Warriors' Wives by Emma Bridges;

Author:Emma Bridges; [Bridges, Emma]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780192581600
Publisher: Oxford University Press USA
Published: 2023-08-09T00:00:00+00:00

Aeschylus’ Clytemnestra

The story of Clytemnestra has enjoyed a particularly rich afterlife, thanks largely to the attention which Aeschylus gave to her relationship with Agamemnon in his 458 bce trilogy, the Oresteia (comprising the tragedies Agamemnon, Choephoroi, and Eumenides). As discussed in Chapter 2, Agamemnon’s sacrifice of his and Clytemnestra’s daughter Iphigenia for the sake of pursuing war against Troy might represent metaphorically the challenges faced by couples when the demands of the military take precedence over those of a soldier’s partner and family. This mythical marriage, as scrutinized by Athenian tragic dramatists, can also be read as an extreme manifestation of the fears of troops on active service that their place at home might be filled by another man in their absence. In Chapter 5 I will analyse in detail the representation of Agamemnon’s return as a distortion of the normal processes of reunion between returning husband and waiting wife; there I will explore further Clytemnestra’s refusal to relinquish her role as head of the household, and consider how this relates to her transgression of gendered norms. For now, however, I consider the way in which infidelity is represented in the Agamemnon, and in particular how Aeschylus draws here on the Homeric comparison between Clytemnestra and Penelope. In this play—in contrast with tragedies by Sophocles and Euripides, which I will discuss briefly later in this chapter—Clytemnestra’s relationship with Aegisthus is given less weight as a motive for murder than her desire to take revenge for Agamemnon’s sacrifice of their daughter Iphigenia. For Aeschylus, Clytemnestra’s infidelity is just one element of this waiting wife’s transgression of societal norms, and of her failure to behave as a warrior’s wife should. I will also consider in this section what the Agamemnon suggests about Clytemnestra’s perspective on her husband’s extramarital relationship with Cassandra, the war captive with whom he has returned home.

Although infidelity is not cast here as the primary motivation for the murder of Agamemnon, the shadow of Clytemnestra’s adultery is present throughout Aeschylus’ Agamemnon. The watchman comments in his opening speech that Agamemnon’s house is ‘not tended very well as in the past’ (οὐχ ὡς τὰ πρόσθ’ ἄριστα διαπονουμένου, 19; cf. 36–7, where he suggests that he is unable to speak out about the house’s troubles); this appears to be an oblique reference to Clytemnestra’s behaviour. In his representation of Clytemnestra Aeschylus plays with the image of the good and faithful waiting wife, drawing on the Homeric precedent which sets her up as Penelope’s opposite. For example, Clytemnestra’s opening words in the play, and her exchange with the chorus, where she expresses joy at the news of Troy’s fall (264, 266–7), are duplicitous; the listening chorus cannot yet know that her delight stems from the fact that she can now carry out her plan to kill Agamemnon.36 She later articulates a response to her husband’s homecoming which combines all of the elements that her listeners (the chorus as internal audience, and the spectators in the theatre) might expect from a loyal wife (601–12):

I’ll rush to receive my honoured husband as well as possible on his return.

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