Agamemnon

that Clytemnestra is conceived as being really “possessed” by the Daemon of the House when she commits her crime. Her statements on p. 69 are not empty metaphor. A careful study of the scene after the murder will show that she appears first “possessed” and almost insane with triumph, utterly dominating the Elders and leaving them no power to answer. Then gradually the unnatural force dies out from her. The deed that was first an ecstasy of delight becomes an “affliction” (pp. 72, 76). The strength that defied the world flags and changes into a longing for peace. She has done her work. She has purified the House of its madness; now let her go away and live out her life in quiet. When Aigisthos appears, and the scene suddenly becomes filled with the wrangling of common men, Clytemnestra fades into a long silence, from which she only emerges at the very end of the drama to pray again for Peace, and, strangest of all, to utter the entreaty: “Let us not stain ourselves with blood!” The splash of her husband’s blood was visible on her face at the time. Had she in her trance-like state actually forgotten, or did she, even then, not feel that particular blood to be a stain?

To some readers it will seem a sort of irrelevance, or at least a blurring of the dramatic edge of this tragedy, to observe that the theme on which it is founded was itself the central theme both of Greek Tragedy and of Greek Religion. The fall of Pride, the avenging of wrong by wrong, is no new subject selected by Aeschylus. It forms both the commonest burden of the moralising lyrics in Greek tragedy and even of the tragic myths themselves; and recent writers have shown how the same idea touches the very heart of the traditional Greek religion. “The life of the Year-Daemon, who lies at the root of so many Greek gods and heroes, is normally a story of Pride and Punishment. Each year arrives, waxes great, commits the sin of Hubris and must therefore die. It is the way of all Life.” As an early philosopher expresses it, “All things pay retribution for their injustice one to another according to the ordinance of Time.”1

To me this consideration actually increases the interest and beauty of the Oresteia, because it increases its greatness. The majestic art, the creative genius, the instinctive eloquence of these plays⁠—that eloquence which is the mere despair of a translator⁠—are all devoted to the expression of something which Aeschylus felt to be of tremendous import. It was not his discovery; but it was a truth of which he had an intense realization. It had become something which he must with all his strength bring to expression before he died, not in a spirit of self-assertion or of argument, like a discoverer, but as one devoted to something higher and greater than himself, in the spirit of an interpreter or prophet.

G. M.

Dramatis Personae

Characters in the Play

• Agamemnon, son of Atreus and King of Argos and Mycenae; Commander-in-Chief of the Greek armies in the War against Troy

• Clytemnestra, daughter of Tyndareus, sister of Helen; wife to Agamemnon

• Aigisthos, son of Thyestes, cousin and blood-enemy to Agamemnon, lover to Clytemnestra

• Cassandra, daughter of Priam, King of Troy, a prophetess; now slave to Agamemnon

• A Watchman

• A Herald

• Chorus of Argive Elders, faithful to Agamemnon

Characters Mentioned in the Play

• Menelaus, brother to Agamemnon, husband of Helen, and King of Sparta

• The two sons of Atreus are called the Atreidae

• Helen, most beautiful of women; daughter of Tyndareus, wife to Menelaus; beloved and carried off by Paris

• Paris, son of Priam, King of Troy, lover of Helen. Also called Alexander

• Priam, the aged King of Troy

• The Greeks are also referred to as Achaians, Argives, Danaans; Troy is also called Ilion

Family Trees

The chief characters in the play belong to one family, as is shown by the two genealogies:⁠—

I

(Also, a sister of Agamemnon, name variously given, married Strophios, and was the mother of Pylades.)

II

Agamemnon

The Scene represents a space in front of the Palace of Agamemnon in Argos, with an Altar of Zeus in the centre and many other altars at the sides. On a high terrace of the roof stands a Watchman. It is night.

Watchman2

This waste of year-long vigil I have prayed God for some respite, watching elbow-stayed, As sleuthhounds watch, above the Atreidae’s hall, Till well I know yon midnight festival Of swarming stars, and them that lonely go, Bearers to man of summer and of snow, Great lords and shining, throned in heavenly fire. And still I await the sign, the beacon pyre That bears Troy’s capture on a voice of flame Shouting o’erseas. So surely to her aim Cleaveth a woman’s heart, man-passionèd! And when I turn me to my bed⁠—my bed Dew-drenched and dark and stumbling, to which near Cometh no dream nor sleep, but alway Fear Breathes round it, warning, lest an eye once fain To close may close too well to wake again; Think I perchance to sing or troll a tune For medicine against sleep, the music soon Changes to sighing for the tale untold Of this house, not well mastered as of old. Howbeit, may God yet send us rest, and light The flame of good news flashed across the