Refracted Truth and Multivalent Meaning in Aeschylus’ Agamemnon

Abstract

As the characters of Aeschylus’ Agamemnon grapple with the violence drowning the house of Atreus, the audience and reader encounter a tangle of contradictory interpretations. The playwright supplies no map for navigating these tortured paths. By examining each character’s response to critical elements of the plot, this essay demonstrates how Aeschylus confronts his audience with mortal characters whose discordant perspectives generate an uncomfortable uncertainty contrasting with the trilogy’s movement toward divine resolution that culminates in Eumenides.

1. Introduction

Aeschylus’ Oresteia builds on a simple mythological truth: Agamemnon, the commander of the Greek forces that fought for ten years at Troy, returned home, where he was murdered. The Homeric Odyssey had established this long before: a dead Agamemnon was twice given voice in the underworld, where he lamented his demise at the hands of Aegisthus and his own accursed wife (11.409–410; 24.96–97).1 Aeschylus transformed this tradition into a trilogy enacting the death of Agamemnon, the revenge of his son Orestes, and the pursuit of Orestes by the Furies. These three dramas, followed by the ribald coda of a satyr play, were first performed in the spring of 458 BCE during the festival in honor of Dionysus on a stage at the foot of the acropolis. After almost four thousand lines and several hours of performance, the goddess Athena concluded the third and final tragedy by escorting the newly reconciled Furies to a new home in Athens, where the goddesses of vengeance would be honored and would, in turn, bless the land and its people (Eumenides 938–1020). No gods, however, set foot on the stage during Agamemnon. Aeschylus confronts his audience with mortal characters whose discordant perspectives generate an uncomfortable uncertainty contrasting with the trilogy’s movement toward divine resolution that culminates in Eumenides.

As Agamemnon opened the day’s performances, the audience initially encountered a lone sentinel and then watched a chorus of old men from the city of Argos interacting with their queen Clytemnestra, the returning army’s herald, their doomed king Agamemnon, his captured concubine Cassandra and, finally, the queen’s lover Aegisthus. These varied voices seek to understand what is happening but produce conflicting interpretations of the action as it unfolds. The result is disorienting, with no authoritative voice adjudicating between the disparate perceptions of reality. This paper examines that dissonance by examining critical elements of the tragic story as experienced by the characters.2

2. The Signal Fire

The play opens with a watchman lying alone on the roof of the palace at night, assigned the duty of watching “for a token (sumbolon) marked in flame” (8).3 This fire will represent more than mere combustion. It will have meaning: “the gleam of fire that brings a word from Troy: the message it has fallen” (9–10). When the watchman soon cries out, “The beacon! Welcome! beaming through this night as bright as day!” (22–23), the visible flames convey that unseen reality. The watchman has no doubts about the meaning of this token: “There will be carnivals of song and dance in Argos at this happy turn” (23–24). Argos will celebrate because of the truth revealed in flame: “The town of Troy is overthrown” (29–30). The watchman will even “start a jig of joy” (31), comparing the beacon to a winning toss of the dice (32–33). The war is over, so the victorious army and its kings are coming home. The watchman even anticipates a warm handshake from his returning ruler (34–35), even if Denniston and Page (1957, p. 70, n. 34 ff.) do not see in Agamemnon “a man accustomed to greeting his servants warmly.”

The watchman surely finds, as well, private meaning in the signal, which seems to grant his plea uttered in the play’s first line: “I beg you gods: release me from this drudgery” (1). He has not enjoyed his post, “this year long spent as lookout, time I’ve crouched through like some watchdog” (2–3). His bed is damp, not that he even sleeps, as fear has been his constant companion (12–14). His jubilant cry on seeing the flame may, then, reflect his hope for a change in his personal circumstances as much as any optimism for Argos.

In fact, the watchman plants a seed of doubt with cryptic comments about current conditions in the city. Complaining about his unpleasant assignment, he attributes it to the command of “a heart in hope, a woman’s heart that organizes like a man” (10–11). Himmelhoch (2023, p. 141, n. 11) notes “the unnatural horror (from an ancient Athenian perspective) of a woman wielding absolute power” as the watchman introduces “the transgressive, masculinized Clytemnestra.” He finds himself unable to hum a tune to while away the long hours, lapsing into lament for “how this house has met hard times, not managed for the best as once it was” (16–19). After the beacon prompts his hopeful reaction, the watchman suddenly clams up: “As for the rest, I’m keeping quiet—” (36). Some truths remain untold, though the house itself could spell it out clearly, if only it had a voice (37–38). The watchman, however, will profess ignorance to all not already in the know (38–39). The clear meaning communicated by the signal fire now competes with some darker truth.

The watchman, “calling clear to Agamemnon’s wife” (26), alerted Clytemnestra to the appearance of the beacon. The queen had no doubts about the truth of this report, as she later explains before the chorus and the army’s herald, who has arrived ahead of Agamemnon:

A while ago I raised my joyful triumph-cry

back when the fiery messenger first came at night

to tell me of the capture and sack of Troy.

(587–589)

Her confidence surely stems from the fact that she herself oversaw the construction of this communication system: “I organized my relay race of beacons” (312). She has described for the chorus, at length and in geographical detail (281–316), the journey around the Aegean Sea to Argos of “this light, direct descendant from the fire of Troy” (311). If Aeschylus were not dramatizing for the tragic stage a variation of this particular myth with all the expectations brought into the theater by its audience, then a wife’s careful effort to learn as quickly as possible of her husband’s fate and her subsequent elation at the thought of his return could be heart-warming. The meaning of the beacon for Clytemnestra will prove far more chilling. She has created an early warning system designed to enable her to spring her trap.

Her response to the long-expected message is also equivocal. She told the herald, “I offered sacrifice” (594). Extensive sacrifices, according to this description from the chorus when they entered for the first time, approaching the royal palace from the direction of the city, off-stage:

All the altars flame with offerings

to the gods who help the city—

those of the sky, earth, meeting-places—

everywhere the flames are leaping,

conjured by the purest resin,

ointments from the royal storehouse.

(88–96)

As Hall (2024, p. 247, n. 88–91) comments, “Clytemnestra is apparently being careful to extend her gratitude to every possible divinity with an interest in Argos, or as least to be seen to do so.” The source of her gratitude so displayed is the return of her husband, but the audience knows that the truth behind this thankfulness cannot be hopes of re-establishing their relationship. Nonetheless, her offerings to the gods may be most sincere. The beacon spotted by the watchman means that Clytemnestra can accomplish her purpose, and for this she is grateful.

The older male citizens of Argo who comprise the play’s chorus neither saw the signal fire nor were apprised of its appearance. They arrive on stage confused by the flames they do see, those rising from the altars of the city’s many sanctuaries. As the queen attends to ritual activity, ask her for an explanation:4

What’s the news, queen Clytemnestra?

What’s the message that has led you

to proclaim these sacrifices?

(85–87)

Ignored by Clytemnestra, the old men sing their first choral passage (the parados), but resume their questioning when the queen returns: “I would be glad to know from you if you are sacrificing in the knowledge of some firm good news” (261–263). She tells them the truth, “The Greeks have taken Priam’s city” (267), to which she has ascribed meaning, “good news…more joyful than could be hoped for” (264/266). This first brief report evokes incomprehension from the chorus. Her even more concise restatement of the conquest calls forth their joyous tears. But then the chorus insist on proof. Their distrust of the truth undermines the potential meaning of the signal fire. Five skeptical questions follow in a tense exchange including this frustrated reply from the queen: “You are insulting my intelligence as though I were some girl” (277). Clytemnestra stops the barrage with her elaborate geographical review of the beacon’s progress. She concludes: “That’s the sort of evidence and corroboration I give you, the message (sumbolon) from Troy my husband has sent to me” (315–316). Clytemnestra shares with the chorus the sumbolon that the watchman had seen at the appearance of the beacon. Finally accepting this truth, the chorus embrace its hopeful meaning, ready to pray to the gods (317). They even request a reprise of the fire’s journey. When the queen presents, instead, a vision of Troy conquered, the chorus confirm their acceptance of the meaning of the signal fire: “And now that I have heard persuasive evidence from you, I shall prepare to offer to the gods due thanks” (352–353). Although Denniston and Page (1957, p. 100, n. 352) do not accept at face value the chorus’ profession, their simple sincerity supports the sense of Raeburn and Thomas (2011, p. 108, n. 351–353) that the chorus are now “trusting the beacon-signal.”

The chorus seem to accept the truth of and understand the meaning of the signal fire—until their second choral song (the first stasimon) carries them from celebration of Troy’s fall to consideration of the costs of that conquest. This darker turn of mind renews their doubts:

Prompted by the beacons, news

spread like wildfire through the city:

yet is it really true—who knows?—

or divine duplicity?

Who’s so childish, wonderstruck,

as to have their heart set blazing

by some new fire-message trick,

just as liable to changes?

(475–482)

This should be simple. A pre-arranged signal travels to Argos via flame accurately transmitting the report of Troy’s downfall, but the chorus hesitate to believe the truth. The cause may be their misogynistic attitude toward the queen compounded by an archaic epistemology privileging direct personal experience as the source of credible knowledge (Wians 2009, pp. 183–4). Their suspicion contrasts with the confidence of Clytemnestra and with the guarded happiness of the watchman. The audience knows that Agamenon is coming home to die and has experienced with the watchman the appearance of the signal. The audience does not know, however, how the beacon will lead to the murder, and Bednarowski (2015, pp. 181–3) proposes that “Aeschylus’ spectators would have been willing to entertain untraditional and unexpected outcomes.” The extended attention to the signal and its mixed reception construct an unsettling start to the play.

3. The Sacrifice of Iphigenia

The first blood spilled to secure the victory reported by the signal fire belonged to Iphigenia, a daughter of Agamemnon and Clytemnestra. The audience must twice face the terrible reality of Iphigenia’s death. They experience it first as the play opens through the eyes of horrified witnesses uncertain as to its meaning, and later as the play ends through the eyes of a vengeful mother confident in her course of action. The dreadful scene of the young girl prepared for sacrifice assails the audience early in the play, at the culmination of the first choral song (103–258). The chorus, wondering if the war has ended, had begun to sing of the departure of the Greek forces ten years before. The old men remember the sight of two eagles devouring a pregnant hare. They recall the exact words of the seer Calchas, who interpreted this scene as an omen of victory tempered by the threat of anger from Artemis. When contrary winds strand the Greek fleet, Calchas attributes this to Artemis and presents Agamemnon with a dilemma: his expedition or his daughter. The chorus quote the king’s deliberations before they reveal that “he steeled his hand to grasp his daughter’s sacrificial blade” (224–225). This awful truth could mean that Agamemnon faced an impossible choice. The moral responsibility of Agamemnon is much debated, but Dué (2006, p. 129) suggests that “…already in the opening choral song that depicts Iphigeneia’s death, the play makes clear how we are to interpret the act, no matter how necessary it was.” The chorus believe that the king “veered the breathings of his thought to godless, rank impiety” (219–220). Their language, according to Hall (2024, pp. 270–71, n. 222–227), unveils the meaning they perceive in this brutal turn: “The menacing adjectives describing delusion are lavishly accumulated…to emphasize the climactic decision Agamemnon is making and point out that the crime he is about to commit is premeditated, immoral, deluded and will have agonizing repercussions.” The die cast, two stanzas compound the horror as Iphigenia is trussed up “like a goat-kid for the sacrifice” (232). Her pleas unacknowledged, her mouth gagged, Iphigenia did the only thing in her power: “she shot each leader standing by with an arrow from her eye, imploring pity” (240–241).

The chorus, however, narrate no further. The audience, but not Iphigenia, is spared the final blow as the chorus state, “What happened next upon that day I neither saw nor say” (248). This implies that the chorus did see what had previously transpired, their detailed narrative an eyewitness account.5 It is thus unclear how they did not see the sacrifice itself, why they end their story before its end. Unlike the watchman’s silence, which hides some unspoken truth, the chorus obscure nothing with their reticence. Wohl (1998, p. 75) even accuses the chorus of having a “vicarious interest in the scene” so that “its vehemence in denying its participation (even as witnesses) in the murder itself merely reinforces the impression that the narrative has something to hide,” while Goldhill (1984, p. 31) writes that “The telos of the sacrificial narrative is hinted at, however, in a deliberately mysterious and horrific way.” The image of the struggling girl haunts the memory of the old men, but they claim not to have witnessed the moment that the blade drew blood. Instead, they present the vague assertion that the predictions of Calchas “did not go unfulfilled” (249)—that is, Artemis relented, the winds changed and the Greek fleet sailed to Troy. Ignoring the terrible spectacle of the young girl’s death, the chorus “hope the rest at any rate will turn out fortunate” (255). Himmelhoch (2023, p. 176, n. 250–251) summarizes nicely: “To soothe their anxiety, the chorus conclude their narrative with apotropaic platitudes.” The old men suppress their memory of the murder of Iphigenia just as they have suppressed her name, which does not appear in this choral song. The chorus force the sacrifice of a daughter to mean no more than that Agamemnon can lead his expedition to Troy.

With that, Iphigenia fades into the background, though Clytemnestra has not forgotten the murder of her daughter. As promised, Agamemnon returns, and it is Clytemnestra who kills him. The chorus are aghast: “you shall be deprived of country, banished with the city’s hatred” (1410–1411). Standing over the body of her husband, the queen rails against the hypocrisy of these old men:

Today you sentence me to exile from my country,

And to hatred from the people and their curses.

Yet back then you raised no voice against this man,

this man who rated her as nothing,

back on that day he cut his own child’s throat—

as though it were the slaughter of an animal,

one from his many fleecy flocks of sheep—

the treasure of my labor pains,

used as a charm to quell the gusts from Thrace

(1412–1418)

Clytemnestra makes explicit the excruciating truth omitted by the chorus—Agamemnon performed the sacrifice, he killed Iphigenia. He valued his daughter as much as he valued his livestock. Clytemnestra, by contrast, invokes the bonds of motherhood to emphasize her attachment to her offspring. She makes a mockery of the meaning ascribed to the murder of her child, a frivolous magic spell.

4. The Sack of Troy

Ten years Argos awaited the news delivered by the signal fire, the destruction of Troy that brings Agamemnon home as a conquering hero. Joy, thankfulness, and relief might seem like apt emotional responses to this military success and subsequent homecoming. The watchman anticipated such celebration (22–24), though his thoughts ended on a discordant note. Clytemnestra, too, initially sounded the part (264–265), but an audience aware of her true purposes might be jarred by the dissonance. The herald, the first member of the army to set foot in the city, does strike the expected chord, lauding the king and his accomplishment in an opening speech:

Welcome him right royally,

The man who has uprooted Troy by hacking

with the blade of justice-wielding Zeus.

(524–526)

He attributes the success of the expedition to the justice of Zeus and dwells on the punishment meted out to the guilty. He leaves no doubt that Agamemnon deserves the credit, “Of every man alive he is the one most worthy to be praised” (531–532). He resumes the tenor of this acclamation in a second speech:

It’s justified to boast before this sunlight

that the fame of our achievement

shall go flying over sea and land

(575–576)

Troy’s defeat is an achievement worthy of boast and fame. The herald even speaks as if quoting the text for an inscription that would provide a permanent record of this deed.6 In the words of the herald, the sack of Troy means that the people of Argos ought to thank Zeus and to praise the generals.

Unsurprisingly, Agamemnon echoes such thoughts in the very first words that he utters after ten years away from home:

First it is right for me to greet this land of Argos

and its guardian gods; they share with me the credit

for this safe return, and for the justice

that I’ve visited upon the land of Priam

(810–813)

Once again, the sack of Troy is deemed an act of divinely ordained justice. As he continues, he concentrates on the destruction wrought on Troy, the violence he deems appropriate retribution. The king leaves no room to question the meaning of the cost of ten bloody years in warfare across the sea.

The chorus have not shown themselves so sanguine. Although confused and anxious from the outset, the old men had offered the requisite thanks for the victory in their second choral song: “And to Zeus the host-protector, who achieved this, I pay homage” (362–363). After considering the reasons that Zeus acted, however, they compared the loss of a single wife, Helen, to the loss of many husbands off to war, many of whom were lost forever:

Contrast the shape that comes back home,

entering their houses

voiceless and cold: a hollow urn

filled with crumbling ashes

(434–436)

The chorus identify the resentment bred in Argos by the battlefield casualties, drawing attention to the harsh realities of war that Agamemnon will not acknowledge during his brief time on the stage. After welcoming their “mighty sovereign, sacker of the Trojans’ city” (782), the old men have the courage to tell the returning king of their own dissatisfaction with his leadership:

you were steering far from wisdom’s

channel when, in order to retrieve a

wayward woman, you recruited

men to face their deaths.

(801–804)

Only the following two lines present a positive response to the sack of Troy: “However, I rejoice now with deep gladness for these labors well completed” (805–806). No triumphalism issues from the chorus, and Hall (2024, p. 353, n. 782–809) rightly considers this speech “a strange and uneasy one.” The interpretation of Agamemnon’s success proves more complicated than the herald’s proclamation.

Clytemnestra had anticipated this when she envisioned the spectacle of a fallen Troy as she persuaded the chorus of the truth of the report from the signal fire. She begins with the sounds of a captured city: “And I imagine there’s discordant shouting in the town.” She likens to oil and vinegar, unmixing, the distinct wails of the conquered and the howls of the conquerors. She draws a sympathetic portrait of Trojan misery:

One side falls down and clutches at the bodies

of dead husbands, brothers, parents’ parents,

as they mourn their dearest dead from throats enslaved.

(326–329)

Even the victorious Greeks seem miserable: “all weary from battle…hungry for whatever they can find—not orderly but grasping at what chance may grant” (330–333). At least they are “relieved from camping in the open with dew and frost” (335–336). Clytemnestra suggests that even these gains are at risk as she considers the possibility that the Greeks in their victory would fail to “show due reverence to the gods” (338). She dwells for the next ten lines on how the Greek army might incur divine wrath. Hers is not a happy tale.

Even the herald undermines his patriotic message by sounding at times like the queen.7 Warming up to his first official greeting, he opens with a darker expression of relief at coming home: “so many of my hopes lay shattered that I had despaired of ever dying here in Argos” (505–506). He begins his second speech with a less than inspiring summary of those ten years:

Well, things have been achieved, and we could say

that some, in this long stretch of years, have turned out well,

while others are more questionable.

(551–553)

The herald proceeds to detail at length the physical discomfort of life laying siege to Troy. He wraps up this line of thinking by apparently embracing a positive perspective while actually underscoring the cost in lives:

But why complain of all these things?

The pain is past, well past—so far so for the dead

that they don’t need to think of getting up again.

For us, the ones left living, benefit wins out,

And gains outweigh the losses—

so good riddance to those sufferings.

(567–572)

The darkness persists in the final speech of the herald as he responds to the chorus’ inquiry about the brother of Agamemnon, Menelaus: “It’s not appropriate to sully a propitious day with telling of bad news” (636–637). But he cannot hide the truth:

how on earth am I to mix up good and bad

with telling of the storm

the gods brought down against the Greeks?

(648–649)

The possibility of divine anger raised by Clytemnestra has been realized, so the herald’s grim report surely diminishes his positive acclamation of that “propitious day” (636). On the morning after the tempest, they saw “the Aegean waters blossoming with corpses of Greek men” (658–660). As far as the herald knows, only a single boat, the one carrying him and Agamemnon, survived the tempest. The sack of Troy looks more problematic if the army that destroyed it has been almost entirely destroyed.

Aeschylus grants Cassandra the final word on the sack of Troy: “Oh, oh, the suffering, suffering of my city’s crushing!” (1167). This utterance concludes her first prophetic frenzy. She had personally experienced the devastation of her home and its people, and now, as an enslaved prisoner of war, she relives the horror through her divinely afflicted clairvoyance. Hall (2024, p. 408) notes that Cassandra equates herself with the walls of Troy, and her translation (2024, p. 185) captures the metaphor: “And I, my mind inflamed, shall soon collapse to the ground” (1172). The prophetess will share her city’s doom. This final voice of despair joins the pride, joy, relief, and anxiety that the audience has witnessed on the stage as responses to the sack of Priam’s city. Troy has fallen, but what that means remains multifarious.

5. The Feast of Thyestes

The palace which Agamemnon enters had known murdered children before Iphigenia. Though unmentioned for much of the drama, Lloyd-Jones ([1971] 1983, p. 90) finds that “dark hints continually point to some sinister secret in the royal family’s past.” When the gruesome tale does emerge, it is from the lips of Cassandra, the captive Trojan princess and prophetess who accompanied Agamemnon to Argos.8 She arrives on stage with her captor and remains there for an extended period, one-third of the play (782–1330). Half of that time she stands silent in her priestly regalia, which Taplin (1978, pp. 103–4) and McClure (1999, p. 93) consider an unusual dramatic choice. Only after Agamemnon enters the palace followed by Clytemnestra, frustrated at failing to lead Cassandra inside, do words issue from the Trojan’s mouth. In a trance, she repeatedly calls on Apollo and asks, “What kind of home is this? Where’s this place that you have drawn me?” (1087). The chorus respond literally, “This is the palace of the sons of Atreus” (1088), but Cassandra sees something unseen and immediately corrects them:

No, a house god-hating—

it’s a house that’s freighted

with much inbred bloodshed,

where its own are butchered.

A human abattoir,

a blood-bespattered floor.

(1090–1092)

The old men think she “seems keen-scented like a hound; she’s on the track of murders” (1093–1094), and Cassandra solves the case as she voices her vision:

This is what confirms me,

what I see before me:

these little ones bewailing

their own cruel killing,

and the roasted meat

their father had to eat.

(1095–1097)

The chorus recognize this nightmare (1106) and later express their surprise that a stranger, too, knows the truth (1199–1201). Cassandra had witnessed in her prophetic imagination Thyestes dining on the flesh of his own children. Atreus, the father of Agamemnon, had murdered the children and served them to Thyestes at a banquet. Released from her mantic state, Cassandra explains to the chorus that the underworld deities of vengeance called Erinyes or Furies haunt the house: “they skulk inside, refusing to be sent away” (1189–1190). Unexpectedly, the slaughter of innocents is not “the primal wrong,” since Cassandra perceives the Furies “denouncing him, the one who trampled on his brother’s bed” (1191–1193). Atreus retaliated with unspeakable savagery because Thyestes had an affair with his wife. Painful inspiration falls anew on the prophetess, who perceives once more the children of Thyestes holding the very meal on which their father dined (1217–1222). She also catches sight of the future: “in revenge for this, I say that there is one, the jackal lolling in the lion’s bed, the stay-at-home, who’s plotting how to catch the master when he comes” (1223–1225). Cassandra’s experience of the cursed house of Atreus has shifted from the past to the present.

Aegisthus fulfills Cassandra’s prophecy when he strides onto the stage accompanied by an armed retinue as the play draws to a close. Cassandra’s imagined jackal takes credit for “the whole scheme behind this deadly plot” (1609). His first words express his exultation at the successful assassination: “I greet you, welcome light of day that brings me justice” (1577), the first of a dense use of words related to justice in the speech (Raeburn and Thomas 2011, p. 232, n. 1577–1611). Aegisthus considers the corpse of the king to be evidence that “gods look down from high upon the crimes of earth and make sure humans pay the price” (1578–1579). Claiming that Agamemnon is “paying for the plot his father perpetrated” (1582), the surviving son of Thyestes recounts the sordid tale in more comprehensive and coherent fashion than Cassandra’s prophetic hallucinations. This careful description justifying his conspiracy with Clytemnestra does lack one salient piece of information: Thyestes’ seduction of his brother’s wife is not included in the discussion of Atreus’ decision to exile Thyestes “when he was challenged for the kingship” (1585). So Aegisthus tells the truth but not the whole truth. He misses some of the meaning, as well, when he concludes that his murderous revenge is nothing more or less than justice itself. Aegisthus fails to consider where the cycle of vengeance must lead; as the chorus warn him as they play ends (1667), the son of Agamemnon will return home to enact this logic in the trilogy’s second play.

6. The Murder of Agamemnon

The Greeks have captured Troy, so Agamemnon can come home to be murdered. The Athenian audience awaited his death, and Aeschylus made them wait until line 1343 out of 1673. Rehm (1994, p. 89) suggests that through “the manipulation of lyric meter, the long-anticipated murder of Agamemnon now comes as a shock.” Cassandra has just exited the stage into the palace when Agamemnon cries out from inside: “Aah! I have been struck…deep…fatal…” (1343) and then “Again…I’m struck again…aah!” (1345). These two blows release the tension building ever since the watchman claimed, “a hulking ox is standing on my tongue” (36–37), refusing to unveil truths about something rotten in Argos. The continual disquiet of the chorus has maintained this sense of menace. Early on, the old men asked Clytemnestra about the sacrifices in order to “cure this anxious fear that plagues us” (98–99). Later, talking to the herald before the queen joins them, the chorus echo the watchman, speaking obliquely about a dire situation but refusing to say more:

HERALD: But what provoked this sullen state of mind?

CHORUS: I’ve always said that silence is the antidote to harm.

HERALD: Some people made you fearful in the rulers’ absence?

CHORUS LEADER: So much that, as you said, to die would be a blessing.

(547–550)

The exit of Agamemnon into the palace amplifies the dismay of the old men. The fourth choral song, the third stasimon, opens with an expression of their fearful uncertainty:

Why does this clinging dread

overcast me with foreboding,

fluttering around my heart,

as I try to read the omen?

(976–978)

Four stanzas explore their lurking fear and inability to identify its source. The audience knows the truth, of course, and so does Cassandra. Her first two prophetic trances transport her, as we have seen, to the feast of Thyestes but then continue with extended visions of the murder of Agamemnon. These focus their attention on the deed and its perpetrators. The chorus can make no sense of the truth presented to them, even when Cassandra makes it explicit: “With your own eyes, I say, you shall see Agamemnon dead” (1246). The old men prefer denial: “Hush now, poor woman! Do not say such things” (1247). Even when Agamemnon cries out, the chorus wonder, “Who is it shouting about deadly wounds?” (1344).

The second scream leaves no doubt, but the chorus still debate the meaning of what they have heard. The voice of the chorus fractures, as each member offers his own opinion. Taplin and Billings (2018, p. 44, n. 1) suggest that the “highly unusual splitting up of the chorus into individual speeches dramatizes their indecision, in contrast to Clytemnestra’s resolution.” Despite these varying responses, the chorus locate the meaning in the politics of the community, reflected in the fourth and ninth voices that assign the king’s murder to “a new tyrannical regime” (1355 and 1365). The old men disagree, however, on how to act. The first five demand action, but some of the later voices raise doubts until the chorus leader privileges their uncertainty:

CHORUS MEMBER 11: We ought to be discussing what we know for sure.

Mere guesswork’s not like certain knowledge.

CHORUS LEADER: I feel we are agreed: we must

find out for sure how Agamemnon fares.

(1368–1371)

As they insisted on proof before accepting the meaning of the signal fire, so the chorus distrust the truth ringing in their ears with the death cries of their king. The sight of Agamemnon’s corpse, however, transforms the chorus. A jubilant Clytemnestra emerges from the palace, displaying the bodies of her husband and Cassandra for all to see. Confronted with the truth, the chorus find their resolve, reviling their queen for her actions.

Clytemnestra stands undaunted in the face of the old men’s verbal assault. Although the queen briefly acknowledges the possibility of political violence (1421–1425), the meaning of Agamemnon’s death for her is personal. When she calls her right hand “this architect of justice” (1405–1406), she is thinking not of a well-ordered society but of her murdered daughter. Clytemnestra dedicated her deed to “Justice, now completed for my child” (1432). She spells out her logic most clearly when, for the first and only time, she utters her daughter’s name:

Yes, the darling that I bore him,

dearly-wept Iphigenia,

he, her father, made his victim.

Now he’s suffered suitably to

match his actions.

(1525–1527)

Perhaps hearing the girl’s name shocks the chorus out of its unadulterated hostility toward Clytemnestra. Philosophical introspection replaces visceral antagonism: “I remain at a loss, helpless without resource which way to turn my mind” (1530–1532).9 Clytemnestra and the chorus each move toward a new, shared meaning for Agamemnon’s death, the truth that “This family and dire catastrophe are glued together fast” (1566). The chorus had already called upon the spirit afflicting the house (1468), with Clytemnestra in immediate agreement. Although the chorus rejects her claim that this spirit, rather than the queen, is the true murderer (1505–1506), their minds do turn to the children of Thyestes demanding justice. When Clytemnestra imagines Iphigenia welcoming her father to the underworld (1555–1559), the old men begin to understand the complicated reality of Agamemnon’s death, realizing that “to judge is difficult” (1561).10 They wonder “Who can eliminate the seed, expel the household curse at last?” (1565). The queen seems to forge what Hall (2024, p. 458) terms “a tense truce” with the chorus by her promise to “purge this household from the madness of our killing one another” (1575–1576).11

This uncomfortable détente comes crashing down when Aegisthus bursts on to the stage with his bodyguard and “shatters the mood” (Rehm 1994, p. 91) with his own account of the meaning of the king’s murder as he “rudely crushes any insight that was growing” (Taplin 1978, p. 144). We considered above his confident connection between his uncle’s slaughter of his brothers and his own murder of his cousin. His father Thyestes had cursed the line of Atreus, and Aegisthus has no doubt that “In consequence of that you see the man brought low” (1603). He claims credit for planning the assassination intended to avenge his family—though Clytemnestra had styled herself the author of the murder. She did reflect on the curse that inspired Aegisthus, but Iphigenia provided her motivation. Aegisthus, on the contrary, makes no mention of his lover’s daughter. Any possible concern about the varying meanings they assign to Agamemnon’s death, however, are swamped by the political, which quickly comes to the fore in the confrontation between Aegisthus and the old men of the chorus. They assail an exultant Aegisthus with reinvigorated hostility, and he responds with threat after threat of violence:

Prison and starvation-pangs remain

outstanding teachers, even for the aged mind.

(1621–1623)

You’ll suffer long and hard for saying that.

(1628)

and anyone who’s not obedient

I’ll clamp beneath a heavy yoke.

(1639–1640)

Come on now, my soldiers, hands on sword hilts ready.

(1651)12

I shall still be looking to get my hands on you in future.

(1666)

For the chorus, Iphigenia and the doubts raised by her death and by the curse disappear as Agamemnon assumes a role as the victim of a cowardly conspiracy. By a simplistic heroic code, the old men esteem their king above Aegisthus: “But why not strike this warrior down yourself, you coward?” (1643–1644). The fundamental issue is the rule of the city: “You think that you’ll be sovereign over Argos?” (1633). The bodyguard draw their swords as the old men raise their staffs to contest the meaning of Agamemnon’s death. Clytemnestra prevents bloodshed but concludes the play asserting the new political reality: “You and I shall take control together, and set straight the powers of this palace” (1672–1673). Whatever the shortcomings of Agamemnon’s rule, his death now initiates a new regime prepared to impose its will on the community by force.

7. The Murder of Cassandra

None of this gives meaning to the body of Cassandra, lifeless next to Agamemnon. After the questions raised by her silence, after the horror evoked by her vision of what was and what would be, after the pathos of predicting her own demise, she remains profoundly visible on the stage while becoming almost invisible in the dialogue. The chorus that had pitied Cassandra utters not a word about her when confronted with her slaughtered corpse. Aegisthus never seems to notice her. Only Clytemnestra addresses the presence of the second body, delighting in the fact that she has committed two murders, that the captive concubine accompanies the king in death. The embittered wife lays out this additional, and legitimate, grievance at the unfaithfulness of her husband, whom she calls “the charmer of the golden girls at Troy” (1439). She distorts the truth, however, when she crudely dismisses Cassandra as a prostitute “who used to shuttle back and forth across the benches on board ship” (1442–1443) using language that Hall (2024, p. 444, n. 1440–1443) describes as “more obscene than anything anywhere in Greek tragedy.” The queen’s claim that Cassandra and Agamemnon “have met their due deserts” (1443) rings hollow after the chorus and the audience have experienced the piteous, powerless, prophetic person of Cassandra. She, like Iphigenia, is offered as a sacrificial victim to this tragic tale.13

8. Conclusions

The signal fire spelled Agamemnon’s doom, and we might imagine that the watchman was not surprised when Argos learned of the coup d’etat. Like the Athenian audience, he knew that something was going on. He quickly disappears, as the play requires, but his disappearance can mirror his unwillingness to become entangled, his location of meaning in his own circumstances. The herald, too, found meaning in his personal fortunes. He made the necessary proclamations, but his concern centered on his own survival in contrast to so many who perished at Troy and on the voyage home.14 These brief appearances by two ordinary individuals glance at the mundane, extraneous to but impacted by the complicated truths and meanings of the tragic action. The old men of the chorus, by contrast, are invested in these deeper questions, questions to which they can settle on no answers until the corpse of the king is revealed. They flounder in their uncertainty.15 Clytemnestra experiences no such insecurity, Aegisthus even less. These two act without hesitation to bring meaning to their suffering. Agamemnon is just as confident, but he fails to anticipate the consequences of his actions. Cassandra remains helpless in her knowledge of the truth about the feast of Thyestes, about the sack of Troy, about the plot against Agamemnon.

The contrasting realities experienced by these characters flood the audience with the impossible complexity of this tragedy. What Goldhill (2000, p. 56) calls a “polysemous text” and Hall (1997, p. 118) understands as “polyphonic tragic form” refuses to privilege a single perspective. Cassandra may win the sympathy of the chorus and the audience,16 but she does not and cannot resolve the dramatic tensions, though with “the strangest and most enigmatic language” she “sheds the clearest light in a drama of doubt, distortion and partiality” (Taplin 1978, p. 141). Even the abominable Aegisthus, whom Hall (2024, pp. 44–45) calls “an unlovely tyrant” marked by “petty egocentrism,” does not lack justification of his hatred for Agamemnon and elucidates the curse afflicting the house of Atreus. As the voices accumulate, so do the meanings, contradictory understandings of perceived truths. Aeschylus offers no help, nor does the divine. Though oft invoked, the gods do not step out of the machine to uncomplicate the countless complications.

That will change as the trilogy proceeds. In Libation-Bearers, Orestes justifies his mission of revenge to his sister Electra and the chorus with the assertion that “Apollo’s powerful oracle commanded me to carry out this dangerous task” (269–270). Apollo is not present, but his presence directs the action. When Orestes hesitates at the crucial moment to strike his mother, his companion Pylades spurs him on with the only words he utters in the tragedy:

What then to make in future of Apollo’s

Delphic oracles, and of our sacred oaths?

Treat any human as your enemy before the gods.

(900–902)

Reminded of Apollo’s injunction, Orestes steels his resolve and kills his mother. Unseen Furies, however, soon darken his mind as they seek vengeance for this deed. Orestes stakes his claim to justice by declaring that his “incitement to take on this action was Apollo’s Delphic oracle” (1029–1031), while the chorus affirm that “Apollo’s touch will free you from these torments” (1059–1060). Libation-Bearers lacks divine characters but not divine direction. In the concluding tragedy Eumenides, Apollo and the Furies do take the stage as the conflict about Orestes’ guilt is contested by the gods, and Athena joins them to mediate. The goddess convenes a jury of Athenians, and she herself casts the vote to secure Orestes’ acquittal. Orestes exits at line 777 while twenty-five percent of the play yet remains, time enough for Athena to persuade the vengeful Furies to become the Eumenides, the Kindly Ones. Whether this resolution proves satisfactory is much contested; Shilo (2023, pp. 28–29) provides a recent overview of the scholarly responses. For our purposes, the emergence of a perspective shared by former adversaries demonstrates the distance traveled from the darkened understanding of Agamemnon.