Clytemnestra

Clytemnestra appears in Homer's Odyssey, and several classical plays including Seneca's Agamemnon, Sophocles's Electra, Euripides's Electra and Iphigeneia at Aulis. She is the title figure in a ballet by Martha Graham and is represented by painters such as John Collier and Lord Frederick Leighton. Clytemnestra is most famous, however, for her pivotal role in Aeschylus's dramatic trilogy, the Oresteia, as the murderer of her husband, King Agamemnon.

Daughter of Leda and Tyndareus, King of Sparta, Clytemnestra was also the half sister of Helen, who, unlike Clytemnestra, was immortal because her father Zeus seduced Leda in the form of a swan. Cly-temnestra married King Agamemnon, but legends vary concerning the circumstances. For instance, in Iphigeneia at Aulis, Clytemnestra reveals that she was the wife of Tantalus when Agamemnon decided to take her for his bride. Apparently, Agamemnon murdered her first husband and then killed her son by dashing the child upon the ground.

Clytemnestra and Agamemnon lived in Mycenae of Argos and had several children, including Iphigeneia, Electra, and Orestes. When Paris kidnapped Helen, wife of Menelaus, Agamemnon's brother, it caused war to break out between Argos and Troy. Agamemnon then left home and Clytemnestra to join forces with his brother and other leaders from the Argive city states. At the straits of Aulis, the winds stilled and the army was stranded, unable to sail to Troy. A soothsayer told Agamemnon that he must sacrifice his oldest daughter, Iphigeneia, to Artemis if he wished to set sail. Deceiving Clytemnestra of his intentions, he sent her word that her daughter was to be married to Achilles, but upon Iphigeneia's arrival, Agamemnon had the girl sacrificed. According to Euripides, Iphigeneia is assumed into the heavens and a stag is sacrificed in her place; yet Clytemnestra, refusing to believe the messenger's tale, blamed Agamemnon for the death of her daughter.

Ten years passed before the Trojan War ended. In her husband's absence, Clytemnestra took a lover, Agamemnon's cousin, Aegisthus. In Aeschylus's Agamemnon, the most famous of the Greek plays that feature the Mycenaean Queen, Clytemnestra welcomes her husband home from the war. She convinces him to commit sacrilege by walking upon tapestries, an act reserved only for the gods. Once inside the palace, as Agamemnon disrobes, Clytemnestra mortally stabs her husband, thus avenging Iphigeneia's death. In addition, Clytemnestra murders his concubine, Cassandra, whose pitiable prophesy of the tragedy within, including her own death, is ignored by all on stage. As customary in classical Greek drama, where bodies are revealed after violence and death occur offstage, when the corpses of Agamemnon and Cassandra are displayed, Clytemnestra claims full responsibilities for her deed and Aegisthus acknowledges his role in the plotting of the murders.

In the second play of the Oresteia, The Libation Bearers, Clytemnestra meets her end. Following the [Page 229]death of Agamemnon, Electra and Orestes conspire to avenge the murder of their father. At play's end, first Aegisthus and then Clytemnestra die in the hands of Orestes, who subsequently flees from the palace to escape the vengeance of hideous gorgon creatures known as the Furies. In the final play of the trilogy, the Eumenides, Orestes is still pursued by the Furies, who are spurred to vengeance by Clytemnestra's ghost. Orestes flees to Apollo's sanctuary in Delphi. The ghost of Clytemnestra pleads for equal vengeance on her son for his crime, as now she resides in the underworld shamed and without honor. At the temple of Athena (goddess of wisdom), Apollo pleads for Orestes. The court consists of 12 Aegean citizens and the goddess herself presides as judge. Athena's diplomatic and persuasive pleas quell the temper of Clytemnestra's bloodthirsty Furies. The vengeful Furies become the judicious and honorable Eumenides. The court's decision, however, reinforces the supremacy of men as the head of the household and subjugates the role of the mother.

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