V. The Oresteia

Abstract

Like the rest of the Oresteia the theme of Agamemnon is retribution, a theme which even in this single play spans more than one generation and embraces a complex interaction of human and divine combined with an element of family curse. Paradoxically, however, of the vast perspective that Agamemnon presents in terms of time and space it has not been events actually portrayed upon the stage that have attracted most attention so much as their antecedents, described by chorus and characters alike often in graphically enigmatic terms. The fact, however, that so much of the overall effect depends upon description and interpretation of past events by characters and groups intimately involved in them itself raises important questions for the reaction of the audience. Are we for instance to take the description of what took place at Aulis as objective truth or as subjective and flawed rationalization, hedged around with ambiguous nuances and constituting yet another element in that aura of unease which surrounds so much of the action? Further complication arises from the actual chronological presentation of motivating forces. Consistently it is the human aspect which appears first, naturally so since it is this that establishes personal guilt and sows the seed of future retribution, but that human motivation is often subsequently portrayed as concomitant with the will of heaven and coincident with the curse on the House of Atreus. Take for instance the theme of Atreus’ treatment of his brother Thyestes which ultimately serves as the background to the present generation’s bout of bloodletting. Though it underscores historically and morally much of what we see and hear in Agamemnon, it comes to the fore only in the Cassandra scene, long after the introduction of Iphigeneia and Troy, and receives its most telling expression from the lips of Aegisthus, whose specious use of it to justify murder compounds rather than resolves the cycle of retribution. The effect throughout the play is thus a constantly shifting basis of perspective, producing in scholarly assessments of the action a stark divergence of opinion typified at the extremes by the dichotomy between literal and symbolic approaches to the text.