So, we mentioned tragedies having this
very compressed action. That's definitely true in this play, The
Agamemnon. Agamemnon's story is quite straight
forward and relatively easy to tell. We've got a very beginning scene where
there's this watchman. He's sitting up on top of, of a, of a,
Of a roof, and wondering what's about to happen.
He's got his eye out. He's trying to see some kind of a beacon,
There must be a beacon out there. Well, what he's looking for is a beacon that has
been preset on a mountain that's as far away from Argos as this watchman is able
to see and atop of a mountain. And that mountain has got a pre-positioned
fire that is positioned as far away from another mountain top as a person is able
to sitting on that mountain top, and so on, and so on, and so on.
And these mountain tops lead all the way back to Troy.
So, seeing there's a mountain top far away from Troy and seeing that Troy is burning,
That person, the first man stationed at the signal fire, lights a fire on his
mountain top right near by Troy. The one farthest away lights a single
beacon, beacon on top of his mountain top, and so on, and so on,
All the way around the Agean Sea until the fire from Troy literally leaks out and
comes over to Argos, comes over to Mycenae,
Agamemnon's home town. The fire from Troy has come and visited
them. This technology of a signal beacon, really
extraordinary. Clytaemnestra gets a word right away that
her husband has conquered Troy. Now, that wanting to get that signal, you
might want to have imagined that if you were operating from an Odysseus and
Clytem, Odysseus and Penelope kind of stand point, that, you know, they wanted
to find out when their loved one was going be home so they could have a nice reunion.
Well, in this case, no, not at all. Clytemnestra wants to find out when her
loved one going to be home because she set up things to kill him.
That, that extra technology of the beacon signal being used to work out her own
internal nastiness that works out inside this family.
We've got a back and forth, then Clytemnestra appears.
She has back and forth with the chorus. Starts talking to them about what's been
going on. The herald then appears and has a back and
forth with the chorus as were getting ready to see Agamemnon come and then,
boom, Agamemnon arrives right near the beginning of the play.
Isn't it? It's not too far end.
Agamemnon arrives, and we have a long back and forth discussion between Agamemnon and
his wife, Clytemnestra. Their greeting is a far cry from, you
know, hi, honey, I'm home. It's been ten years, nice to see you.
It's a back and forth kind of verbal test of wills.
Not right out in the open but very subtly in a subterranean way, they're taking each
others measure such that Clytemnestra is making sure that she's going to be able to
kill this guy. And Clytemnestra, or Agamemnon is just kind of trying to make
his way into his own house again and figure out where things stand.
Not very clever. Agamemnon is not held up in the mythical
Greek,. Greek in the, in Greek myth as being a
clever man. He's an extremely strong man, but he's
brutish. He's not very clever.
And as another indicator of that, he comes back with his prize from wartime.
His concubine new wife, Cassandra, And brings her right out into the open.
And, you know, here she is, Clytemnestra. Here's your, you know, here's, here's your
new wife friend that's going to be my new wife.
We'll have to find a place for her. Having multiple sexual dalliances as we
know from Odysseus, that just kind of happens.
Greek men exonerated themselves from thinking of that as a bad thing.
They just went ahead and had thought of that as just fine.
But, there clearly is a kind of line that Agamemnon is crossing here.
He's being a bit brutish about it. You don't rub it in Clytemnestra's face.
You would do it more subtly. But, Agamemnon just waltzes in with
Cassandra right there and they have this conversation.
Agamemnon and Cassandra go back and forth, long verbal battle, verbal battle goes
back as they kind of work their way back and forth.
Then, Agamemnon takes the invitation to trample on the Crimson path.
Well, we have a lot to talk about when we deal with the thematics of the play in the
coming lectures. Agememnon and Cassandra and Clytemnestra
then have a kind of a long back and forth set of conversations.
At that point, Agememnon and, and Clytemnestra disappear behind the door.
There they are back there. They disappeared behind the door.
And Cassandra then is invited in. Clytemnestra comes back out and says, oh,
you, young lady. Please come. You're welcome, too.
Cassandra then does this long slow march toward the door, and as she's doing it,
she's actually seeing her own death. Cassandra's prophesying her own death.
She sees what's going to happen behind that door, and it's going to involve her,
and it's going to be very ugly. More to say on that, too, when we deal
with the thematics. Then, awful things happen behind the door.
The doors burst open and Aegisthus comes booming out and we have a back and forth
with the chorus as we try to figure out what just happened and how we're supposed
to value that. It's a complex situation with lots of
nasty stuff that's going on, And what we're supposed to make of all
that. This scene is famous depicted in lots of
different representations graphically. It's something that Greeks clearly some
time thinking about it arrests the imagination.
The story of Agamemnon here emerging from his bath.
You can see he still has his robes around him.
Again, recovering this theme, and we will talk about it more the cleansing that's
attempted to happen in Agamemnon's family line turns into a, a murder.
A bath becomes a blood bath. Aegisthus then thrust, thrust the sword
into him. This, wonderful mixing ball has a whole
series of, of vignettes aspects of the story of Agamemnon's house, all in a giant
circle. And that circular pattern is used by the,
the artist that makes the bowl. At one piece, we have Aegisthus taking out
Agamemnon. Cassandra is nearby and here she's
carrying her double ax, while she's aiming her double axe right there at her own son.
Her son who's involved in killing her, the father Agamemnon, with the daughter
Electra nearby. The sons, fathers, mothers, brothers,
sisters, all of them are just on top of each other.
And the crime that's stuck inside this family, seems to have no way of getting
out. The spare action of this particular part
of the story in the Agamemnon is going to lead us to this one, a very dense close up
look at one part of the story, Agamemnon's killing.
Each piece of it's going to get pulled out.
We're going to look forward to the nasty things that are going to happen later on
in the Oresteia. And we're definitely going to look backward to all the things
that have led up to this, Including the story of the daughter of
Agamemnon, Iphigenia, that we haven't talked about yet.
Or, sorry. Daughter of Agamemnon and Clytemnestra
that we haven't talked about yet the story of Iphigenia.
All kinds of things to talk about. and get ready for some, some special flavors of
ugly family nastiness coming up next.