Mnemosyne — Classical Greek Myth Library

In both Aeschylus’s *Choephoroi* and Sophocles’ *Electra*, Clytemnestra is shaken by a night-vision that drives offerings to Agamemnon’s tomb—and so brings Electra and Orestes into the recognition plot—but the dream’s content differs by playwright. In Aeschylus, the chorus and later the queen’s own report (through the dream’s interpreters and Clytemnestra’s words to the chorus) center on a serpent: she dreams she gives birth to a snake, wraps it in swaddling clothes, and offers it her breast; it draws blood with the milk. The household seers declare that those who killed Agamemnon will themselves be killed; Orestes, hearing the dream, accepts it as his emblem—he is the snake who will bite. Libations sent to the tomb to avert the omen become the meeting-ground for sister and brother. In Sophocles, Chrysothemis reports a different vision: Clytemnestra dreamed that Agamemnon returned to life, took his own scepter (now held by Aegisthus), and planted it at the hearth, from which a fruitful bough overshadowed the land of Mycenae. The queen, afraid, sends tomb-offerings; Electra rejects the rite as hypocrisy and later uses the false news of Orestes’ death. Sophocles thus replaces the blood-nursing serpent with a restored-king and scepter omen—still a spur to offerings and fear, but without Orestes’ explicit self-identification as the snake. The catalogue keeps a comparative entry here and a dedicated Aeschylean serpent narrative in 03/170, so the version lines stay distinct while the shared function—dream → libations → recognition path—remains clear.