READING AGAMEMNON

The story of Agamemnon's murder and the revenge taken by his son, Orestes, was familiar to Greek audiences. In the Odyssey, different characters tell parts of the story for their own purposes. Agamemnon was the leader of the Greek army at Troy. Aegisthus seduced Clytemnestra while Agamemnon was at Troy, and killed Agamemnon at a banquet when he returned. Eight years later, Agamemnon's son killed Aegisthus (Od. 3.307–10). Zeus tells how he warned Aegisthus, to show the mortals unjustly blame their troubles on the gods (1.32–43); Athena tells Telemachus about the glory Orestes has won, to inspire him to action (1.298–300); Agamemnon's ghost describes how he was killed, to warn Odysseus against trusting his wife (11.405–56). Because Orestes is a positive example, the epic never explicitly says that Orestes killed his mother, as well as Aegisthus, though it is clear that he did. Also, although other evidence makes it clear that the story of Iphigenia's sacrifice was old, Homer never mentions it. The lyric poet, Stesichorus, composed a long poem (two papyrus scrolls) about Orestes that included his rescue from his father's murderers by his nurse, Clytemnestra's dream of a snake, the Furies' pursuit of Orestes after the matricide, and the support of Apollo for Orestes.

Aeschylus's version of this story, the trilogy Agamemnon, Libation Bearers, and Eumenides (collectively, the Oresteia) is the only one of his trilogies to survive complete – and even this complete tragic trilogy has lost its satyr play, Proteus, about Menelaus's adventures in Egypt.