This three-play cycle is a modern retelling of the fall of the House of Atreus. It follows the children of Clytemnestra and Agamemnon, siblings who are both players in the family tragedy and victims of it. The cycle of blood and vengeance seems inescapable until the final reunion of a lost sister and brother brings the bloody family saga to its mystical and unlikely end.
Iphigenia And Other Daughters Pdf 11
Clytemnestra inspires awe, even in her daughters. She has done things; she has made her presence felt; she has been a part of history. Even her far more famous sister Helen was never so actively involved in events. Helen was merely bundled like a statue from one place to the next, one bed to the next. Clytemnestra, like Antigone, made a stand for her own interpretation of justice. This makes her heroic at the same time that it makes her monstrous. She is formidable and impossible to dismiss.
In the meantime, she has devoted her life to being the ultimate scourge and household blight. She cannot kill her mother, but she can make her life miserable and fearful. This is at least as hard on the blight as it is on the blighted. She has driven herself mad and she lives in horrifying squalor and sleeplessness. Technically, I suppose I see her as a manic-depressive, always prowling, never sleeping, seldom eating and always talking, talking, talking.
Aside from his identity as a veteran, his only other true identity is as an exile. He has been in exile all of his conscious life. But unlike most exiles, he has no home to remember with any joy. His return home is inevitable and terrible to contemplate since it will propel him out into a hostile world again, this time as a criminal as well as an exile.
The subversive plan the two siblings devise at the end of the piece is a peculiar event, but it is the final recourse these mythical characters have in resolving the perpetual cycle of their myth. They cannot escape from legend into obscurity in any ordinary way; they have always been too special for that, too visible to the gods and posterity. A statue will have to be taken back to civilization. That is what legend demands as a means of releasing Orestes from his cycle of misery. Iphigenia, already translated to limbo by the workings of her saga, volunteers what is left of her humanness and distinctness to give her brother his means of escape. It is an act of self-sacrifice that is personally intentional as no other action of the play has been. In this way, the only two characters capable of a loving relationship in the entire play put their own terrible myth to rest and are quietly released at last into obscurity.
[E.1.4] Sixth, he slew Damastes, whom some call Polypemon.4 He had his dwelling beside the road, and made up two beds, one small and the other big; and offering hospitality to the passers-by, he laid the short men on the big bed and hammered them, to make them fit the bed; but the tall men he laid on the little bed and sawed off the portions of the body that projected beyond it.
[E.1.15] and Daedalus fastened a thread to an ant, and, having bored a hole in the spiral shell, allowed the ant to pass through it. But when Minos found the thread passed through the shell, he perceived that Daedalus was with Cocalus, and at once demanded his surrender.16 Cocalus promised to surrender him, and made an entertainment for Minos; but after his bath Minos was undone by the daughters of Cocalus; some say, however, that he died through being drenched with boiling water.17
[E.1.23] Having made a compact with Pirithous that they would marry daughters of Zeus, Theseus, with the help of Pirithous, carried off Helen from Sparta for himself, when she was twelve years old,25 and in the endeavor to win Persephone as a bride for Pirithous he went down to Hades. And the Dioscuri, with the Lacedaemonians and Arcadians, captured Athens and carried away Helen, and with her Aethra, daughter of Pittheus, into captivity26; but Demophon and Acamas fled. And the Dioscuri also brought back Menestheus from exile, and gave him the sovereignty of Athens.27
[E.2.10] The sons of Pelops were Pittheus, Atreus, Thyestes, and others.42 Now the wife of Atreus was Aerope, daughter of Catreus, and she loved Thyestes. And Atreus once vowed to sacrifice to Artemis the finest of his flocks; but when a golden lamb appeared, they say that he neglected to perform his vow,
[E.2.15] But46 the nurse took Agamemnon and Menelaus to Polyphides, lord of Sicyon,47 who again sent them to Oeneus, the Aetolian. Not long afterwards Tyndareus brought them back again, and they drove away Thyestes to dwell in Cytheria, after that they had taken an oath of him at the altar of Hera, to which he had fled. And they became the sons-in-law of Tyndareus by marrying his daughters, Agamemnon getting Clytaemnestra to wife, after he had slain her spouse Tantalus, the son of Thyestes, together with his newborn babe, while Menelaus got Helen.
[E.2.16] And Agamemnon reigned over the Mycenaeans and married Clytaemnestra, daughter of Tyndareus, after slaying her former husband Tantalus, son of Thyestes, with his child.48 And there were born to Agamemnon a son Orestes, and daughters, Chrysothemis, Electra, and Iphigenia.49 And Menelaus married Helen and reigned over Sparta, Tyndareus having ceded the kingdom to him.50
[E.3.1] But afterwards Alexander carried off Helen, as some say, because such was the will of Zeus, in order that his daughter might be famous for having embroiled Europe and Asia; or, as others have said, that the race of the demigods might be exalted.
[E.3.3] For nine days he was entertained by Menelaus; but on the tenth day, Menelaus having gone on a journey to Crete to perform the obsequies of his mother's father Catreus, Alexander persuaded Helen to go off53 with him. And she abandoned Hermione, then nine years old, and putting most of the property on board, she set sail with him by night.54
[E.3.15] When the armament was in Aulis, after a sacrifice to Apollo, a serpent darted from the altar beside the neighboring plane-tree, in which there was a nest; and having consumed the eight sparrows in the nest, together with the mother bird, which made the ninth, it was turned to stone. Calchas said that this sign was given them by the will of Zeus, and he inferred from what had happened that Troy was destined to be taken in a period of ten years.64 And they made ready to sail against Troy.
[E.3.18] Departing from Mysia, the Greeks put to sea, and a violent storm coming on, they were separated from each other and landed in their own countries.67 So the Greeks returned at that time, and it is said that the war lasted twenty years.68 For it was in the second year after the rape of Helen that the Greeks, having completed their preparations, set out on the expedition and after their retirement from Mysia to Greece eight years elapsed before they again returned to Argos and came to Aulis.
[E.3.33] He also took Lesbos82 and Phocaea, then Colophon, and Smyrna, and Clazomenae, and Cyme; and afterwards Aegialus and Tenos, the so-called Hundred Cities; then, in order, Adramytium and Side; then Endium, and Linaeum, and Colone. He took also Hypoplacian Thebes83 and Lyrnessus,84 and further Antandrus, and many other cities.
[E.4.3] The Greeks made a wall and a ditch to protect the roadstead,94 and a battle taking place in the plain, the Trojans chased the Greeks within the wall.95 But the Greeks sent Ulysses, Phoenix, and Ajax as ambassadors to Achilles, begging him to fight for them, and promising Briseis and other gifts.96
[E.5.2] Hippolyte was the mother of Hippolytus; she also goes by the names of Glauce and Melanippe. For when the marriage of Phaedra was being celebrated, Hippolyte appeared in arms with her Amazons, and said that she would slay the guests of Theseus. So a battle took place, and she was killed, whether involuntarily by her ally Penthesilia, or by Theseus, or because his men, seeing the threatening attitude of the Amazons, hastily closed the doors and so intercepted and slew her.109
[E.5.17] As Cassandra said that there was an armed force in it, and she was further confirmed by Laocoon, the seer, some were for burning it, and others for throwing it down a precipice; but as most were in favour of sparing it as a votive offering sacred to a divinity,126 they betook them to sacrifice and feasting.
[E.5.22] But Menelaus slew Deiphobus and led away Helen to the ships133; and Aethra, mother of Theseus, was also led away by Demophon and Acamas, the sons of Theseus; for they say that they afterwards went to Troy.134 And the Locrian Ajax, seeing Cassandra clinging to the wooden image of Athena, violated her; therefore they say that the image looks to heaven.135
[E.5.23] And having slain the Trojans, they set fire to the city and divided the spoil among them. And having sacrificed to all the gods, they threw Astyanax from the battlements136 and slaughtered Polyxena on the grave of Achilles.137 And as special awards Agamemnon got Cassandra, Neoptolemus got Andromache, and Ulysses got Hecuba.138 But some say that Helenus got her, and crossed over with her to the Chersonese139; and that there she turned into a bitch, and he buried her at the place now called the Bitch's Tomb.140 As for Laodice, the fairest of the daughters of Priam, she was swallowed up by a chasm in the earth in the sight of all.141 When they had laid Troy waste and were about to sail away, they were detained by Calchas, who said that Athena was angry with them on account of the impiety of Ajax. And they would have killed Ajax, but he fled to the altar and they let him alone.142
[E.6.5] After sacrificing, Agamemnon put to sea and touched at Tenedos. But Thetis came and persuaded Neoptolemus to wait two days and to offer sacrifice; and he waited. But the others put to sea and encountered a storm at Tenos; for Athena entreated Zeus to send a tempest against the Greeks; and many ships foundered. 2ff7e9595c
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