TFBT: Orestes Kills His Mother

“Ah, ah! You slave women, look at them there: like Gorgons, wrapped in sable garments, entwined with swarming snakes! I can stay no longer” Orestes, speaking of the Erinyes at the finale of The Libations Bearers 

At Hour 25 we continue to study The Oresteia; a trilogy of plays by Aeschylus.  Currently under review is The Libation Bearers.  As usual my emphasis is not so much the main character; Agamemnon of the first play of the same name, nor his son or daughter who are the main characters in the present play, but rather on the Erinyes; the ancient goddesses of vengeance.

1. Still No Erinyes

Just like the first play for all the talk of “malignant powers from underneath”,  blood crying out for the Furies, the personified Curses of the slain, deep-brooding Erinyes, and “the hounds of wrath that avenge a mother: Tisiphone, Megaira and Alecto don’t appear on stage.  Okay, maybe they appear at the final moment of the play, but they are clearly off-stage.    Regardless of Loxias’ prophecy that the Erinyes will hound Orestes if he does not avenge his father’s killing, they don’t.  The god of Delphi threatens the fallen Agamemnon’s son with “the wrath of malignant powers from underneath the earth, and telling of plagues & leprous ulcers” and who are stirred by kindred victims calling for vengeance, and madness, and groundless terrors out of the night, torment and harass a man” But the powers that Loxias threatens Orestes with, don’t seem interested in him, until the final moments of the play when our young hero slays his mother, Clytemnestra.  “Have you no regard for a parent’s curse, my son?....Take care: beware the hounds of wrath that avenge a mother.”  

2.  Locks and Rivers

“Look, I bring a lock of hair to Inakhos [The river-god of Argos.] in compensation for his care, “Achilles discusses this ritual in honor of his own home-town river Spercheüs.   (Iliad 23:138)  Why the river?  Why not the local nymph? 

3.  Heroic Honors and the Proto-Event

Recently at Hour 25 we meet with Lenny Muellner.  One of the topics discussed was his proto-event theory in “The Anger of Achilles”.  Proto-events are things that happen and at the time there is not context then just in retrospect.  So, Uranus was not the first King of the Gods, because, no one knew what a king was or who “gods” were. For example Julius Caesar was never crowned Caesar, Augustus was the first Caesar.  Likewise Electra was presenting her father Agamemnon heroic honors for the first time as it would be forever after.  The experiences the foreign slaves had of heroic honors is the proto-event to the Greek mind.  The House of Atreus sending a princess to perform them is the first time and hence forth Agamemnon (and Cassandra) received honors (conceptually) forever.  Ain’t that cool?

4.  The Answers to Electra’s Rhetorical Questions.

 “O mother Earth, she sends me forth, godless woman that she is. But I am afraid to utter the words she charged me to speak. For what atonement is there for blood fallen to earth?” (45)    Now there is irony or wisdom.  One mariticide, Clytemnestra asking the proto- mariticide Gaea for help.  Yes mariticide means; husband-killer.)  And the answer to Electra’s question as to what atonement there is for blood fallen to earth is; Erinyes (Hesiod, Theogony 176)

5.  More Comparisons of Agamemnon to an Eagle

At line 110 of the Agamemnon there is a reference to him as an eagle and here in the Libation Bearers the poet says, “Behold the orphaned brood of a father eagle that perishes”.  Aeschylus refers to their “nest” and calls Orestes and Electra “nestlings”.  And how did Agamemnon die?  “…a father eagle that perishes in the meshes, in the coils of a fierce viper.”   The viper in question is of course Clytemnestra and consequently it only makes sense that she should birth a viper (Orestes) in a dream later on in The Libations Bears.  “What food did it crave, the newborn viper? In her dream she offered it her own breast. “(530) It only makes sense that a viper births a viper and that the poison in her veins should be passed to him.  I am reminded of Hera’s poisoned left breast nursing the hydra and an argument that Hera’s “bile” passed through her milk to Thetis and Thetis’ to Achilles.  Both pointing out the long life and re-cycling ability of that slow poison which when clutched to the chest eventually kills its possessor.

6.  Orestes Should Have Listened to Homer

“The gifts are too paltry for her offense [hamartia]. 520 For though a man may pour out all he has in atonement for one deed of blood, it is wasted effort. So the saying goes”.  That is pretty opposite the argument presented in the Embassy Scene of the Iliad

7.  Confounding of the Fates and Furies

There seems to be a lot of confusing other goddesses with the Erinyes.  Around 310 & 950 the Fates unleash a very fury-like Dike.   At 650 the Fates are the smithies producing weapons on the Dikes anvil for the Furies.  (I looked up “anvil” at Perseus.org  one of the resulting entries included “thunderbolt”)  And finally the Erinyes are described as Gorgon-like; which is odd because Medusa was originally a looker, so her immortal sisters should have been good looking.  Medusa was the only one to become scary … and dead.  What was Aeschylus trying to say?

In summary, no Erinyes until Orestes killed a blood relative, Aeschylus tossed in some ancient ritual, there is some logic for Clytemnestra asking the Earth for help, the analogy of Agamemnon to an eagle continues with his children and his inter-species marriage to that viper Clytemnestra gets tossed into the metaphoric mix, Orestes totally blew off the argument of accepting blood-money and Aeschylus seems to wax a little too poetic at times mixing up is goddesses.   

 

TFBT: Cassandra, Sex Slave of Agamemnon

I preparation for next week’s Book Club at Hour 25 I read “Agamemnon” again this time from Cassandra’s point of view.  Just reading her lines and skipping the rather clueless chorus, Cassandra makes a lot more sense.  She is an amazing character with an incredible scene rather than just a plot device. 

And I couldn’t help but notice the ironic difference between her and her consort.  Agamemnon is clueless the whole time he is on stage.  Clytemnestra’s gloating, bragging and delight in describing all the ways she’d heard he died just makes it too obvious that the guy is doomed.  Oblivious, he dies.  On the other hand Cassandra knows all too well what happened is happening and will happen.  Yet knowing all, she too dies.

Herbert Weir Smyth’s translation of Agamemnon at Hour 25 and at Perseus, translates Cassandra’s lament at lines 1072 and 1076 as “Woe, woe, woe! O Apollo, O Apollo!”  However, Browning, Gilbert Murray and Philip Vellacott’s various translations say something like “Woe, woe! O Earth, O Apollo, O Apollo!”  The Greek at Perseus says “ὀτοτοτοῖ πόποι δᾶ. Ὦπολλον Ὦπολλον.“  And the lexicon at Perseus says that δᾶ = by earth.  I have no Greek, so maybe others can help me.  Which translation is correct?  Why is Cassandra calling to Gaea?  Prayer?  Witness?  Simply an expletive?

At line 1100  Kassandra cries of Clytemnestra; “Alas, what can she be planning? What is this fresh woe she contrives here within, what monstrous, monstrous horror, unbearable to philoi, beyond all remedy? And help stands far away!”  So after that oblique dialogue Aeschylus orchestrated between the herald and chorus regarding Menelaus’ whereabouts, we now know for sure that he is no where nearby.

I just think the below is a lovely and moving bit of poetry to end on;

“Ah me, Scamander, my native stream! Upon your banks in bygone days, unhappy maid, was I nurtured with fostering care; 1160 but now by Cocytus and the banks of Acheron, I think, I soon must chant my prophecies.”

TFBT: Random Notes from 16.CB22.1x and “Agamemnon”

I am taking an online class from Harvard called The Ancient Greek Hero in 24 Hours(CB22.1x). This week (hour) in Professor Gregory Nagy’s wonderful class, we studied the play Agamemnon by Aeschylus . Aeschylus was the first of the great Ancient Greek playwrights.

 If you don’t know the story of Agamemnon, here it is.  Agamemnon and his brother Menelaus lead the Greek forces to Troy in an attempt to recover his sister-in-law Helen.  She either ran off with or was kidnapped by the Trojan prince Paris.  Only things didn’t start out too well for the Greeks.  Their fleet got stranded in Aulis due to contrary winds.  Agamemnon got the great idea to sacrifice his daughter Iphigenia, in order to get favorable winds. 

The play starts ten years later.  Iphigenia’s mother, Clytemnstra had ten years to plot her revenge with her lover.   It is not mentioned here or in the Iliad, but Iphigenia was the second of Clytemnestra’s child to die by Agamemnon; a little boy (Apollodorus’ Epitome.2.16 and Euripides’ ” Iphigenia at Aulis”.1148]

After a short lament by the night watchman about the uncomfortable situation for everyone in the kingdom and the signal fires that will announce the fall of Troy, “The signal fire suddenly flashes out… you blaze in the night, a light as if of day"  It must be day, because immediately the men too hold to depart for Troy ten years before are in the street declaring, “all the gods our city worships, the gods supreme, the gods below,  the gods of the sky and of the agora, have their altars ablaze with offerings. Now here, now there, the flames rise high as the sky,” Can you visualize the scene?  A signal fire so bright as to be confused with the sun?  It would be located to the east, part of a series of fires strung out across the world to declare Grecian victory.  The blaze coincides with the rising of the sun.  The panicky Clytemnestra made animal sacrifices at all the holy altars.  The flames made high by flagrant oils brought from the palace store room.  Can you see the glows and glaring rising up beneath the dawn of a new age; the smell of roast meat and rich spices?

Of course the chorus of old men can’t believe the good news their leader says at line 248;  “What happened next I did not see and do not tell.”  This denial on their parts is prompt by fear.  They know a conspiracy is at hand, but fear to acknowledge it.  Professor Nagy says in  The Ancient Greek Hero In 24 Hours, “Refusal to visualize and verbalize is what mystery requires when outside the sacred context.“  This suggests that the silence they’ve learned in order to not reveal the Great Mysteries  is a skill used to avoid the wrath of Queen Clytemnestra.  They are so in the habit of not using their eyes to see or ears to hear, they have a hard time hearing and then seeing when the good news is confirmed at line 269: “What have you said? The meaning of your words has escaped me, so incredible they seemed.  Joy steals over me, and it challenges my tears.”

Clytemnestra tricks her husband into bring on his “bad luck” by trammeling on a ridiculously expensive purple carpet.  Sort of  welcoming home the conquering hero with a “red carpet”.  In response to the display of opulence the Chorus comments at line 774 “But justice shines in smoke-begrimed dwellings and esteems the virtuous man. From gilded mansions, where men’s hands are foul, she departs with averted eyes and makes her way to pure homes.”

Of course Agamemnon has no clue about the doom that awaits him inside his house, but it is amazing how many subtle references there are to the net in which Clytemnestra entangles her husband before stabbing him to death.  “ Round him, as if to catch a haul of fish, I cast an impassable net - fatal wealth of robe - so that he should neither escape nor ward off doom… To lie in this spider’s web, breathing forth your life in an impious death …Is it a net of death?... And as for wounds, had my lord received so many as rumor kept pouring into the house, no net would have been pierced so full of holes as he.

Agamemnon captured the Trojan Prince Cassandra and brought her home as a ware prize.  Cassandra is blessed/cursed with the second sight and knows too well the doom waiting them within the palace walls.  At line  1159 she laments to the old men “Ah me, Scamander, my native stream! Upon your banks in bygone days, unhappy maid, was I nurtured with fostering care;  but now by Cocytus and the banks of Acheron, (rivers in Hades) I think, I soon must chant my prophecies. “

After the bloody event, Clytemnestra and her lover reveal the bodies of Agamemnon and Cassandra to the horrified onlookers and threaten them with harm if they don’t accept their new king and queen.

 One of the queen’s final comments about the event was;  “ No! Iphigenia, his daughter, as is due, shall meet her father lovingly at the swift-flowing ford of sorrows [at the River Acheron], and shall fling her arms around him and kiss him." Could there be a creepier image?