The Bucket List Book Adventure - Agamemnon - Aeschylus

The Bucket List Book Adventure – Book 3: Agamemnon by Aeschylus

By a.d. elliott | Take the Back Roads - Art and Other Odd Adventures

Dear Henry,

Book Three of the Bucket List Book Adventure, Aeschylus’s Agamemnon, is complete! Let me tell you all about it.

Aeschylus was born around 525 BC, roughly two centuries after Homer composed The Iliad and The Odyssey. Before becoming the father of Greek tragedy, he worked in a vineyard until (as the story goes) the god Dionysus appeared to him in a dream and told him to write plays. He listened. His first play debuted in 499 BC, and by 484 BC, he was winning top honors at the City Dionysia, the great Athenian festival of drama.

He wasn’t just a playwright, either; Aeschylus fought in the Greek army at Marathon (490 BC), Salamis (480 BC), and Plataea (479 BC). Over the course of his lifetime, he wrote between 70 and 90 plays, but only seven of them survive. He died in Sicily around 456/455 BC in what may be the most peculiar death story of antiquity: an eagle dropped a turtle on his bald head, supposedly mistaking it for a rock. Whether true or a 2,500-year-old joke about baldness, it certainly keeps his memory alive.

"No stronger than a child is a dream that falters in daylight."
-Aeschylus, Agamemnon

The play begins at the end of the Trojan War, as King Agamemnon returns home to Mycenae, unaware that his queen, Clytemnestra, is planning his murder. Her rage is rooted in tragedy: Agamemnon sacrificed their daughter, Iphigenia, to gain favorable winds for the journey to Troy. It’s hard to blame her for holding a grudge.

Aegisthus, Clytemnestra’s lover, also carries a family vendetta. His father, Thyestes, and Agamemnon’s father, Atreus, spent years locked in a horrific cycle of betrayal, revenge, and cannibalistic stew (yes, really). A prophecy foretold that Thyestes would gain revenge only through a child conceived with his own daughter Pelopia. That child was Aegisthus. After years of plotting and tragedy, Aegisthus eventually killed Atreus, but Menelaus later used the Spartan army to install Agamemnon as king of Mycenae. Aegisthus never forgot the injury.

During Agamemnon’s decade-long absence in Troy, Aegisthus and Clytemnestra forged both a political and romantic alliance, one rooted in grief, ambition, and considerable Greek melodrama.

"For many among men are they who set high the show of honor, yet violate justice."
-Aeschylus, Agamemnon

When Agamemnon finally arrives home, he brings with him Cassandra—the Trojan princess and prophetess—taken as a concubine. Clytemnestra kills them both, an act that is equal parts vengeance and political maneuver. Cassandra’s death, however, feels especially heartbreaking; she had no say in any of the events that brought her to that moment.

Aegisthus then steps forward to claim credit and share the throne, despite having contributed absolutely nothing except being present.

I’ve never found Agamemnon particularly sympathetic. In the Iliad, he behaves badly, feuds constantly, steals Briseis from Achilles (who had already stolen her from someone else), and seems remarkably comfortable sacrificing his daughter so that his brother can retrieve Helen. The casual way women were treated as bargaining chips or movable property is one of the clearest indications of the period’s gender dynamics, and Agamemnon fits neatly into that mold.

Clytemnestra, on the other hand, is one of literature’s most compelling women. She is fierce, calculating, grieving, justified, and villainous all at once. Her desire to cut down the man who killed her child is understandable, even as her affair with Aegisthus complicates her legacy.

Cassandra’s role is pure tragedy: a woman who saw the truth clearly but could never make anyone believe her. (Although in Marion Zimmer Bradley's retelling, The Firebrand, Clytemnestra lets Cassandra go.)

"Death is a softer thing by far than tyranny."
-Aeschylus, Agamemnon

One of Aeschylus’s major tools is the chorus, which acts like a narrator and weaves in essential backstory. It helps orient the reader, but it can also make the text feel heavy or distant. I imagine it would be far more engaging performed aloud, with the rhythm and spectacle of Greek theater supporting it.

Agamemnon ends with the stage set for the next chapter of the cycle: The Libation Bearers, where the tangled web of revenge continues.

xoxo
a.d. elliott

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a.d. elliott is a wanderer, photographer, and storyteller living in Salem, Virginia. 

In addition to her travel writings at www.takethebackroads.com, you can also read her book reviews at www.riteoffancy.com and US military biographies at www.everydaypatriot.com

Her online photography gallery can be found at shop.takethebackroads.com

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