"Let the new day shine – as the proverb says –
glorious from the womb of Mother Night."
In this quote, Clytemnestra is reacting to the sight of the signal fires burning, which indicates that the Greeks have won the Trojan War and are returning in triumph. Ostensibly, she is saying here that the long night of battle is over, and that now is dawning a new era of peace and prosperity as a result of their victory. Secretly, though, there is a double meaning to her words: the signal fires indicate that Agamemnon is coming home soon, and she will be able to enact her plan of vengeance. The days of Agamemnon's life are those of Night, but her glorious act of vengeance will create the dawn of a bright new future where Agamemnon has been repaid for his actions and she will rule the city in his stead.
"Where will it end? –
where will it sink to sleep and rest,
this murderous hate, this Fury?"
These, the closing lines of The Libation Bearers, ask this question: when will the cycle of violence end? Agamemnon has sacrificed his daughter Iphigenia to Athena, and Clytemnestra has killed him for it. Atreus forced Thyestes to eat his own children, and Aegisthus conspired in the murder of Agamemnon in vengeance. In revenge for his mother's murder of his father, Orestes returns and kills both Clytemnestra and Aegisthus. In response to this action, the Furies are now hunting Orestes, whose actions have come back to haunt him. In short, there is a cycle of violence and no end in sight.
"The man goes free,
cleared of the charge of blood. The lots are equal."
In these lines, Athena has proclaimed the results of Orestes's trial: he is free, cleared of all wrongdoing accused of him because of his matricide. The Furies, having chased Orestes for quite a while, are upset, but Athena placates them by making them the guardians of justice in the city of Athens ("The Kindly Ones"). This quote is important because it finally marks the end of the cycle of violence: all it takes, apparently, is some good old legal procedure overseen by a goddess.
