AGAMEMNON AESCHYLUS Translated by Richmond Lattimore
INTRODUCTION TO AESCHYLUS’ AGAMEMNON Agamemnonis the first part of the trilogy known as theOresteia, the other two parts beingThe Libation BearersandThe Eumenides. The trilogy was presented in 458BCE and won first prize. According to the legend, in the version used by Aeschylus, Atreus tricked his brother, Thyestes, into devouring his own children, all but one. Thyestes cursed the entire house. In the next generation, Agamemnon and Menelaus, sons of Atreus, were kings in Argos. Helen, wife of Menelaus, eloped to Troy with Paris (Alexander). Agamemnon led the expedition to Troy to recover her, and, to procure favorable winds to get there, sacrificed his daughter, Iphigeneia, to Artemis. Meanwhile Agamemnon’s wife Clytaemestra took as her lover Aegisthus, the only surviving son of Thyestes. Agamemnon and Clytaemestra arranged a series of beacons between Argos and Troy, by which he would signal the capture of the city. It is at this point thatAgamemnonbegins. The action consists of a short, simple series of events: the return of Agamemnon with his captured war prize, Cassandra; his formal reception and entrance into the palace; the murder of Agamemnon and Cassandra by Clytaemestra and Aegisthus; and, at the end, their defiance of Argos and its citizens. The power of the drama lies partly in the arrangement of these events, partly also in the choral lyrics and long speeches, in which the tragic scenes of the past, flashbacks in memory, as well as hints about the future, are made to enlarge and illuminate the action and persons before us.
AGAMEMNON Characters WATCHMAN CHORUS of Argive Elders CLYTAEMESTRA , wife of Agamemnon HERALD AGAMEMNON , son of Atreus and king of Argos CASSANDRA , daughter of King Priam of Troy AEGISTHUS , cousin of Agamemnon Scene: Argos, in front of the palace of King Agamemnon. The Watchman is posted on the roof. WATCHMAN I ask the gods some respite from the weariness of this watchtime measured by years I lie awake elbowed upon the Atreidae’s roof dogwise to mark the grand processionals of all the stars of night 5 burdened with winter and again with heat for men, dynasties in their shining blazoned on the air, these stars, upon their wane and when the rest arise. I wait; to read the meaning in that beacon light, a blaze of fire to carry out of Troy the rumor 10 and outcry of its capture; to such end a lady’s male strength of heart in its high confidence ordains. Now as this bed stricken with night and drenched with dew I keep, nor ever with kind dreams for company— since fear in sleep’s place stands forever at my head 15 against strong closure of my eyes, or any rest— I mince such medicine against sleep failed: I sing, only to weep again the pity of this house no longer, as once, administered in the grand way.
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