The Agamemnon of Aeschylus | Page 3

Agamemnon to be a warning that [Greek: Aga mimnei],
"the unseen Wrath abides." _Agâ_, of course, is not exactly wrath; it is more like
Nemesis, the feeling that something is [Greek: agan], "too much," the condemnation of
_Hubris_ (pride or overgrowth) and of all things that are in excess. _Agâ_ is sometimes
called "the jealousy of God," but such a translation is not happy. It is not the jealousy, nor
even the indignation, of a personal God, but the profound repudiation and reversal of
Hubris which is the very law of the Cosmos. Through all the triumph of the conqueror,
this _Agâ_ abides.
The greatest and most human character of the whole play is Clytemnestra. She is
conceived on the grand Aeschylean scale, a scale which makes even Lady Macbeth and
Beatrice Cenci seem small; she is more the kinswoman of Brynhild. Yet she is full not
only of character, but of subtle psychology. She is the first and leading example of that
time-honoured ornament of the tragic stage, the sympathetic, or semi-sympathetic,
heroine-criminal. Aeschylus employs none of the devices of later playwrights to make
her interesting. He admits, of course, no approach to a love-scene; he uses no sophisms;
but he does make us see through Clytemnestra's eyes and feel through her passions. The
agony of silent prayer in which, if my conception is right, we first see her, helps to
interpret her speeches when they come; but every speech needs close study. She dare not
speak sincerely or show her real feelings until Agamemnon is dead; and then she is
practically a mad woman.
For I think here that there is a point which has not been observed. It is that Clytemnestra
is conceived as being really "possessed" by the Daemon of the House when she commits
her crime. Her statements on p. 69 are not empty metaphor. A careful study of the scene
after the murder will show that she appears first "possessed" and almost insane with
triumph, utterly dominating the Elders and leaving them no power to answer. Then
gradually the unnatural force dies out from her. The deed that was first an ecstasy of
delight becomes an "affliction" (pp. 72, 76). The strength that defied the world flags and
changes into a longing for peace. She has done her work. She has purified the House of
its madness; now let her go away and live out her life in quiet. When Aigisthos appears,
and the scene suddenly becomes filled with the wrangling of common men, Clytemnestra
fades into a long silence, from which she only emerges at the very end of the drama to
pray again for Peace, and, strangest of all, to utter the entreaty: "Let us not stain ourselves
with blood!" The splash of her husband's blood was visible on her face at the time. Had

she in her trance-like state actually forgotten, or did she, even then, not feel that particular
blood to be a stain?
To some readers it will seem a sort of irrelevance, or at least a blurring of the dramatic
edge of this tragedy, to observe that the theme on which it is founded was itself the
central theme both of Greek Tragedy and of Greek Religion. The fall of Pride, the
avenging of wrong by wrong, is no new subject selected by Aeschylus. It forms both the
commonest burden of the moralising lyrics in Greek tragedy and even of the tragic myths
themselves; and recent writers have shown how the same idea touches the very heart of
the traditional Greek religion. "The life of the Year-Daemon, who lies at the root of so
many Greek gods and heroes, is normally a story of Pride and Punishment. Each year
arrives, waxes great, commits the sin of Hubris and must therefore die. It is the way of all
Life. As an early philosopher expresses it, "All things pay retribution for their injustice
one to another according to the ordinance of Time."[1]
[Footnote 1: See my _Four Stages of Greek Religion_, p. 47. Cornford, _From Religion
to Philosophy_, Chapter I. See also the fine pages on the Agamemnon in the same
writer's _Thucydides Mythistoricus_, pp. 144, ff. (E. Arnold 1907). G. M.]
To me this consideration actually increases the interest and beauty of the _Oresteia_,
because it increases its greatness. The majestic art, the creative genius, the instinctive
eloquence of these plays--that eloquence which is the mere despair of a translator--are all
devoted to the expression of something which Aeschylus felt to be of tremendous import.
It was not his discovery; but it was a truth of which he had an intense realization. It had
become something which he must with all his strength bring to expression before he died,
not in a spirit of self-assertion or of argument, like a