Ghosts evoking Ghosts : Phantoms of regality on Aeschylean stage, from Persians to Oresteia

In Persians, Aeschylus introduces the first appearance of a ghost on the theatrical stage. Darius’ specter is able to weave Past and Future in the form of a prophecy: the Phantom's voice is deep and wise and, in actual fact, it resonates as a symbol of the failure of Xerses, his son. In Libation Bearers the dramatic situation is similar to the Persians', and the audience expects to see the Phantom of Agamemnon, invoked by a summoning ritual made by his children and the Chorus on his tomb. But the promised apparition of Agamemnon’s ghost did not come to be: so, the public was directed by Aeschylus to invest not in the resentment of the spirit of the hero-father, but in the new heroism of his son Orestes, who is going to act out as the main character in his own drama. In Eumenides, with an unexpected twist, the Shadow of the murdered mother does appear: the absence of the father's ghost is offset by the dramatic weight of the fantastic scene of a far more terrible and unexpected apparition: the Phantom of the Mother.