Epitome

Apollodorus

Apollodorus. The Library. Frazer, James George, Sir, editor. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press; London: William Heinemann Ltd. 1921

The god gave him leave, so he departed secretly to Mycenae in company with Pylades, and killed both his mother and Aegisthus.[*](This vengeance for the murder of Agamemnon is the theme of three extant Greek tragedies, the Choephori of Aeschylus, the Electra of Sophocles, and the Electra of Euripides. It was related by Hagias in his epic, the Returns, as we learn from the brief summary of Proclus (Epicorum Graecorum Fragmenta, ed. G. Kinkel, p. 53). Compare Pind. P. 11.36ff.; Hyginus, Fab. 119. Homer briefly mentions the murder of Aegisthus by Orestes (Hom. Od. 1.29ff.; Hom. Od. 1.298-300; Hom. Od. 3.306ff.); he does not expressly mention, but darkly hints at, the murder of Clytaemnestra by her son (Hom. Od. 3.309ff.).) And not long afterwards, being afflicted with madness and pursued by the Furies, he repaired to Athens and was tried in the Areopagus. He is variously said to have been brought to trial by the Furies, or by Tyndareus, or by Erigone, daughter of Aegisthus and Clytaemnestra; and the votes at his trial being equal he was acquitted.[*](The trial and acquittal of Orestes in the court of the Areopagus at Athens is the subject of Aeschylus's tragedy, the Eumenides, where the poet similarly represents the matricide as acquitted because the votes were equal (Aesch. Eum. 752ff.). The Parian Chronicle also records the acquittal on the same ground, and dates it in the reign of Demophon, king of Athens. See Marmor Parium 40ff. (Fragmenta Historicorum Graecorum, ed. C. Müller, i.546). Compare Eur. IT 940-967; Eur. IT 1469-1472; Eur. Or. 1648-1652; Tzetzes, Scholiast on Lycophron 1374; Paus. 1.28.5; Paus. 8.34.4; Dictys Cretensis vi.4. In the Eumenides the accusers of Orestes are the Furies. According to the Parian Chronicler, it was Erigone, the daughter of Aegisthus and Clytaemnestra, who instituted the prosecution for the murder of her father; the chronicler does not mention the murder of Clytaemnestra as an article in the indictment of Orestes. According to the author of the Etymologicum Magnum, s.v. Αἰώρα, p. 42, the prosecution was conducted at Athens jointly by Erigone and her grandfather Tyndareus, and when it failed, Erigone hanged herself. Peloponnesian antiquaries, reported by Paus. 8.34.4, alleged that the accuser was not Tyndareus, who was dead, but Perilaus, a cousin of Clytaemnestra. According to Hyginus, Fab. 119, Orestes was accused by Tyndareus before the people of Mycenae, but was suffered to retire into banishment for the sake of his father. As to the madness of Orestes, caused by the Furies of his murdered mother, see Eur. Or. 931ff.; Paus. 3.22.1; Paus. 8.34.1-4. The incipient symptoms of madness, showing themselves immediately after the commission of the crime, are finely described by Aesch. Lib. 1021ff. )

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When he inquired how he should be rid of his disorder, the god answered that he would be rid of it if he should fetch the wooden image that was in the land of the Taurians.[*](As to the oracle, compare Eur. IT 77-92; Eur. IT 970-978; Tzetzes, Scholiast on Lycophron 1374; Hyginus, Fab. 120.) Now the Taurians are a part of the Scythians, who murder strangers[*](The Taurians inhabited the Crimea. As to their custom of sacrificing castaways and strangers, see Hdt. 4.103; Eur. IT 34-41; Diod. 4.44.7; Paus. 1.43.1; Orphica, Argon. 1075ff., ed Abel; Ovid, Ex Ponto iii.2.45-58; Mela ii.11; Ammianus Marcellinus xxii.8.34. According to Herodotus, these Taurians sacrificed human beings to a Virgin Goddess, whom they identified with Iphigenia, daughter of Agamemnon. The victims were shipwrecked persons and any Greeks on whom they could lay hands. They were slaughtered by being knocked on the head with a club, after which their heads were set up on stakes and their bodies thrown down a precipice into the sea or buried in the ground; for reports differed in regard to the disposal of the corpses, though all agreed as to the setting of the heads on stakes. Ammianus Marcellinus says that the native name of the goddess was Orsiloche.) and throw them into the sacred fire, which was in the precinct, being wafted up from Hades through a certain rock.[*](This account of the disposal of the bodies of the victims is based on Eur. IT 625ff.:—*)ore/sthsta/fos de\ poi=os de/cetai/ m', o(/tan qa/nw;*)ifige/neiapu=r i(ero\n e)/ndon xa/sma t' eu)rwpo\n pe/tras.Compare Eur. IT 1154ff.:—h)/dh tw=n ce/nwn kath/rcato,a)du/tois t' e)n a(gnoi=s sw=ma la/mpontai puri/;Thus Apollodorus differs from the account which Herodotus gives of the disposal of the bodies. See the preceding note.)

So when Orestes was come with

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Pylades to the land of the Taurians, he was detected, caught, and carried in bonds before Thoas the king, who sent them both to the priestess. But being recognized by his sister, who acted as priestess among the Taurians, he fled with her, carrying off the wooden image.[*](This account of the expedition of Orestes and Pylades to the land of the Taurians, and their escape with the image of Artemis, is the subject of Euripides's play Iphigenia in Tauris, which Apollodorus seems to have followed closely. The gist of the play is told in verse by Ovid, Ex Ponto iii.2.43-96 and in prose by Hyginus, Fab. 120. Compare Tzetzes, Scholiast on Lycophron 1374; Scriptores rerum mythicarum Latini, ed. Bode, i. pp. 7, 141ff. (First Vatican Mythographer 20; Second Vatican Mythographer 202).) It was conveyed to Athens and is now called the image of Tauropolus.[*](In saying that the image of the Tauric Artemis was taken to Athens our author follows Euripides. See Eur. IT 89-91; Eur. IT 1212-1214. But according to Euripides the image was not to remain in Athens but to be carried to a sacred place in Attica called Halae, where it was to be set up in a temple specially built for it and to be called the image of Artemis Tauropolus or Brauronian Artemis (Eur. IT 1446-1467). An old wooden image of Artemis, which purported to be the one brought from the land of the Taurians, was shown at Brauron in Attica as late as the second century of our era; Iphigenia is said to have landed with the image at Brauron and left it there, while she herself went on by land to Athens and afterwards to Argos. See Paus. 1.23.7, Paus. 1.33.1. But according to some the original image was carried off by Xerxes to Susa, and was afterwards presented by Seleucus to Laodicea in Syria, where it was said to remain down to the time of Pausanias in the second century of our era (Paus. 3.16.8; Paus. 8.46.3). Euripides has recorded, in the form of prophecy, two interesting features in the ritual of Artemis at Halae or Brauron. In sacrificing to the goddess the priest drew blood with a sword from the throat of a man, and this was regarded as a substitute for the sacrifice of Orestes, of which the goddess had been defrauded by his escape. Such a custom is explained most naturally as a mitigation of an older practice of actually sacrificing human beings to the goddess; and the tradition of such sacrifices at Brauron would suffice to give rise to the story that the image of the cruel goddess had been brought from the land of ferocious barbarians on the Black Sea. For similar mitigations of an old custom of human sacrifice, see The Dying God, pp. 214ff. The other feature in the ritual at Brauron which Euripides notices was that the garments of women dying in child-bed used to be dedicated to Iphigenia, who was believed to be buried at Brauron. See Eur. IT 1458-1467. As to Brauron and Halae, see Paus. 1.33.1 with Frazer's note (vol. ii. pp. 445ff.). But other places besides Brauron claimed to possess the ancient idol of the Tauric Artemis. The wooden image of Artemis Orthia at Sparta, at whose altar the Spartan youths were scourged to the effusion of blood, was supposed by the Lacedaemonians to be the true original image brought by Iphigenia herself to Sparta; and their claim was preferred by Pausanias to that of the Athenians (Paus. 3.16.7-10). Others said that Orestes and Iphigenia carried the image, hidden in a bundle of faggots, to Aricia in Italy. See Servius on Virgil, ii.116, vi.136; Scriptores rerum mythicarum Latini, ed. Bode, i. pp. 7, 142 (First Vatican Mythographer 20; Second Vatican Mythographer 202); compare Strab. 5.3.12. Indeed, it was affirmed by some people that on his wanderings Orestes had deposited, not one, but many images of Artemis in many places (Aelius Lampridius, Heliogabalus 7). Such stories have clearly no historical value. In every case they were probably devised to explain or excuse a cruel and bloody ritual by deriving it from a barbarous country.) But some say

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that Orestes was driven in a storm to the island of Rhodes,---and in accordance with an oracle the image was dedicated in a fortification wall.[*](This drifting of Orestes to Rhodes seems to be mentioned by no other ancient writer. The verb (καθοσιωθῆναἰ, which I have taken to refer to the image and have translated by “dedicated,” may perhaps refer to Orestes; if so, it would mean “purified” from the guilt of matricide. According to Hyginus, Fab. 120, Orestes sailed with Iphigenia and Pylades to the island of Sminthe, which is otherwise unknown. Another place to which Orestes and Iphigenia were supposed to have come on their way from the Crimea was Comana in Cappadocia; there he was said to have introduced the worship of Artemis Tauropolus and to have shorn his hair in token of mourning. Hence the city was said to derive its name (Κόμανα from κόμἠ. See Strab. 12.2.3. According to Tzetzes, Scholiast on Lycophron 1374, Orestes was driven by storms to that part of Syria where Seleucia and Antioch afterwards stood; and Mount Amanus, on the borders of Syria and Cilicia, was so named because there the matricide was relieved of his madness (Ἀμανός, from μανία“madness” and ἀ privative). Such is a sample of Byzantine etymology.)

and having come to Mycenae, he united his sister Electra in marriage to Pylades,[*](As to the marriage of Electra to Pylades, see Eur. El. 1249; Eur. Or. 1658ff.; Hyginus, Fab. 122.) and having himself married Hermione, or, according to some, Erigone, he begat Tisamenus,[*](As to the marriage of Orestes and Hermione, see above, Apollod. E.5.14, with the note. According to Paus. 2.18.6, Orestes had by Hermione a son Tisamenus, who succeeded his father on the throne of Sparta. But Pausanias also mentions a tradition that Orestes had a bastard son Penthilus by Erigone, daughter of Aegisthus, and for this tradition he cites as his authority the old epic poet Cinaethon. Compare Tzetzes, Scholiast on Lycophron 1474.) and was killed by the bite of a snake at Oresteum in Arcadia.[*](Compare Scholiast on Eur. Or. 1645, quoting Asclepiades as his authority; Tzetzes, Scholiast on Lycophron 1374. In the passage of Euripides on which the Scholiast comments (Eur. Or. 1643-1647), Orestes is bidden by Apollo to retire to Parrhasia, a district of Arcadia, for the space of a year, after which he is to go and stand his trial for the murder of his mother at Athens. This year to be spent in Arcadia is no doubt the year of banishment to which homicides had to submit before they were allowed to resume social intercourse with their fellows. See Frazer's note above on Apollod. 2.5.11 (vol. i. pp. 218ff.). The period is so interpreted by a Scholiast on Eur. Or. 1645. As to Oresteum in Arcadia, see Paus. 8.3.1ff., who says that it was formerly called Oresthasium. A curious story of the madness of Orestes in Arcadia is told by Paus. 8.34.1-4. He says that, when the Furies were about to drive him mad, they appeared to him black, but that he bit off one of his own fingers, whereupon they appeared to him white, and he immediately recovered his wits. The grave of Orestes was near Tegea in Arcadia; from there his bones were stolen by a Spartan and carried to Sparta in compliance with an oracle, which assured the Spartans of victory over their stubborn foes the Tegeans, if only they could get possession of these valuable relics. See Hdt. 1.67ff.; Paus. 3.3.5ff.; Paus. 3.11.10; Paus. 8.54.3.)

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