There is a lot of Greek playwrights who composed tragedies, however, only the works of
three (Aeschylus, Sophocles and Euripides) have been passed down to us (Sayre).
Agamemnon
is part o
f
Aeschylus
’
trilogy;
The
Oresteia
, which was first performed in 458 BC during
the festival of Dionysus in Athens, where it won first prize. Aeschylus wrote plays in which the
chorus served a considerable role in drawing attention to the subliminal moral virtues that establish
or specify the action (Sayre) and
The
Oresteia (Agamemnon, The Libation Bearers and Eumenides)
represented that vision. The trilogy is based on true character as it narrates the story for the
Mycenaean king Agamemnon (Sayre). Aeschylus wrote this trilogy to pinpoint the flaws of the
current form of justice which is pushed upon society by the Furies (deities of vengeance) and to try to
promote a shift towards the ultimate/true form of justice which is driven by societal well-being
instead of personal emotions.
Aeschylus’
Agamemnon
starts after the fall of Troy. A beacon of light indicates the defeat of
Troy to all those in Argos, including Queen Clytaemnestra (Agamemnon’s wife). Reminiscing about
her daughter’s, Iphigeneia, offering at the hands of Agamemnon, she does not plan to greet King
Agamemnon home in a conventional fashion. She welcomes him with a Crimson carpet upon his
arrival. She then proceeds to cunningly call Agamemnon “Now, my beloved one, / step from your
chariot; yet let not your foot, my lord, sacker of Ilium, touch the earth…Let there spring up into the
house he never hoped/ to see, where Justice leads him in, a crimson path” (905-911 Lattimore).
Agamemnon enter the house while Cassandra (Agamemnon’s paramour) who’s portrayed as a
prophetess, stays outside. Clytaemnestra attempts to lure Cassandra inside as well but she remains
silent and starts to call on Apollo and passionately expresses the tragedies of the house of Atreus
(Agamemnon’s father who invited his brother, Thyestes to a feast only to serve him the flesh of his
own children) foreseeing of Agamemnon’s and her own impending death at the hands of
Clytaemnestra and Aegisthus (Agamemnon’s cousin) who takes over Argos after Agamemnon leaves
for Troy; takes Clytaemnestra as well. He orchestrates the scheme to murder Agamemnon yet leaves
the actual act to Clytaemnestra. Cassandra enters the palace. Agamemnon cries out as he’s butchered
by Clytaemnestra; Cassandra’s dies next. The tragedy ends as Clytaemnestra
denounces that Justice has been done in the name of Iphigeneia. It’s made explicit however, that
there is more killing to come. I personally feel like Aegisthus is the true personification of evil in this
Tragedy because he abused his hunger for power by manipulating the grief-stricken Clytaemnestra’s
emotions in favor of his personal gain.
Justice is the main theme in the three plays (
Agamemnon, The Libation Bearers and the
Eumenides)
that compose Aeschylus’ trilogy. The plot is about motives and reason of murder and
vengeance and how theses personal, emotional affairs become intertwined in the world of politics
(Berndt) meaning that justice from its primordially human feeling is expressed principally in the first
2 plays of the trilogy (
Agamemnon
and
The Libation Bearers)
and is portrayed in its socio-political
form in
The Eumenides
(Berndt). Aeschylus presents this change in principles of justice as a
development of historical necessity i.e. for a society to function as united whole, it must agree on a
definition and structure for maintaining justice to consequently guarantee stability and order, this
agreed upon political definition of justice must not interfere with personal and emotional justice of
