Aeschylus' Oresteia: Agamemnon Explained Part Two

We are reading Aeschylus' Oresteia. This week Dcn. Garlick, Adam Minihan, Thomas Lackey, and Dr. Frank Grabowski discuss part two of Aeschylus' Agamemnon, the second part of the first play of the Oresteia.

Check out thegreatbookspodcast.com for more sources.

Check out our written guide to the Oresteia.

I.             Clytemnestra and Agamemnon: Murder, Manipulation & Denial (795)

Clytemnestra dominates Agamemnon as a complex figure of cleverness, rage, and manipulation. Upon Agamemnon’s return, she denies him a true homecoming by rolling out the red tapestries and inviting him to walk on them (901). Two main observations on the red tapestries. First, Clytemnestra is literally denying Agamemnon the satisfaction of setting his foot on Argos’s soil. It is a denial of him truly coming home. Compare this denial to the herald who praises the soil of Argos upon his return (493).

Second, walking on the tapestries is an act of hubris and impiety. Even Agamemnon states it is an act reserved for the gods (915). It said that the dye needed to make these tapestries would have been incredibly laborious and expensive—and upon walking upon them, they would be ruined. Note also their comparison to streams of blood (903). Clytemnestra is inviting Agamemnon to a prideful, impious, and prodigal act. The invitation should be compared to Agamemnon’s opening lines that praise and give gratitude to the gods (795).

Clytemnestra hatred is profound. Her actions reflect years of planning, deep-seated hatred, and extraordinary control over the narrative surrounding the king’s return. She is leading Agamemnon into impiety so that he will die at odds with the divine. It is akin, in Catholic parlance, to leading someone into mortal sin prior to murdering them. It is a supernatural cruelty similar to Achilles intentionally throwing bodies in the river to deny them their burial rites in the Iliad.

Agamemnon's behavior in this moment reflects his characteristic weakness. He is effeminate, weak-willed, and impressionable. Clytemnestra is clever and dominative (935). He even states that Clytemnestra is treating him “like a woman” (912). His inability to assert himself as either husband or king leaves him vulnerable to Clytemnestra's intellectual superiority. She remarks: “The power is yours, if you surrender your free will to me,” underscoring how she undermines his authority on every level (939). One should recall the wife of Odysseus, Penelope, the “matchless queen of cunning,” who through her wit and fidelity preserved King Odysseus’ kingdom and herself until his return. One may see Clytemnestra as an evil Penelope—a queen whose wit is turned against her king to his destruction.

II.           The Chorus and the Tragedy of Cassandra (977)

 The old men of Argos, the chorus, “huddle in terror” as Agamemnon and Clytemnestra enter the palace. They are afraid and inept. Notice the imagery of a man’s blood wetting the earth and whether it can then sing (1017). It is difficult not to think of the story of Cain and Abel, and how Abel’s blood cried out to God (Genesis 4:10). Clytemnestra reemerges from the palace and attempts to coax Cassandra, the Trojan princess, into the palace. Cassandra is silent, which is expected, as it was tradition only two persons would speak on the stage at a time—and here Clytemnestra and the leader of the chorus are both speaking. As an aside, one of the most comical moments of the entire Oresteia was when Cassandra was revealed (947). Agamemnon steps down from his chariot in front of a wife who hates him only to reveal the young, beautiful Trojan princess. It is a darkly comedic moment in which one imagines the internal hatred churning in Clytemnestra at the sight of Cassandra.

Aeschylus plays with his audience’s assumption that Cassandra is not a speaking character. When Clytemnestra goes into the palace, it would have been a surprise enough to have Cassandra speak—but Aeschylus has her scream (1072). As Lackey describes, Cassandra’s scream would have shocked the audience and created a sense of foreboding. Lackey compares the moment to a “jump scare in a horror movie,” emphasizing how unexpected and unsettling it would feel to a Greek audience accustomed to the constraints of the dramatic tradition.

Aeschylus draws heavily from the myth of Cassandra. To wit, Apollo, the god of prophecy, desired Cassandra, but in the act of coupling with her, she drew away from him (1213). It is a rare occurrence of the divine act lacking fecundity. As such, Apollo cursed Cassandra with the gift of prophecy, but no one will believe her (1218). The one caveat is that when someone does finally believe her, it will be a sign of her death is imminent (1219).[1]

Her prophetic warnings go unheeded, as per her curse, but her vivid descriptions of the family’s blood-soaked history and impending doom deepen the play’s tension. “The house that hates god, an echoing womb of guilt… soil streaming blood,” Cassandra cries, invoking the horrors of Tantalus and Atreus (1088). Aeschylus uses Cassandra to explain the action that will occur offstage, as she describes Agamemnon’s death (1126).

Justice in Agamemnon is reduced to cycles of revenge, a primitive form of blood vengeance that sustains violence rather than resolving it. Cassandra herself is tangled in this cycle, a figure of tragic innocence like Iphigenia before her. As Lackey notes, “Cassandra is innocent in so many ways… the most innocent of victims,” and yet she is offered no way out of her fated demise. She is the “last ember” of Troy (1173). One should recall too that in addition to suffering the fall of Troy and the death of her family, Cassandra was raped by little Ajax in the temple of Athena in Troy. It was this evil she suffered that caused Athena to curse the Achaeans with Poseidon’s help during their journey home...

Check out our guide, linked above, for more!

[1] Fagles, 302.