Agamemnon by Aeschylus
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Aeschylus >> Agamemnon
P. 7, l. 146, But I-e, i-e.]--(Pronounce _Ee-ay_.) Calchas, catching sight
in his vision of the further consequences which Artemis will exact if she
fulfils the sign, calls on Apollo Paian, the Healer, to check her.
P. 7, l. 160, Zeus, whate'er He be.]--This conception of Zeus is expressed
also in Aeschylus' _Suppliant Women_, and was probably developed in the
Prometheus Trilogy. See my _Rise of the Greek Epic_, p. 291 (Ed. 2).
It is connected with the common Greek conception of the _Tritos Soter_--
the Saviour Third. First, He who sins; next, He who avenges; third, He who
saves. In vegetation worship it is the Old Year who has committed Hubris,
the sin of pride, in summer; the Winter who slays him; the New Year which
shall save. In mythology the three successive Rulers of Heaven are given
by Hesiod as Ouranos, Kronos, Zeus (cf. _Prometheus_, 965 ff.), but we
cannot tell if Aeschylus accepted the Hesiodic story. Cf. note on l. 246,
and Clytemnestra's blasphemy at l. 1387, p. 63.
P. 9, l. 192, Winds from Strymon.]--From the great river gorge of
Thrace, NNE; cf. below, l. 1418.
P. 9, l. 201, Artemis.]--Her name was terrible, because of its
suggestion. She demanded the sacrifice of Agamemnon's daughter, Iphigenia.
(See Euripides' two plays, _Iphigenia in Tauris_ and _Iphigenia in
Aulis_.) In other poets Agamemnon has generally committed some definite
sin against Artemis, but in Aeschylus the death of Iphigenia seems to be
merely one of the results of his acceptance of the Sign.
P. 10, l. 215, 'Tis a Rite of old.]--Literally "it is Themis." Human
sacrifice had had a place in the primitive religion of Greece; hence
Agamemnon could not reject the demand of the soldiers as an obvious crime.
See _Rise of Greek Epic_, pp. 150-157.
P. 11, l. 246, The Third Cup.]--Regularly poured to Zeus Soter, the
Saviour, and accompanied by a paean or cry of joy.
P. 11, l. 256, This Heart of Argos, this frail Tower:]--i.e. themselves.
P. 11, l. 264, Glad-voiced.]--Clytemnestra is in extreme suspense, as
the return of Agamemnon will mean either her destruction or her
deliverance. At such a moment there must be no ill-omened word, so she
challenges fate.
P. 12, l. 276, A word within that hovereth without wings.]--i.e. a
presentiment. "Winged words" are words spoken, which fly from speaker to
hearer. A 'wingless' word is unspoken. The phrase occurs in Homer.
Pp. 13 ff., ll. 281 ff.]--Beacon Speech. There is no need to inquire
curiously into the practical possibility of this chain of beacons. Greek
tragedies do not care to be exact about this kind of detail. There may
well have been a tradition that Agamemnon, like the Great King of Persia,
used a chain of beacons across the Aegean.--Note how vividly
Clytemnestra's imagination is working in her excitement. She seems to see
before her every leaping light in the chain, just as in the next speech
she imagines the scene in Troy almost with the intensity of a vision.
P. 14, l. 314, Victory in the first as in the last.]--All are Victory
beacons; the spirit of Victory infects them all equally. Cf. l. 854 below,
where Agamemnon prays that the Victory which is now with him, or in him,
may abide.
P. 15, l. 348, A woman's word.]--Her hatred and fear of Agamemnon, making
her feel vividly the horrors of the sack and the peril overhanging the
conquerors, have carried her dangerously far. She checks herself and
apologizes for her womanlike anxiety. Cf. l. 1661, p. 77.
P. 18, ll. 409 ff., Seers they saw visions.]--A difficult and uncertain
passage. I think the seers attached to the royal household
(cf. _Libation-Bearers,_ l. 37, where they are summoned to read a dream)
were rather like what we call clairvoyants. Being consulted, they look
into some pool of liquid or the like; there they see gradually emerging
the palace, the injured King, the deserted room, and at last a wraith of
Helen herself, haunting the place.
P. 21, l. 487.]--This break in the action, covering a space of several
days, was first pointed out by Dr. Walter Headlam. Incidentally it removes
the gravest of the difficulties raised by Dr. Verrall in his famous essay
upon the plot of the _Agamemnon_.
P. 21, l. 495, Dry dust, own brother to the mire of war.]--i.e. "I can see
by the state of his clothes, caked with dry dust which was once the mire
of battle, that he comes straight from the war and can speak with
knowledge." The Herald is probably (though perhaps not quite consistently)
conceived as having rushed post-haste with his news.
Pp. 22 ff., HERALD.]--The Herald bursts in overcome with excitement and
delight, full of love for his home and everything he sees. A marked
contrast to Agamemnon, ll. 810 ff. Note that his first speech confirms all
the worst fears suggested by Clytemnestra. Agamemnon has committed all the
sins she prayed against, and more. The terrible lines 527 ff., "Till her
Gods' Houses, etc.," are very like a passage in the _Persae_, 811 ff.,
where exactly the same acts by the Persian invaders of Greece make their
future punishment inevitable.
P. 22, l. 509, Pythian Lord.]--Apollo is often a sinister figure in
tragedy. Cf. Sophocles _Oedipus_ , ll. 915 ff., pp. 52 ff., and the
similar scene, _Electra_, 655 ff. Here it is a shock to the Herald to come
suddenly on the god who was the chief enemy of the Greeks at Troy. One
feels Apollo an evil presence also in the Cassandra scene, 11. 1071 ff.,
pp. 47 ff.
P. 23, l. 530, Happy among men.]--The crown of his triumph! Early Greek
thought was always asking the question, What is human happiness? To the
Herald Agamemnon has achieved happiness if any one ever did. Cf. the
well-known story of Croesus asking Solon who was the happiest man in the
world (Herodotus, I. 30-33).
P. 24, ll. 551 ff., Herald's second speech.]--The connexion of thought is:
"After all, why should either of us wish to die? All has ended well." This
vivid description of the actualities of war can be better appreciated now
than it could in 1913.
P. 25, l. 577, These spoils.]--Spoils purporting to come from the Trojan
War were extant in Greek temples in Aeschylus' day and later.
P. 26, l. 595, Our women's joy-cry.]--There seems to have been in Argos an
old popular festival, celebrating with joy or mockery the supposed death
of a man and a woman. Homer (Od. iii. 309 f.) derives it from a rejoicing
by Orestes over Aigisthos and Clytemnestra; cf. below, ll. 1316 ff., p.
59; Aeschylus here and Sophocles in the _Electra_, from a celebration by
Clytemnestra of the deaths of Agamemnon and Cassandra. Probably it was
really some ordinary New Year and Old Year celebration to which the poets
give a tragic touch. It seems to have had a woman's "Ololugmos" in it,
perhaps uttered by men. See Kaibel's note, Soph. _Electra_ 277-281.
P. 26, l. 612, Bronze be dyed like wool.]--Impossible in the literal
sense, but there is after all a way of dying a sword red!
P. 27, l. 617, Menelaus.]--This digression about Menelaus is due, as
similar digressions generally are when they occur in Greek plays, to the
poet feeling bound to follow the tradition. Homer begins his longest
account of the slaying of Agamemnon by asking "Where was Menelaus?" (Od.
iii. 249). Agamemnon could be safely attacked because he was alone.
Menelaus was away, wrecked or wind-bound.
P. 28, l. 642, Two-fold scourge.]--Ares works his will when spear crosses
spear, when man meets man. Hence "two-fold."
P. 29, CHORUS. The name HELENA.]--There was a controversy in Aeschylus'
day whether language, including names, was a matter of Convention or of
Nature. Was it mere accident, and could you change the name of anything at
will? Or was language a thing rooted in nature and fixed by God from of
old? Aeschylus adopts the latter view: Why was this being called Helena?
If one had understood God's purpose one would have seen it was because she
really _was_ "Helenas"--_Ship-destroyer_. (The Herald's story of the
shipwreck has suggested this particular idea.) Similarly, if a hero was
called Aias, and came to great sorrow, one could see that he was so called
from 'Aiai,' "Alas!"--The antistrophe seems to find a meaning in the name
Paris or Alexandras, where the etymology is not so clear.
Pp. 33 ff.]--Entrance of Agamemnon. The metre of the Chorus indicates
marching; so that apparently the procession takes some time to move across
the orchestra and get into position. Cassandra would be dressed, as a
prophetess, in a robe of white reaching to the feet, covered by an
_agrenon_, or net of wool with large meshes; she would have a staff and
certain fillets or crowns. The Leader welcomes the King: he explains that,
though he was against the war ten years ago, and has not changed his
opinion, he is a faithful servant of the King ... and that not all are
equally so. He gave a similar hint to the Herald above, ll. 546-550, p.
24.
P. 35, Agamemnon.]--A hard, cold speech, full of pride in the earlier
part, and turning to ominous threats at the end. Those who have dared to
be false shall be broken.--At the end comes a note of fear, like the fear
in Shakespeare's Julius Caesar. He is so full of triumph and success; he
must be very careful not to provoke a fall.--Victory, Nike, was to the
Greeks a very vivid and infectious thing. It clung to you or it deserted
you. And one who was really charged with Victory, like Agamemnon, was very
valuable to his friends and people. Hence they made statues of Victory
wingless--so that she should not fly away. See _Four Stages of Greek
Religion_, p. 138 note.
P. 36, Clytemnestra.]--A wonderful speech. It seems to me that Aeschylus'
imagination realized all the confused passions in Clytemnestra's mind, but
that his art was not yet sufficiently developed to make them all clear and
explicit. She is in suspense; does Agamemnon know her guilt or not? At
least, if she is to die, she wants to say something to justify or excuse
herself in the eyes of the world. A touch of hysteria creeps in; why could
he not have been killed in all these years? Why must he rise, like some
monster from the grave, unkillable? Gradually she recovers her calm,
explains clearly the suspicious point of Orestes' absence, and heaps up
her words and gestures of welcome to an almost oriental fullness (which
Agamemnon rebukes, ll. 918 ff., p. 39). Again, at the end, when she finds
that for the time she is safe, her real feelings almost break out.
P. 38.]--What is the motive of the Crimson Tapestries? I think the
tangling robe must have been in the tradition, as the murder in the bath
certainly was. One motive, of course, is obvious: Clytemnestra is tempting
Agamemnon to sin or "go too far." He tries to resist, but the splendour of
an oriental homecoming seduces him and he yields. But is that enough to
account for such a curious trait in the story, and one so strongly
emphasized? We are told afterwards that Clytemnestra threw over her victim
an "endless web," long and rich (p. 63), to prevent his seeing or using
his arms. And I cannot help suspecting that this endless web was the same
as the crimson pall.
If one tries to conjecture the origin of this curious story, it is perhaps
a clue to realize that the word _droite_ means both a bath and a
sarcophagus, or rather that the thing called droite, a narrow stone or
marble vessel about seven feet long, was in pre-classical and
post-classical times used as a sarcophagus, but in classical times chiefly
or solely as a bath. If among the prehistoric graves at Mycenae some later
peasants discovered a royal mummy or skeleton in a sarcophagus, wrapped in
a robe of royal crimson, and showing signs of violent death--such as
Schliemann believed that he discovered--would they not say: "We found the
body of a King murdered in a bath, and wrapped round and round in a great
robe?"
P. 39 f.]--Agamemnon is going through the process of temptation. He
protests rather too often and yields.
P. 39, l. 931, Tell me but this.]--This little dialogue is very
characteristic of Aeschylus. Euripides would have done it at three times
the length and made all the points clear. In Aeschylus the subtlety is
there, but it is not easy to follow.
P. 40, l. 945, These bound slaves.]--i.e. his shoes. The metaphor shows
the trend of his unconscious mind.
P. 41, l. 950, This princess.]--This is the first time that the attention
of the audience is drawn to Cassandra. She too is one of Aeschylus' silent
figures. I imagine her pale, staring in front of her, almost as if in a
trance, until terror seizes her at Clytemnestra's greeting in l. 1035, p.
45.
P. 41, l. 964, The cry.]--i.e. the cry of the possessed prophetess which
rang from the inner sanctuary at Delphi and was interpreted by the
priests.--The last two lines of the speech are plain in their meaning but
hard to translate. Literally: "when the full, or fulfilled, man walketh
his home,--O Zeus the Fulfiller, fulfil my prayers."
P. 42, l. 976.]--The victim has been drawn into the house; the Chorus sing
a low boding song: every audience at a Greek tragedy would expect next to
hear a death cry from within, or to see a horrified messenger rush out.
Instead of which the door opens and there is Clytemnestra: what does she
want? "Come thou also!" One victim is not enough.--In the next scene we
must understand the cause of Clytemnestra's impatience. If she stays too
long outside, some one will warn Agamemnon; if she leaves Cassandra, she
with her second sight will warn the Chorus. If Cassandra could only be got
inside all would be safe!
P. 44, l. 1022, "One there was of old."]--Asklepios, the physician,
restored Hippolytus to life, and Zeus blasted him for so oversetting the
laws of nature.
P. 45, l. 1040, Alcmena's son.]--Heracles was made a slave to Omphale,
Queen of Lydia. His grumbles at his insufficient food were a theme of
comedy.
P. 45, l. 1049, Belike thou canst not yet.]--Cf. below, ll. 1066 ff. The
Elder speaks in sympathy. "Very likely you cannot yet bring yourself to
submit."
P. 46, l. 1061, Thou show her.]--It seems odd to think that this passage
has for centuries been translated as if it was all addressed to Cassandra:
"But if you do not understand what I say, please indicate the same with
your barbarous hand!"--What makes Cassandra at last speak? I think that
the Elder probably touches her, and the touch as it were breaks the spell.
P. 47, l. 1072, Cassandra.]--"Otototoi" really takes the place of a stage
direction: she utters a long low sob.--The exclamation which I have
translated "Dreams!" seems to occur when people see ghosts or visions.
_Alcestis_, 261; _Prometheus_, 567. Cf. _Phoenissae_ 1296.--"Mine enemy!"
The name "Apollon" suggested "_apollyon,"_ Destroying ... the form which
is actually used in the Book of Revelation (Rev. ix. 11).
Observe how, during the lyric scene, Cassandra's vision grows steadily
more definite: First vague horror of the House: then the sobbing of
children, slain long ago: then, a new deed of blood coming; a woman in it:
a wife: then, with a great effort, an attempt to describe the actual
slaying in the bath. Lastly, the sight of herself among the slain. (This
last point is greatly developed by Euripides, _Trojan Women_, ll. 445 ff.,
pp. 33 f.).
The story of the Children of Thyestes is given below, ll. 1590 ff., p. 73.
Procne (or Philomela) was an Attic princess who, in fury against her
Thracian husband, Tereus, killed their child Itys, or Itylus, and was
changed into a nightingale, to weep for him for ever.
P. 52, ll. 1178 ff.]--Dialogue. During the lyrics Cassandra has been
"possessed" or "entranced": the turn to dialogue marks a conscious attempt
to control herself and state plainly her message of warning. In order to
prove her power, she first tells the Elders of deeds done in the past
which are known to them but cannot have been known to her. When once they
are convinced of her true seercraft, she will be able to warn them of what
is coming!--The short 'stichom[^y]thia'[**TR: This is a y with a
circumflex, not a superscript.] (line for line dialogue), dealing in awed
whispers with things which can hardly be spoken, leaves the story of
Cassandra still a mystery. Then her self-control breaks and the power of
the God sweeps irresistibly upon her; cf. below, ll. 1256 ff.; where it
comes at her like a visible shape of fire, a thing not uncommon with
modern clairvoyants.
P. 56, l. 1252, Thou art indeed fallen far astray]--Because they had said
"what _man_"
P. 56, l. 1265, These wreathed bands, this staff of prophesy.]--Cf.
_Trojan Women_, ll. 451 ff., p. 34.
P. 60, ll. 1343 ff., The death cry; the hesitation of the Elders.]--This
scene is often condemned or even ridiculed; I think, through
misunderstanding. We knew the Old Men were helpless, like "dreams
wandering in the day." It is essential to the story that when the crisis
comes they shall be found wanting. But they are neither foolish nor
cowardly; each utterance in itself is natural and characteristic, but
counsels are divided. One would like to know whether Aeschylus made them
speak together confusedly, as would certainly be done on the modern stage,
or whether the stately conventions of Greek tragedy preferred that each
speaker should finish his say. In any case, what happens is that after a
moment or two of confused counsel the Elders determine to break into the
Palace, but as they are mounting the steps the great doors are flung open
and Clytemnestra confronts them, standing over the dead bodies of
Agamemnon and Cassandra.
The illusion intended is that the Elders have entered the Palace and
discovered Clytemnestra. But, as the mechanical arrangements of the Greek
stage were not equal to this sudden change of scene, and since also it
would, even with perfect machinery, have a tiresome interrupting effect, a
slight confusion or inconsistency is allowed. We are supposed to be inside
the house; but as a matter of fact the supposition is soon forgotten, and
the play goes on without any attention to the particular place of the
action. On Clytemnestra's speech see Introduction, p. xiii.
P. 63, l. 1387, A prayer well sped to Zeus of Hell]--As the third gift or
libation was ritually given to Zeus the Saviour, Clytemnestra
blasphemously suggests that her third and unnecessary blow was an
acceptable gift to a sort of anti-Zeus, a Saviour of Death.
P. 65, l. 1436, Aigisthos.]--At last the name is mentioned which has been
in the mind of every one!--Chryseis was a prisoner of war, daughter of
Chryses, priest of Apollo. Agamemnon was made to surrender her to her
father, and from this arose his quarrel with Achilles, which is the
subject of the Iliad.
Pp. 67-72, ll. 1468-1573, Daemon.]--The Genius or guardian spirit of the
house has in this House become a Wrath, an 'Alastor' or 'Driver Astray.'
See Introduction, pp. x ff.
P. 68, l. 1513, MOURNERS.]--This attribution of the different speeches or
songs to different speakers is, of course, conjectural. Ancient dramas
come down to us with no stage directions and very imperfect indications of
the speakers.
P, 72, l. 1579, AIGISTHOS.]--The entry of Aigisthos enlivens the scene
again after the brooding and bewildered end of the dialogue between
Clytemnestra and the Elders. At the same time, it seems, no doubt by
deliberate intention, to reduce it to commonplace. Aigisthos' self-defence
is largely justified, but he is no hero.
P. 73, l. 1602, Pleisthenes.]--Apparently one of the ancestors of Atreus,
but it is not clear where he comes in the genealogy. He may be identical
with Pelops.
P. 74, l. 1617, Oarsman of the nether row.]--On an ancient galley, bireme
or trireme, the rowers of the lower bank of oars ranked as inferior to
those who used the long oars from the deck.
P. 76, l. 1654.]--Clytemnestra, see Introduction, p. xiii. She longs for
peace, yet after all "Had Zimri peace who slew his master?" The end of the
play leaves us waiting for the return of Orestes. In the first scene of
the _Libation-Bearers,_ he is discovered standing by night at his father's
grave.