used to regard Clytemnestra as a mere monster of cruelty. It is
therefore a shock of surprise, when we come to Æschylus for her story,
to find that he has made her quite human. He is not concerned in her
case, any more than with the other persons of his Drama, to expose
intricate motive, or to paint delicate shades of character. In his task
of hewing out dramatic form—of virtually creating Drama—he left subtlety
and ingenuity and stagecraft to be perfected by his successors. Hence he
is not exercised very much about making his plot a plausible one, or to
explain how its incidents are effected. He has a great religious
purpose; and this, with the ritual form in which he had to work,
subordinates the purely dramatic elements. But he does clearly let us
see—and this is all the more important from his usual reticence—that the
whole course of Clytemnestra’s action was determined by Agamemnon’s
inconceivable cruelty.
This point eludes us often, because we accept the sacrifice of Iphigenia
as an act belonging to a barbarous age. So it is, but we forget that the
age of Agamemnon had practically left barbarism behind it. The slaughter
of Iphigenia must have been almost as revolting to the ideas of that
time as it is to us; and although in times of national crisis fanatical
minds may have been capable of reviving the savage custom of human
sacrifice, that is no justification of Agamemnon. And that he submitted
to the superstitious frenzy, and offered up the life of his child, was
the act which armed Clytemnestra against him.
The deed was, however, of a piece with his character. He was haughty,
passionate, headstrong, brooking no resistance and no rivalry: a man of
tremendous force of character who had grown too great and who in his
pride had even dared to dishonour Apollo himself in the person of his
votaries. To such a man, who after ten years’ preparation found his
fleet hindered by unfavourable gales, the slaying of his daughter was
merely an unpleasant step toward the fulfilment of his purpose. Her
beauty and her youth were of little account, and her mother’s tears and
entreaties were brushed aside as weakness.
_Sin from its primal spring
Mads the ill-counselled heart, and arms the hand
With reckless strength. Thus he
Gave his own daughter’s blood, his life, his joy,
To speed a woman’s war, and consecrate
His ships for Troy._[13]
The story of Clytemnestra, then, rightly begins here. She too was
passionate and proud, with a will of iron: a nature of strangely blended
strength and tenderness. When the blow came from the hand which should
have shielded her, it struck dead her gentler self. She gave herself up
to thoughts of revenge; and hearing from Troy as the years passed
tidings of Agamemnon’s infidelity, the last link between them was
broken. Other news would come to her ears: of sedition amongst the
people, left so long without a ruler; of the country suffering from the
need of its strongest men, who were all away at the war; and of a
certain Egisthus, her husband’s enemy, who had returned from exile.
There would be a bond of sympathy between Clytemnestra and this
Egisthus. Had he not a feud against her husband? Was he not wronged by
Agamemnon, too? Had his father not suffered at the hands of Agamemnon’s
father? There would be a meeting between them, followed by other
meetings, while they made common cause against the king; and presently
the two were united, not only in a plot for Agamemnon’s overthrow, but
in the bonds of guilty love.
When the news came of the fall of Troy and the return of the army,
Clytemnestra had matured her plans for vengeance. For years she had
nursed her wrath, and plotted with all the subtlety of her mental
powers. And for years she had hoped for and dreaded the day which would
bring back the king to Mycenæ. Her love for Egisthus was common
knowledge in the palace. Her sin would doubtless be proclaimed to
Agamemnon immediately after his arrival, even if he did not already know
of it; and she knew that the penalty of it would be death. So every
instinct and impulse of her nature, and every consideration of
self-defence too, demanded instant action. Vengeance for the murder of
her daughter, her love for Egisthus, and the need of self-preservation
all combined to nerve her for what she had to do. Agamemnon’s arrival
was imminent; she must be ready, and when the moment came she must not
falter. But meanwhile, before the old senators who had gathered to
welcome him (and who form the Chorus of the drama) she must play the
part of a loving wife.
When the first part of the Trilogy (the _Agamemnon_) opens,
beacon-lights announce the fall of Troy. The news flies through the
palace, and there is instant excitement. The old senators come thronging
out; and as they sing, wonderingly and half-doubting, Clytemnestra the
queen suddenly enters. She stands for a moment to confirm this amazing
news, and the old men turn to address her. But she makes no answer: it
is as though she has not heard them—as though nothing but the words “The
king is coming” clamour in her ears, and bring a rush of emotion that
stifles speech. She goes out silently; but while the old men are singing
of the doom of Troy, she reappears. Her entrance now is resolute and
majestical: her purpose is taken, and in firm tones she declares to the
Senators that the news they have heard is true. As she speaks, the tide
of emotion rises again and carries her on to utterance that is almost
prophetic:
CLY. _This day Troy fell. Methinks I see’t; a host
Of jarring voices stirs the startled city,
Like oil and acid, sounds that will not mingle,
By natural hatred sundered. Thou may’st hear
Shouts of the victor, with the dying groan,
Battling, and captives cry....
... Happy if the native gods
They reverence, and the captured altars spare,
Themselves not captive led by their own folly.
May no unbridled lust of unjust gain
Master their hearts, no reckless, rash desire._
CHO. _Woman, thou speakest wisely as a man,
And kindly as thyself._[13]
Clytemnestra’s speech is significant. She knows the nature of the king,
and she fears that his victory over Troy has been a brutal one, pushed
even to the last extremity of insult to the country’s gods. That impious
pride is her uppermost thought; with it, she steels her heart; and when
the herald arrives, she listens in ominous silence as his tale confirms
her utmost fears.
HER. _Agamemnon
Comes, like the sun, a common joy to all.
Greet him with triumph, as beseems the man
Who with the mattock of justice-bearing Jove
Hath dug the roots of Troy, hath made its altars
Things seen no more, its towering temples razed,
And caused the seed of the whole land to perish.
... His hand hath reaped
Clean bare the harvest of all bliss from Troy._[13]
If anything were needed to confirm Clytemnestra’s resolution, surely it
lay in these words. Agamemnon, the ruthless slayer of his daughter, the
destroyer of Troy, who had no fear of the gods and no pity for man,
would have no mercy upon her. She must kill or be killed; and she must
act quickly.
Even while the herald spoke came the sound of the procession which was
bringing the king up from the ships. First, his own chariot, surrounded
by his guard and by the people who had gone out along the road to
welcome him. Then, following close behind, a chariot containing the
solitary figure of a woman, seated amid the spoils of war. She was
Cassandra, a prize of battle, brought home by Agamemnon to be his
slave-wife. But she was no ordinary slave. Daughter of Priam, King of
Troy, and virgin priestess of Apollo, she had been torn from the altar
of the god by her captor; and Clytemnestra, watching her wild eyes, knew
that Agamemnon had filled up the measure of impiety to the gods and
insult to herself.
Agamemnon uttered a laconic greeting to the people, while the queen
stood tense and still. By no word or sign did he acknowledge his wife:
only, in perfunctory terms, hailed his country and his country’s gods,
and thanked the people for their welcome.
Then Clytemnestra, holding tremendous passions in the leash, began her
formal speech of welcome.
CLY. _Men! Citizens! ye reverend Argive seniors,
No shame feel I, even to your face, to tell
My husband-loving ways._[13]
The hour has come for which she has waited so long: her desperate plan
is formed: all that may have been needed to strengthen it has been
heaped upon her in the pride and insolence of the king. But she must
dissemble a little longer; she must force herself to speak lovingly, to
appear faithful before the people, and to lull suspicion in Agamemnon’s
mind. In her husband’s speech there had been a veiled menace: and now,
after the first conventional phrases of affection, her words, too, take
on a double meaning; and an undercurrent of bitter irony runs through
them. On the surface lies the obvious meaning, to meet the exigency of
the moment; just below it lay another sense, designed to leap to life
and plead for her when the deed that she is contemplating shall be
accomplished.
“_There comes a time when all fear fades and dies.
... Does any heart but mine
Know the long burden of the life I bore
While he was under Troy?_“[14]
The time has indeed come to put aside fear, but for a reason that these
senators cannot see yet, any more than they can conceive the real nature
of the burden that she had borne so long. To say that Clytemnestra’s
speech is not really that of a faithful wife, that it is too loud in its
protestations of joy, too insistent and eager in its avowal of fidelity,
is beside the mark. For not only is Agamemnon in all probability aware
of Clytemnestra’s sin, but she realizes that he may be aware of it.
Hence the deep irony of the situation; and hence too the fact that these
protestations, begun calmly and deliberately with the object of
deceiving the crowd, gradually take on a different tone. The king’s
manner to her from the moment of arrival had been cold, even repellent.
The conviction grows that he has been forewarned, and with that
conviction, the sense of danger to herself is heightened. As her speech
proceeds we seem to feel her quickening pulse and tingling nerve, we
seem to share the rush of fear that sweeps away restraint and carries
her along a torrent of language that is wild, vehement, and almost
frenzied.
“_Now with heart at peace
I hail my King, my watchdog of the fold,
My ship’s one cable of hope, my pillar firm
Where all else reels, my father’s one-born heir,
My land scarce seen at sea when hope was dead,
My happy sunrise after nights of storm,
My living well-spring in the wilderness!
Oh, it is joy, the waiting time is past!
Thus, King, I greet thee home. No god need grudge—
Sure we have suffered in time past enough—
This one day’s triumph._“[14]
At this point she seeks relief in action from the stress of emotion:
“_Light thee, sweet my husband
From this high seat: yet set not on bare earth
Thy foot, great King, the foot that trampled Troy!
Ho thralls, why tarry ye, whose task is set
To carpet the King’s way? Bring priceless crimson:
Let all his path be red, and Justice guide him,
Who saw his deeds, at last, unhoped for, home._“[14]
Self-control is clearly returning. There is profound significance in her
closing words, an invocation to Justice to lead Agamemnon to his doom.
There is an inner motive, too, as well as awful irony, in the invitation
to the king to walk on ‘priceless crimson.’ She must contrive that he
will commit himself still further before the people, who are already
stirred by faction and chilled by his hauteur. In the full light of what
she is about to do, she sees that this is Agamemnon’s last public act;
and has determined that the man of blood shall walk to his death along a
crimson path. The deed is almost sacrilege; but after some protest,
Agamemnon yields to her entreaties.
“_If you must have it so, let some one loose
The shoe that like a slave supports my tread;
Lest, trampling o’er these royal dyes, some god
Smite me with envious glances from afar._“[15]
He has a consciousness of what he is doing, and his mind misgives him;
but he who could deny to the mother the life of her child, cannot refuse
this indulgence to his pride. Clytemnestra, in exultation that she can
hardly conceal, reassures him. In lines of exquisite poetic beauty, but
weighted with a meaning that he does not see, she declares that this
honour is his due; that it is a sacrifice for his return. Then, as
Agamemnon passes within the palace, she remains for one instant outside.
The fire of exultation dies away. She forgets the people standing round,
the need for dissimulation, the danger of discovery. One thought sweeps
everything else away—the thought of the stupendous deed that she is
about to attempt, its horror and its peril. She raises her hands and
utters an awful prayer:
“_Zeus—thou fulfillest all—fulfil my prayer!
And take good heed of all thou doest herein!_“[15]
Then she follows Agamemnon into the palace. But there remains one person
whom she has overlooked, Cassandra, priestess and prophetess of Apollo.
As the Chorus takes up a lovely song full of foreboding, the queen
returns and calls to Cassandra to come within. But there has fallen upon
Cassandra a prophetic vision of the crime. She is distraught with fear
and horror, and can find no answer to the imperious queen. Clytemnestra,
to whom every moment is of infinite importance, suddenly loses all her
dignity in mere rage at the silent, helpless girl.
“_I have not time to waste out here with her.
By this the victims at our midmost hearth
Stand ready for the slaughter and the fire;—
Rich thank-offerings for mercies long despaired.
... I’ll not demean myself
By throwing more words away._“[15]
As Clytemnestra passes a second time within doors, the poor captive
begins to wail a prophecy of what is about to be enacted there. She
mourns for the awful curse upon the house.
“_There bides within
A band of voices,—all in unison,
Yet neither sweet nor tuneful, for their song
Is not of blessing. Ay, a revel-rout,
Ever emboldened with new draughts of blood,
Within these walls, a furious multitude,
Hard to drive forth, keep haunt, all of one kin.
They cling to the walls; they hymn the primal curse,
Their fatal hymn._”
She foresees the death of Agamemnon, and her own fate beside him. Twice
she approaches the palace and twice recoils in horror. But at last,
committing herself to Apollo, she rushes within; and instantly there
rises a dreadful cry. It is the voice of the king.
“_Ah! Ah! I am mortally stricken, here, in the palace!_”
The old men stand paralysed with fear; and before they can move a step
to help, the agonized voice cries a second time:
“_Oh me! Again I am smitten, to the death!_”
There is an instant uproar and outcry. The palace becomes noisy with
hurrying feet and clamorous voices; the old men feebly rush this way and
that, unable to decide, in their weakness and senility, how to act. In
the midst of the disorder, the doors of the palace are thrown open, and
Clytemnestra is revealed, weapon in hand, bending over the body of
Agamemnon. A dreadful hush falls; and the queen, drawing herself up
before the people, deliberately confesses to the deed and declares her
motives.
“_I, who spake much before to serve my need,
Will here unspeak it, unappalled by shame.
... Time, and thought still brooding
On that old quarrel, brought me to this blow.
‘Tis done, and here I stand: here where I smote him!—
I so contrived it,—that I’ll ne’er deny,—
As neither loophole nor defence was left him....
Such—O ye Argive elders who stand here,—
Such is the fact. Whereat, an if ye will,
Rejoice ye!...
Such a cup of death
He filled with household crime, and now, returning,
Has drained in retribution._”
But to the Senators only one thing is clear. A terrible crime has been
committed: their king has been foully slain. All Clytemnestra’s pleas in
extenuation of the deed are wasted words. To them the situation is
tragically simple: her guilt is plain; there is but one word that fits
her—murderess. There is no question for them of reason or of motive.
What she claims to be a righteous judgment upon Agamemnon, they declare
to be a crime demanding punishment. But they are not strong enough to
enforce their will; and when they threaten Clytemnestra with banishment,
she answers with scorn.
“_That is your sentence. I must fly the land
With public execration on my head.
Wise justicers! What said ye, then, to him
Who slew his child, nor recked of her dear blood
More than if sacrificing some ewe-lamb
From countless flocks that choked the teeming fold,
But slew the priceless travail of my womb
For a charm, to allay the wind from Thrace?..._”
“_Then hear my oath. By mighty Justice,
Final avenger of my murdered child,
By Atè and Erinys, gods of power,
To whom I sacrificed this man, I look not
For danger as an inmate, whiles our hearth
Is lightened by Aegisthus, evermore,
As hitherto, constant in love to me;
My shield, my courage!_“[15]
[Illustration:
CLYTÆMNESTRA
_Hon. John Collier_
_By permission from the original picture in the Guildhall Art Gallery_
]
Then, as the elders mourn the death of the king and the demon of
vengeance that haunts the house, Clytemnestra, in passionate conviction,
declares that she has been merely an instrument of that spirit of
vengeance.
“_But I
Here make my compact with the hellish Power
That haunts the house of Atreus. What has been,
Though hard, we will endure. But let him leave
This roof, and plague some other race henceforth
With kindred-harrowing strife. Small share of wealth
Shall amply serve, now I have made an end
Of mutual-murdering madness in this hall._“[15]
She comforts herself with the thought that now at last the Furies are
appeased. No doubt of her own motives assails her: no warning hint that
crime is not cancelled by fresh crime. In the first glow of triumph she
has no premonition of the return of an avenging son. She proposes to
herself a reign of peace with Egisthus which shall erase all memory of
the past.
“_Might but this be all of sorrow, we would bargain now for peace....
I and thou together ruling with a firm and even hand,
Will control and keep in order both the palace and the land._“[15]
On this note of false security the _Agamemnon_ closes; and for the fate
of Clytemnestra, which now becomes bound up with the story of Electra,
we must go to the second drama of the trilogy, the _Libation-bearers_.
-----
Footnote 13:
From Professor J. S. Blackie’s translation of the _Agamemnon_
(Everyman’s Library).
Footnote 14:
From Professor G. Murray’s translation of part of the _Agamemnon_ in
his _Ancient Greek Literature_ (William Heinemann).
Footnote 15:
From Professor Lewis Campbell’s translation of the _Agamemnon_
(Clarendon Press).
_Æschylus: Electra_
The Æschylean Trilogy pauses at the point of Clytemnestra’s triumph. The
first drama, the _Agamemnon_, ends there. We left the queen tasting the
joy of revenge, but by no means gloating heartlessly over Agamemnon’s
fall. She was conscious of the magnitude of the event; and the awfulness
of her deed would have daunted even her strong spirit had she not been
confident that she was the instrument of destiny in striking down the
proud and cruel king.
The friends of Agamemnon, the loyal faction which should have risen
against her, must have been few and weak. They were evidently soon
subdued. They could not stand against the force of her powerful will;
and, moreover, she combined with her strength a wise tact and a keen
sense of justice. Doubtless these qualities had gone far to establish
her government in Agamemnon’s long absence. Her sway was no new thing to
the people of Argos; and when she resumed it with Egisthus as her
consort, she took up the thread of her former life, with little outward
sign to mark the change.
Underneath the surface of national life, wrath and horror at the murder
of the king must have smouldered. Inside the palace itself, as we shall
see presently, there was a small party ardently devoted to his memory
and to the cause of his absent son, Orestes. But they were no match for
Clytemnestra; and she in her turn, having shaken off the nightmare of
fear in which she had lived for so many years, proposed to herself a
future that should cleanse and sweeten all the past. Her first emotion
was one of intense relief, not only from the long strain of suspense,
but from the fact that now, as she firmly believed, the old curse upon
the house of Atreus had at last been fulfilled. Her hand had dealt the
final blow; the last life demanded by that implacable spirit had now
been offered up. Henceforward it only remained to wipe out the past by
just rule and sober living.
So for a time—we do not know quite how long—she lulled herself in false
security. Years may have passed in this ominous calm: memory fell
asleep, and she lived serenely in a present that was full of such
interest and action as her mind delighted in. In such a mood, she would
not observe, or would disregard, small signs of disaffection around her.
Day by day she would see the sad face of her daughter Electra; but until
some shock came to awaken her sleeping soul, Electra’s accusing eyes
would fall upon her unheeded. The awakening came at last, however; and
it is at this point that Æschylus opens the second part of his Trilogy,
in the drama called the _Choephorœ, or Libation-Bearers_.
The scene is laid outside the Royal Palace at Mycenæ, before that tomb
of Agamemnon which archæologists within recent years have brought to
light on the ancient site of the city. The time is morning, and two
young men, who have evidently travelled far, approach the tomb. One is
Orestes, the son of Agamemnon whom Clytemnestra had sent away as a
child. The other is his dear friend Pylades. Orestes has returned
secretly to Argos, bidden by the oracle of Apollo to avenge his father’s
death. But he has no army: he does not know that he has a single friend
in Mycenæ; and his purpose is fraught with extreme danger. How he will
accomplish it he cannot yet imagine; but he must first try to discover
if there are any in the palace who will befriend him.
As they reach the tomb, Orestes calls upon Hermes, the god who guides
the shades of the dead, and invokes his father’s spirit.
“_O Hermes of the Shades, that watchest over
My buried father’s right, be now mine aid.
I come from exile to this land. Oh save me!_
· · · · ·
_Father, here standing at thy tomb I bid thee
Hear me! Oh hear!_“[16]
Then, according to a solemn custom of the heroic age, Orestes begins to
clip the locks of hair from his head and place them upon the tomb as a
votive offering. As he is thus engaged, a train of mourning women slowly
emerge from the palace, carrying vessels in their hands with libations
for the dead. They are slaves, captive Trojan women whom the poet uses
as the Chorus of his Drama; and they are followed at a little distance
by the drooping figure of a girl, whom Orestes rightly believes to be
his sister Electra. They are coming to pour offerings at the tomb of the
king. This in itself is a sign of encouragement to Orestes. But he dare
not show himself until he is assured that they are friendly to his
cause; and he and Pylades hastily withdraw, where they may hear and see
the ceremony without being seen.
The women are singing; and as their lovely parodos rises and falls, we
learn why they are coming thus early to the neglected tomb of the
murdered king. The astounding fact reveals itself that they are sent by
Clytemnestra. Clearly, the awakening has come to her at last. In the
night that has just passed she had been visited by a dream that seemed
to her a dreadful portent. She had started from her bed, screaming with
horror, and had called for lights. But the crowding women with their
lamps could not drive away the vision of the fearful serpent-birth that
had turned and rent her breast. And Clytemnestra, her conscience
suddenly shaken into life, had sent for the interpreters. They had no
comfort for her, however, in their reply:
_They cried, aloud, by heavenly sureties bound,—
“One rages there beneath
Menacing death for death....”_
So the interpreters confirmed her fear, that this dream was an omen sent
from the unquiet spirit of her husband. Remorse assailed her. The shade
of Agamemnon, neglected hitherto, must be propitiated. As soon as
daylight came, libations should be poured upon the tomb; and that they
should be acceptable, Electra should perform the rite. She might not
herself call upon that dread spirit in the underworld; but Electra, with
her grief-marred face and her loyal love to her father, would be a
fitting suppliant.