Betrayal And Revenge In The Plays Medea And The Libation Bearers

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Betrayal and Revenge in the plays “Medea” and “The Libation Bearers”

In 458 B.C. Aeschylus produced his great trilogy, “The Oresteia”. The Oresteia was said to perfect the vision of warning and reward, which in other words also can be thought of as betrayal and revenge. The Oresteia originally consisted of four plays-Agamemnon, The Libation Bearers, The Euminides and Proteus. Proteus did not survive, though the three tragedies form a unity in themselves as the only Greek trilogy we have. In this essay I will only focus on one of the three plays, called “The Libation Bearers”. The other play I will be looking at is “Medea”. Medea is the earliest tragedy of Euripides and in it we see a classic moral pattern. Aspects such as betrayal and revenge are explored in this play, such as also in The Libation Bearers, which can also be recognized in many modern plays today. It shows how strong feeling from one person to another can make you do things that are reactions of love and hate.
The first play I will look at is The Libation Bearers, and how already from the start Tantalus of Lydia betrays himself by killing his own flesh and blood. Although the actual “blood curse” first starts later (between two brothers named Atreus and Thyestes) with betrayal and revenge all amongst family members, I believe that it all started with Tantalus, a barbarian whose spirits haunt the Oresteia. Tantalus is the starter of it all; he feeds his son Pelops to the gods for no apparent reason that then gets condemned to starve in Hades. Already here we see how Tantalus is betraying himself by killing his own son and gets his justice from the gods who let him starve. This play runs on an act of recognition, were betrayal and revenge is taken from one generation to the next. The actual blood curse in the house of Atreus, which I mentioned earlier, was started by the a feud between two brothers, Atreus and Thyestes.Thyestes betrays his brothe...