0763ANCIENTOrestes_VaticanSarcophagus

0763ANCIENTOrestes_VaticanSarcophagus

Aeschylus Choer. 210 ff.
Sophocles El. 1170 ff.
Euripides El. 220 ff.

Orestes Sarcophagus, ca. 130 AD, Vatican, Museo Gregoriano Profano, inv. 10450.) (higher-res click here)

Common sarcophagus relief depicting Orestes (far right) holding knife and grasping Delphic tripod, the Erinnyes lurk behind the veil, and one sleeps at Orestes' feet Aegisthus topples backward over his throne and murdered Clytemnestra, with Orestes drawing a sword (left); (right). On the left end of the front relief, Agamemnon's shade invokes revenge from Orestes and Pylades.

Cf. the right half of another Roman sarcophagus relief, mid-2nd Century AD, marble; Museo dell'Opera del Duomo, Firenze.

Zanker and Ewald know 29 "or so" surviving Orestes sarcophagi in two classes: 16 show Orestes killing his mother, 13 focus on the episode with Iphigenia among the Taurians. All are from the Antonine period. Class 1 creates "a strangely ambivalent image of the dissolution and destruction of the family structure, which is apparently how the patron of the sarcophagus regarded death." (P. Zanker and B.C. Ewald, Living with Myths: the imagery of Roman sarcophagi (Oxford 2012), p. 379.

Orestes' trial signifies the mortal travail of the deceased, whose duty to divine urgings earned expiation from even heinous crimes. (Cf. A.M. McCann, Roman Sarcophagi in the Metropolitan Museum of Art (New York, 1978), 53 - 60. McCann knows this and 12 other Orestes sarcophagi.)

OGCMA slides are designed by Roger T. Macfarlane for use in Classical Civilization 241 courses at Brigham Young University.
The present resource contains information assembled for The Oxford Guide to Classical Mythology in the Arts, 1300 - 1990's, edited by J. Davidson Reid (Oxford 1994), and it is used with express permission from Oxford University press.
Address concerns or inquiries to macfarlane@byu.edu.