← Ascend - The Great Books Podcast
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- [00:00]
Deacon
Today on Ascend, the Great Books Podcast, we are kicking off Aeschylus's Oresteia with the play Agamemnon, the death of Agamemnon. We're mainly looking at themes of justice, a primitive justice. How does justice develop throughout the Orestia as a whole. We're also going to talk about the empty throne of Argus and how the Polis is suffering without their king. We'll talk about the Ephigenaya narrative and return back to that with Artemis and the sacrifice of Agamemnon's daughter. And we'll also have a brief conversation on Zeus as the nameless God, the nameless divine, and whether there's been a maturation in thought about Zeus. So join us today as we explore Aeschylus's Oresteia, the first play, Agamemnon.
- [01:02]
Adam
Welcome to Ascend, the Great Books Podcast. I am so glad that you guys are here. We have a virtual roundtable discussion for you today to talk about the Oresteia. Last week we. We kind of broached the topic of Aeschylus. Who is it? Who is this author? Where is he from? What is his occupation? I don't know. Some other things that we probably talked about. Go check out that last episode. You can also check us out on thegreatbookspodcast.com there you can find our guides. You can find everything that we did for the Iliad, everything we did for the Odyssey. You can follow us on X or Twitter or whatever they're calling it nowadays. Also, we have a MySpace page if you go check that out. No, we don't have a MySpace page, but it would be cool if we did. It'd be cool if that made it come back. But, Deacon, it's great to have you on your podcast. Welcome and I'll let you introduce our guests.
- [01:58]
Deacon
Thank you, Adam. It's always a joy to be here. So tonight we are joined by two distinguished scholars, friends of the podcast. So we have Mr. Thomas Lackey, independent scholar, member of our Sunday Great books, and a commentator on many things here on the podcast. Thomas, welcome.
- [02:16]
Thomas Lackey
Thanks for having me.
- [02:18]
Deacon
Always. We also have Dr. Frank Grabowski, another friend of the podcast, other member of our Sunday Great Books group, and also a professor of philosophy at Roger State University. Dr. Grabowski, how are you tonight?
- [02:32]
Dr. Frank Grabowski
I'm doing well. Evening.
- [02:34]
Deacon
Good, good. Yeah. So before we get into it, I have a slight confession to make before we kind of break into the first play of the Oresteia Confession to me. Well, that was terrible. I'm never going to say that again. So Adam doesn't sing in the background. So I.
- [02:49]
Adam
Every time I hear that, I have.
- [02:50]
Deacon
To say that, yeah, we're really glad you're here. So by confession to make is that I have decided that I don't like mule deer. That's my confession. So if you remember like this for hunting season. A few months ago, back in the glory days, I had the beautiful opportunity to go out into the panhandle of Oklahoma, which very much looks like New Mexico. When I say panhandle, like I was right out there at the end of it. And it really does. I mean, it's like mesas, big bulls, flat country, cacti. Like it's very different than what you think, but it's just gorgeous country. And I was able to get a mule buck. This like just beautiful 4x4 wonderful buck that we found down in a kind of a bowl. It's like a three hour stalk from when we saw him to where we could actually get to where I could shoot him. Nice 200 yard shot, went straight down. Just everything that you would want out of a good hunting story. But I had been like warned that mule buck is not like mule deer in general tastes different than venison. And I, I have tried to like it, but man, I can tell. Like, I can tell even if it's in Chile, even if my wife makes it into like Mexican food. I can be like, use the mule buck, didn't you? She's like, yes, it just has a different flavor. I'm not entirely sure why.
- [04:04]
Thomas Lackey
What does it taste like? What. I mean, taking venison as a baseline, what is the mule deer?
- [04:11]
Deacon
Old venison.
- [04:15]
Adam
I wonder what the jerk. I wonder if you jerkied it out if it would, what it would taste like, if that would make it any better.
- [04:21]
Deacon
I don't know, it just has a unique flavor. I'm not sure some people have commented that it's a, it's something they eat out there. I know in some areas it's like a sage brush. They take on a particular flavor. I don't think that's out in the panhandle, but anyway, so I have this like gorgeous, you know, skull, these, these nice antlers from this mule buck. And we're, we're slowly, you know, he's fed the family. We've used, I think, a good use of the overall deer. But it's just come to me that I'm like, I'm not excited about actually pulling another one.
- [04:47]
Thomas Lackey
Are you gonna, are you gonna mount this, the skull on the wall? The next Podcast. Is there gonna be the antlers in the, in the background and.
- [04:54]
Deacon
Yeah. Can I like take my camera and like do this? Like, I think if I go up. Oh yeah, look at that. See, there's that guy. That's a different one. The balloons are for. The balloons are my father in law's birthday party that we had. Those aren't. I'm not gonna show off my balloons too much. But the.
- [05:10]
Thomas Lackey
I have to admit, when it scrolled up and I'm like, that seems smaller than I thought a mule deer would be. But I wasn't going to say anything until now. I know it's not the same deer, so there you go.
- [05:22]
Deacon
Thanks, Thomas, for critiquing my trophy. I appreciate that. We can move on to Aeschylus. I'm done.
- [05:29]
Adam
Okay, cool. So it opens up. It's very interesting I thought, how it opens up with the Watchmen. And the very first it's calling upon the gods.
- [05:39]
Deacon
Right.
- [05:40]
Adam
I thought that was very interesting how like the very opening is calling upon the gods. The watchman is. And he's been a watchman there for many years and he's seen many things, right. So like my thought process was like, this watchman's out there. This is his duty. He does not want to fall asleep because the penalty for this is death. So he's out there and he's looking for the light. They're looking for the signal basically that they're coming back home. Right. That Troy has been taken over. And he's. He's like basically completely dependent upon the. The, like, let's see, line five or so. He talks about how the armies the. Of the night and there is the lead. The ones that bring us snow or the crops of summer brings us all that we have. And I think it was just really interesting how he's just talking about how completely dependent they are. So I just thought it was a very interesting opening to scene that I was not really expecting. What are you guys thoughts there?
- [06:46]
Deacon
Well, I think that too the Watchmen. I like two things. One, I like that you noticed the invocation to the gods at the beginning. Because I think as we move through it, I think all three plays do this. I think there's an invocation of the gods at all three, so that's probably something to take note of. Two, my understanding here is that even when the play opens with the watchman, there's like something unique happening with him, like where he is on the stage, et cetera. Like, Thomas, do you want to take a brief moment and give us the practical structures of the play and what the audience is actually seeing.
- [07:18]
Thomas Lackey
Yeah, yeah. I'll give a quick rundown of just how these things were staged back in the day. So they'd be outdoors and there'd be a kind of sloping hillside where the audience sat, and it would sweep down towards a flat area below. Some people think it was circular, but at the least it was the flat area where the actors were staged. And that was called the orchestra. And so in behind that would be a small tent or building called the skane, where they could change their costumes and their masks, because the actors all wore masks. And that would be sort of like going behind a curtain in a modern production, being outdoors. They went into the scene and would change their clothes. And the skene gets tightly integrated into some of the plays like it is here, so that that building becomes a building within the play. In this case, it's the House of Atreus. It's the literal house. And the watchman is probably literally on the roof of that scene, which stands for the house. And the doors of the skene become the doors of the house and so forth. So it is a part of the structure of the play and sort of like its mechanics, but it also becomes part of the scenery, if you will, of the play. It's integrated tightly in it. And whenever there's action that takes place inside the skene, they've got this device called an ekiklema. It's basically a platform on wheels. And they'll just roll it out. And this usually will be done so that you can see what happened inside. It's often done in aftermath. Like we'll see later that the bodies of Agamemnon and Cassandra are put. Are rolled out onto the. On this echo clima. So it's also important that there's only ever two to three speaking actors. So if you'll notice, there's way more parts than that. So what the actors will do is they'll go into the skein a, change their costumes, change their masks and reemerge as another character. So you only have a limited number of speaking characters at any time. And then you'll have the chorus, which is pretty obvious as you read it, that they don't know exactly the size of the chorus, but be about a dozen people. And then they usually represent somebody kind of on the periphery, watching the action and then commenting on it. Like, in this case, we get the. The elderly man that didn't go to war. And so they're kind of. They kind of identify with the audience in Some sense. And that they're just outside the main action and looking in and then. And commenting on it.
- [10:02]
Deacon
Do we, do we have like a good working understanding of how many of our English words come from this?
- [10:06]
Thomas Lackey
I mean, a lot. Yeah.
- [10:08]
Deacon
Like, we have an orchestra, right? We have an orchestra. We have a chorus. We have. I'm gonna butcher this. It's the skeine. But isn't that. That gets translated into scene? Am I. Am I correct on that?
- [10:21]
Thomas Lackey
Dr. Grabowski mentioned that the other day and now that I see it, it's like, oh, yes, of course. But. Yeah, the, the. But I hadn't. I'd only heard it out loud and it hadn't really hit me. But yeah, it's. It's seen. So you're like. And scene. Right, like, because you're changing the. But I guess the, the last bit that I'd say is that just remember that these are musical, right? So the chorus is a chorus. It sings, it dances, it moves around. We don't have Greek music, but I think it's at least worth kind of remembering that. This is a. This is quite a spectacle, right? There's a. There's, you know, you've got the choreography of. It would have been part of the production. So when Aeschylus is writing this, he's writing it in a very dramatic way. You have all the speaking parts, you have the singing parts, you've got the dancing. It. It's. It's quite a production.
- [11:09]
Deacon
Oh, I guess I appreciate that.
- [11:11]
Thomas Lackey
Thing is the prologue, right? And that's where Adam came in. Because the prologue, the way this is staged, right? You realize they don't really know where you are or what time it is. So the prologue has to set the scene, if you will, right? You've got to have somebody that says, here I am in this place at this time, looking for this thing. And now all the audience is, okay, now I know, right? Like, now I'm ready. And so you get that prologue feature.
- [11:39]
Dr. Frank Grabowski
I think the whole production. One way of thinking about how the Greeks would have experienced this, witnessing this play, would be not quite what we come to expect from modern day plays, but something more akin to an opera.
- [11:56]
Deacon
Yeah, I don't. When I read this, when I see the chorus, I don't think singing and dancing. So that's helpful because that's not how I read that. That's not how I see that in my mind as I work through this.
- [12:07]
Adam
That's really interesting, Deacon, because I know how much you love expressing yourself through the art of singing and Dancing. And so I thought that would be the instant thing that would catch. That would catch for you. But I'm surprised I didn't make that connection.
- [12:19]
Deacon
Yeah, you can look up. You can look up all my liturgical dances on YouTube.
- [12:23]
Thomas Lackey
Well, you know, the opera point is, also works in reverse because they were trying to claim it. Like we've lost this connection to this powerful way of expressing ourselves that the Greeks seem to have. And then, you see as it comes into the broke, there's some real attempt to reclaim this dramatic form. And opera comes out of that. Of course, we don't actually know exactly how they did it. So opera is kind of its own thing, but it's strongly inspired by an attempt to reclaim this dramatic form.
- [12:51]
Deacon
Yeah, I appreciate that. I appreciate you sketching out those kind of practicalities, because I think it's really helpful, as we move through the text, if we return to the opening here, the Watchmen that Adam kind of led us into. One of the things that I would point out is, I don't know, line 1213, it talks about she, right? So she commands, full of her high hopes, that woman, she maneuvers like a man. And for those of us, you know, that are kind of reading this for the first time or are still new to it, I think that's a theme that we should flag, right, that Aeschylus brings this in. There's actually a lot of play on gender and sex throughout the play. Right. So Clytemnestra maneuvers like a man to see kind of what that. What does that mean? And does she always adhere to that? Another thing, then the watch is then like, you know, is Agamemnon critiqued in the opposite. Right. Is he acting like a woman or is he treated like a woman? So there's a theme, particularly for, like, the first time readers. If we're trying to pull out some just kind of like rhetorical themes, I think gender is certainly one of them.
- [13:50]
Adam
Yeah, I agree.
- [13:52]
Dr. Frank Grabowski
You know, I think there's a real parallel between the characters of Agamemnon and Clytemnestra in Aeschylus. Agamemnon and King. Well, King, I should say Macbeth and Lady Macbeth in Shakespeare's Macbeth. I think Shakespeare also toys with the gender swapping as well.
- [14:16]
Thomas Lackey
Well, I think there's a sense of unease as well. So I think there's a conscious way in which he's using it to draw these things. And there's an unconscious way as well, where he's setting up and the watchman says this. Well, there's a kind of sense of fear and dread and just things being just not quite what they seem and uneasy. And I think he's using it in that dramatic way as well. It's just making it. Everything seems just a little eerie and a little bit off.
- [14:43]
Deacon
You know, another. Another theme kind of this opening scene, which I really like. I think it's somewhat haunting. I think it's a. It's somewhat beautiful in its own right. It sets the scene well. One of the other themes, it's not maybe a theme, but a question I had at the beginning was, how do these people see Agamemnon? So if you look at, I don't know, a little bit, probably line 20 or so in Fagals. So that's something we should say and remind people. I'm pulling from the Fagels edition. And so line 20 or so he says, oh, for a blessed end to all our pain. Some God said, burning through the dark. So obviously the burning through the dark is that he's looking for the signal fire. So as a practicality, that's what he's looking for. So if you remember, like, Lord of the Rings, the movies, right? This is the Gondor calls for aid. Right. So there's like, all these signal fires that go on the mountain ridge and they can actually see these things. But when he talks about, like, an end to pain, and there tends to be a very high understanding of the king. This is a question I had, is how do they see Agamemnon? Because the Agamemnon that I took away from Homer, like in the Iliad, which were, you know, chronologically in the story, were between the Iliad and the Odyssey, who are actually, what, 300 years removed from Homer. That Agamemnon, the Homeric one, I found to be very poor leader, a dunce. Right. A very capricious man. Right. I remember Odysseus. Right. You are the disaster. That's who I think of when I think of Agamemnon. But here I think there's very much a theme of, like, them wanting him to return. And there's a disorder and a pain that they're suffering because he's not here.
- [16:17]
Dr. Frank Grabowski
Yeah, there's an absence. There's an empty throne. And so I think that for at least the Watchmen, knowing what Argos is going through, for Agamemnon to return, the idea would be that he would bring some stability to this unstable situation.
- [16:35]
Deacon
Which is interesting about how many parallels then we're going to get here between Agamemnon's journey home and Odysseus journey home.
- [16:43]
Thomas Lackey
Yeah. And the watchman comes off almost like the swineherd in that sense. But it becomes interesting in a different way. Only that you see that Agamemnon's return. You get the idea that he's looked for again in this hopeful way, but he's not Odysseus. Right. Things don't turn out the way that they should because he's a different sort of man.
- [17:07]
Deacon
It's an interesting kind of just merry go round of narratives here. Right? Because when we read Homer, the entire Odyssey has the death of Agamemnon as a parallel. That's like haunting it, right? I mean, that's something that is a constant guidepost throughout that text is, hey, Telemachus, remember Orestes. Hey, Odysseus, remember Agamemnon. Right. Clytemnestra and Penelope are the contrasts, right? So now, 300 years later, we're actually getting a story that's just on the death of Agamemnon, but now it's riffing off the Odyssey because we've already received that narrative that's in the back of our heads. So it's an interesting. I mean, this is part of the great books, right? We're interesting entering into this great conversation. And Aeschylus is very much drawing from the Homeric tradition, but also it's. It's malleable. Right. He can play with it a little bit. And so I'm just curious, like, which Agamemon is it that shows up in this text?
- [18:00]
Dr. Frank Grabowski
Good question.
- [18:01]
Deacon
Any other. Any other thoughts, like, on the opening of Our Friend the Watchman?
- [18:06]
Adam
I just thought that he. At the very end, like around 43, 44. So it just speaks, I think, to this watchman's character. I just, like, I really liked him because, you know, back before he says he knows the stars by heart and at the, you know, around 44. So he says, I speak to those who know, to those who don't. My mind's a blank. I never say a word. So it's just like he's a man of principle. It seems like he's a man who, like, knows his role. He's gonna stick to it. I think it just kind of shows. Just a little. Little peek into his character there.
- [18:41]
Dr. Frank Grabowski
Well, that's an interesting passage too, Adam, because of what that refers to. This is a nod in the wink. A nod in the wink to the audience, because a few lines prior, he refers to the house and the old stones. This is in reference to the curse that is upon the house of Atreus. And so he's not prepared to spill the beans. But he doesn't have to, because those who are watching the play know the backstory.
- [19:13]
Deacon
But we might know the backstory. So do we want to. Do we want to give that backstory real fast on. Just like this curse of. Because I don't think this enters into the Homeric text. I don't think this. I don't think this actually has an avenue there. At least I don't remember it in the Odyssey as a reference point.
- [19:29]
Dr. Frank Grabowski
I think Thomas is well versed in the backstory. I wouldn't mind handing it off to him.
- [19:32]
Deacon
Yeah, I vote. I vote Thomas as well. That's a great idea. Let's do Thomas. Go ahead and lead us.
- [19:37]
Thomas Lackey
Okay. So it. This, even though it's the house of Atreus, this, The. The curse goes back even further, right? It goes back to Tantalus, who we did see in the Odyssey. And we get from the word tantalizing there he was being punished in Hades. What he had done comes with. We get two different stories, and it's not really clear which one Aeschylus is drawing on, but it also doesn't really matter. One is that he killed his child and fed the child to the gods. The child's name was Pilos. This seems to be some way of trying to feed mortal food to the gods. There's a kind of. Some sort of transgression here of mortality and immortality. It's not 100% clear the gods knew what he was doing, except for Demeter, who was distracted by missing Persephone, who was spending her six months in Hades at the time because she goes back and forth, who accidentally ate his shoulder. And so the gods bring Pelops back to life and. But he's often depicted with an ivory shoulder because they had to make him a new one because Demeter ate his shoulder and then Pelops. And anyway, he's cursed by the gods for this, this attempt to trick the gods. And in some way, it's not 100% clear to me how, but in some way besmirched their immortality. The other option is that he stole ambrosia and nectar, which would be more obvious because ambrosian nectar seems to be somehow tied or again, to their immortality. And that if a mortal had access to ambrosia and nectar, they could take on some of the attributes, immortality. So when you move on to Pelops. So now he's cursed. Well, Pelops, I don't remember all the details exactly, but he wants to marry someone and There's a. Some sort of contest related to a chariot, and they replace the axle with wax. Anyway, the person that helps him, he. They get into an argument over the woman, and he tosses the guy off a cliff who curses him for his what he takes to be a betrayal. So we got two curses down, and then we hit the big one. So Pelops has two kids, Atreus and Thyestes, which, there's a deal of some sort that whichever one of them has a particular golden fleece from a particular golden sheep will be the king. Well, Atreus has the fleece at the time, so he says, yeah, sure, that's a great deal. We'll settle it that way. There's a dispute over who's going to be king. Well, Thyestes says, aha. Well, here's the fleece. And he. Ultimately, Atreus gets a different sign of the sun setting in the east to show Noah, actually, I'm supposed to be the rightful king. But it occurs to them later, how did I lose this? Where did that fleece coat come from? He realizes his wife had been having an affair with his brother, and she had given him the fleece in order to try to swindle him out of the kingdom. So he arranges a dinner, says, basically, we're going to bury the hatchet. Let's all get, you know, let's all be friends now. You know, bygones be gigons. He takes Thyestes children, cooks them, feeds them to Thyestes. So now he's borrowing from the Tantalus thing. But Thyestes is just a man. He doesn't realize what's going on. He ends up eating his own children. And after the dinner, Atreus brings out the hands and feet and head of the children, says, hey, look. See what you did? And Thyestes curses Atreus. And there's a very strong notion that this curse has a kind of real possession or inhabitation of this family now that it takes on a reality or maybe even a daemon in the. In the spiritual sense. Right. So that it hovers over this house now. And it's. It. You can see it's repeating again and again of parents harming the children of brothers and contesting the throne, that sort of thing again and again and again.
- [23:55]
Deacon
I have a. I have two comments or questions. One is, is Tantalus and his situation in Hades the actual origin of the word tantalizing?
- [24:06]
Thomas Lackey
Yeah.
- [24:07]
Deacon
Is that actually true? Wow. So if anyone remembers in the. In the Odyssey, if I remember correctly, correct me if I'm wrong. But so Tantalus is stuck basically in this pool. And if he puts his head down to try and get a drink, the pool goes down so he can't quench his thirst. And then above him is a tree that has, you know, delicious fruits or something hanging above him. And if he reaches up to bite one, it reaches up or in some way moves him away from it. So he's stuck in the middle and he can't ever. It's one of the punishments at the end of the narrative of Odysseus in the House of the Dead, where we see various unique punishments and who was there too. Syphisus was there, rolling the boulder up the hill over and over again. So that's interesting. I didn't know that. That's a. That's a good little fact to take away from this. The second one is the theme of Gus friendship. The guest friendship again plays into this curse. Like we saw with the Cyclops. We saw the suitors that, you know, that this is a violation. So since Cyclops eating his guests here, the host feeds his guests his own children.
- [25:09]
Thomas Lackey
Well, and Professor Meinecke, Peter Meinecke, brings us out really well that within Greek culture, all of food and family and this notion of guest friendship are all sacred things. And so what Atreus has done here is managed to, you know, pull off a kind of trifecta of offending all of the most sacred things at once. And so it's the curse. It kind of reaches a peak at Atreus there.
- [25:35]
Dr. Frank Grabowski
Well, Thomas, I think that. Thank you for that. That rundown. I thought we had it bad with Joe and Hunter, but we could have had it much worse.
- [25:44]
Thomas Lackey
That was good, I will say, by the way, it's probably worth noting that Aegisthus is thyestes son. We're gonna get to that in a little bit. But so this. This is not over yet.
- [25:55]
Deacon
Yeah. That's one thing that you get with these Greek stories is that these tragedies are always multiple generational. Right. It's never isolated. Even with Troy. Right. If you remember Troy, Troy had been sacked the last generation by many of their fathers. Achilles, father was there. Ajax's father was there, led by Heracles. So I love that all these stories are always multi generational because it just kind of weaves these narratives that are really fun to embrace.
- [26:23]
Thomas Lackey
Well, I think they're not accidentally connected in that way. Right. I want to draw on that theme because they're. There's a real sense in which the sins of the father are descending to the son. There's a sense in which that this is an inherited guilt which all of them have to wrestle with and in some cases are, you know, relive in their own way.
- [26:49]
Deacon
No, I agree. Okay, let's push forward into the chorus. So it's like the next part, line 44 or so. The, you know, my takeaways from this chorus, just on like a surface level one, is who is the chorus? So Thomas gave us a good understanding of just like the role of the chorus insofar as, like a play in general, the chorus, though the identity of a chorus changes per play. So here the chorus in Agamemnon is the old men, right? It's the. The elders of the city of Argos. And so obviously, like, my mind immediately went to another parallel to Homer, which is these are like the. The elders, the old men of Ithaca. Right. And I think we'll see these parallels develop very intentionally because both of them seem very inept. Right. They can't really do anything. They talk a lot. They don't seem to affect the type of change that they should have in their polis. Right. Their city state is disordered. And then part of that too, tethers to my question I asked earlier is how do they view Agamemnon? And here very clearly, you know, it opens up of 10 years gone, 10 to the day our great avenger went for Priam. And so one thing that caught my attention here is they very much seem to think or hold that Troy was a just war.
- [28:04]
Thomas Lackey
Right.
- [28:04]
Deacon
That Agamemnon was, you know, an avenger. He actually was an agent of Zeus's justice to go and right a wrong.
- [28:15]
Thomas Lackey
Well, I think having the language of justice introduced so early is important too, because the whole Aristaya is going to swirl around what is justice? Yeah, maybe even more, how do you achieve justice?
- [28:32]
Dr. Frank Grabowski
But I would add, though, I think they're a bit ambivalent because if we were to skip ahead, there's a passage a bit later around line 435, where I think they do begin to question the legitimacy of the war, the usefulness of the war. And so I think that while they may at times wax nostalgic about the days of long past where Argos was not at war, I do think that they have questions about whether the Trojan War was worth it.
- [29:11]
Deacon
Oh, I agree, I agree. If we track the. Let's. Let's let the narrative play out a bit, I think they start at least my takeaway from the text overall is they. They start with at least somewhat of a positive veneer of like, this was our king, this was just, he was the avenger. And then I very much agree with you that then there's going to be questions about, well, you know, was your just war done justly? And then two, now that it's all been done, do we think it was worth it? And I think those are separate questions. And I agree with you. I think they're played out as we kind of move through the text.
- [29:42]
Thomas Lackey
Well, I think Aeschylus is also, and he does this, he begins here and then it's going to go across the whole trilogy. But I think there's a certain sense of trying different ideas of justice and then, you know, weighing them in the scale, if you will. Like, was this really just, well, and then offering like another conception of justice and then trying that one out, saying, well, maybe that didn't work either. And until we finally reach the end.
- [30:09]
Deacon
I agree. If you're, if you're a first time reader of this text, which is a wonderful text, I think you're saying, well, what do I really need to track? Like, what's the main theme? Like, what am I really looking for in this text? I think it's justice. I think that's the main theme. Racist. Through the entire Oresteia, what is justice? And I agree, Thomas, I think you're going to get a lot of different takes. Not necessarily maybe one that builds upon one another, but at certain times you're going to get different perceptions of justice. And at the end of the Oresteia as a whole, we'll have to circle back and say, okay, did we receive an answer? So I want to push us on to the next section, which is the leader in Clytemnestra, start a little dialogue. So around two. Do I jump ahead a little bit? No, that's around 115 or so, I believe. Right. This is where Clytemnestra comes out. The chorus is still going on, right? Yes, the chorus is still going on. Clytemnestra has come out, but she's not speaking yet. But at 1:15, what I want to point out here is we get a return of the story of the Omen and Iphigenia. So let me see if I can just sketch this out, because I think Aeschylus takes this in a really interesting way. So if you remember when we did our Year of Homer, one of the narratives that's not in Homer is the fact that when Agamemnon finally got his thousand ship fleet to sail to Troy, they stop at an island and then when they're there a sacred hare, a bunny, a rabbit dies. We had. We have to kind of discuss how, but it dies. And Artemis then becomes infuriated. And so Artemis being the goddess of the hunt, animals are sacred to her. Artemis also has a reputation for being incredibly vengeful when even against the slightest things against her. And so Artemis says, hey, you can appease the death of this sacred hare by killing the daughter of Agamemnon and sacrificing her to me. And so one of the narratives is, is that, well, obviously Ephigenia, the daughter's not with them, so how do they get her there? He sends back to Clytemnestra, hey, I've arranged this wedding between Evigenia and Achilles, send her onto the island. So she comes, she's dressed for a wedding, she shows up and there are these horrific statements, which there's actually one here in the Orestaya as well, or even in the agaMemon, it's around 2:30 or so where she cries out, you know, she realizes that she's been betrayed. What I want to point out here at this juncture at 115 is Aeschylus gives us a retelling of how the hair died. And what's interesting is in a lot of stories, you know, it's Agamemon's men that kill the hare. Or in some stories, it's Agamemnon kills a deer sacred to Artemis, and Agamemnon knows what he's doing. Here we basically get a bird sign, if I understand this correctly, right? So there's two eagles, the twin eagles. This is Agamemnon and Menelaus, right? They're leading this charge, the Troy, and they grab this pregnant hare and tear it open. And, you know, out from the hare comes all of these unborn rabbits, right? So it's a very graphic scene that is then an analog, a foreshadowing to what's going to happen at Troy. So the first thing to take away here is that the actual death of the rabbit sacred to Artemis is actually not done by Agamemnon or any of his men. It's a bird sign, which is presumably from Zeus and I, and I am interested.
- [33:42]
Dr. Frank Grabowski
I find it interesting too, that the way that the chorus reflects upon this because. And this is in more than one, in more than one place, they say cry, cry for death in the Fagles translation. Cry, cry for death, but good went out in glory in the end. So they're sanguine about the deaths of these people. In fact, they say the same thing About Iphigenia. Cry, cry for death, but good went out in glory in the end. And so. Right. Sometimes you have to crack a few eggs to make an omelet, I suppose.
- [34:15]
Deacon
Yeah, that's a, it's a hell of an omelette.
- [34:17]
Thomas Lackey
Yeah. I mean, Artemis, you know, it says that she loathes the eagle's meal, right. And that she grudges her father's winged hounds. So there's an idea there where they are acting under some of Zeus, you know, some grant from Zeus to avenge this, this wrong. But that Artemis intends to frustrate them. I think one take I heard from Elizabeth Vandiver and I think this is the best, is that she's not objecting to anything that they have done. She's objecting to what they will do, that they will go too far, that they will destroy the young and the innocent in Troy. And I mean, I think this is something that we might look out in. Agamemnon's character in general is that he seems to destroy young and innocent and beautiful and delicate things. And I think that gets recapitulated in Iphigenia where basically the test she's setting up is, okay, this is what you're going to do to Troy. Well, first you have to become the kind of man, you have to change into the kind of man that would do this to people. And I think there's a notion here that when it talks about Iphigenia's sacrifice, that he changed.
- [35:39]
Deacon
Yeah, no, I, I agree. I actually really like that take because the, the text here was confusing to me. If you take it that Artemis is actually the vengeful goddess who seems just really arbitrarily trying to offer or request human sacrifice. Because one of the lines that stood out to me was a little after 2:15 it says, and once he slipped his neck into the strap of fate. So that's a huge line by itself. Right? So once Agamemnon decides to sacrifice his daughter, it's his own neck in the noose of fate. I mean that whole image there is, is worth some commentary. But the one that came to my mind was this the follow up. His spirit veering black and pure, unholy. And there's a really interesting juxtaposition there of like wait, we just had a bird sign from Zeus. We had Artemis demand what you need to do. You're following the will of the gods and now your soul is black. So what is righteousness here? What is piety? How. And so it makes more sense to me then that Artemis's sacrifice was actually an attempt to get them to stop going to Troy, that she's going to ask for something so asinine, right? So disproportionate to what's actually happened that no sane man would actually do this, but Agamemnon does it.
- [36:59]
Dr. Frank Grabowski
Would that be an act of mercy then, on the part of Artemis? I mean, giving them a chance, giving them an opportunity out. Like, if they could only recognize the fact that what she is suggesting or what she's proposing is outrageous. Because it does. Because then this sort of draws me to the line around 1:82.3, where the chorus recite from the gods enthroned on the awesome rowing bench, there comes a violent love. Another way of translating that from the Greek would be a kind of forced grace. That. That. That they kind of go out of their way to offer us. To offer us a way out, and yet we step on rakes constantly.
- [37:51]
Thomas Lackey
Well, I think commenting that there's a kind of absurdity here, because just following the lines that Deacon read, he talks about basically the absurdity of sacrificing a good and innocent child for a guilty woman. Right. It. There. There's already that he's contrasting these two things, and there seems to be a disproportionality already right at the outset.
- [38:17]
Deacon
Right. Oh, go ahead.
- [38:20]
Adam
I was just gonna say, did anybody, like, consider or like, the parallels between Abraham and Isaac in this whole scene here, like, of. Of giving up their son? Like, I almost felt at. At a point in time, I almost felt like Agamemnon was like, crap, I've already agreed to this. I. I guess I'm in. You know, and. And like, said, like, okay, I just got to do it. I don't know. Like, did anybody. Was there. Is there a parallel, though, that I'm maybe missing or.
- [38:54]
Dr. Frank Grabowski
I think that's a good. I think that's a good connection. Adam.
- [38:57]
Deacon
Yeah, I think the connection plays out more or better. Or maybe I'm more comfortable with it if we bring in other narratives. So there's other narratives that have tried to solve this conflict by stating that Evigenia didn't actually die, that Artemis actually saved her, or there was some kind of ruse and. And Ephigenia actually just spends the rest of her life in peace being a priestess to Artemis. And so in that context, where you actually have the Divine coming in and kind of taking the sacrifice away and protecting it, there are probably more parallels there, obviously. The two narratives, I think, are very distinct, particularly from the. You know, if you compare the intents of Abraham and Agamemnon. Right. Agamemnon never seems to think like, oh, the gods will give me my daughter back. Or, you know, this will just be a test of my piety. Him consenting to do this puts his soul in blackness and being impure. I think there's a strong parallel there to play out. Okay, I skipped a part. So let's look at. As we were kind of playing out the Ephe janaya narrative, there's a really interesting statement. So I want to flag this, and maybe Dr. Kabowski or Thomas can take a hit at it. And this is. If you go back to line 161 in Fagles, it says, zeus, great, nameless. All in all, if that name will gain his favor, I will call him Zeus. I mean that. It's a very simple little couple lines to read over, but I think there's something going on here.
- [40:36]
Adam
Yeah. In the book, I made a note. I said, I wonder if Plato picked up on this. Like, I wonder if this is where he. Like, I wonder if this is one of the things he said. Like, this is because it seems like they're moving from the multiple God to maybe a monolithic or maybe, like, unmoved mover type of God right here. So I don't know. That was just what was in my note, like, what I wrote down in my book.
- [41:00]
Deacon
It's funny you wrote out Plato, because in my notes, I agree with you. Plato's Euthyphro comes to mind. But in my notes, I wrote out St. Paul. Right. The unknown God.
- [41:09]
Adam
So we're just showing, like, the holiness factor.
- [41:11]
Deacon
Right.
- [41:11]
Adam
It's like, I'm the pagan, you're the ordained deacon. I get it. I understand.
- [41:16]
Deacon
I appreciate you playing out that analogy. Thank you.
- [41:21]
Dr. Frank Grabowski
To answer your question, Deacon, I would just briefly. I just briefly say that this reflects something that I think we'll see as we move on through the trilogy, and that is the limitations of language, that we come up with words for those things that we can conceptualize. And if we struggle to conceptualize something, then often we can't find the words to fit what it is that we have in mind. And I think that this is one instance. But as we move forward with this play into libation bearers and humanities, I think the same thing holds true for justice, that Aeschylus is trying to work up a novel or a different understanding of justice than what we may have become accustomed to in Homer. And I think that this is approaching something more philosophical that we'll encounter later in Plato's.
- [42:25]
Deacon
Dialogues. And in Aristotle, yeah, There's something oftentimes in our year of Homer, we talked about that there were concepts that are nascent. Right. They're incipient, they're just kind of beginning. They're not necessarily at a philosophical stage yet, but definitely. Just like Homer was a teacher, Aeschylus is a teacher. And it just really caught my attention here that Zeus is now almost standing as a symbol or sign for a divine force. It just seems like there's something has occurred here in Greek thought. But if I recall correctly, there's really not anything akin to that in Homer by name. You could make an argument. It just occurs to me, you could make an argument that it's there in its beginning stages insofar as it's very difficult to extricate Zeus from the nameless fate. And maybe that's where it is in Homer, that those two really can't ever be separated. And here it seems to be that, oh, well, we can call the nameless fate, we can call this nameless power Zeus, that they are the same, but one's personified.
- [43:29]
Thomas Lackey
Do you wonder if Aeschylus weren't quite so old and respected at this time, if he wouldn't have suffered a similar fate to Socrates, you mean? Go ahead.
- [43:41]
Deacon
So you think the statement's impious.
- [43:43]
Thomas Lackey
Like it's impious in something of the same sense. Right. Because only he's. He's making a distinction between the stories we tell about the gods and the gods themselves, which in just implicitly opposite.
- [43:55]
Dr. Frank Grabowski
I was going to say the opposite, though. I mean, I'm not. Yeah, I, you know, you might be right, Thomas, but I was actually going to say that this seems to be a gesture or a way of expressing piety. He says, you know, I have no words to do him justice. I'm not worthy. Wayne and Garth.
- [44:16]
Deacon
Right.
- [44:16]
Thomas Lackey
Now, I want to be clear. I don't mean that Socrates either was actually impious. I mean impious in the same sense that Socrates was accused of it. Because of course, Socrates, the whole irony is that he's actually very pious.
- [44:31]
Dr. Frank Grabowski
Right, right, right, right. No, but I do, I do appreciate deacons bringing this up, because I think language is something that I think we have to keep in mind when we're reading these plays, because I think, really do think that Aeschylus is desperately trying to formulate new ways of speaking about justice, although he just simply doesn't have the vocabulary to do so.
- [44:57]
Deacon
But the grammar is becoming more refined. Right. So one of the things that we're looking at is these poetics, particularly the Greek playwrights, these tragedians, are really an intellectual bridge between Homer and Plato. And so we're seeing, though, I think, that the grammar has developed and we're gonna see that with justice. Right, The. The grammar around justice has developed. It's at a maturation that's now allowing these Greeks to discuss certain concepts that we just. We might see in a certain way in Homer. But they've actually grown a lot over the last 300 years.
- [45:30]
Dr. Frank Grabowski
It's not to detract from Plato's contributions or, you know, what he does in the dialogues, but I think it's critical we understand how we get from Homer to Plato, and it's going to be by way of this bridge of these dramatists.
- [45:51]
Thomas Lackey
Well, I think it's interesting as well to think that what. When you lack exactly the word you want, you can still sometimes approach indirectly the point you'd like to make through a story. And I think, I mean, in a very important way, this is what Aeschylus is doing. He may lack the exact grammar, but he can say, well, let me tell you this. And then somehow people apprehend what he's trying to get at. Even though he doesn't have the one word, he can say, well, let me tell you this story, and you'll see it. And, And I think. I think that works very well here.
- [46:21]
Deacon
Agreed. Yeah. One of my, One of my theories currently that's. That's just kind of occurred to me is that after reading Homer and actually seeing how much is actually in those texts from, like a beginning, philosophical reflection on things, you know, in Plato's dialogue. Well, I'll say it this way. When Aristotle, he only quotes Plato when he disagrees with him. Like, Aristotle doesn't say throughout all of his texts, like, I learned this from Plato, or if you read Plato's dialogue here, this is where I'm extracting a systematic theology. He only really quotes Plato when he disagrees with him. I've come to realize that Plato does the same thing with Homer. So I think Plato is actually heavily in debt to a lot of Homeric thought. But he only quotes him when he disagrees with him to a certain degree. And so I haven't read the Republic in a while, but I remember when I first read it how critical he was of him. But then when you read Homer, you're like, oh, there are a lot of things here that Plato has roots in. And so it's funny to join that great conversation and see how these great minds are kind of Riffing off each other. And I just think it's funny on the Greeks, they tend to only quote each other when they actually disagree, but they're actually heavily indebted to each other.
- [47:28]
Dr. Frank Grabowski
Absolutely.
- [47:30]
Deacon
All right, let's sally forth, if we will. And now jump to the leader in Clytemnestra in their dialogue after the chorus. And that pushes us all the way to 2. 59. So one of the things that sticks out to me in this passage that I might just kind of point out as a beginning point for the dialogue on this section. And again, I'm going to. I'm going to put this on a T. And then Thomas can come in and swing away. So the. Around 280 in the fagals edition, Clytemnestra gives this really long description of how the beacons were lit. Right. Which again, I can't say that without thinking of Lord of the Rings, but anyway, how the beacons were actually lit throughout this process. And I'm gonna tell you what, I had flashbacks to the end of book two in the Iliad, where they have like, this whole group of, like, here's all the people who came on the ships and they list all these names and etc. And it's one of Adam's favorite parts of the entire Iliad. And so one of the things, though, that caught my attention is like, you know, when you have a scene like that, your mind becomes numb and you're just like, I'm just gonna go right past this. And obviously in the Iliad, one of the things that we tried to push back on was like, yes, this is a difficult passage. It has all the charm of a biblical genealogy, but there's actually something here which is. It's actually praising Greek unity, Right? These, these little warring polis, you know, city states, don't get together for things. And so this is actually a giant anthem to Greek unity. So, Thomas. This is another part where my brain wanted to go numb and skip this entire list of why do I care where the beacons are?
- [49:15]
Thomas Lackey
Yeah, so apparently. And. And again, I'm. I'm drawing on a commentary here. I think this one was also one of Mr. One of Professor Meinecke's. But the gist is that all of these mountains have some sort of connection to the story, and particularly towards some sort of like, inter familial violence or. But, for example, Ida, let's start right there is the site of the initial choice of Paris that sort of sets all of this in motion. So Limnos is famed for all the women there having overthrown and murdered their husbands. Right. And you kind of go down these lists, and I can't even claim to be. To know the stories of all of them, but one of these mountains, I think it's Kytheron, but one of them is also the mountain that overlooks the plain where Iphigenia was sacrificed. Right. And so you kind of go down these. These don't seem to be accidental mentions, especially Limnos, which is mentioned by Aeschylus again later. I believe it's in Libation Bearers. So this story is one he's obviously familiar with. I mean, but these bring on kind of a. They bring back stories with them, I think would be the good way to put it. Each of these has, like, this little backstory that's being brought into this tale.
- [50:49]
Adam
I had a. I had a question on 260. When it talks, when he says, we, we've. We've come, Clonesra, we respect your power. Can you maybe, like, what does that really mean? Like, what does it mean for them to respect their power? Like, I know we talked a little bit about, you know, in Odysseus or in the Odyssey, when. When Odysseus was trying to come home and all the suitors were there and they were trying. It didn't seem like they were really respecting her power. Odysseus wife. Like, I wonder what that really means. Like, respect. Respect your power as queen.
- [51:29]
Thomas Lackey
I think one thing is when you really respect someone's power, you don't usually start off by saying, I really respect your power.
- [51:39]
Deacon
You think this is like a. Well, I mean, another thing too, that occurs to me is this is a description of Clytemnestra, right? And so, you know, is this not another playing off of. Of the gender, Right? So I. I respect your power, Queen. Well, usually the people who, right, are rejoicing in their strength, standing in their power. These are all phrases that are typically reserved, you know, for these, for the. The arete of men, right? And so to me, I took that as another kind of riff on, you know, is Clytemnestra acting like a man. That would be my. That was my gut reaction about it, okay.
- [52:18]
Adam
Because, I mean, we see a complete inverse, right, with Penelope and in the Odyssey, because they don't respect. They never blame. You know, in here, in Agamemnon, they say, we want to hear, but we never blame your silence. And, man, in the Odyssey, they were, you know, Penelope was not allowed to stay silent. You know, they kept trying to coax her. So, like, I was just curious on. It just seems like it's a complete inverse of a queen's roles, duties, how they respect him, how they. Whether or not they allow him to talk or not. Like, you know, it just seems like. So I didn't know if there was some irony there or if it was a play on words. I didn't know if I was missing something.
- [52:57]
Deacon
No, it's a good question. I think it's a good question.
- [53:00]
Thomas Lackey
I'll add to the end, of course, that she then goes into this detail about the. The beacons, which shows that she's much, much cleverer than the people she's dealing with. Right. So she. Now, I'm not saying that beacon fires were completely unheard of in the day, and they weren't and all the rest, but she had set up this entire scheme in such a way that they were. They had no idea what was going on, and yet she had this, all this all worked out. So I think we're also just seeing the disparity between her level of planning and everybody else's level of understanding of what's going on.
- [53:33]
Deacon
No, I think that's definitely a theme. I think she outwits people throughout the entire narrative. So let's kind of push Forward a bit. So 3. 45. I just want to flag this goes Back to what Dr. Grabowski and I were going back and forth on is like, how do the men. How's the chorus? How's the city view? The Trojan War. And so there's a line here where it says, just let no lust, no mad desire. Seize the armies to ravish what they must not touch, Overwhelmed by all they've won. So this is obviously a statement of irony because we know the Achaians, when they sacked Troy, they went too far. So again, we get this interplay of like, okay, it's a just war, but a just war can be done unjustly. And so, you know, you get this narrative. I think little Ajax is probably the best example of this, which, you know, they. They chase the woman into Athena's temple and basically, you know, drag her out and violate her in Athena's temple, where she should have been safe. And so this is actually what incurs Athena's curse at in between the two books where she asked Poseidon to curse them as they're all having to go back home when the Greeks have to go back home. So this is the. The impetus of this curse. So again, for the purpose of this conversation I'm tracking, is the Trojan War a just war? My working Understanding throughout the text is, yes, it was just because Paris violated guest friendship by taking Helen, and Zeus oversees that guest friendship. Agamemnon is the avenger. But then they act unjustly, right, when they're actually in Troy. And so now we have this curse that comes upon the men as they come back.
- [55:12]
Dr. Frank Grabowski
And it's not just a few lines later where once again we have this. We encounter this question of who or what is Clytemnestra? She says, here you have it. What a woman has to say. And the leader of the chorus responds, spoken like a man, right? So I think that there's. This takes us back to a point that was made earlier about how unsettled this entire play is. There's something that is wrong. There's something unnatural, something diabolical afoot.
- [55:48]
Thomas Lackey
Well, I think there's a wrestling there with something about unsettling, about justice itself, because I think there's a notion that, like Deacon was just saying, that here is a just war. And I think not only is there a kind of doubt, or almost even despair over whether or not it was waged justly, but I think there's a kind of a doubt as to whether or not it can be waged justly. Meaning that for justice to be done, I have to avenge this wrong, but can I actually avenge it without doing further wrongs? And I think that's the kind of the, the, the thing that Aeschylus begins to show in many different forms. We had the Iphigenia form, now we're having the form of the sack of Troy itself. And we'll continue to get this replayed.
- [56:33]
Deacon
No, I agree there's very much a theme of justice. And actually that's a good segue into. If you look at 380, this is where, you know, Thomas has already played out kind of the curse of the House of Atreus, and this is where Aeschylus actually starts to touch on it, right? Full blown. The father's crimes will blossom. But here I think there's a little bit of an irony going on because they're actually talking about Troy, if I understood this correctly. Like, it's actually talking about. So here it would actually be Paris's crimes fall upon his father Priam, and the whole polis suffers. But obviously I think there's a deep irony here because they're also commenting on the House of Atreus, which has this kind of cascading generational curse going through it. And then underneath that, it's juxtaposed with a statement of justice. And I Think that, you know, particularly for the first time readers, this is what you have to watch. You've got to watch when he talks about justice. And so we get at 385, right, who treads the grand altar of justice down and out of sight. It's juxtaposed with, if you look back at 250, there's another comment of justice that turns and balances the scales. So he's giving us all these examples, right, Troy, etc. And then he's commenting on in a certain way, how do we see justice in this text? And I would say this is a little bit like, how do we phrase this? It's a little bit like looking like a diamond, where we're not actually seeing the whole diamond at the same time, we're just seeing a facet of it, right? So it's like, well, here's one story here. Here's a story of guest friendship and how the, you know, injustice of a son can be heaped upon the father. And here's the. This, you know, you can't tread upon the altar of justice, but this is just one facet. But you kind of have to string these all along to mix metaphors within the orestaya to figure out then what is he actually trying to move us towards as a concept?
- [58:21]
Thomas Lackey
I think there's an idea here too that when he brings in analogies regarded to excess and greed and luxury and these other things, that these are routes to injustice in various forms. So just like he's dealing with various sort of attempts at picturing justice, I think he's also offering various routes and pictures of injustice.
- [58:47]
Deacon
No, I agree. If you look at like 4:45, Thomas, I think you went, you went. Or actually, this kind of tethers to. This kind of tethers to the conversation that Dr. Grabowski and I have been going back and forth on of like, was, how do we see the Trojan War? So we've seen, okay, maybe it's just they did some things that were unjust while they were there, but now we're starting to get some commentary on the back end about was the Trojan War worth it? And so, you know, it goes, you know, he went down so tall an onslaught all for another woman. So they mutter in secret, right? And the rancor steals towards our staunch defenders, Atreus's sons. So now we're seeing that there's this bickering, there's this undercurrent of murmuring of like, wait, was this war actually worth it? Look what we've suffered all for the sake of another woman. Actually, if you keep going on just a few lines after 4:50, it's a little bit more clear. The people's voice is heavy with hatred now the curses of the people must be paid.
- [59:50]
Dr. Frank Grabowski
What?
- [59:51]
Thomas Lackey
I mean, I think it's a recapitulation, right, as well, of the idea of the innocent being sacrificed for the guilty.
- [59:59]
Deacon
Yeah, it's another facet of that.
- [60:01]
Thomas Lackey
Yeah.
- [60:02]
Deacon
What were you gonna say, Dr. Grabowski?
- [60:04]
Dr. Frank Grabowski
No, I just said, really, what is war good for?
- [60:07]
Adam
Absolutely nothing.
- [60:09]
Deacon
It's not a good reference. All right, let's push into the next section, which is the leader dialoguing with the Herald. And so this starts at like, 479, 480. And so one of the things I. One of the takeaways I had here just, you know, as kind of like a raw take, was the herald very clearly is showing up before the armies, right? So here's this herald. He's coming beforehand. He's saying that Agamemon is coming. And so one of the things, though, I think, that we have to notice here is I think we have to take great note of how Aeschylus portrays him returning to Argos. And so you get it like, 495 good Greek earth, the soil of my fathers. Ten years out and a morning brings me back. There's this deep piety that he expresses, kind of like, you know, metaphorically for the soil. Right. For his home country. He's returned to the Polis. And I think that what Escalus is doing here is he's giving us a preliminary site of the men coming back. Because then this is going to be contrasted then with the return of Agamemnon himself.
- [61:21]
Thomas Lackey
Yeah, you can imagine him, you know, literally falling on his knees and, like, kissing the ground.
- [61:26]
Deacon
And I think the Escalus, you know, even kind of plays this out. Five, 15, give him. That's Agamemnon, the royal welcome he deserves. He hoisted the pickaxe of Zeus, who brings revenge. So, of course, now he's starting to prepare Argos for the return of the king, as Dr. Hrawski said earlier, Right. Argos is suffering, it's in pain, it's disordered, the throne is empty, and the king needs to return to establish order. And he has a royal welcome, right, that he deserves because he is the avenger of Zeus right here as a pickaxe, which I think is an interesting. It's an interesting use of that, right? Why not a hammer or a sword? There's probably some meaning there. But at the end of the day. Right. He is an agent of Zeus's justice upon Troy.
- [62:14]
Thomas Lackey
Although I wonder, because he says that he's raised it and worked over and the seed utterly destroyed from the land. And it talks. I think it's in this line somewhere about the altars being thrown down. There's this notion where they've exacted justice. But then the things he begins to list are things that have gone too far and violated holy and sacred things.
- [62:39]
Deacon
Yeah, it says right after that, the shrines of her gods and the high altars, gone. So you think that could be an example of another example that they went too far.
- [62:47]
Thomas Lackey
Right.
- [62:48]
Deacon
The just war was unjust.
- [62:49]
Thomas Lackey
Okay, Well, I mean, a good example of that is violating the, The. The. The altar with Priam. Right. So Priam is killed while claiming sanctuary at the altar in one of the temples. Of course, there's also the example of Cassandra being assaulted by little Ajax in Athena's temple.
- [63:12]
Deacon
So let's look at the. This, this section keeps going and it enters into one of the dialogues I actually found most delightful just because of the play back and forth and the ironies that are in it, where you have the leader and the herald, and the herald's very excited to be home and to repair the way of the king. And then the leader is very much trying to imply to him that something is terribly wrong. Right? And so you get these kind of. These two very clashing dispositions. And it actually lends to what I found to be a very, maybe darkly comedic, but comedic back and forth. And so, for instance, right. The leader is like, this is a little bit before 5:35. Love for the ones who love you. That's what took you. The herald says, you mean the land and the armies hungered for each other? There were times I thought I'd faint with longing. So anxious for the armies. Why, leader? For years now, only my silence has kept me free from harm. And so the leader is very much trying to hint to the herald that something is amiss. Right. The home is in disorder and trying to, I think, communicate to the herald, like, you should probably tell the king something. Right. Something is actually wrong and the king is coming home. There has to be a warning.
- [64:30]
Thomas Lackey
Well, I think maybe Agamemnon wonders that too. Right. He doesn't just ride in and triumph. He sends the herald out to sort of feel things out ahead of him.
- [64:40]
Adam
Well, he also doesn't roll in like, I mean, he's rolling in with another gal, which I know that's normal for then, but, like, maybe not the smartest thing haven't seen your wife in a while. Oh, yeah, by the way, I got another gal behind me.
- [64:55]
Thomas Lackey
Well, I think there's also a good question about how much triumph he feels at the moment, because as we got in the Herald's speech, all of the other ships were lost. So the only ship to make it back is Agamemnon's. So most of the people.
- [65:09]
Deacon
Right. In his fleet.
- [65:11]
Thomas Lackey
In his fleet, his personal fleet, because.
- [65:13]
Deacon
Lots of them make it back of the fleet overall. But you're talking about the only ship that comes back, Vagabinmon, is one ship of his fleet from Argos. Right. That's how that works.
- [65:23]
Thomas Lackey
Correct. And all I'm getting at is that many of the people within the city will be mourning to see that their loved ones didn't make it back. So there's a very mixed sort of sense of honor. I'm sure they're glad to have the king back. But then, you know, they're looking over his shoulder to see is my. Is my brother, my. My husband, my son among the. The group. And, you know, he's not.
- [65:50]
Deacon
I agree. Let's look at. So let's push forward into the next section, which is. Then you get the leader dialoguing with Clytemnestra. And there's a section here down at the bottom. This is line a little after 600 that I kind of want to touch on, which is Clytemnester now is telling her own story, and she's talking about how faithful she is. She's wonderful, right? She's. She's faithful. And she says down here. And for his wife, may he return and find her true at hall, just as the day he left her faithful to the last, a watchdog, gentleman to him alone. And so I think there's a deeper thing going on here which I'm going to have to defer to my betters on in the Greek. But what it caught my attention was that we're. We're tracking a theme of justice in the Oresteia, in Agamemnon, right? We're tracking a theme of justice, and she talks about herself as the watchdog, and that very much is an analog for a very primitive understanding of justice. We actually see this explicitly in Plato's Republic, where he talks about his guardians of the polis. Because the dog, the faithful watchdog, is just. It is friendly towards the family, friendly towards friends, and it hates its enemies. And that's a really primitive understanding of justice. I give to those what is due to them. Right. I love my friends And I hate my enemies because in that very. This is the watchdog. Because in that kind of very primitive understanding of justice, there's no betrayal. Right. I think about the. The cold, dark pit of hell and Dante's Inferno. Right. Is. Is referred. Reserved for the betrayers. Right. Those who betray, you know, their masters or their lords. And the, the watchdog doesn't do this. This is a primitive understanding of justice. And it's interesting that Aeschylus uses it as a somewhat darkly comedic picture of what Clytemnestra is saying. She is.
- [67:49]
Dr. Frank Grabowski
Yeah. And I would just add one. One little fun tidbit here for the listeners of the Ascend podcast is that, you know, the Greek word here that's being translated as watchdog, Kuon is. It does mean a dog who typically helps a shepherd out with his job. But kuon is also the word that Helen uses to refer to herself in, in the Iliad, which fill in the blank female dog rhymes with witch and pitch and ditch. But it's interesting that I'm not tracking.
- [68:31]
Deacon
Dr. Kabowski is, you know, being pious because I'm pretty sure I read that passage out loud when we did Homer and just said it. So I appreciate that he has a good piety for the podcast.
- [68:42]
Dr. Frank Grabowski
No, but, but again, I think this is once again Aeschylus, given his facility with language, the, the, the keen eared audience would pick up on this. That she is referring to herself as you might say a watchdog in the sense of, of being just. Of being noble, of protecting the flock. But this is. She's also a rather shrewish, unscrupulous woman. That she's vengeful.
- [69:18]
Deacon
Yeah. It's basically a masterful pun, right?
- [69:22]
Adam
I think so.
- [69:22]
Dr. Frank Grabowski
I think that's what he's getting at.
- [69:24]
Deacon
Yeah. Not that Adam, don't get too excited, but like, you know, it's a brilliant pun in the Greek, basically, is how I took it. Okay, well, let's push on to the next section, which is then the Herald and the Leader go back into dialogue. They kick it off with understanding. Where is Menelaus? So if you remember in the story, they've lost him. He's not dead. They've literally lost him. Right. His. Him and his ships have been lost. If you remember, he goes down to Egypt and has his own kind of, you know, Odyssey that then gets picked up at the beginning of the actual Odyssey when Telemachus goes and visits him and we kind of hear his whole story. So it's interesting here that there's this own little take of just like, wait, where is Menelaus? Because it's interesting, in Aeschylus he has Agamemnon and Menelaus basically coming both from Argos. Right. They're the twin eagles. And they seem to be coming back to the same place where Menelaus really was kind of going back to Sparta. And there's. It's a little gray there. But again, like these twin eagles, they both been to be based out of Argos, they're both coming back to Argos. Sparta is not playing as key of a role here, as I think it does in Homer. There is, if you push forward, kind of thinking about Homer 2 around line 660. This is where you talk about the curse, remember, that Athena had on the men as they came back. And there's a wonderful coupling of lines here where he's telling about what happened to the fleet coming home. And he says, I see the Aegean heaving into a great bloom of corpses. Greeks, the pick of a generation, scattered through the wrecks and broken spars. And so outside it's kind of this kind of dark beauty that this passage has. It also is showing you the best of the generation. This is part of that sorrow as Agamemnon comes home about whether Argos and the people actually think this war was worth it and how they're actually going to receive their king.
- [71:20]
Thomas Lackey
This is an interesting question that immediately follows that because then he says, yet ourselves and our ship, its hull unscathed, some God either stole away or begged us off. So he's saying that some God saved them, uniquely. I wonder. I don't know if that's expounded anywhere else, but I wonder for what reason they were spared.
- [71:41]
Deacon
That's a good question.
- [71:43]
Thomas Lackey
And by which God?
- [71:46]
Deacon
Yeah. Or whether that's just an implication of the fact that some God must have looked after them because they've arrived home. Right. Because everything is so faded. So a God must have spared us because we made it. Right. All right, let's look at the next section, which is the chorus. This is like line 683 or so. I think I'll mention one or two things and then. And then Maybe set up Dr. Grabowski here. One of the things I thought was really interesting is that it contextualizes the Trojan War as a wedding between the Achaeans and the Trojans. You get this a little bit before line 700. It kind of really riffs off the fury, this kind of female fury, if you will, in Troy's blood. Wedding day. It was just. It was an interesting Analogy that I had to kind of go over a few times to try and understand why they were using that. I'm still not entirely sure if I understand the full meaning. Eskylus is actually trying to parse out there. If anyone has any great ideas, I'm very much open to it.
- [72:53]
Thomas Lackey
Isn't it Strife that throws down the apple of the choice of Paris at the wedding of Peleus and Thetis?
- [72:59]
Dr. Frank Grabowski
Discord.
- [73:00]
Deacon
Yeah, Discord does. Which I'm pretty sure is a distinct goddess from Strife. So it could be. It could be a reference to that. That it's a wedding, right. That actually precipitates the entire Trojan War in a certain way. Right. When she throws the golden apple into the wedding of Thetis and Peleus, the parents of Achilles.
- [73:20]
Thomas Lackey
That's all I've got. That's my. That's my one. That's it.
- [73:25]
Deacon
We'll take it. I appreciate it. We're going with that. We got it. So then I think that the next thing I want to kind of tee up here is down at line 755, it says, but ancient violence longs to breed. New violence comes. And then a few lines down from this, the next paragraph, it says, but justice shines in sooty hovels and loves the decent life. Something is happening in this passage. So we've been tracking justice. And so let me kind of maybe parse it out what I see on its. On its face, and then maybe defer to Dr. Krabowski to parse out some of the Greek that I think is underneath this. So one we see. The ancient violence longs to breed new violence comes. One of the clear themes in the passage in Agamemnon as a whole is justice. But one of the primitive forms of justice that we see, that we probably need to comment on is the cycle of violence, right? The violence breeds more violence. And the way we see this is. This is the eye for an eye, right? This is lex talionis. This is the law of revenge. And so there's a few things to parse out here. So if someone actually. We see this at the end of the Odyssey, this is a good example, right? Odysseus kills the suitors. We could have a conversation about whether that's just or not. But he kills the suitors. So what happens then? The kinsmen of those suitors say, well, now we have to go kill King Odysseus because he killed our people. There's a few things to note about this. One, that this is the Blood Avenger. This is what the Hebrews will talk about, Right. The Old Testament has this as well. There's the Blood Avenger, the kinsman redeemer, that when someone in your family is murdered, it's not the state, it's not the polis that knacks revenge and justice. This is on a familial level, right. This is still very tribal and familial. And so the Blood Avenger needs to go and kill the person who murdered your kinsman. The problem with this theory is that the person you murder might also have kinsmen and a Blood Avenger who then comes back. And so this is what I took it as, is that violence breeds new violence. Is that we have this cycle on this primitive tribal violence, or, excuse me, justice that doesn't seem to end. And so in the Odyssey, if you remember, the Odyssey has what I would recall as a lackluster ending, which is it sets up a big tension in what is justice. But instead of parsing it out philosophically, the cycle is stopped via power, right? Zeus says, no, there will be peace. And Athena has this very, you know, deus ex machina ending in which he just stops it, right? Everyone will have peace, and that's it. There's no real parsing out of who's right or who's wrong. So that's what I took here, is the ancient violence longs to breed, new violence comes.
- [76:15]
Thomas Lackey
Yeah, I mean, I think the Odyssey ending is a little unsatisfying in some ways, but I actually think the most satisfying read is that it's wrestling with exactly this question of how will this cycle ever end? And there's an idea, at least. Athena, in the sense of wisdom, does offer some hope, although the actual expression of it seems kind of abrupt, you know, But I think Ezra takes up the same question.
- [76:41]
Deacon
Yeah. And I think that as Dr. Grousi said earlier, Right. You can. You can look at this of like, well, is this really a swing and a miss by Homer, or is this Homer pointing out a problem, but he doesn't have the grammar to offer an answer right now? Right.
- [76:53]
Thomas Lackey
I think it's the latter.
- [76:55]
Deacon
I think so, too. I mean, obviously, I tend to err on Homer the teacher and give him the benefit of the doubt. But, yeah, I think that there's a question at the end of the Odyssey about justice that really isn't answered, but a problem is raised. I guess just to throw out a big theory here, I think that as we move toward the Oresteia as a whole, I think how the Oresteia ends, I Think gives us the ending that we wanted in the Odyssey.
- [77:22]
Thomas Lackey
I agree. And I think also what Aeschylus is doing is re raising the same question. And he's using, you know, this is a trilogy, right? So he's re raising the question here in the first part of the trilogy and offering sort of different, again, different possible solutions. And I think part of the problem here is that as you're talking about the kinsmen Redeemer or the blood of Injuries, there's a tension between the idea that if. If the. If the Redeemer or the avenger doesn't pursue their role, there is no justice because there's no other route. Right. You. If you. All crime would be unpunished and unavenged if you just let everything go. However, there seems to be these times where it either wasn't worth it or it wasn't possible to do it without committing new crime, or, you know, some. Or you go too far and struggling with. Or there's a tension in the case as we get to Orestes himself. I must avenge my father's murderer, but I also must not harm my own family. How is he possibly going to get out of that?
- [78:30]
Deacon
Correct. So, Dr. Groski, what do you think about this passage?
- [78:35]
Dr. Frank Grabowski
Well, yeah, I think something that the reader needs to be mindful of, you know, violence. I've seen the word translated as outrage. Thomas, what translation are you using?
- [78:47]
Thomas Lackey
This one is the collared translation, and I have another one over here as well.
- [78:53]
Dr. Frank Grabowski
What word appears in that passage?
- [78:56]
Thomas Lackey
Which line is it exactly?
- [78:59]
Dr. Frank Grabowski
Well, I just want to know what the English is because, you know, I think, again, it's important to know the Greek. I was just curious, so I looked it up, and word that's being translated by fagals as violence, which is again perfectly fine, is hubris. And so I think reading hubris into this passage really does, I think, offer some other interesting directions that one may take. What Aeschylus is trying to say precisely in the contrast now between hubris and decay, or between hubris, overweening pride, if you will, and justice. So I wanted just to like, mention that and see if anyone on the podcast today interesting or significant.
- [79:50]
Deacon
How's that work? So why. How like etymologically, so that that Greek word gets transliterated into English just as hubris, which we take as pride. But in the Greek, it can mean everything from.
- [80:02]
Dr. Frank Grabowski
Well, it can mean the result. It can mean the result of pride. So, you know, if you're filled with conceit, that could lead to hubris. In the Sense of violence in the sense of a bad outcome, but it also can be understood as the pride that would result in that bad outcome. So it is ambiguous.
- [80:31]
Thomas Lackey
So the poetic translation I have here translates it as sin. So old sin loves when comes the hour again to bring forth new.
- [80:39]
Dr. Frank Grabowski
Yeah, that's a little. I think that's a little open, but I do feel there's some license there.
- [80:45]
Deacon
But.
- [80:45]
Dr. Frank Grabowski
No, it's fine.
- [80:46]
Thomas Lackey
Yeah. But the. The more modern translation from this Oxford World's Classics 1, the collar translation, has insolence, which is, I think, you know, trying to draw into the. The hubris aspect.
- [81:02]
Dr. Frank Grabowski
Well, I like that because it. It makes it more internal as opposed to something that manifests itself externally. And of course, it does bring to mind the story of Genesis and the original sin, which then leads to subsequent acts of hubris, say, in the case of Cain and Abel and so on.
- [81:25]
Deacon
No, Very good. Yeah, I appreciate you adding a lot of value to those lines because I just simply saw it on its face as that kind of primitive cycle of violence under that. That primitive form of justice.
- [81:38]
Dr. Frank Grabowski
Sure, violence does love to breed, but so too does hubris, for sure.
- [81:43]
Deacon
Yeah, no, that adds a whole nother layer to that. So I really appreciate you parsing that out. Let's sally forth into the entrance of Agamemnon. So he finally enters the play, the man himself. This is at 795. So, I mean, I'm going to give a positive read here. I'm just going to throw this out to the group. I'm going to give a positive read of Agamemnon here, where the first thing he does. What does he do? He's pious. He says, first, with justice, which is a very loaded phrase here in Aeschylus. With justice, I salute my Argos and my gods. So there's his polis, there is his gods, right? So we think about that threefold piety that typically goes from the gods, the polis and the family. So one of them's somewhat missing here, and maybe there's a reason for that. But we get two out of the three, you know, my accomplices who brought me home and won my rights from Priam's Troy. The just gods, Right? So he. He is giving the gods something they. That's owed to them, right? A just salute. And then also the gods have been just to him because they sent him as this avenger. And this actually bookends his entire opening monologue because if you go down to 8:15, he says, our thanks to the gods, long drawn out, but it is just the prelude. And then coupled with that, Aeschylus has Clytemnestra enter the scene, right. And she's bringing these tapestries. So what do we think though, before we get to the tapestries, what do we think about this opening monologue of Agabinmon? I mean, is this, is this the piety of him on display?
- [83:19]
Dr. Frank Grabowski
I would second that. That's my read. I take Agamemnon at this point to be this battle worn king. He's relieved to be home finally, he's exhausted. And I think that he is following the steps that a king would take when he returned home from a 10 plus year war. So I think that he's incredibly vulnerable at this point, which of course Clytemnetra is going to exploit. But I take this act of piety to be genuine. I don't take it to be false or performative, although there may be a performative aspect to it. But I take Agamemnon's return to be very sympathetic.
- [84:07]
Adam
Yeah, he seems to be hitting the mark, right? He seems to be playing the role well.
- [84:12]
Thomas Lackey
I think this speech in general is probably Agamemnon at his best, but I'm not sure how great the best of Agamemnon might be. You know, when he says the justice I exacted on Priam City and he says the gods hurt our cause. So I think there's a sense in which, you know, he's not saying, you know, Zeus brought justice upon Priam and I was the instrument. It's, I brought vengeance on Priam and the gods helped me. And I think there is an important difference there.
- [84:52]
Deacon
I do, I, I very much want to second that. I think that he is at his best here and I think that he's coming off. I mean, they did this several times where the Achaeans, they didn't give the right sacrifices. Remember when they built their own ramparts? So the gods got all bent out of shape and sideways on that. They didn't offer the proper sacrifices and piety to Athena, if they even could do that, to appease her wrath. And so I think he's coming off right, being humbled, which I realize is a thick word, but I think he's coming off being humbled of losing his men over the sea. So yes, they defeated Troy, but you know, again we get into this, this conversation of but was it worth it? And to what degree is he coming home as a victor?
- [85:34]
Thomas Lackey
Oh, just one interesting note. He says the storms of ruin live on, but that's ruin with capital R. Like Ate. It's only an interesting thing to call back to the Iliad when he talks about things going very wrong and he talks about going wrong for them, about ruin haunting his house. So here he's talking about ruin on Priam. But back in the Iliad, there's almost like this oblique reference to the idea of ruin haunting his own house. Mm.
- [86:09]
Deacon
There's a sign. So if you kind of push forward a little bit in the narrative, you know, another one I think that elicits a lot of different opinions is he mentions Odysseus in 8:25. He says, My comrades, their shadows, I tell you. Ghosts of men who swore they died for me. Only Odysseus, I dragged that man to wars. But once in harness, he was a trace horse. He gave his all for me, dead or alive. No matter, I can praise him. So my understanding is that there's a positive and a negative reading here. So the positive read is that Odysseus did basically win him the war. Right. So if you remember, if you go back to our Ascend, you know, after hours podcast, when we did the interim between the Odyssey, excuse me, the Iliad and the Odyssey, almost all those narratives are all focused on Odysseus, right. He just. Every. Every problem that comes up, he solves, right? They have to go get the bow, they have to get the thing from Athena, they have to do all these. He solves all these problems. Up until then, obviously he's the one that comes up with the Trojan horse. So in a certain way, this is like, of course he's going to praise Odysseus because ultimately he won him the war. I think, though, there's also a negative read of it, which actually Fagles has in his notes, in which Aeschylus audience would have seen this as a sign of Agamemnon's obtuseness, of his inability to actually read people and understand what's happening around him fully. Because Odysseus was known, you know, as the trickster, as the great deceiver. And for him to only praise Odysseus as the one man that he basically can trust shows that he still hasn't quite figured out Odysseus yet at all.
- [87:43]
Dr. Frank Grabowski
Yeah, I think that's a cynical read, though.
- [87:47]
Thomas Lackey
Yeah, I got to go with pro. I was just critical of Agamemnon. So I'm going to switch it around now and say I actually think. I take the positive read here and say that he's giving he's. To the best that Agamemnon can do. Trying to share the credit, which is not a trait. We see much out of Agamemnon in the Iliad.
- [88:10]
Adam
That's true.
- [88:10]
Deacon
No, he's still at his best. Adam, what do you think?
- [88:12]
Adam
No, I. I think I take the positive like I take the positive read for him. I don't typically stand up for Agamemnon too much, but when I feel like that I can. I'm going to.
- [88:26]
Deacon
That's great. I. Sorry, I'm still too jaded from the Odyssey. So I just see an Odysseus reference and it has to be a negative. So I'm going with the cynical one on this one. I haven't forgiven him. Right after he, you know, had little. What was his name? A Styanax. Once he had little style ax thrown off the walls of Troy. That was it for me. It was downhill. So anyway, we'll move on. So Clytemnestra responds to him and I think this is another like, hilarious scene because this is like this starts a little bit before 845 where she basically just tells him how hard her life has been. So here's the king getting back from a 10 year war in which he's basically lost all of his men. He's the victor, but he's not even quite sure if he can relish in his victory. And it's not really sure if the polis is actually going to receive him as king. And Clytemnestra's. Is this her first. This is her first substantive response to him is basically about how hard it's been to be a woman sitting at home.
- [89:25]
Thomas Lackey
Of course it's not to him though, it's difficult.
- [89:28]
Adam
It's a difficult life.
- [89:30]
Deacon
Oh, that's true. Yeah. So, Thomas, that's a good correction. She's actually turning to the chorus, right?
- [89:38]
Thomas Lackey
Yeah. I just think it's interesting that she doesn't address him directly at first. Now neither did he address her directly. He addresses the people, then she addresses the people, but neither one of them are speaking to each other yet.
- [89:51]
Deacon
Yeah, no, that's good clarity.
- [89:53]
Thomas Lackey
And she also stops him from getting down from the chariot, which is going to become important. Just a minute. But I mean, kind of in the stage direction kind of aspect of it, you can tell from what follows he was about to step out and she's like. She stops him by her speech.
- [90:09]
Deacon
Well, let's look at 865 because I think something's going on here too. So when she finally turns to Agamemnon, she says, and so our child is gone. Not standing by our side, the bond of our dearest pledges, mine and yours, by all rights, our child should be here. And of course, when I read this, I was like, oh boy, like, here we go. This is Ephigenia. Right. So, by the way, because this is something to think about, they have not seen each other or I guess presumably spoken to one another since Agmedmon duped her into sending their daughter and he did a human sacrifice, which I'm assuming for familial relationships is a negative. Right. And so I think there's. Then it pivots right. Orestes. Oh, you seem startled. So it seems like, I mean, I could be wrong here, but this seems like this passage right here, their first actual. Like they're actually interacting with one another is incredibly thick. It's predicated on the child that's missing, I thought, which I think is what Aeschyls is intending. You think she's going to mention Ephigenia, but then she mentions Orestes and then mentions that Agamemnon has a response. So he realizes now his son is not home either, which I'm assuming he sees his son as, you know, an ally and also just someone that he would long to see after. What has this now been over 10 years? And so I thought this was a brilliant little section.
- [91:41]
Dr. Frank Grabowski
Well, she's ironic throughout this entire exchange with Agamemnon, it's just rife with these subversive, passive aggressive insults.
- [91:55]
Thomas Lackey
I think this is.
- [91:56]
Dr. Frank Grabowski
She even refers to him at one point as the watchdog of the fold, once again using that same word, Kuon, to refer to him. Right. And so I think this is her way of asserting once again her power, her authority. Who is really in charge here? Agamemnon is a beaten man physically as well, intellectually at this point, she's outmaneuvering him left and right.
- [92:26]
Thomas Lackey
I was going to say as well that, I mean, you see that there's a kind of a callback here to the Odyssey where Clytemnestra sent Orestes away, probably for Orestes own safety as well. But the effect is that she prevents him from ever seeing his son, which is which of those is foremost in her mind at this moment. We know that that becomes a theme that's in the Odyssey, that I never got to see my son. Or better to put it even more strongly, she denied me being able to see my son again.
- [93:01]
Deacon
Well, let's pick up that theme of denial, because I think that is. I think that's going to very Much animate some of these scenes that I. I didn't quite understand her intent until I think you. I think the theme of denial is what makes certain actions of hers illuminated, right, or blossom. So let me kind of just throw this out. There's two things, I think, to think about. So it's both predicated on the tapestries, right? So you have these tapestries, and she's throwing these out to him. And very clearly, the impact, or, you know, how I understood this was, is that, you know, these tapestries take a lot to make, almost an obscenely, you know, rich process to make. And my understanding also is that if he walks on them, they're basically going to be ruined. And so Agamemnon's the one that basically tells us, this type of greeting for me is reserved for the gods. So she seems to be tempting him into blasphemy. But here's what I don't get about it, is why, like, why do this? So the whole point is to get him inside the house where she's going to murder him. The blasphemy does not seem to be a necessary part. Right? Like, why do this? Why. Why is she playing? I'm assuming also the tapestries inform us, because of the incredibly intricate way they're made, that Clytemnestra has been doing this for a long time. She has been planning this out for a very long time. And so why does she do this? I mean, what is the insight here? Why go through all of this trouble of the tapestries when the whole point is just to get him inside the house? Well, she's gonna go inside anyway.
- [94:45]
Adam
Does it make it easier for him, like, it. To make it feel better? Like, I don't know. Like, it seems like maybe it helps her conscience or something like that, knowing, like, listen, he did this too. So it just, like, it makes it easier to. To tell the whole, you know, the whole populace, like, hey, this is. He's dead, but look, he also did this. So I don't know. That's a raw thing.
- [95:11]
Deacon
No, I think. No, Adam, I think there's something there. I mean, when I first heard of the Oresteia people, who told me about it, very much kind of presented a story in which Agamemnon deserved his death because he came home and had such pomp and circumstance for him coming home, that it was blasphemous and that he almost deserved his fate. And it's interesting because that's not the read that I have now, actually looking at the text, even though I do think for some reason, Clytemnestra, one, wants him to commit blasphemy. And two, I think the tapestries are playing a somewhat subtle role of the denial.
- [95:54]
Thomas Lackey
Yeah, I think there's a couple of things. As you mentioned, the tapestries, the die doesn't stick. So not only will that ruin the tapestry, but it will come off on his feet. So there's a very symbolic element of his feet being stained red by walking on these. He's. He's. You know, I think there. There's also to recall the theme we had earlier of the idea that Agamemnon is responsible for the destruction of beautiful and innocent and delicate things. I think there's a sense of acting that out, just like with Iphigenia and these other situations where he is responsible for the destruction of what is good and beautiful. And then lastly, I think on the theme of denial that you're hinting at is that, remember, he has not stepped out of the chariot yet. So he's not had that moment the herald had of, you know, kissing this good Greek earth. I'm home again. And by rolling this out, she literally prevents him from ever touching the ground. He never gets to come home. He's denied that in some real sense.
- [97:06]
Deacon
Yeah. And I think that is. I mean, I agree with you 100%. And so I think that is what really has to be noted here, is that the blasphemy. Yeah. I took as like, she's trying to, like, maybe justify her actions, right? Like, oh, this was a blasphemer that I have killed. And so she's trying to move the gods to her side or something like that. But what really struck me was is that this denies him even setting his foot back on Earth. And this is, again, I think, should be compared back to the herald, which I think, Thomas, I had a very much, a very similar image in my head with the herald of when he's saying these things about the soil, he's, like, on his knees, like, you know, gripping the earth. Right. And so you compare the herald's coming home with Agamemnon's coming home, and that Kaitenestra's hatred is to such a degree that she will go through the process of making these tapestries and deny him, even setting his foot on the earth. Right. She's denying his homecoming in every single aspect she possibly can. And, I mean, this woman has been planning this with a deep, abiding hatred for her husband for years.
- [98:15]
Adam
Well, Agamemnon wasn't really excited about coming. Like, wasn't through the Iliad, like, wasn't eager to get home. You know, he did draw out that war for. For 10 years.
- [98:29]
Deacon
That's true. So let's look at. Well, I mean, anything else on this. I mean, anything else on the. The tapestries. I mean, it's. It's kind of over the top, right? Like 902 or so. Quickly let the red stream flow and bear him home. I mean, it's clear blood imagery there. So what anything else on this that we've missed? Because I think there are multiple layers here.
- [98:53]
Dr. Frank Grabowski
Just one quick point, and that is that once again, we get an interesting gender swap where Agamemnon accuses his. His wife Clytemnestra of treating him like a woman. So, again, I think that this business about the tapestries reminds us that once again, we have in Clytemnestra someone who is asserting herself as very masculine, as embodying many of these masculine virtues that we've grown accustomed to from Homer. But, Thomas, I'm sorry, you were saying?
- [99:28]
Thomas Lackey
Oh, no, no, I was gonna say that. I think also one thing, and this actually perfectly segues with that is I think she's baffled him, right? Because when he objects to doing it, he gives multiple reasons that are not quite the same. I'm not a woman. I'm not. This is too rich. I'm not a God. This. I'm not a barbarian. He's giving all sorts of. He knows something's wrong, but he seems to be casting about for the exact reason why he feels that it's wrong. And I think that there's a sense in which she's, you know, again, operating at a. At a level of clever. Cleverness. A couple of steps above him, maybe more than a couple of steps. And he knows he's. He knows he's getting. He's getting set up, but he can't quite figure out what's wrong about it.
- [100:11]
Deacon
I agree. Let's push forward a little bit into a little. After just a line I want to point out. Around 9:23 or so, this is. Who's speaking here? This is Agamemnon. And he says, call no man blessed until he ends his life in peace, fulfilled. So two thoughts here. One again, deeply tragic line, right? So he comes back from Troy as the victor, etcetera, and, you know, he says, well, don't call no man blessed until you see the end of his life. Which is about to happen about 10 minutes. And then, of course, like we've heard the Odyssey. So then when Odysseus goes down to Hades, you see how much. Then Agamemnon is not known as the one who sacked Troy. He's known as the one who's murdered by his wife. And so the first thing is there is I think kind of this, the tragic lines here for those of us who know the story of Agamemnon, which the whole audience of Aeschylus would have. But two. I'm familiar with these lines also from Aristotle. Right. So Aristotle picks this up when he talks about happiness that. Well, is that a truly happy man? Well, in a certain way you can't say that's a happy man until the end of his life and you actually see his life as a whole and then you can say, yes, that was a happy man. And I think that philosophical insight is really then played out in the Odyssey where we see Odysseus go down and see all the souls in Hades that are having conversations about how they view their life and whether they were happy with it now that they're dead.
- [101:35]
Thomas Lackey
Looking back on it, you know, and that line comes from, I know it comes from Solon, but Dr. Grabowski, I can't remember where in relation to Homer and Aeschylus does Solon lie.
- [101:48]
Dr. Frank Grabowski
Yeah, so, so Solon is considered to be the former, not, not previous, but he formed, he established the laws that would eventually become, or that would eventually establish Athens as democracy. And so I guess if we're going to assign a number, it would be around 600 BC, so roughly 200 years after Homer. And I guess that would make it about 150, 60 prior or before Aeschlus.
- [102:24]
Thomas Lackey
That's an interesting thought as well. Just to see drawing a proverb associated with, with one of the foremost leaders of Athens and founders of that, that, you know, the, the, the, the outlook of Athens and drawing it into this story.
- [102:44]
Dr. Frank Grabowski
Yeah, I mean Solon was one of the so called seven sages of Greece. And so these are individuals who were highly regarded for their, you know, beyond their practical contributions to Greece, their wisdom. And so, yeah, I would imagine that there were many proverbs that had been attributed to Solon, this being probably the most famous.
- [103:08]
Thomas Lackey
You know, I guess one ironic aspect because I don't think is that just before this he turns to Clytemnestra and asks her to deal kindly with Cassandra and then says that God looks favorably from afar on the man gentle in victory, which is again one of these deeply ironic things. We've just heard him bragging of what he's done to Troy and then he seems to know the right thing to say. But he certainly didn't live it out.
- [103:42]
Deacon
Well, I mean, that's. That seems to be Agamemnon in a nutshell, right? I mean, think I was thinking about the other day about that passage in the Iliad where the whole book is bookended by Diomedes having to give counsel to the king because Agamemnon just keeps making terrible decisions. I mean, it's not for Diomedes, Nestor, Odysseus, Agamemnon would have gone home. Right? So, yeah, he's just, again, I think this is. In certain ways, Agamemnon is best because he's almost. Because again, like, I think in Homer, he's almost comically bad. Here I got almost a sympathy for him, that here's a man that really doesn't have the capacity to be understanding the situation he's in and he's just going to fall into a hook, line, sinker. I think the gender roles really play this out because if you look at 9:35, right, Clytemnestra is like pushing him and pushing him hard. And he says, well, where's the woman in all this lust for glory, right? You're acting like a man, right? That Thumas, that spirited part of you, seems to be an overdrive. But then the irony is, is that she convinces him to do something he doesn't want to do. So he plays this almost effeminate role of giving in and being submissive to her, which then allows him to go through these actions that basically make him a blasphemer, even though he's clearly aware of it. I mean, he just succumbs to her.
- [105:03]
Dr. Frank Grabowski
Well, and just one more point too, Deacon, because I like what you just said.
- [105:07]
Deacon
A.
- [105:07]
Dr. Frank Grabowski
A few lines later, Clytemnestra says, in this line I found striking, she says, you know, the power is yours, Agamemnon, if you surrender your free will to me. So what kind of power does that really confer upon Agamemnon if he's surrendering himself, body and soul, to his wife?
- [105:28]
Thomas Lackey
Right?
- [105:28]
Dr. Frank Grabowski
So, yeah, I mean, I think that this, you know, aside from all of these other questions that Aeschylus is raising about justice, I do think too, he's questioning what does power truly amount to?
- [105:43]
Deacon
Right. Well, let's push in a little bit. Oh, go ahead, Thomas.
- [105:46]
Thomas Lackey
I just hadn't noticed this before that where she calls him right at the end, she says, I was trying to devise a safe return for this life. Here she's speaking about Agamemnon and then references looks up and says, this Leafy growth comes to your house and stretches shade over it against the Dog Star Sirius. That's just interesting because there's certain sacrifices that surround the appearance of Sirius in August when it's visible in the day. And it just. I'm sure this has this resonance of something, again, uneasy. Wrong. There's this bringing up here of a quasi sacrificial element related to Agamemnon's return.
- [106:37]
Deacon
Well, let's. Let's push into what I found to be easily one of the most comedic scenes of the entire first half of Agamemidmon, which is that he finally, you know, she finally convinces him to step off the chariot onto these tapestries, which has all the meaning that we've just discussed. But then when he steps down, right, there's like this little note. He steps down from the chariot to the tapestries and reveals Cassandra dressed in the sacred regalia. Right? Is that. What is that? The fillets, robes and scepter of Apollo? And so, I mean, this is a hilarious scene, right? So he's. His wife is sitting there basically berating him, acting like a man, and he steps down from a chariot and then reveals, you know, this beautiful woman, Cassandra, dressed like Apollo. Who, again, who's Cassandra? Right. She is the princess of Troy. She, in the Iliad was the one that was on the walls and saw Priam coming back with the body of Hector. And so here is his. Again. He likes these slave girls, right? Go back and think about Brise. So here's his treasure from Troy. And I just. When you read this, you just have to imagine Clytemnestra's face, right? You just have to imagine her face simultaneously seeing her husband succumb to her plans and then also revealing this woman.
- [108:01]
Dr. Frank Grabowski
As a single man. I don't have anything wrong. I don't see anything wrong with this.
- [108:08]
Deacon
Good. Any thoughts on Cassandra as we kind of, I think, enter into the. The end of the first half of Ag Menmon. All right, well, hearing none, I think that we. It's a good place to stop for this week's look into Agamemnon. So next week we'll pick up. Right, with Cassandra, which I think is probably one of my most fame or famous favorite sections of the entire play is Cassandra. And I think all the. All the backstory and meaning behind her actually speaking in this play. So any other thoughts or final comments before we wrap it up for this week?
- [108:47]
Adam
No, I just want to thank Dr. Grabowski and Thomas Lackey for hanging out with us this evening to kind of walk through some of this with us and be able to give us some insights on Agamemnon. And we appreciate it very much. Hopefully we can pick back up on this next week. What do you say, guys?
- [109:05]
Deacon
I think we can do it, Adam. I believe in us.
- [109:08]
Adam
All right. Good deal. Hey, you guys have been listening to us in the Great Books podcast. Check us out on our website, Ascend, thegreatbookspodcast.com or just thegreatbookspodcast.com either one. We own both URLs. We own them both, so you can go check them out. It goes to the same place. It's been a lot of fun. Thank you guys so much. We'll see you next week.
- [109:28]
Deacon
See you.