Agamemnon
(Aeschylus)
Write your abstract
here.
A soldier describes the dog's life he
leads,
camped
on
a
hill, sleepless day and night, tending a
stacked
pyre
he is
to light when he sees one lit on a distant
hill.
This
is
the first we learn of the device by which
Clytemnestra
contrives to be informed of Agamemnon's
return:
signal
fires on hills from Troy to Greece, so that
she
will
learn
of Agamemnon's expected arrival before his
ships
land,
and
can prepare his reception. For the murder
of
their
daughter
Iphigenia, and now for a fresh outrage---
the
slave
mistress
Cassandra he has brought in tow---Agamemnon
must
pay.
So
must Cassandra, who is no more a person in
her
own
right to
Clytemnestra than to Agamemnon. Master's
slave
or
bitch,
she must die in his train. Clytemnestra
tells
him
her
estimation of him and the fate that awaits
in
plain
disguise through double-meaning phrases of
greeting,
then
leads both off to slaughter. Cassandra's
potent
though
barely coherent description makes an
enactment
superfluous.
(Clytemnestra has had a consort for quite
some
time
who
aids in the dispatch. In most mythical
tellings,
her
lover
is the principal agent of Agamemnon's
death.
Aeschylus
shifts the moral balance by making
Clytemnestra-
--
who
has
legitimate and considerable provocation---
the
main
active
agent.)
The horror of Agamemnon's death is
certainly
not a
function
of his worthiness. If anything death
confers a
stature
on
this vain blusterer that he could never
achieve
in
life.
Cassandra, whose position is far more
abased,
meets
death
more clear-eyed and indomitable.
For now, Clytemnestra triumphs. Her
children,
Orestes and Elektra, favour their father and vow
revenge.
The remaining plays in this trilogy tell their story.
(None
of the other Greek trilogies survive in toto, nor is it
clear that anyone other than Aaeschylus ever wrote them
as
continuous sequences. The three Oedipus plays of
Sophocles
(including the 'Oedipus family' saga) are sometimes
thought
of as a trilogy but were not conceived as one.)
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