Agamemnon

“It goes as it goes

Now. The end will be destiny.

You cannot burn flesh or pour unguents,

Not innocent cool tears,

That will soften the gods’ stiff anger.”

In these fatalistic lines, the chorus reflects on the inevitability of fate or destiny, what the Greeks called moira. Nothing can change destiny, or the will of the gods, not even prayers or offerings. This idea conveys a sense of hopelessness and resignation, suggesting that nothing that human beings do really makes any difference, as their fates are already written and unalterable. This idea informs the way that the “cursed” house of Atreus is presented throughout the play.

“Sing sorrow, sorrow: but good win out in the end.”

This line, sung as a kind of refrain by the chorus during the parodos, encapsulates the prevailing mood of not only Agamemnon but the Oresteia as a whole. The chorus—like the watchman, the herald, and other supporting characters of the play—expresses, rather ominously, the hope that everything will turn out well in the end, whatever misfortunes and sorrows must be met along the way. The lines are well-suited to the trajectory of the Oresteia: The cycle of violence is perpetuated in Agamemnon through Clytemnestra’s murder of Agamemnon and in Libation Bearers through Orestes’s murder of Clytemnestra before Orestes’s acquittal finally ends it in Eumenides.

“Zeus, who guided men to think,

who has laid it down that wisdom

comes alone through suffering.”

In these lines, the chorus introduces the idea that wisdom comes from suffering. This will become a central theme as the play and the trilogy progress, as the characters—Agamemnon, Clytemnestra, Aegisthus, and Orestes—come to understand their mistakes through the suffering they provoke. Zeus uses this cycle of wisdom gained through suffering to ensure that justice is served.

“My lady, you speak graciously like a prudent man.”

The chorus explicitly praises Clytemnestra for her masculine qualities, which become a key aspect of her characterization. Some of her stereotypically masculine qualities, such as her prudence and her intelligence, are viewed as praiseworthy according to ancient Greek norms. Additional “masculine” qualities that Clytemnestra displays later in the play—including her boldness and her violence—are depicted as contributing to her decision to murder her husband and, thus, to actions that are to be condemned.

“And the vaunt of high glory

Is bitterness; for god’s thunderbolts

Crash on the towering houses.

Let me attain no envied wealth;

Let me not plunder cities,

Neither be captured in turn, and face

Life in the power of another.”

The chorus warns against attaining too much glory or wealth, which was thought by the ancient Greeks to provoke the evil eye and, with it, “god’s thunderbolts.” Greek literature reveals deep preoccupations with fear of the vicissitudes of fortune and the idea that those who rise too high have that much further to fall. In this context, these lines display the chorus’s foreboding of what is to happen now to the house of Agamemnon, which—not unlike Troy—has perhaps risen too high.

“With such a yoke as this gripped to the neck of Troy

He comes, the king, Atreus’ elder son, a man

Fortunate to be honored far above all men

Alive; not Paris nor the city tied to him

Can boast he did more than was done him in return.”

The herald juxtaposes the fortune and glory of Agamemnon with Paris, whose misdeeds brought about his own death and the destruction of his homeland. The fate of Troy is representative of the justice of the gods, which punishes those who transgress, as Paris did. Though Agamemnon is fortunate now, he is soon to suffer a fate no less terrible than that which he inflicted on Troy, a fate that also represents the justice of the gods.

“Come, and with speed, back to the city that longs for him,

And may he find a wife within his house as true

As on the day he left her, watchdog of the house

Gentle to him alone, fierce to his enemies,

And such a woman in all her ways as this, who has

Not broken the seal upon her in the length of days.

With no man else have I known delight, nor any shame

Of evil speech, more than I know how to temper bronze.”

The message Clytemnestra asks the herald to give Agamemnon is filled with deceit: Virtually every claim she makes is false or disingenuous. Clytemnestra was not true to Agamemnon but became the lover of his cousin and enemy, Aegisthus. She was not the “watchdog” of Agamemnon’s home, seeking to protect his house, and her intentions toward him are not “gentle.” Rather, she opened her doors to his enemies and set in motion a plot to kill him. This message highlights Clytemnestra’s penchant for deceit.

“Who is he that named you so

Fatally in every way?

Could it be some mind unseen

In divination of your destiny

Shaping to the lips that name

For the bride of spears and blood,

Helen, a hell on earth? All too truly

Hell for ships, hell for men and cities […]”

Even Helen’s name is a reminder of The Inescapability of Fate or destiny (moira, as the ancient Greeks referred to it). In a passage that is often cited by scholars and philologists, the chorus creates several puns on Helen’s name to highlight her role in bringing fated destruction on Trojans and Greeks alike. Thus, HELen becomes a “HELl on earth,” “HELl for ships,” and “HELl for men and cities.” In the original Greek, the pun plays on the similarity between the name Helene (“Helen”) and the aorist verbal form helein, meaning “to seize, destroy”.

“How give honor

Not shooting too high nor yet bending short

Of this moment’s fitness?

For many among men are they who set high

The show of honor, yet violate justice.”

The chorus wonders how to praise and honor Agamemnon for his success without overstepping the line between humility and hubris and violating justice. This reflects an important ancient Greek belief that praising a mortal excessively incurs the evil eye and the jealousy of the gods, thus potentially bringing about ruin. Unlike the chorus, Clytemnestra does not hesitate to praise and honor Agamemnon excessively, urging him to walk on luxurious crimson tapestries and, thus, leading him to act in such a way as to “violate justice.”

“To Argos first, and to the gods within the land,

I must give due greeting; they have worked with me to bring

Me home; they helped me in the vengeance I have wrought

On Priam’s city.”

Agamemnon’s first words when he arrives onstage seem suitably pious: Agamemnon gives thanks to his homeland and its gods, to whom he attributes his success. Agamemnon views his conquest of Troy as the retributive justice of the gods, who wished to punish Paris for his misdeeds. Yet Agamemnon’s piety will soon give way to hubris, symbolized by his willingness to step on the crimson tapestries laid out for him by his wife, Clytemnestra.

“Grave gentlemen of Argolis assembled here,

I take no shame to speak aloud before you all

The love I bear my husband. In the lapse of time

Modesty fades; it is human.”

Clytemnestra breaks with contemporary conventions to address the people of Argos publicly. She justifies this transgression of feminine norms by citing “the love I bear my husband,” though the irony of this claim will soon become clear. Clytemnestra, far from wishing to honor her husband, is already laying the snares in which she will entrap and murder him. By addressing the city publicly, she approximates introducing herself as Agamemnon’s rival and successor.

“Now, my beloved one,

Step from your chariot; yet let not your foot, my lord,

Sacker of Ilium, touch the earth. My maidens there!

Why this delay? Your task has been appointed you,

To strew the ground before his feet with tapestries.

Let there spring up into the house he never hoped

To see, where Justice leads him in, a crimson path.”

Clytemnestra welcomes her husband home, asking him to enter the palace on tapestries spread out on the ground. Though this request or gesture is presented as an act of respect, what Clytemnestra ultimately achieves is convincing Agamemnon to commit a symbolic act of hubris. These lines, thus, carry a certain irony, heightened by Clytemnestra’s statement that it is “Justice” that leads Agamemnon into the palace. The justice to which she refers is that of Agamemnon’s death by her hand.

“Such state befits the gods, and none beside.

I am a mortal, a man; I cannot trample upon

These tinted splendors without fear thrown in my path.

I tell you, as a man, not god, to reverence me.”

Agamemnon reprimands Clytemnestra for the manner in which she greeted him, pointing out, piously enough, that her request that he walk on the crimson tapestries accords him honor that is not appropriate for a mortal man. His resistance, however, will be weakened by her arguments. When Agamemnon goes against his judgment by stepping on the tapestries, he commits the hubris he hoped to avoid.

“CLYTEMNESTRA. Be not ashamed before the criticism of men.

AGAMEMNON. The people murmur, and their voice is great in strength.

CLYTEMNESTRA. Yet he who goes unenvied shall not be admired.

AGAMEMNON. Surely this lust for conflict is not womanlike?

CLYTEMNESTRA. Yet for the mighty even to give way is grace.”

This spoken dialogue or exchange is an example of a stylistic device called stichomythia. Clytemnestra uses cunning argumentation to convince Agamemnon, against his better judgment, to incur human and divine envy—committing hubris—by stepping on the tapestries she laid out for him. She manipulates him by appealing to his vanity. Implicitly elevating him to a status above those of ordinary men, whose criticism she tells him not to be “ashamed” of, Clytemnestra ultimately persuades Agamemnon to act inappropriately.

“Since you must have it—here, let someone with all speed

Take off these sandals, slaves for my feet to tread upon.

And as I crush these garments stained from the rich sea

Let no god’s eyes of hatred strike me from afar.

Great the extravagance, and great the shame I feel

To spoil such treasure and such silver’s worth of weaving.

Conceding to Clytemnestra’s insistence that he enter the palace by walking upon the crimson tapestries, Agamemnon betrays his essential flaw, commonly referred to as a “tragic flaw”: his desire for honor. Even his description of his sandals as “slaves for my feet” reveals his inflated view of himself. Agamemnon does not entirely forget the gods, praying that he might be spared their “hatred,” yet his fate suggests that his murder is, at least in part, a harsh but just punishment for his hubris.

“Zeus, Zeus accomplisher, accomplish these my prayers.

Let your mind bring these things to pass. It is your will.”

These are the final words Clytemnestra speaks before she follows Agamemnon into the palace. Her prayer, couched in symbolic language, appears to be that of a dutiful wife asking for the well-being of her husband’s house. Its irony lies in the fact that what Clytemnestra is actually asking Zeus to “accomplish” is the murder of Agamemnon.

“Now I will tell you plainly and from no cryptic speech;

Bear me then witness, running at my heels upon

The scent of these old brutal things done long ago.

There is a choir that sings as one, that shall not again

Leave this house ever; the song thereof breaks harsh with menace.

And drugged to double fury on the wine of men’s

Blood shed, there lurks forever here a drunken rout

Of ingrown vengeful spirits never to be cast forth.

Hanging above the hall they chant their song of hate

And the old sin, and taking up the strain in turn

Spit curses on that man who spoiled his brother’s bed.”

Cassandra, who prior to this point addresses the chorus in cryptic song, now declares that she will prophesy “plainly”: She explains that the atrocities committed by Agamemnon’s brother, Atreus, and Atreus’s brother, Thyestes, will prompt further bloodshed. She is hinting that Aegisthus, the son of Thyestes and cousin of Agamemnon, will help Clytemnestra murder Agamemnon. But the chorus, steeped in the bloody history of the royal house, cannot see past her references to Atreus and Thyestes, whose crimes it believes to be in the past. Consequently, the chorus cannot understand her prophecies.

“Why am I then so pitiful? Why must I weep?

Since once I saw the citadel of Ilium

Die as it died, and those who broke the city, doomed

By the gods, fare as they have fared accordingly,

I will go through with it. I too will take my fate.”

Realizing that the chorus is not equipped to understand her, Cassandra comes to terms with her fate. She realizes that she cannot escape the fate that the gods prescribed for her, just as her city, Troy, was unable to avoid the fate the gods prescribed for it.

“High fortune is a thing insatiable

For mortals. There is no man who shall point

His finger to drive it back from the door

And speak the words: ‘Come no longer.’”

The chorus, witnessing yet not completely understanding Cassandra’s acceptance of her fate, meditates on the inevitability of human “fortune.” Like Cassandra, all human beings must accept what fate or fortune brings.

“Much have I said before to serve necessity,

But I will feel no shame now to unsay it all.

How else could I, arming hate against hateful men

Disguised in seeming tenderness, fence high the nets

Of ruin beyond overleaping? Thus to me

The conflict born of ancient bitterness is not

A thing new thought upon, but pondered deep in time.

I stand now where I struck him down. The thing is done.”

Reentering the stage with Agamemnon’s murder completed, Clytemnestra initiates the denouement of the play with a characteristically bold speech, disavowing everything she said before as deception spoken “to serve necessity.” It is important to Clytemnestra to establish that her murder of her husband was both premeditated and justified, a “conflict born of ancient bitterness” rather than “a thing new thought upon.” The care with which Clytemnestra demonstrates this premeditation contributes to her characterization as cunning, careful, and essentially “masculine” in the ancient Greek understanding of the word.

“You try me out as if I were a woman and vain;

But my heart is not fluttered as I speak before you.

You know it. You can praise or blame me as you wish;

It is all one to me. That man is Agamemnon,

My husband; he is dead; the work of this right hand

That struck in strength of righteousness. And that is that.”

Clytemnestra, reinforcing that she should not be treated as “woman and vain,” earnestly presents her actions as just and views her success as proof of her “strength of righteousness.” She does not perceive, however, that even if she served as a vehicle of justice by bringing about Agamemnon’s just fate, she behaved unjustly by killing him. Ultimately, Clytemnestra’s actions, justified though they may be, will do no more than perpetuate the cycle of violence when Orestes, the son of Agamemnon and Clytemnestra, avenges his father using a justification that is very similar to that of his mother.

“Here is anger for anger. Between them

Who shall judge lightly?

The spoiler is robbed; he killed, he has paid.

The truth stands ever beside god’s throne

Eternal: he who has done shall suffer; that is law.

Then who shall tear the curse from their blood?

The house is glued to ruin.”

The chorus, responding to the murder of Agamemnon, views it and the curse of Atreus within the framework of justice as suffering. It interprets the continuing misfortunes of the house as a result of previous offenses that led to an unending cycle of violence: The house, as they therefore realize, “is glued to ruin,” the consequence of both the heredity of the Atreid curse and the retributive nature of justice established throughout the play.

“O splendor and triumph of this day of justice!

Now I can say once more that the high gods look down

On mortal crimes to vindicate the right at last,

Now that I see this man—sweet sight—before me here

Sprawled in the tangling nets of fury, to atone

The calculated evil of his father’s hand.”

As Aegisthus enters, his first words highlight his perspective that the murder of Agamemnon is just and proves that the gods “vindicate the right at last.” To him, the death of Agamemnon is punishment for the crimes Agamemnon and his father committed against his own father, Thyestes. Aegisthus’s perspective fits the idea of retributive justice advanced throughout the play. At the same time, he, like Clytemnestra, does not understand that even if the death of Agamemnon was just, the act of killing him was not necessarily so. This oversight will prove to be his and Clytemnestra’s undoing.