Mistrust and Violence: Animal Metaphor in the Oresteia Anonymous College

There are many instances throughout the Oresteia trilogy where animals and animal figures play an important role in the function of the play. While the use of animal imagery is a common technique in literature, Aeschylus uses animals to manipulate and influence the reader’s perceptions of the play and its characters and situations. Comparisons to animals and beasts provide insight into those they describe, and the metaphors that come from the animal world are used as reflections of the human world to display something previously unseen or unspoken; Aeschylus uses animals to display hidden aspects of human life, politics, and relationships. In the Oresteia, Aeschylus utilizes animal imagery and metaphor of the dog, lion, and snake to emphasize the theme of mistrust and violence through the beastly nature of human beings.

One animal that Aeschylus makes use of in the text is the dog, known already as a creature whose existence is often intertwined with that of humans. In the opening monologue of Agamemnon, the Watchman laments his position as the eternal guard of Clytaemnestra's residence, remarking that she had left him “elbowed upon the Atreidae’s roof dogwise to mark the grand processionals of all the stars of night”...