Looking at Agamemnon

241 Pages·2020·2.771 MB·English

by  David Stuttard

Looking at A gamemnon
i
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Looking at Agamemnon
Edited by David Stuttard
iii
BLOOMSBURY ACADEMIC
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trademarks of Bloomsbury Publishing Plc

First published in Great Britain 2021

Copyright © David Stuttard & Contributors 2021

David Stuttard has asserted his right under the Copyright, Designs and
Patents Act, 1988, to be identifi ed as Editor of this work.

Cover image: Mixing bowl (calyx krater) with the killing of Agamemnon.
The Dokimasia Painter, Greek c. 460 B C . Photograph © 2021 Museum
of Fine Arts, Boston

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Contents
List of Contributors vi
Foreword vii
Introduction: Agamemnon in Context D avid Stuttard 1
1 Eating Children Is Bad for You: Th e Off spring of the Past in
Aeschylus’ A gamemnon Edith Hall 13
2 Agamemnon at Aulis: Hard Choice or No Choice? A lan H.
Sommerstein 29
3 Th e Homecoming of Agamemnon A lex F. Garvie 39
4 Clytemnestra and Cassandra H anna M. Roisman 49
5 Ritual in Agamemnon Richard Seaford 69
6 Let the Good Prevail S ophie Mills 77
7 Agency in A gamemnon Robert Garland 89
8 Wealth and Injustice in A gamemnon Michael Carroll 105
9 ‘Th ere is the sea – who can drain it dry?’ Natural and
Unnatural Cycles in Agamemnon Rush Rehm 119
10 Similes and Other Likenesses in Aeschylus’ A gamemnon
Anna Uhlig 135
11 Agamemnon , Warfare and Its Aft ermath Isabelle Torrance 149
12 Revenge for Murder Seen through Modern Eyes: Recent
Reception of Aeschylus’ O resteia Betine van Zyl Smit 161
Aeschylus’ A gamemnon translated by David Stuttard 173
Bibliography 217
Index 223
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Contributors
Michael Carroll is Lecturer in Greek Literature at the University of
St Andrews.
Robert Garland is Roy D. and Margaret B. Wooster Professor of the Classics
Emeritus, Colgate University.
Alex F. Garvie is Emeritus Professor of Greek at the University of Glasgow.
Edith Hall is Professor in the Department of Classics and Centre for
Hellenic Studies at King’s College.
Sophie Mills is Professor in the Department of Classics, University of
North Carolina Asheville.
Rush Rehm is Professor of Th eatre and Performance Studies, and of
Classics at Stanford University.
Hanna Roisman is Professor of Classics, Arnold Bernhard Professor of Arts
and Humanities, Emerita, Colby College.
Richard Seaford is Emeritus Professor of Ancient Greek at the University
of Exeter.
Alan H. Sommerstein is Emeritus Professor of Greek at the University of
Nottingham.
David Stuttard is a freelance writer, historian and theatre director, and
Fellow of Goodenough College, London.
Isabelle Torrance is Professor of Classical Reception at Aarhus University.
Anna Uhlig is Associate Professor of Classics at the University of
California, Davis.
Betine van Zyl Smit is former Associate Professor of Classics at the
University of Nottingham.
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Foreword
Aeschylus’ A gamemnon is the fi rst play in the only extant Greek tragic trilogy,
the O resteia , and while it is tempting to consider the three plays as a unity it
is equally valid to discuss them on their own. Aft er all, every other surviving
tragedy was once part of a trilogy, and the loss of its companion pieces is not
considered an insuperable impediment to our studying it. In the case of
Agamemnon , of course, the presence ‘in the background’ of the other two
plays enhances our knowledge, and our awareness of how the trilogy develops
and ends adds to our appreciation of its beginning.
I fi rst translated Agamemnon for performance (as a stand-alone play),
which I directed for Actors of Dionysus in 1999. I directed a subsequent, very
diff erent production for the same company in 2003. Since then I have been
fortunate to work on several of the speeches with Sian Philips, Stephen Greif
and the late Fenella Fielding. Every actor who has performed my words has
enhanced my understanding of the text, and my personal thanks go to them all.
Every chapter in this volume, too, has deepened my understanding and
appreciation of the text and context of A gamemnon . Th e collection was
assembled during the Covid-19 crisis of 2020, and my sincere thanks go to
every contributor who, despite the many demands imposed upon them by
having to revise courses for distance-learning, managed so determinedly to
submit their chapters – especially Edith Hall and Richard Seaford who, when
two of their colleagues were forced to drop out because of illness or
bereavement, stepped into the breach, adapting and updating material from
lectures they had given in association with one of my productions of the play.
As with other volumes in this series, I have allowed authors to choose
those aspects of the play on which they wished to focus. Inevitably there is
the occasional small overlap between some chapters, with which I have not
interfered, and, while I suggested that authors use the forms ‘b c ’ and ‘a d ’, I
respected the wishes of those for whom it was important to use ‘b ce ’ and ‘ ce ’.
Equally, I have respected contributors’ choices with regard to transliteration
from the Greek and spelling of names, e.g. Clytemnestra / Clytaemestra.
Many of the quotations from A gamemnon are taken from my own
translation (a slightly revised version of my 1999 version), which is printed
aft er the chapters. Readers wishing to use it for productions of their own
should contact me through my website, www.davidstuttard.com, where
applications for performance should be made before the commencement of
any rehearsals.
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viii Foreword
Finally, I would like to thank all those who have been involved in the
production of this book, especially the twelve Olympian contributors, who
have given so generously of their time, and with whom it has been such a
pleasure to work. At Bloomsbury, my thanks go to Alice Wright, who
commissioned it, her maternity-leave replacement, Georgina Leighton, and
her assistant Lily MacMahon; also to Rachel Walker, the Senior Production
Editor, Dave Cummings, who edited the text and Terry Woodley, who
designed the cover; also to the ever-effi cient Merv Honeywood, the Client
Manager at Refi neCatch. A very big thank you, too, to the home team, my wife
Emily Jane (not yet quite so frustrated by my endless forays into the classical
world that she has been driven to emulate Clytemnestra) and my research
assistants, our two cats, Stanley and Oliver, lion-cubs ‘reared in the palace’, but
thankfully (so far) with a better outcome than that imagined by the chorus in
Agamemnon.
Introduction: A gamemnon in Context
David Stuttard
Agamemnon is at heart a revenge play. On the face of it the plot is simple: it
tells how Queen Clytemnestra of Argos murders her husband, Agamemnon,
leader of the Greek army in the Trojan War, in vengeance because he killed
their daughter. But there is nothing simple in how Aeschylus handles his
material. As the drama unfolds and we delve deeper into the circumstances
that have led to this moment, the reasons why Agamemnon apparently must
die become increasingly more complex: motive piles on motive as more and
more characters, both human and divine, become implicated in the litany of
savagery that plagues the royal palace, until the very building appears to
assume a malignant life of its own. Yet this is no mere horror story. While
Agamemnon’s palace, with its slaughtered children, gushing blood and
vengeful furies that at times seem to possess Clytemnestra, may share
similarities with the Overlook Hotel in Stanley Kubrick’s fi lm, Th e Shining , in
Aeschylus’ hands the atrocities perpetrated by its inhabitants become the
starting point for a profound meditation on the nature of crime and
punishment, innocence and guilt, vengeance, justice, good government and
the relationship between humankind, the gods and the world around them,
overarching themes that will permeate the whole of the O resteia trilogy of
which A gamemnon forms the fi rst part.
However, while the themes are universal and the tragedy may in many ways
be timeless, A gamemnon was very much a product of its age, so to begin to
appreciate it fully we must be aware of the social, cultural and political
conditions familiar to Aeschylus and his audience in the Athens of 458 bc ,
when it was fi rst staged. Not that this was its only performance: so popular was
the Oresteia that it was oft en revived – including by Aeschylus himself in Sicily,
and aft er his death by his successors in Athens and elsewhere – while today it
enjoys the distinction of being the only classical Greek trilogy to survive
(almost) complete. Considerations of context as well as of why A gamemnon
has intrigued so many for so long are the subject of many of the chapters in
this book. But before we begin to examine the play in depth, it might perhaps
be useful not only to set it in its historical and cultural context but to consider
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