The main characters in Aeschylus’ Agamemnon formulate two different narratives about the death of their daughter, Iphigenia. As a result of their stories and coping mechanisms being different, the unity of their home is disrupted. Like most stories with multiple authors there are discrepancies, exaggerations, disregarded information, and changes in the way the story is told in order to support the narrators’ agenda. In Agamemnon, Aeschylus reveals through the transformed relationship between Clytemnestra and Agamemnon-as a result of the death of Iphigenia-that when marital partners have discrepancies in shared personal memories that their ideas of home and homecoming are also inconsistent. Clytemnestra as the mother of Iphigenia develops a story about her daughters’ demise; this story ultimately …show more content…
Her version of the story reveals her agenda to redeem revenge in the form of justice for her daughter. Her narrative focuses on the turpitude of Agamemnon’s act and never accommodates the information the chorus communicates to her about how difficult it was for Agamemnon to make the decision; that when Artemis requested the sacrifice he felt like “[his] hands [were] stained” and that he had no other option (page 110, line 210). In Robert Fagles’ translation of Agamemnon, this does not get incorporated into her story because she was not present, when this occurred. Had she been present she might have been more empathetic to Agamemnon creating a more nuanced version of the story; not to say she would have spared his life, but had she still decided to execute him her reason might have been more geared towards justice than revenge. As a result of her absence during the murder, she now only perceives him with resentment, and this is the beginning of the discrepancies in their stories. A problem in the retelling of the story of Iphigenia that
As one of the most well known ancient Roman love poets, Ovid has demonstrated bountiful talents within his writing. When reading myths from his book titled Metamorphoses, you gain an enlightening insight of how he viewed mythology. To Ovid, love was the origin of everything. Therefore, it should not come as a surprise that most of his poems relate to the theme of love. However, not all poets are the same and every re-telling of a myth has its own unique perspective. In this paper I will compare and contrast the myth of Medea in Euripides Medea and Ovid’s Metamorphoses Book 7. I will then explain how Ovid’s approach to love and loss correlate to his general approach to myth as a whole. I will support my belief with evidence from Ovid’s Metamorphoses Book 14.
For the Greeks, Homer's Odyssey was much more than just an entertaining tale of gods, monsters, and men, it served as cultural paradigm from which every important role and relationship could be defined. This book, much more so than its counter part The Iliad, gives an eclectic view of the Achean's peacetime civilization. Through Odyssey, we gain an understanding of what is proper or improper in relationships between father and son, god and mortal, servant and master, guest and host, and--importantly--man and woman. Women play a vital role in the movement of this narrative. Unlike in The Iliad, where they are chiefly prizes to be won, bereft of identity, the women of Odyssey are unique in their personality, intentions, and relationship towards men. Yet, despite the fact that no two women in this epic are alike, each--through her vices or virtues-- helps to delineate the role of the ideal woman. Below, we will show the importance of Circe, Calypso, Nausicaa, Clytaemestra, and Penelope in terms of the movement of the narrative and in defining social roles for the Ancient Greeks.
The book then talks about viewpoints of women, both real and those who face tragedy. Women during this time were very secluded and silent, but the heroines contradicted that. This chapter talks about the images of women in the classical literature in Athens, and the role they had in society. Many tragedies were ones that formed by mythes during the Bronze Age. It showed the separation in what made women heroic, rather than average. While viewing other Scholarly sourcese, Pomerory writes her own theory, she used others
Aeschylus' The Oresteia features two characters burdened by seemingly hopeless decisions. First is Agamemnon, king of Argos, whose army was thwarted by the goddess, Artemis. Agamemnon was faced with the decision to call off the army's sail to Troy, and thus admit defeat and embarrassment, or to sacrifice his daughter, Iphigenia, to satisfy Artemis whom had stopped the winds to delay Agamemnon's fleet. Second is Orestes, son of Agamemnon, who was given the choice by Apollo to avenge his father's murder, thus committing matricide, or face a series of torturous consequences. Although both Agamemnon and Orestes were faced with major dilemmas, their intentions and their characters are revealed through their actions to be markedly different.
... She was powerless to act otherwise. She was not a respected military leader like her husband. She couldn't bring him to court or change destiny in any other way. So, as a mother, she did what she felt she had to do. She acted for the justice of her child and her sex. When Agamemnon ordered the soldiers to put the bit in Iphigeneia's mouth before her sacrifice, it was because he didn't want to hear the cries of his daughter dying. Clytemnestra, however, forced her husband and the rest of Greece to hear the cries, the cries of the pained women and deal with the situation he did nothing to mend. For this she would be condemned, but because of her powerlessness, for this she was justified.
Aeschylus and Eugene O'Neill have populated their trilogies with cannibals and vampires. Family members feed off one another both literally and figuratively. For the houses of both Agamemnon and Ezra Mannon, this bloodlust is insatiable and inherited, an inescapable curse. A family curse provides the dramatic force necessary to push characters toward pivotal actions and events. At the conclusion of both trilogies the curse is finally broken (or at the very least supplanted). While O'Neill and Aeschylus articulate the destructive and violent effects of the curse in similar terms, each playwright breaks the curse to achieve distinctly different thematic goals. The curse is described and decentered in order to be critiqued.
Olsen, S. D. "The Stories of Agamemnon in Homer's Odyssey." Transactions of the American Philological Association (1974-) 120 (1990): 57-71. JSTOR. Web. .
The Greek gods were not only intimately involved in the action of the Trojan War, they were also the impetus for the war. Although the overt cause of the war was Paris' abduction of Helen, this act was the result of quarrelling goddesses. The Trojan prince Paris was forced to choose the fairest amongst the goddesses Hera, Aphrodite, and Athena. Each goddess attempted to sway Paris with offerings, and Aphrodite's temptation was Helen; this leads to the war and the immortal alliances that overshadow its mortal activities. The story that the poem implicitly addresses is of the Achaen king Agamemnon and his daughter Iphigenia. The Achaen forces have gathered at Aulis before mounting their attack on Troy when one of Artemis' stags is killed; this, coupled with Agamemnon's boasting of the act, is why "Artemis is offended" (51). In retaliation, the goddess imprisons the troops at Aulis by preventing the wind from powering their fleet. In order to appease the goddess and begin the war, Agamemnon sacrifices his own daughter Iphigenia as "the child" who will become "the victim of Aulis." Although Artemis intervenes and makes Iphigenia one of her priestesses, only the goddess knows that Iphigenia escaped death.
The thesis of the Oresteia proves to be the sacrifice of Iphigenia, for it is with the death of a woman that the tables of the curse on the house of Atreus start to unfold. The sacrifice of Iphigenia becomes the start of the continued curse within this particular generation of the house of Atreus. Agamemnon, a misogynist, did not value the life of his innocent daughter over the spoils of men. It is significant that an innocent woman, ready for marriage, an act that brings together two households, was not married but instead murdered. Her sacrifice shows a separation between men and women along with failure within the household.
In The Odyssey and Hymn to Demeter, both Penelope and Demeter love and miss their family members. When Demeter hears her daughter Persephone’s cry, “a sharp grief took hold of Demeter in
The affair between Ares and Aphrodite poses the question of whether Odysseus will return home to find Penelope with another man. The story of Klytemnestra and Agamemnon is a theme itself throughout most of the poem. Therefore its is hard to ignore it as both hold the same story with different outcomes. In addition, the level of anxiety builds through Penelope's actions and the contradicting traits of different women.
I once again found myself struggling to maintain interest. As the servants were singing and Iphigenia was giving her heroic speech, I kept wanting the story to move faster. However, when the ending did come, I was not prepared for it. I had convinced myself that Iphigenia was not actually going to die, especially at the hands of her own father. Even after her scream, I kept thinking that there is no way she could have been sacrificed. The ending left me with many questions like: Why did Agamemnon walk out with his hands covered in blood? It was like he wanted Clytemnestra to have no doubts that he murdered his firstborn daughter. Some other questions I had were: Did Clytemnestra leave Agamemnon or become a bad wife? Did she forgive
The Agamemnon picks up with Agamemnon and Menelaus, sons to Atreus, who joined together in the war of Troy after Paris, son of Priam, seduced Helen, wife to Menelaus. Angered by his ruthless man-sacrifices in the war, Artemis required that Agamemnon take the life of his daughter Iphigeneia in order to save the army and fleet o...
After Agamemnon’s death, Aegisthus is next in line to become king and Clytemnestra is his queen. Her desire for power is hidden by her claims of justification. She challenges anyone to take her power. “[H]e who conquers me in fair fight shall rule me” (45). She threatens the Chorus to a fight for power. She knows she has all the power now the king was dead and she is his queen. Clytemnestra is aware she killed him for his power, but her arrogance makes her put the deed on the curse of the House of Atreus and vengeance for
Agamemnon is the first part of the trilogy known as the Oresteia. Agamemnon is a story where the main character sacrifices his own daughter to a God, Artemis to win a battle and then his wife revenge him for the sacrifice. The concept of fate plays an important role in the tilogy Agamemnon which led to the tragic endings of the play. According to the meaning of fate it means the development of events outside a person’s control, regarded as predetermined by a super natural power. Fate is what send Agamemnon to the war with Menelaus to fight against Paris, fate is what predetermined Agamemnon to sacrifice his own blood for the sake of his ship and companions and fate is what determined Cassandra his wife to plot to kill him and to revenge him for her daughter.