The Guilt of Agamemnon

Author(s): Hugh Lloyd-Jones

Source: The Classical Quarterly, New Series, Vol. 12, No. 2 (Nov., 1962), pp. 187-199
Published by: Cambridge University Press on behalf of The Classical Association
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 THE GUILT OF AGAMEMNON,
IN recent years the general view of the theology and morality of Aeschylus
which we still find expressed in the most popular handbooks of Greek tragedy
has come under fire ;2 fire which its defendershave so far been unwilling or un-
able to return. That Aeschylus was a bold religious innovator propounding
advanced doctrines can no longer be assumed without argument; neither can
one take for granted that his outlook on morality in general and on justice in
particularwas as advanced as it was once usual to maintain. Aeschyleanjustice,
it is now beginning to be realized, had more in common with the ancient
Hebrew justice that demanded eye for eye and tooth for tooth than with the
exalted conceptions attributed to the poet by modern theorists. But whatever
view we take of Aeschylus' notion of justice, we are not likely to dispute the
paramount importance of justice in his work, and especially in the Oresteia.
If I begin, then, with the assumptionthat the Oresteiais concerned with justice,
human and divine, I shall be on safe ground.
The first and greatest of its three plays shows how the leader of the Greek
expedition against Troy, the chosen instrument of Zeus' chastisement of the
Trojans, comes to a miserable end. The train of events that leads to this
conclusion has been set in motion long before the play begins, when the Greek
fleet is assembled at Aulis on its way to Troy. The goddess Artemis becomes
incensed with Agamemnon, and sends unfavourable winds that prevent the
fleet from sailing. Either the great expedition, ordered by Zeus, must be
abandoned, or the king must sacrificehis own daughter to appease the goddess.
He consents to the sacrifice.This action earns him the bitter enmity of his wife,
who at home in Argos plans his murder. She has at hand an instrument ready
to her purpose. Agamemnon's father, Atreus, has long ago massacred the
children of his brother, and has served him at a banquet with their roasted
flesh. One survivor has escaped, and he is now a grown man waiting for his
revenge.
The constant preoccupation of the poet with guilt and retribution creates
a strong impressionin the hearer'smind that the exact assessmentof Agamem-
non's guilt must be important for the understanding of the play. And yet there
is no agreement among scholars as to the nature of that guilt. Agamemnon
has been sent against Troy by Zeus himself; and yet Zeus allows him to perish
miserably. Why ? Is it for having consented to his daughter's sacrifice? If so,
how far is his punishment the work of Zeus, and how far is it the consequence
of the wrath of Artemis? The motive for that wrath is itself a subject of acute
controversy. Or is Agamemnon punished for his remorselessextirpation of the
Trojans, and the destruction of their city together with its temples and its
altars? What part is played in his destructionby the curse brought down upon
his family by the monstrous action of his father, Atreus? Or is he punished for
his own pride and arrogance? Most modern scholars, with the notable excep-
I This paper formed the first of my J. H. and Mr. G. E. M. de Ste Croix.
Gray Lectures given at Cambridge in 1961; 2 See D. L. Page's preface to Aeschylus,
it has also been given at other places I am Agamemnon,ed. J. D. Denniston and D. L.
grateful to those who have helped to improve Page, 1957; and my article 'Zeus in Aeschy-
it, and particularly to Professor E. R. Dodds lus' in J.H.S. lxxvi (1956), 55
f.

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188 H. LLOYD-JONES
tion of Eduard Fraenkel, have seen him, if not as an arrogant and cruel despot,
at least as something not far removed from one. Or can it be that several, or
all of, these factors contribute somehow to his ruin ? If so, how far can we hope
to assign to each its proper degree of importance in working to this end ?
All these questions are controversial. The most learned of Aeschylean
scholars, to whom every serious student of the play must acknowledge a large
debt, has even warned us that 'it would be absurd to attempt an exact calcula-
tion as to the degree of efficacy in each of the different elements that work
together towards Agamemnon's fatal end'.' It is indeed important to guard
against attacking the complicated task of unravelling these twisted strands
with any excessive confidence that we shall reach a clear-cut answer. Yet it is
agreed that the trilogy is concerned with justice, guilt, and retribution; and
that seems to me to justify a fresh attempt to discover how the poet meant us
to suppose these notions are exemplified in his work. Whether the results
which are arrived at are absurd will be for the reader to judge.
The Chorus in its opening anapaests (60of.) strongly asserts that the cause
of the Atreidae against the Trojans is a just cause. They have been sent against
Troy by Zeus, the guardian of the law of host and guest: Zeus, who has been
outraged by Paris' crime against the sacred laws of hospitality. At the beginning
of the first stasimon (367 f.), the point is further reinforced. The Chorus has
just been told that Troy has fallen. 'They can speak of a stroke from Zeus',
they begin; 'this, at least, one can make out.' Later in the play the same truth
is strongly insisted on both by the Herald and by the King himself. And yet
it is by the will of Zeus, as the loyal elders themselvesfinally acknowledge, that
Agamemnon comes to his miserable end.
The reasons begin to emerge in the parodos, in that great choral ode which
describes what has happened ten years earlier, when the Greek fleet lay en-
camped at Aulis on its way to Troy. The portent of the eagles that tore and
devoured a pregnant hare has taught Calchas, the prophet of the Greek army,
that Troy is destined to fall to the expedition; it has taught him also that
Artemis is incensed against its leaders, the Atreidae. In the whole play nothing
is more controversial than the reasons for Artemis' anger, but in an investiga-
tion of the guilt of Agamemnon the problem of her motive is not one that we
can avoid.
'In time', says Calchas (126 ff.), 'this expedition captures Priam's city;
and all the plentiful herds of the people before the walls shall Fate violently
ravage. Only may no envious grudge from the gods strike beforehand and cast
into darknessthe great bit for Troy's mouth that is the host encamped. For in
pity Artemis bears a grudge against the winged hounds of her father that
slaughter the poor trembling hare with all her young before the birth; and
she loathes the feast of the eagles. . . . The Fair One, kindly as she is towards
the helpless offspring of ravening lions and pleasant to the suckling young of
all creatures that roam the wild, demands fulfilment of what these things
portend; favourable is the portent, yet fraught with blame. And I invoke the
blessed Healer, that she prepare not against the Danaoi lengthy delays in
port caused by adverse winds that hold fast the ships, striving to bring about
another sacrifice, one without song or banquet, a worker of quarrels born in
the house and fearless of the husband. For there abides a terrible, ever re-
arising, treacherouskeeper of the house, unforgetting Wrath, child-avenging.'
Eduard Fraenkel, Aeschylus, Agamemnon (1950), iii. 625.

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 THE GUILT OF AGAMEMNON 189
The ancient epic called the Cypriaaccounted for the wrath of Artemis by
means of a story not mentioned by Aeschylus. According to Proclus' summary
of the plot of this lost work (O.C.T. of Homer, v. 104), Agamemnon had shot
a stag, and in his triumph boasted that as an archer he surpassedeven Artemis.
A similar story is told by Sophocles in his Electra(563 f.). That story is not
mentioned here; but can we rule out the possibility that it was, none the less,
the reason for the wrath of Artemis that Aeschylus had in mind ? If that is so,
it follows that he has set down Artemis' anger to an obscure and arbitrary
grievance, a grievance so trivial that it is not worth mentioning in the play at
all. It would certainly be unsafe to deny a priorithat this could be the case;
but the conclusion is such a strange one that it seems hardly reasonable
to adopt it without further examination of the evidence. Does the portent give
us any clue to the reason for the goddess's anger?
Calchas says that she is angry because she loathes the feast of the eagles;
and the eagles, he says, stand for the Atreidae. Here, say some scholars, we
have the explanation of her anger: she hates the eagles, and the eagles stand
for the Atreidae; therefore, she conceives a hatred for the Atreidae. This
interpretation seems to me to rest on an intolerable confusion between the
world of the portent and the world of the reality it happens in order to sym-
bolize. The eagles and the hare belong to the world of the portent; that
portent symbolizes an event which is to happen in the real world. The eagles
stand for the Atreidae; so it is natural to infer that the hare must stand for
some other figure or figures belonging to the real world. We can hardly avoid
supposing that it stands for the Trojans and their city. So when Calchas says
(137) Artemis abhors the eagles' feast, he must mean that Artemis abhors the
coming destruction of Troy, which the Atreidae are destined to accomplish.
I believe that this conclusion is confirmed by the words of Calchas' explana-
tion of the portent. But the point is not to be grasped immediately, for like
most Greek prophets Calchas casts his interpretation in riddling language. 'In
time', he begins (126 f.),I 'this expedition captures Priam's city; and all the
plentiful herds of the people before the walls shall fate violently ravage.' This
is strange language. We should have expected that the tearing of the pregnant
hare would stand for the annihilation of the Trojans, not only men, women,
and children, but even the unborn; we can scarcely help remembering the
speech of Agamemnon to Menelaus in the sixth book of the Iliad (57 f.), in
which he declares that not even the unborn children of the Trojans shall
escape his vengeance. Yet when it comes to the explanation of the portent, we
are told that the Achaeans will destroy the Trojan ... cattle!
That seems incredible; and I have suggested that the explanation lies in
the habit Greek prophets had of referringto people by the names of animals.2
If so, 'the abundant herds of the people' will mean 'the abundant herds that
arethe people'. This is confirmedby the presence of the words 'beforethe walls';
for the Trojan cattle did not perish before the walls, but the Trojan men did
perish 'in front of the city'.
If it is correct, the close correspondenceof the portent with the future reality
S .
Xpd-v~L7V aYpELHpLaiovrrTv aLSE c8KAEv0o0,
7rdvraSE 7Trawv
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2
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poiRh ci 76flatov.
Rh. Mus. ciii (1960),
7po),76 f.

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I90 H. LLOYD-JONES
must be taken as established. The eagles stand for the Atreidae; the hare
and its young stand for Troy and its inhabitants. What reason does Calchas
give for the pity felt by Artemis for the hare? He says that Artemis is the
patroness of the young of all wild animals; and according to many modern
interpretersthis fact in itselfis enough to explain her anger against the Atreidae.
But this is out of the question.Just as both eagles and hare correspondto figures
of the real world, so must the motive assigned to the goddess for championing
the hare represent a motive for championing what the hare representsin the
world of reality. We have seen that in the real world the hare represents
the Trojans. Has Artemis a special motive for championing the Trojans that
may correspondin the world of reality to the motive assigned her in the world
of the portent for championing the hare?
She has, in fact, an excellent motive; for in the Iliad and in the whole
poetical tradition Artemis together with her brother Apollo appears as a loyal
partisan of Troy against the invaders. This supplies a motive for her hostility
to the Atreidae that is fully sufficient to explain her action. The last scholar
to put forward a view at all similar to this weakened his case by regarding the
sacrifice of Iphigeneia as 'an atonement payable in advance for the destruction
of Troy'.' This language is too legalistic: it is a mistake to talk of 'sin' and
'atonement' in this connexion. In Aeschylus, as in Homer, the lesser gods have
a position in no way comparable with that of Zeus; they may range them-
selves on either side in the Trojan conflict, but Zeus for the time holds the
balance and will in the end decide the issue.Artemis' blow againstAgamemnon
is one move in the struggle; it is the attempt of a pro-Trojan goddess to strike
at the invadersbefore the invasion: Artemis must be seen not as ajudge punish-
ing a sin, but as a powerful enemy striking at an enemy. Zeus will not
prevent Artemis from bringing about the sacrifice; and Calchas hints that this
may have consequences beyond itself. Why may it have these consequences?
'There abides', he says (i52 ff.),z 'a terrible, ever re-arising, treacherous
keeper of the house, unforgetting wrath, child-avenging.' That is usually
taken as an allusion to Clytemnestra; indeed, some scholars have thought
that it identifies the Wrath with her. But if I am right in translating 7raAivop-ros
by 'ever re-arising', the reference cannot be limited to her. There is a possi-
bility (see Denniston-Page, ad loc.) that the word may mean 'arising in the
future'; and in view of that I do not press the point. But it is worth noticing
that if iraAlvop-roshere could bear its natural meaning, the referencewould be
to a child-avenging wrath that is 'ever again arising'. And that could only
be the ancient wrath of the House of Atreus.
After the narrativeof Calchas' prophecy, the Chorusenters upon the famous
invocation that is often called the 'hymn to Zeus' (160 ff.). Why does the Chorus
choose this moment for the invocation? The question is not one which every
editor of the play has tried to answer; but the choral lyrics of Aeschylus are
not normally irrelevant to the dramatic situation, and there is no reason why
this one should form an exception to the rule. What is the situation at this point ?
Zeus has sent the Atreidae against Troy; but Artemis has confronted them with
the intolerable choice between abandoning the expedition Zeus has ordered
or consenting to Iphigeneia's killing. Where might Agamemnon have looked
I B. Daube, Zu den Rechtsproblemenin 2 /LL/vEL
yap oflEpa7TaALvop-ro0
olKO0/I-Ot
Aischylos' Agamemnon (Ziurich, 1939), pp. 0oAla, tLgVLS
twLvtaov
147 f. TEKVO-7OLVOS.

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 THE GUILT OF AGAMEMNON i91
for help ? And where might the elders of Argos appeal in the face of the anxiety
that even now, ten years later, still torments them in consequence of what
happened at Aulis? Only Zeus could have helped him, and them, to cast from
their minds 'the burden of futile worry' (165). Zeus' power is over all, and he
teaches men, by means of bitter experience, to obey his stern law of reciprocal
justice. Artemis has faced Agamemnon with a terrible alternative. Zeus has
sent him against Troy; surely he can hope for aid from Zeus.
Yet the Chorus does not appear at all confident that such aid will be forth-
coming. 'Why not ?', the audience may wonder. The Chorusgives no indication
of the reason for its fears; at this point, the audience can only ponder on the
riddling final words of the prophecy of Calchas. But, in the light of a full
knowledge of the play, the reader may well wonder, 'Will aid from Zeus
be forthcoming for the son of Atreus?'
From the invocation the Chorus returns abruptly to the scene at Aulis,
and Agamemnon's grim dilemma. Should he have given up his expedition
and gone home ? Many scholarshave been of this opinion. But in his brilliant
introduction to the play D. L. Page has argued that Agamemnon has no
choice. Zeus, he has pointed out, has ordered the expedition; it is his will that
Troy shall fall. Hear the words attributed to Agamemnon (214 f.) : 'That they
should desire with passion exceeding passion a sacrifice to still the winds, a
sacrifice of maiden's blood, is right in the sight of heaven'.' It is no use trying
whose emphatic position no less than its
to water down the final word OE'jZuS,
solemn associationslends it great weight in this place. Yet we must notice that
Agamemnon's action is described by the Chorus in words that leave no
doubt that it is considered as a crime (218 f.) : 'And when he had taken upon
him the bridle of compulsion, and the wind of his purpose had veered and blew
impious, impure, unholy, from that moment he reversed his mind to a course
of utter recklessness.For men are made bold by evil-counselling shameless
infatuation, the beginning of woe. So he brought himself to sacrifice his
daughter, in aid of a war to avenge a woman's loss and as advance payment
for his ships.'
We are faced with an apparently glaring contradiction. We must agree with
Page that Agamemnon has no choice but to sacrifice his daughter; the ex-
pedition had to sail. Yet E. R. Dodds2 is equally right in insisting that
his action was, and is meant to be regarded as, a crime. The text is explicit
on this point. Can it be that both are right ? Can Zeus have forcedAgamemnon
to choose between two crimes, either of which was certain to result in his
destruction? My answer to this question would be, Yes.
The words just now quoted which describe how Agamemnon made his
decision imply that he is mentally deranged: -radAatvarapaKcor0M
'rpwoo7T•r•owv
(222). These words recall the famous passage in the nineteenth book of the
Iliad in which Agamemnon tries to account for his reckless behaviour in pro-
voking Achilles. 'I was not responsible',he exclaims, 'but Zeus and my portion
I
7VoauavELOU vydp would render vTrEpTLKpOVby 'you
Ovulasa '-Vbitterness
whose excess of rTLKpW3S shall taste bitter
vrapOEvtov
u'atljia-ro- dp-
arEpLOpyw aoq' E'LOuv- in your own mouth', supposing the adverb to
/EIV
y, eI y p EL 7. involve the sense of the word 7rLKpdOillus-
OELS"
I follow Page in accepting Bamberger's trated by Fraenkel, op. cit. ii. 301, n. I.
emendation of to a0'. At 2 'Morals and Politics in the Oresteia', in
vrEpdopyw• as a parallel Proc. Cambr. Phil. Soc. 186, N.S. vi
P. V. 944 (cited by Fraenkel
rTEpLdpyo" (1960),
supporting the manuscript reading), I 19 f.; on this point see pp. 27-28.

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192 H. LLOYD-JONES
and the Erinys that walks in darkness,who while I spoke put cruel Ate in my
mind' (86-88). Infatuation, iTapaKorrj, in the Agamemnonis hardly distinct
from Ate in the Iliad; and Ate is commonly an instrument of Zeus.
Zeus is indeed determined that the fleet must sail; Agamemnon has indeed
no choice. But how has Zeus chosen to enforce his will? Not by charging
Calchas or some other accredited mouthpiece to inform the king of his decision;
but by sending Ate to take away his judgement so that he cannot do otherwise.
Does it follow that Agamemnon is not held responsible for his action? Cer-
tainly not. In Homer Agamemnon excuses his behaviour by pointing to the
action of Ate on his mind; but it does not occur to him to deny his respon-
sibility, or to shuffle out of paying the enormous compensation which he has
promised to Achilles. It is the same in Aeschylus. Dodds (loc. cit., p. 27) is
right in saying that where Plato said acdl'aE`Aozdvov- (
OE' dvaltooS, Aeschylus
might have said alc'a E`AozdEvov- 7avadmosl: it is curious that in spite of this
OEd•
he still thinksAgamemnon could have chosen not to kill his daughter. Zeus has
taken away Agamemnon'sjudgement; but that does not absolve Agamemnon
from the guilt his error will incur. Nothing could better illustrate the saying
of Aeschylus' Niobe that Zeus makes a fault in men, when he is determined
utterly to destroy a house (fr. 277, Loeb edition, pp. I5-I6).
But what leads Zeus to determine to destroy a house? A famous chorus of
the Agamemnon (750 f.) gives a definite answer to this question; and it stands
in such a context that we can hardly doubt that the belief which it expresses
is meant to be regarded as a true one. Prosperity in itself, the Chorus insists,
is not sufficient to arouse the anger of the gods; only crime brings down
punishment on a man or on his descendants after him. Despite the Chorus's
claim of originality, this doctrine is not, of course, peculiar to Aeschylus;
Page (loc. cit., p. 136) has reminded us that it is found in two places in the
fragments of Solon, a writer not unfamiliar to Aeschylus' audience. It is likely
to represent Aeschylus' own belief. If so, it is unlikely that Zeus' decision to
destroy Agamemnon is without a motive.
Zeus has faced Agamemnon with an impossible alternative. Also, he has
taken away his judgement, so that he takes a fatal course; not that the other
choice would not have been equally fatal. Why has he done this ? Why, in using
Agamemnon to punish Troy, has he chosen a coursewhich must lead inevitably
to the ruin of Agamemnon ? Do we know of any guilt previously attaching to
the King himself? No. But do we know of any guilt attaching to his ancestors?
More than half the play has elapsed before we hear anything of such guilt.
But let me continue with the commentary on the play's successive scenes that
I have begun, resuming from the scene that follows the parodos.
Running right through the play we find a deliberate parallel between the
fate of the house of Priam and the fate of the house of Atreus; equally per-
vasive, only less important, is the parallel between the fate of Helen and the
fate of Clytemnestra. Again and again we find this sequence repeated; first,
pious moralizings as the working of Zeus' law is traced in the just punishment
of Troy; next, gradually increasing realization, both by the audience and
by the Chorus, that what is true of Troy may prove true also of Troy's con-
querors; lastly, agonized apprehension. This is the pattern of scene after
scene and chorus after chorus. It was the pattern of the Chorus's initial ana-
paests together with the parodos; it is the pattern of the scene between
Clytemnestra and the Chorus that follows.

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 THE GUILT OF AGAMEMNON 193
In the first of her two great speeches in that scene (281 ff.), Clytemnestra
describes the rapid journey from Troy to Argos of 'the light lineally descended
from the fire of Ida' (31i). Some people see nothing in the Beacon Speech
but an irrelevant, if magnificent, geographical excursus. No one could be
more reluctant than I to attribute to ancient authors anything like what is
generally meant by the modern term 'symbolism'. But I cannot doubt that
in Clytemnestra's mind the fire from Ida stands for the avenging fire of
Zeus; nor that the Beacon Speech is highly relevant to the parallel between
the fates of the Priamidae and that of the Atreidae which I have just men-
tioned. In the second of her speeches in this scene (320 f.) Clytemnestra paints
for the Chorus a vivid picture of what she imagines to be happening in the
captured city. If the conquerors show piety, she says, towards the gods of the
conquered land and towards their shrines, then they may escape being con-
quered in their turn. But if they commit sacrilege, they may provoke revenge;
and even if they avoid sacrilege, they may arouse the vengeance of the spirits
of the dead. Clytemnestra's pretended fears are obviously her secret hopes.
This speech looks forward to the later scene in which the Chorus gradually
extracts from the innocently optimistic Herald the news of the storm that has
scattered the returning ships. This disaster was directly provoked by the sacrilege
Clytemnestra had anticipated, and its occurrence greatly facilitated the accom-
plishment of her plan; for it was owing to the storm that Agamemnon returned
in a single ship and without his brother. The adventures of Menelaus after the
storm formed the subject of the satyr-play that accompanied the trilogy, the
Proteus; this, too, may help to explain the importance assigned by the poet to
the brothers' separation.
The first stasimon begins on a note of triumph and ends on one of disaster.
From the theme of the just punishment of Troy, the Chorus passes to that of
Helen and of the lives sacrificed for her sake, and ends on a note of anxious
foreboding (459 f.) 'My anxious thought waits to hear something yet shrouded
in darkness. For the gods are not unwatchful of the killers of many; and in
time the black Erinyes consign to darkness him who is fortunate without justice,
reversing his fortune and ruining his life; and he has no protection once he is
among the vanished. To be praised exceedingly is dangerous .... My choice
is the prosperity that comes without envy. May I not be a sacker of cities, nor
yet be made captive by others and see my life waste away." It is remarkable
that Agamemnon's own loyal councillors can seem to imply that he is 'for-
tunate without justice'. If he has killed many, is it not because he is the minister
of Zeus' vengeance ? If he has made war and sacrificed his daughter for the
sake of Helen, has it not been at Zeus' order ?
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194 H. LLOYD-JONES
The scene of the Herald repeats the now familiar sequence of hope and
triumph followed by the slow realization that all is not well; it ends with the
Chorusforcing the Herald, much against his will, to describe the disasterof the
storm. Then the second stasimon takes up once more the theme of Helen, and
illustrates her nature by the fable of the lion cub. It shows Helen to be in a
sense a daemonic being, one sent into the world for the express purpose of
causing havoc and destruction.We are meant to remember that Clytemnestra
is her sister; later in the play, the Chorus itself will observe the similarity of
their careers (1468 f.). From the theme of Helen, the Chorusgoes on to speak of
guilt and divine justice (750 f.). Prosperitydoes not of itself provoke the anger
of the gods; evil deeds alone bring down divine justice either on their doer or
on his descendants after him.
Immediately after this famous passage the King enters the stage; we can
hardly doubt that the words the Chorus has lately uttered somehow apply to
his case. The elders welcome him. In the past they have criticized his con-
duct in making war to recover Helen; but now that his plan has been success-
fully accomplished, they are glad to greet him with enthusiasm and to warn
him against secret enemies. Perhaps the presentation of the King himself may
furnish some clue to the problem of his guilt. But the character assigned him
by the poet has been, and is, the subject of acute controversy. 'It is a common
view', wrote Fraenkel in 1942, '... . that king Agamemnon is either the villain
of the piece or, at any rate, a reckless, overbearing and impious tyrant.' His
own view is very different. For him Agamemnon is 'in everything.., .a great
gentleman, possessed of moderation and self-control';z he is '"every inch a
king"; his every word and gesture is expressiveof a powerful sincerity'.3Page
takes a view of Agamemnon's character not widely removed from that against
which Fraenkel has so energetically protested. 'His first address does not
endear him,' he writes, 'he is ready with pious phrases, he greets success
with gratitude, but without surprise . . . He neither mentions his wife nor
expresses pleasure in his home-coming...' (loc. cit., pp. xxxiii f.). When he
gives in to Clytemnestra and fatally consents to make a triumphal entry into
the palace, treading underfoot the purple tapestries normally reserved as
offerings to the gods, that happens, according to Page, 'simply because he is
at the mercy of his own vanity and arrogance, instantly ready to do this
scandalous act the moment his personal fears of divine retribution and human
censure are, by whatever sophistry, allayed' (loc. cit., p. 151).
Let us investigate the reasons for this singular disagreement. Fraenkel
seems to me to have established that his calling the gods 'jointly responsible'
for his victory does not immediately convict the King of hybris; such language
was for a Greek perfectly consistent with a properly respectful attitude.4 But
it cannot be denied that in his opening speech Agamemnon looks back upon
his ruthless extirpation of his enemies with a fierce satisfaction. 'The blasts of
destruction still have life; and the embers as they die with the dead city waft
upwards the rich incense of its wealth' (819-20). 'There is no sentimental
lamentation in this fine sentence,' writes Fraenkel (p. 378), 'but a true note of
profound sympathy.' A few lines later Agamemnon says, 'The ravening lion
leaped over the wall, and lapped his fill of the blood of kings' (827-8). I find
1 Proc. Brit. Acad. xxviii. 22.
Stuttgart, 1957), P. 23.
2 Aeschylus,Agamemnon,ii. 441. 4 Aeschylus,Agamemnon,ii. 371 f.; cf. Proc.
3 Der Agamemnondes Aeschylus(Zilrich and Brit. Acad., loc. cit., 22-23.

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 THE GUILT OF AGAMEMNON 195
no sympathy, profound or otherwise, in that sentence or in anything that
Agamemnon says about the Trojans; and I find it difficult to deny that the
complaisance with which he views the extermination of his enemies must bode
ill for him. Clytemnestrahas, we know, been hoping that the Greekswill commit
some act of sacrilege and provoke the anger of the gods; and the Herald has
told us, in a line most unconvincingly obelized by Fraenkel (527), that the
altars and shrines of the gods are to be seen no more. Agamemnon now boasts
of the city's total destruction; are we to suppose that he has somehow managed
it in such a way as to leave the shrines intact ?' It is true that in his vengeance
Agamemnon has acted as the minister of Zeus. But it is no less true that it is
dangerousto be a sackerof cities, and that the destructionof the Trojan temples
must provoke divine resentment.
We must agree with Page that the grimness and harshnessof Agamemnon
make an unfavourable impression; but we cannot deny that there is much in
the situation that makes this understandable. It is hardly reasonable to re-
proach him with his coldness to his wife; it seems clear that rumours of what
is going on at home have found their way to him. Nor is his behaviour at any
point undignified; here we must contrast him with Aegisthus, whom the poet
has portrayed in a most unsympathetic fashion. Both recent editors have
remarked on the meanness of his conduct and the vulgarity of his language:
what purpose had the poet in depicting him in such a way if not that of showing
his enemy in a comparatively sympathetic light? Further, we must note the
trust and affection of the humble Watchman who speaks the prologue; he
looks forward to clasping in his own his master's well-loved hand. Notice, too,
the attitude of the Chorus. They acknowledge to the King himself that they
have criticized his conduct in the past. But they are glad to welcome him back
from Troy with a friendly greeting; and their sincerity is proved by their
lamentations at the miserableend of him whom they call their 'kindlyguardian'
(1452). Fraenkel and Page are both right; we have here a character of light
and shade. This conclusion is confirmed by a comparison of Aeschylus'
Agamemnon with that of Homer; the two are remarkably alike. Homer's
Agamemnon is not, on the whole, an agreeable character. He is proud and
irascible, to such an extent that he becomes involved in quarrelswith his allies
that have disastrous consequences. He is utterly determined to exterminate
the enemy, declaring to Menelaus that even the unborn children in the womb
shall perish (6. 57 f.). He is ready to proclaim in open council that he prefers
the captive concubine Chryseis to his wife Clytemnestra (. I 13 ff.). But these
defects cannot blind the reader to his magnificent heroic qualities. He is a
good fighter, at his best in a difficult situation; his management of affairs is,
as Apollo says in the Eumenides(631-2), on the whole successful. Like many
hot-tempered men he is capable of behaving with dignity and nobility, as his
reconciliation with Achilles plainly shows.
Let us now examine the crucial scene in which Clytemnestra induces her
husband to tread upon the purple tapestries (932 ff.). Why does Agamemnon
end by succumbing to his wife's persuasion? Fraenkel (loc. cit., p. 441)
argues that he yields partly out of chivalry towards a lady, partly because
after long years of struggle he is weary and his nerve finally gives way. This
is not convincing. Chivalry of such a kind seems to be a medieval and a modern
rather than an ancient concept; and the psychological explanation that the
I See Denniston and Page, op. cit., p. 120.

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196 H. LLOYD-JONES

King sees through his wife but is too weary to oppose her has a decidedly
modern ring. It is a far cry from Aeschylus' Agamemnon to Mann's Aschen-
bach; nor is such a notion firmly grounded in the text. Must we then believe
with Page that Agamemnon secretly longs to make a triumphal entry, and
eagerly grasps at the sophistical excuses offered by the Queen? Or should we
rather accept a third explanation lately offered us by Hermann Gundert,'
who has argued that Agamemnon surrenders because he has been outwitted,
and that he has been outwitted because Zeus has taken away his wits ?
With these three theories in mind let us turn to the text. 'In a moment
of fear', says Clytemnestra, 'might you not have vowed to the gods that
you would do this?' This is no argument; an offering made to discharge a vow
would have been in honour of the gods, but what Clytemnestra is proposing
would be in honour of the King himself. Agamemnon knows this, and might
have said it; what he does say is that, on the advice of an accredited exegete,
he would have done so. 'What do you think Priam would have done ?', the
Queen asks. This again is a sophism; Priam was not only a barbarian, but
a man under a curse. This too Agamemnon knows and might have said; instead
he is content with the dry answer, 'Yes, he certainly would have done it.'
'Have no scruple, then,' says Clytemnestra, 'for the reproach of men.' Agamem-
non could have answered that the reproach of men did not worry him, but that
what he dreaded was the anger of the gods. Instead, he lamely replies, 'Yes, but
public opinion is a great power.' Considered in terms of what we know of
Aeschylean morality, this answer surely indicates a moral blindness. 'But the
man who arouses no jealousy is not enviable', says the Queen. Agamemnon
knows that to incur AOdvosis dangerous; yet he can counter only with the
feeble complaint that a woman ought not to desire contention. 'But for the
fortunate', his wife answers, 'it is becoming to yield the victory.' 'Do you
think victory in this contest so important ?' 'Be persuaded; if you give in to me,
you are the winner.' The King has no answer to this; and after removing his
boots in a futile gesture of appeasement, he enters the palace.
Agamemnon's answers to the last two questions give a definite indication
that he has provoked divine qOdvos: the more closely we consider them, the
harder it becomes to accept Fraenkel's explanation of Agamemnon's conduct.
Must we agree with Page that he gives in 'simply because he is at the mercy of
his own vanity and arrogance'? Here we are troubled by the empirical fact
that during a performance of the play we find ourselves at this point regarding
Agamemnon not with contempt, but with compassion. Note in particular the
lines that immediately precede the stichomythia (926 f.). The king has replied
to his wife's long and effusive speech of welcome with a curt and almost brutal
refusal to accept her praise. But the conclusion of his speech, summing up his
attitude, makes him, almost for the first time, sympathetic. 'Apart from foot-
wipers and embroideries sounds the voice of fame; and good sense is the god's
greatest gift. Men should call him happy who has ended his life in the pros-
perity that we desire. And if in all things I can act thus, I lack not confidence.'
These do not seem the accents of hypocrisy. Yet in the scene that follows,
Clytemnestra twists her husband round her little finger; he is as helpless as
Thrasymachus before Socrates against her devastating dialectic.
How can we account for Agamemnon's rapid collapse? Page's view that
under temptation he reveals his secret moral weakness is not a wholly convin-
I In OEcopla (Festschriftfiir W. H. Schuchhardt)(Baden-Baden, I960), pp. 69 f.

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 THE GUILT OF AGAMEMNON 197
cing explanation of the change in him. Here we must carefully consider the
explanation offered by Gundert, that Zeus and his portion and the Erinys
have put Ate into his mind, to use the words put into Agamemnon's mouth in
the nineteenth book of the Iliad (quoted on pp. 191-2). A parallel which seems
to me to lend strong support to Gundert's view is furnished by that scene in
the Seven against Thebesin which the Messenger describes to Eteocles the seven
champions who are arrayed against the seven gates. Against the first six Eteocles
dispatches champions from his own command. At the seventh gate stands
Eteocles' own brother Polyneices. Like Agamemnon Eteocles is a harsh and
grim character who is yet not unsympathetically portrayed. He knows that if
he fights his brother he will not survive; he knows that pollution of the most
hideous sort is caused by the shedding of a brother's blood; and yet he cannot
bring himself to do as the Chorus wishes and send another in his place. The
reason for this is clearly indicated in the text, as Friedrich Solmsen has shown
in an important article;' Eteocles is in the power of the Erinys. In Agamem-
non's case the evidence of the text is less positive; but I have little doubt that
Gundert is right in thinking that the reason for his behaviour is the same.
Not that Gundert's explanation seems to me entirely sufficient; in a curious
way I believe that he and Page are both partly right. Gundert goes too far in
arguing that Agamemnon reveals no ;lpts, but mere stupidity; for when Zeus
takes away a man's wits, he sends upon him a moral blindness, TrJAaLva TrapaKoHra
irpwororrijtwv. Zeus' action in sending Ate upon Agamemnon causes Agamem-
non to commit a crime; so far Page is right; but in so far as the crime is the
result of Zeus' action, Gundert has supplied an element of the truth which
Page's explanation has ignored. It is clear that we have come upon an anomaly
similar to that which so much perplexed us in the matter of Agamemnon's
fatal decision at Aulis. There Page argued that Agamemnon could not be
held responsible; Dodds argued that his action was a crime, and was called
a crime by the Chorus; both views, I have argued, contain an element of
truth. Here too it is the same. In one sense Agamemnon is guilty; Page has
shown that he utters words that are bound to bring down on him divine envy,
and we know that he will presently pay the penalty. Yet in a certain sense
Agamemnon is innocent; he acts as he does because Zeus has taken away his
wits. But why has Zeus done so ? For the same reason as at Aulis; because of
the curse. As Agamemnon succumbs, vanquished by the irresistible persuasion
of Helen's sister, the destined instrument of his destruction, we look upon him
not with scorn, but with compassion. Guilty as he is, he is not, like Aegisthus,
mean and contemptible; destined as he is to ruin, at once guilty and innocent,
he is a truly tragic figure.
The King disappears into the palace; the Chorus sings the third stasimon,2
full of ominous foreboding; and we are already waiting for Agamemnon's
death-cry. But we are kept waiting till the end of the Cassandra scene. That
scene occupies nearly 300 lines, not much less that one-fifth of the entire play.
The power and beauty of that scene are so overwhelming that it is easy to
forget to inquire what is its function in the unfolding of the plot. What is that
function? Cassandra makes a desperate effort to get across to the uncompre-
hending Chorus a warning of Agamemnon's mortal danger which it is in-
x T.A.P.A. lxviii (I937), 197 f.; see also shortly to appear in Gnomon.
my review of K. von Fritz, Antike und 2 I hope soon to supplement this article
Moderne Tragoedie (Berlin, 1962), which is by a discussion of this ode.

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198 H. LLOYD-JONES

evitably bound not to grasp. This provides a wonderful opportunity for the
working up of an uncanny atmosphere and for the gradual building up of
suspense. But this is not all. Since the narrative of the prophecy of Calchas,
the audience has felt that there is some dark factor in the situation which has
only been hinted at; something which if known would do more to explain the
sinister forebodings of the Chorus than any vague talk of murmurs in the city
against the princes. What that something is is instantly known to the foreigner
Cassandra, whom Clytemnestra has supposed may be ignorant of Greek. No
sooner does she begin to move in the direction of the door than she sees in a
vision (Io96) the murdered children of Thyestes. Soon after she exclaims that
even now a mighty evil is being plotted in the house (I102); and she de-
scribes in confused and agitated utterance a vision of the approachingmurder.
During the firstpart of the scene Cassandraspeaksin lyrics; that part concludes
with her calling to mind the fate of her own family and nation, and recalling
once more to the audience the parallel, so often suggested during the first
four great odes, between the fate of the Priamidae and the fate of the Atreidae.
Then by a last great effort she collects herself, and in trimeters instead of
lyrics, in speech instead of song, she openly declares to the Chorus (I 178 f.)
that the house of Atreus is beset by the Erinyes; that it is haunted by the spirits
of the murdered children; that she and Agamemnon are presently to die an
awful death; and that they will not go unavenged. And just before her final
exit, she returns once more (1287 f.) to the fate of Troy and the not dissimilar
fate of its conquerors.
We cannot regard the Cassandrascene as a mere episode, one whose presence
may be amply justified by its effect but which is not essential to the develop-
ment of the plot. Cassandrasupplies us, first obscurely and later at the climax
explicitly, with the vital piece of information that gives the missing clue for
which we have so long been seeking. One main contribution of the scene to the
unfolding of the plot is Cassandra'sfutile warning; but a more important one is
her bringing into the open, for the first time in the play, the origin and nature
of the curse.
There follows the scene in which Clytemnestra, standing over the dead
bodies of the murdered pair, boldly confronts the Chorus and exults in her
revenge. Returning to the theme so often played on in the early lyrics of
the play, the Chorus cries out against Helen; now her deadly work has
achieved its final triumph. 'O mad Helen,' they exclaim (i455 f.), 'you who
alone destroyed those many, all those many lives beneath Troy, now have you
crowned yourself with the last, the perfect garland, not to be forgotten, by
means of the blood not washed away.' Clytemnestra forbids the Chorus to
blame Helen. Next the old men address the daemon of the house (1468 f.):
'Daemon, you who fall upon the house and the two Tantalids, and exercise
through women an evil sway. ... ." 'Now you have set right your utterance',
the queen replies, 'by calling on the daemon of this race, thrice glutted.' 'Great
is the daemon of whom you speak,' says the Chorus, 'evil is his wrath, insatiate
of baneful fortune. Woe, woe, through the will of Zeus, the cause of all, the doer
of all. For what is fulfilled for men without Zeus? Which of these things is not
god-ordained?'
'
My translation assumes that in 1. 1470 L'ad-'vov by accepting Rauchenstein's con-
one may restore responsion and at the same jecture
time remove the very real difficulty of KaKo••uXOV.

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 THE GUILT OF AGAMEMNON 199
These words of the Chorus are not spoken idly. We can now trace, from the
7rpdrTapXos ~7r of Thyestes, the grand design of Zeus. The action of the Theban
trilogy, almost the only other of which we have a reasonable knowledge, is
determined from the start by the curse upon Laius; so, I feel certain, is the
action of the Oresteiaby the curse upon Atreus. From his birth Agamemnon's
fate, like that of Oedipus or Eteocles, has been determined; he is the son of the
accursed Atreus. Zeus uses him as the instrumentof his vengeance upon Troy;
but he uses him in such a fashion that his own destruction must inevitably
follow. At the outset of the expedition, Artemis, a partisan of Agamemnon's
enemies, demands of him blood for blood. Agamemnon cannot refuse, for it is
Zeus' will that the fleet sail; and Zeus sendsAte to take away hisjudgement and
force him to consent. The King bows to the goddess's demand: and his consent
brings down upon him the vengeance of his wife, who sharesher sister'suncanny
and daemonic nature serving like her as an instrument of Zeus' destructive
purpose. Even his righteous revenge upon the Trojans involves Agamemnon in
yet further guilt. In one sense, it is a triumph of divine justice; in another, an
atrocious crime; the instrument of Zeus' punishment of Troy must himself
be punished. But such guilt as the King contracts from the sacrifice of his
daughter and from the annihilation of Troy with its people and its temples
is only a consequence of the original guilt inherited from Atreus; the curse
comes first, and determines everything that follows. Zeus brings about the
ruin of Priam; Zeus brings about the ruin of Agamemnon. The Chorus of
the Agamemnon, like Sophocles' women of Trachis,' can justly echo Homer's
words at the beginning of the Iliad and say that all that has happened has been
in accordance with the will of Zeus.
Christ Church, Oxford HUGH LLOYD-JONES
I Agam.1485-6; Sophocles, Trach.1278.

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