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    Agamemnon
    Agamemnon
    Agamemnon
    Ebook134 pages1 hour

    Agamemnon

    By Aeschylus

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    About this ebook

    Aeschylus' Agamemnon, first produced in 458 BC, is the opening play in his Oresteian trilogy. Agamemnon returns home after the Trojan Wars with his concubine Cassandra and is murdered by his wife Clytemnestra and her lover, Aegisthus. The ensuing blood feud continues until the third and final play, Eumenides, when peace is finally restored to the house of the Atreidae. It is a powerful and moving play which is difficult to interpret and which for a long time lacked an English edition.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherStart Publishing LLC
    Release dateMar 21, 2013
    ISBN9781625588470

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      Book preview

      Agamemnon - Aeschylus

      Agamemnon

      By Aeschylus

      Start Publishing LLC

      Copyright © 2012 by Start Publishing LLC

      All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book or portions thereof in any form whatsoever.

      First Start Publishing eBook edition October 2012

      Start Publishing is a registered trademark of Start Publishing LLC

      Manufactured in the United States of America

      10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

      ISBN 978-1-62558-847-0

      Table of Contents

      Dramatis Personae

      Preface

      Agamemnon

      Dramatis Personae

      A WATCHMAN

      A HERALD

      CHORUS of Argive Elders, faithful to AGAMEMNON

      AGAMEMNON son of Atreus and King of Argos and Mycenae; Commander-in-Chief of the Greek armies in the War against Troy.

      AEGISTHUS son of Thyestes, cousin and blood-enemy to Agamemnon lover to Clytemnestra.

      CLYTEMNESTRA daughter of Tyndareus, sister of Helen; wife to Agamemnon.

      CASSANDRA daughter of Priam, King of Troy, a prophetess; now slave to Agamemnon.

      Preface

      The sense of difficulty, and indeed of awe, with which a scholar approaches the task of translating the Agamemnon depends directly on its greatness as poetry. It is in part a matter of diction. The language of Aeschylus is an extraordinary thing, the syntax stiff and simple, the vocabulary obscure, unexpected, and steeped in splendour. Its peculiarities cannot be disregarded, or the translation will be false in character. Yet not Milton himself could produce in English the same great music, and a translator who should strive ambitiously to represent the complex effect of the original would clog his own powers of expression and strain his instrument to breaking. But, apart from the diction in this narrower sense, there is a quality of atmosphere surrounding the Agamemnon which seems almost to defy reproduction in another setting, because it depends in large measure on the position of the play in the historical development of Greek literature.

      If we accept the view that all Art to some extent, and Greek tragedy in a very special degree, moves in its course of development from Religion to Entertainment, from a Service to a Performance, the Agamemnon seems to stand at a critical point where the balance of the two elements is near perfection. The drama has come fully to life, but the religion has not yet faded to a formality. The Agamemnon is not, like Aeschylus’ Suppliant Women, a statue half-hewn out of the rock. It is a real play, showing clash of character and situation, suspense and movement, psychological depth and subtlety. Yet it still remains something more than a play. Its atmosphere is not quite of this world. In the long lyrics especially one feels that the guiding emotion is not the entertainer’s wish to thrill an audience, not even perhaps the pure artist’s wish to create beauty, but something deeper and more prophetic, a passionate contemplation and expression of truth; though of course the truth in question is something felt rather than stated, something that pervades life, an eternal and majestic rhythm like the movement of the stars.

      Thus, if Longinus is right in defining Sublimity as the ring, or resonance, of greatness of soul, one sees in part where the sublimity of the Agamemnon comes from. And it is worth noting that the faults which some critics have found in the play are in harmony with this conclusion. For the sublimity that is rooted in religion tolerates some faults and utterly refuses to tolerate others. The Agamemnon may be slow in getting to work; it may be stiff with antique conventions. It never approaches to being cheap or insincere or shallow or sentimental or showy. It never ceases to be genuinely a criticism of life. The theme which it treats, for instance, is a great theme in its own right; it is not a made-up story ingeniously handled.

      The trilogy of the Oresteia, of which this play is the first part, centres on the old and everlastingly unsolved problem of The ancient blinded vengeance and the wrong that amendeth wrong.

      Every wrong is justly punished; yet, as the world goes, every punishment becomes a new wrong, calling for fresh vengeance. And more; every wrong turns out to be itself rooted in some wrong of old. It is never gratuitous, never untempted by the working of Peitho (Persuasion), never merely wicked. The Oresteia first shows the cycle of crime punished by crime which must be repunished, and then seeks for some gleam of escape, some breaking of the endless chain of evil duty. In the old order of earth and heaven there was no such escape. Each blow called for the return blow and must do so ad infinitum. But, according to Aeschylus, there is a new Ruler now in heaven, one who has both sinned and suffered and thereby grown wise. He is Zeus the Third Power, Zeus the Saviour, and his gift to mankind is the ability through suffering to Learn.

      At the opening of the Agamemnon we find Clytemnestra alienated from her husband and secretly befriended with his ancestral enemy, Aigisthos. The air is heavy and throbbing with hate; hate which is evil but has its due cause. Agamemnon, obeying the prophet Calchas, when the fleet lay

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