Iliad and Oresteia 3

Part 3

We have already seen Achilles reappear abridged in the Watchman—Achilles1, that was, the mother bird who “used to watch through many a sleepless night” (9.323)—but the Watchman is only the precursor of Clytaemestra, who describes herself too as sleeplessly waiting for the beacon fires (889). He calls on her to arise, to take up his cry as he falls silent, to awaken with the wrath of Achilles1, to assume the hero’s role. (She takes up the cry, 587; her cry awakens the house, Ch 35; she awakens the Furies, E 94.) It is she, contriver of the fires swifter than Achilles, who will perform the deed he left undone: she it is that has received his spirit, she is Achilles1 transmitted to Argos, she possesses what Calchas foresaw, the wrath that would rise again, the μῆνις παλίνορτος that was once Achilles’, the instrument of the daimôn of the house of Atreus; and no god will restrain her.

Iliad and Oresteia 2

Part 2

As Achilles’s sacrifice of Patroclus is analogous to Agamemnon’s of Iphigeneia, so are its causes. The sacrifice is overdetermined—that is, it has more than one sufficient reason—like other events in the history of the curse; for example, the death of Agamemnon. Grinding with exactness, the daimôn insures against human caprice. Let me review some of the causes.

Iliad and Oresteia 1

This and the following two posts are lectures that were delivered at St. John’s College in the fall of 2016. They are still a bit rough in places, and contain many intrusive notes, mostly references, in parentheses. But I hope they may have some value as they are. An appendix, better read only after the lectures, sets out a scheme of comparison between the two works in question.

Except incidentally, I do not address various major topics, such as war in the Iliad, or justice in the Oresteia; on the other hand I make much of some details. I keep summary of the story to a minimum, and present only some of the evidence for my claims. The first two lectures deal primarily with the Iliad, in the light of the first Chorus of Agamemnon; the third, with the Oresteia. I think they become more interesting as they go on; at any rate they become less reasonable. Knowing how hard it is to pick out what is important in hearing a lecture, I tried to call attention to points that seemed most worthy of it. —As to the notion of treating epic and drama together, one may imagine the playwright Aeschylus facing the problem of how to deal with Homer’s Agamemnon in crafting his own.