; locum interpr. Dodds CQ 3 (1953), 13–15 155 ἄγος ΜΣ: ἄλγος Μ; ἄγος χοᾶν ad ῥεῦμα (= ῥεῦμα χοᾶν) adpositum est 157 μου Blaydes σέβας κλύ᾽ Bamberger: κλύε σέβας Μ 160 ἴτω Bothe: ἰὼ Μ 161 seq. Σκυθιτά, supra ιτ scr. ης, Μ; Σκύθης an Σκυθικά incertum; fort. Σκυθικά τ᾽ ἐν χεροῖν | ἐναργῶς (Bothe) βέλη κτλ., del. παλίντονα tamquam e schol. ad Σκυθικά illatum 163 ξίφη Pauw ex ΜΣ: βέλη Μ

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Ἠλ. ὑμᾶς δὲ κωκυτοῖς ἐπανθίζειν νόμος,      150
παιᾶνα τοῦ θανόντος ἐξαυδωμένας.
Χο. ἵετε δάκρυ καναχὲς ὀλόμενον
ὀλομένωι δεσπόται
πρὸς ῥεῦμα τόδε κεδνῶν κακῶν τ’
ἀπότροπον, ἄγος ἀπεύχετον        155
κεχυμένων χοᾶν.
κλύε δέ μοι σέβας, κλύ’, ὦ δέσποτ’, ἐξ
ἀμαυρᾶς φρενός.
ὀτοτοτοτοτοτοῖ⋅
ἴτω τις δορυσθενὴς ἀνὴρ          160
ἀναλυτὴρ δόμων †Σκυθιτά τ’ ἐν χεροῖν
παλίντον’ ἐν ἔργωι† βέλη ’πιπάλλων Ἄρης
σχέδιά τ’ αὐτόκωπα νωμῶν ξίφη.

152–63 lectio dubia 154 ῥεῦμα Weil: ἔρυμα Μ κεδνῶν κακῶν τ᾽ Schütz: κακῶν κεδνῶν τ᾽ Μ; locum interpr. Dodds CQ 3 (1953), 13–15 155 ἄγος ΜΣ: ἄλγος Μ; ἄγος χοᾶν ad ῥεῦμα (= ῥεῦμα χοᾶν) adpositum est 157 μου Blaydes σέβας κλύ᾽ Bamberger: κλύε σέβας Μ 160 ἴτω Bothe: ἰὼ Μ 161 seq. Σκυθιτά, supra ιτ scr. ης, Μ; Σκύθης an Σκυθικά incertum; fort. Σκυθικά τ᾽ ἐν χεροῖν | ἐναργῶς (Bothe) βέλη κτλ., del. παλίντονα tamquam e schol. ad Σκυθικά illatum 163 ξίφη Pauw ex ΜΣ: βέλη Μ

Electra: But it is right for you to crown these [libations] with wailing, singing forth a paean of the dead man.

Chorus: Send forth a resounding tear, lost for our lost lord, into this stream that would turn back both good and evil, the prayed-for pollution of these poured-out libations. Hear me, majesty, hear me, oh lord, from your dimmed sense! OTOTOTOTOTOTOI! May some spear-strong man come! some redeemer of our house, brandishing in his hands the back-bending Scythian arrows, ready for work, an Ares plying the forged sword in close combat!Footnote 1

There has been little consensus on either the text or the meaning of Cho. 152–63.Footnote 2 Page prefaces his apparatus criticus on this passage by remarking on the manuscript's lectio dubia, and the textual issues associated with this short song were equally apparent in antiquity.Footnote 3 What is clear from this passage, however, is the ‘striking oxymoron’ that it offers of a paean sung in mourning.Footnote 4 Paeans—whether martial, sympotic or medicinal—were songs most associated with Apollo and the Olympian sphere, and a chthonic paean such as Electra requests, a παιᾶνα τοῦ θανόντος (151), would represent an abnormal employment of the genre, to say the least.Footnote 5 However, the choral song at Cho. 152–63 accentuates the dissonance inherent in the passage's frame to present a troubling version of the paean by engaging with, and distorting some of, the genre's formal features, most importantly its characteristic refrain, ἰὴ παιάν, here transformed into a command to weep, ἵετε δάκρυ (152).

Rutherford characterizes this song as a paean owing to its frame and content, but argues that ‘there are no generic allusions’ to the formal paean within this short choral passage.Footnote 6 It is true that there is no sustained paeanic refrain here, nor even a clear paean-cry, but there is, I suggest, a sublimated reference to an altered version of these ritual cries in the chorus’ initial self-address to weep, ἵετε δάκρυ καναχὲς ὀλόμενον (152).Footnote 7 There is admittedly only mild aural correspondence between the chorus’ command ἵετε and the typical ritual cry ἰή, but the connection becomes more apparent when viewed in association with other related extensions and etymologies of the paean-cry. Pindar's Paean 6 for the Delphians, for example, offers the most notable parallel for this passage in its vigorous paeanic epiphthegma following the death of Neoptolemus at the close of the second triad (Pind. Pae. 6.121–2):

<ἰὴ> ἰῆτε⸥ νῦν, μέτρα π̣αιηό-
ν]ων ἰῆ⸤τε⸥, νέο⸤ι⸥.
, sing now—measures of paeans—sing , young men.Footnote 8

The presence in this paean-cry of the otherwise unexampled form ἰῆτε may lend some clarity to the chorus’ verb ἵετε at Cho. 152. Explanations for Pindar's form of the paean-cry here are numerous,Footnote 9 but the most compelling, offered by Wilamowitz and accepted by Rutherford, interprets it as an uncommon form of ἵημι in either the second-person plural imperative, ἵετε, or in the optative, ἱεῖτε.Footnote 10 Although the verb here has the meaning of ‘to utter’,Footnote 11 Wilamowitz argues that its use recalls the original paean-cry associated with Apollo's killing of the Python at Delphi, perhaps most clearly represented by Callimachus’ Hymn 1.103: ἱὴ ἱὴ παιῆον, ἵει βέλος, ‘Iē Iē Paian! Shoot the shaft!’Footnote 12 The association between ἵημι, shooting, and the paean-cry appears in other Hellenistic works and may indicate the earlier circulation of such a traditional etymology during the fifth century.Footnote 13

It is against this backdrop that the paeanic features of Cho. 152 begin to come into clearer focus. The passage's frame provides the song with a clear yet unusual hymnic colouring, and the paronomasia and possible common etymology between cries such as Pindar's ἰῆτε and Aeschylus’ ἵετε confirm such a character. Aeschylus’ ἵετε, however, involves levels of reference beyond the paean-cry in a cult-song such as Paean 6, as perhaps should be expected of a ‘hymn’ to Apollo incongruously embedded within a Dionysian mimetic performance. For instance, like the genuinely hymnic example from Pindar, the chorus’ ἵετε can act as the impulsive, ecstatic cry to the god familiar from the paean and from interjections such as the Bacchic εὐοῖ. Aeschylus’ verb, however, is marked both by its change in metrical quantity from the more traditional refrain and by its grammatical responsibilities as the main verb in its clause. Whereas the Pindaric ἰῆτε, although itself allusive, functions primarily as the religious cry, Aeschylus’ ἵετε can merely nod at such a function before becoming instead a command to weep, a fundamentally ironic appropriation of an already corrupted refrain more typically associated with joy or expectation.Footnote 14

Aeschylus accentuates this characterization in his description of the chorus’ weeping, καναχὲς ὀλόμενον, ‘crashing, lost’, that subtly underlines both the musical nature of the δάκρυ, ‘tear’, and its ensured futility as an offering. καναχές, for instance, is a hapax legomenon, related to terms often used to describe water, but glossed by the scholiast here as ἠχητικόν, ‘resounding’, a descriptor more easily associated with sound or song than with a teardrop.Footnote 15 ὀλόμενον, on the other hand, gains special resonance from the polyptotonic refrain created by its following line, ὀλομένωι δεσπόται: even the tear is ‘lost’ and shed for a ‘lost lord’.Footnote 16 The twisted paean that the chorus sings is instead a resounding lament, and one that, rather than addressing itself to the Olympian gods, is immediately poured out and lost in the streams of chthonic offerings, γαπότους χοάς (Aesch. Cho. 164).

A cry such as Pindar's ἰῆτε can triumphantly recall Apollo's victory over the Python in a hymn performed at Delphi, but Aeschylus’ ἵετε here regards Delphi in a more ambiguous fashion. The chorus’ paeanic reference requests violence, and, although the characters cannot yet appreciate the fact, Orestes will come from Delphi bearing death ordained by Apollo, but conveying also in that violence the matricidal destruction of his family and the seeds of his own madness that, short of the Eumenides’ divine intervention, would be certain to continue the cycle of violence. The ἀναλυτήρ that the chorus requests in line 162 is not an Apollo but an Ares, and he wields Scythian arrows, Σκυθιτὰ … βέλη, a possible reference to Apollo's residence among the Hyperboreans and his absence from Delphi.Footnote 17 The chorus’ quasi-refrain ἵετε deforms the traditional paean-cry's generically appropriate prayer for salvation into a foreshadowing request for further Delphic violence,Footnote 18 and although the song may still attempt to engage with the Olympian sphere, it cannot avoid anticipating the bloodshed of the chthonic world of vengeance to which it is ultimately addressed.

As the song continues, further hymnic features appear, such as the kletic markers κλύε δέ μοι … κλύ’ at line 157, before the chorus veers into the unrestrained and uncontrolled lament of the θρῆνος-like cry ὀτοτοτοτοτοτοῖ of line 159.Footnote 19 The well-ordered male paean has transformed into a frenzied female lament familiar from Cassandra's raving in Agamemnon and later in the play from Aegisthus’ death-cries at Cho. 869.Footnote 20 It is possible, however, that Aeschylus reasserts the song's paeanic character in the chorus’ next word. Page prints ἴτω, ‘let him come’, but West preserves the reading of MS M, ἰώ, a common word for lament in Aeschylus and elsewhere, but a word also associated with the paean-cry.Footnote 21 For instance, at Soph. Trach. 221, in a classic instance of a disordered tragic paean, the chorus exclaims ἰὼ ἰὼ Παιάν, a phrase paralleled by Lamachus at Ar. Ach. 1212, ἰὼ ἰὼ Παιὰν Παιάν.Footnote 22 Especially when read in conjunction with the following prayer for the ἀναλυτήρ to come and restore the house, the reading of M, ἰώ, takes on a further paeanic character that complements the passage's opening word.

The compounded ironies of a chthonic παιᾶνα τοῦ θανόντος in the Dionysian setting of tragedy are numerous. The song's brisk iambic-dochmiac metre would be more at home in lament and would have been noticeably different from the calm and ordered music typical of cult paeans, while the chorus-members themselves were inappropriate paean-singers.Footnote 23 Such structural anomalies occur in many other tragic paeans, but Aeschylus offers a particularly distorted example in this song in the deformation of the formal feature of the genre: the paeanic refrain. That such distortion accompanies the play's central ritual act—the pouring of libations and the placing of the vessels on Agamemnon's tomb—only amplifies this discordant note within a trilogy elsewhere concerned with the theme of corrupted sacrifice.Footnote 24 The shade of Agamemnon has received its offerings for appeasement and the paean that the chorus sings still asks for salvation, but is accompanied by a tearful rather than joyful cry.Footnote 25

References

1 Text and apparatus criticus are drawn from Page, D.L. (ed.), Aeschyli septem quae supersunt tragoedias (Oxford, 1972)Google Scholar as printed in Garvie, A.F. (ed.), Aeschylus: Choephori (Oxford, 1986)Google Scholar. Translations are my own.

2 See Citti, V., ‘Aesch. Choe. 152–163’, Eikasmos 12 (2001), 6376Google Scholar for a discussion of the history of attempts to emend the text.

3 See Page's apparatus criticus on the passage as reprinted in Garvie (n. 1), 9. The scholia on the passage indicate the existence of several competing readings. Schol. ad 154b, for instance, reads ἄγος for M's ἄλγος, an emendation now widely accepted by modern editors; Schol. ad 163a offers ξίφη for M's βέλη to avoid repetition from the preceding line, a reading rejected by Murray, G. (ed.), Aeschyli septem quae supersunt tragoediae (Oxford, 1955)Google Scholar and West, M.L. (ed.), Aeschylus: Tragoediae (Leipzig, 1990)CrossRefGoogle Scholar, but accepted by Page (n. 1), Sommerstein, A.H. (ed.), Aeschylus: Oresteia (Cambridge, MA, 2008)Google Scholar, and Brown, A.L. (ed.), Aeschylus: Libation Bearers (Liverpool, 2018)Google Scholar. The scholia to the Choephoroi are all drawn from MS M, and so—as Dickey, E., Ancient Greek Scholarship (Oxford, 2007), 36Google Scholar notes—are authentically ancient and perhaps ultimately derive from Didymus’ commentary. For a brief discussion, see Dickey (this note), 35–8.

4 Garvie (n. 1), 81 notes the irony of the passage's frame; for more extended commentary on the generic strangeness of the song, see Rutherford, I., ‘Apollo in ivy: the tragic paean’, Arion 3 3 (1995), 112–35, at 123Google Scholar. For a further Aeschylean example of such a paean, consider the herald's invocation of παιᾶνα τόνδ’ Ἐρινύων, ‘the paean of the Furies’, at Aesch. Ag. 645.

5 See Garvie (n. 1), 81. For detailed discussion of the paean, its origins and its development, see Käppel, L., Paian: Studien zur Geschichte einer Gattung (Berlin, 1992), 386CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Rutherford (n. 4), 112–18; Schröder, S., Geschichte und Theorie der Gattung Paian (Leipzig, 1999), 161Google Scholar; and Rutherford, I., Pindar's Paeans: A Reading of the Fragments with a Survey of the Genre (Oxford, 2001), 3136Google Scholar. Rutherford's analysis ([this note], 86), that the paean represents ‘the collective male strength, social cohesion, the assertion of the strength of the community over the forces that threaten it, the world of the living as opposed to the world of the dead, and finally celebration’, seems the most concise yet comprehensive treatment of the genre available. For a thorough and sustained treatment of the generic complications involved in this paean, see de La Combe, P. Judet, ‘Sur le péan d'Agamemnon’, CGITA 10 (1997), 3140Google Scholar.

6 Rutherford (n. 4), 119–23.

7 Rutherford (n. 4), 128 argues that there are in fact no sustained paeanic refrains in extant tragedy, and that the closest any passage comes to a refrain is in a monody: Eur. Ion 141–3: ὦ Παιὰν ὦ Παιάν, | εὐαίων εὐαίων | εἴης, ὦ Λατοῦς παῖ, ‘O Paian, O Paian, may you be joyful, joyful, O child of Leto!’

8 Pind. Pae. 6 (= fr. 52f S–M). Text and translation of Pindar's Paeans is drawn from Rutherford (n. 5).

9 Rutherford (n. 5), 316 offers the possibility that ἰῆτε is the plural imperative of the hypothetical verb ἰῆναι, ‘to cry ’, formed similarly to αἰάζειν from αἰαῖ. Wackernagel, J., ‘Graeca’, Philologus 95 (1943), 177–92, at 184CrossRefGoogle Scholar (= Kleine Schriften, vol. 2 [Göttingen, 1953], 876–91) argues that the form is simply a pluralization of ἰή, similar to the pluralizing of the interjection τῆ, ‘there!’, to τῆτε, for which he cites Schwyzer, E., Griechische Grammatik 1 (Munich, 1939), 1.799aGoogle Scholar.

10 U. Wilamowitz-Möllendorff, ‘Pindars siebentes nemeisches Gedicht’, Sitzungsberichte der Kgl. Preussischen Akademie der Wissenschaften (1908), 328–52, at 348 n. 2 (= Kleine Schriften, vol. 6 [Berlin, 1972], 286–313) prefers the imperative ἵετε rather than the optative. Rutherford (n. 5), 316–18 concurs, although he favours ἱεῖτε owing to metrical quantity. Strunk, K., ‘Frühe Vokalveränderungen in der griechischen Literatur’, Glotta 38 (1960), 7489Google Scholar, at 80–2 prefers the optative owing to the equivalence that he notes between the vowel sounds η and ει in fifth-century Doric and Aeolic dialects. If Strunk is correct, this may have rendered the Pythoctonia reference contained in ἰῆτε more immediate to the poem's audience. Such wordplay would in fact be at home in a hymnic genre, pace Radt, S.L., Pindars zweiter und sechster Paian: Text, Scholien, und Kommentar (Amsterdam, 1958), 171Google Scholar, who objects that a cult-hymn by ‘the pious Pindar’ would never have the same linguistic goals as a Callimachean ‘display piece’. Consider e.g. the punning on Δᾶλος/Ἀστερία in Pind. fr. 33c.5–6 S–M and at Pae. 7b.47 (= fr. 52h) noted by Rutherford (n. 5), 318. Pind. Pae. 5.39–42 (= fr. 52e) may also serve as a counterexample.

11 See LSJ s.v. ἵημι I.2 which adduces as an example Aesch. Cho. 563 ἄμφω δὲ φωνὴν ἥσομεν Παρνησσίδα, ‘and we will both utter the Parnassian speech’, perhaps another suggestive instance within the play connecting ἵημι, Delphi and shooting. For traditional associations between Delphi and the paean-cry, see Rutherford (n. 5), 24–7.

12 Groeneboom, P. (ed.), Aeschylus’ Choephoroi (Groningen, 1949), 40–1Google Scholar suggests an emendation to the text at line 162 that would have restored a second occurrence of ἵημι within the passage in question and so would have rendered the connection between shooting and the verb ἵημι unmistakable: [ἱέντ’] ἐν ἔργῳ βέλη, ‘arrows, shooting in action’. Later editors have not followed his emendation. My thanks to the anonymous referee for suggesting this reference.

13 For other late appearances of this etymology, see Ath. Deipn. 701d; Etym. Magn. 469 s.v. Ἱήϊε. Rutherford (n. 5), 27 adduces Eur. IT 1234–82 for a fifth-century example of the Pythoctonia occurring while Apollo was still a child, and so chronologically parallel with Athenaeus’ etymology, Ath. Deipn. 701d: ἵε παῖ. Rutherford (n. 5), 27 n. 15 lists the most important iconographic sources for the youthful Apollo at Delphi dating back to the sixth century.

14 Although ἵημι is certainly common in Aeschylus, the form ἵετε occurs only twice, and on both occasions within the context of lamentation; see Aesch. Pers. 941–2: ἵετ᾽ αἰανῆ καὶ πάνδυρτον | δύσθροον αὐδάν, ‘send forth an eternal, plaintive, ill-sounding cry!’ The imperative ἵετε does not appear in either Sophocles or Euripides and the optative form ἱεῖτε is absent from all three tragedians. The verb is still too common to argue for a completely specialized, cultic use here, but the rarity of its employment in this form does argue for a careful and pointed use that, along with its similarity to refrains such as Pindar's, could point to a paeanic reference.

15 See Garvie (n. 1), 82 for uses of καναχέω and καναχή as water sounds at Hes. Theog. 367; Cratinus, fr. 198 K.–A.; Callim. Hymn 4.45; Ap. Rhod. Argon. 3.71. The Scholiast's gloss on this line in schol. on 152a reflects Aeschylus’ materialist or synesthetic engagement with sound and song, most strikingly typified within the Aeschylean corpus by the chorus’ remark at Aesch. Sept. 103 κτύπον δέδορκα, ‘I see the sound’. For a discussion of the materialist character of sound in Aeschylean tragedy, see Gurd, S., ‘Resonance: Aeschylus’ Persae and the poetics of sound’, Ramus 42 (2013), 122–37CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Gurd, S., Dissonance: Ancient Greek Sound Culture (New York, 2016), 6290CrossRefGoogle Scholar. See Porter, J.I., The Origins of Aesthetic Thought in Ancient Greece (Cambridge, 2010), 262–75Google Scholar for a discussion of fifth-century materialist aesthetics generally.

16 West (n. 3) athetizes ὀλόμενον.

17 For the myth of Apollo and the Hyperboreans in its early form, see Alcaeus, fr. 307c V.

18 The ambiguously violent nature of this foreshadowed assistance arriving from Delphi chimes with the chorus’ rhetorical question at the play's conclusion, Aesch. Cho. 1073–4: ποθεν σωτήρ | ἢ μόρον εἴπω, ‘whether I should speak of a saviour or of doom’, that will put an end to the curse of Atreus.

19 Schadewaldt, W., ‘Der Kommos in AischylosChoephoren’, Hermes 67 (1932), 312–54, at 321Google Scholar notes that ὀττοτοῖ is glossed at Hsch. s.v. (ο 1528 Latte) as θρηνῶδες ἐπίφθεγμα, and the chorus in Agamemnon immediately associates such a cry with the θρῆνος (Aesch. Ag. 1074–5): τί ταῦτ’ ἀνωτότυξας ἀμφὶ Λοξίου; | οὐ γὰρ τοιοῦτος ὥστε θρηνητοῦ τυχεῖν, ‘Why do you cry your dirge to Apollo? He is not the type to be involved with wailing.’

20 See Aesch. Ag. 1072–6 for Cassandra's cry. As Alexiou, M., The Ritual Lament in Greek Tradition (Cambridge, 1974), 102–3Google Scholar observes, the thrēnos and the related goos were traditionally female song forms, and so this cry may be particularly appropriate to Aegisthus’ characterization throughout the Oresteia. Fraenkel, E. (ed.), Aeschylus: Agamemnon (Oxford, 1950), 3.769–70Google Scholar notes this characterization at Aesch. Ag. 1625, where the chorus addresses Aegisthus as γύναι, ‘you woman’, in addition to Orestes’ description of him at Aesch. Cho. 305 θήλεια γὰρ φρήν, ‘he has a womanly spirit’. Schadewaldt (n. 19), 321 n. 1 reads this death-cry as betraying Aegisthus’ feminized character, for which see Foley, H., Female Acts in Greek Tragedy (Princeton, 2001), 224Google Scholar; Sommerstein, A.H., Aeschylean Tragedy 2 (London, 2010), 187Google Scholar.

21 Both Sommerstein (n. 3) and Brown (n. 3) print ἰώ.

22 See Power, T., ‘Sophocles and music’, in Markantonatos, A. (ed.), Brill's Companion to Sophocles (Leiden and Boston, 2012), 283–304, at 293–7Google Scholar for an extended discussion of the musical distortion of the chorus’ paean in Soph. Trach. 205–24.

23 The metre of 152, the opening line of the song, for instance, is composed of entirely short syllables. Garvie (n. 1), 82 describes such a metre as more ‘appropriate for lamentation’. On the distinction between paeanic and dithyrambic music, see Plut. Mor. 389a–b. Paeans, according to Plutarch, were known for their τεταγμένην καὶ σώφρονα μοῦσαν, ‘orderly and moderate music’. Rutherford (n. 4), 118 describes the paean as ‘almost exclusively a male form’ and continues his discussion of the genre's masculine character at Rutherford (n. 5), 85–90.

24 Consider, to take the most celebrated example, Clytemnestra's sacrificial description of Agamemnon's murder at Aesch. Ag. 1384–92 and the analysis of Zeitlin, F.I., ‘The motif of corrupted sacrifice in Aeschylus’ Oresteia’, TAPA 96 (1965), 463508Google Scholar.

25 C.W. Marshall, Aeschylus: Libation Bearers (London and Oxford, 2017), 35–6 notes that the ritual vessels and the libations themselves would have remained visible throughout the staged action of the play, framing the orchestra as ritual space for the audience.