The story of Orestes the avenger was complete in every essential
particular before it came to the earliest of those three Attic
dramatists, each of whom has stamped it so strongly with the impress
of his own mind.
In the
Iliad there is no hint that the house of Pelops
lay
under a curse which entailed a series of crimes.
The sceptre made by Hephaestus for Zeus, and brought by Hermes to
Pelops, is peacefully inherited by Atreus, Thyestes and
Agamemnon
1. Yet the
Iliad makes at least one
contribution to the material which Aeschylus found ready to his
hand. It is the figure of Agamemnon himself, with eyes and head like
those of Zeus, in girth like Ares, in breast like Poseidon
2; ‘clad in flashing bronze, all glorious, and
pre-eminent amid all
3.’ As Helen stands with Priam on the walls of Troy,
and watches the Achaean warriors moving on the battle-field, he asks
who this one may be:—‘There are others even
taller by a head; but never did I behold a man so comely or so
majestic (“
γεραρόν”); he is like unto one
that is a king
4.’ This is the royal Agamemnon, “
ὁ παντόσεμνος”
5, who lives in the Aeschylean drama, and whose image
reappears in later poetry. For the rest, the
Iliad
gives us just one far-off glimpse of the king's home beyond the
Aegaean, where Orestes is a child in the fortress-palace at Mycenae,
with three sisters, Chrysothemis, Laodicè, and
Iphianassa
6; children of that Clytaemnestra to whom, in the opinion of
her lord at Troy, the damsel Chryseïs was ‘in no
wise inferior, in beauty or in stature, in wit or in skill
7.’
The
Odyssey tells the story as follows. Agamemnon,
before going to Troy, charged a certain minstrel (“
ἀοιδός”) to watch over
8 Clytaemnestra at Mycenae. The
precaution implies a sense of possible danger, but not necessarily
distrust of Clytaemnestra. Presently a tempter came to the lonely
wife in the person of her husband's first-cousin, Aegisthus, son of
Thyestes, who, while his kinsmen were fighting at Troy, dwelt
‘at peace, in the heart of Argos
9.’ For some time Clytaemnestra ‘refused
the shameful deed; for she had a good understanding
10.’ Meanwhile the gods themselves, by their
messenger Hermes, warned Aegisthus against the course of crime upon
which he was entering. But Hermes spoke in vain
11.
Aegisthus removed the minstrel to a desert island, and there left
him, a prey to dogs and birds. He then took the
‘willing’ Clytaemnestra to his home; while he
sought to propitiate the gods by burnt-offerings on their altars,
and by hanging up in their temples ‘many gifts of
embroidery and gold
12.’
Agamemnon, after a stormy voyage from Troy, landed on the coast of
Argolis at a point not far from the dwelling of Aegisthus; who,
apprised by a watcher, came in his chariot, and invited the king to
a banquet; after which he slew him, ‘as a man slays an ox
at the manger
13.’
In this narrative (given by Menelaüs to Telemachus)
Clytaemnestra is not even named; though Menelaüs had
previously spoken of her ‘guile’ as aiding the
crime
14. It is only in a part of the
Odyssey which is of later origin than the
‘Telemachy’ in books
I—IV,—viz., the “
Νέκυια” in the eleventh book,—that Clytaemnestra
appears as actively sharing in the horrors of the banquet, where she
slays Cassandra with her own hand. And, even there, it is by the
sword of Aegisthus alone that Agamemnon is slain
15.
The young Orestes fled, or was conveyed, to Athens. For seven years
Aegisthus and Clytaemnestra reigned at Mycenae. In the eighth,
Orestes returned, and slew Aegisthus
16. Clytaemnestra died at the same
time, but how, we are not told; and Orestes ‘made a
funeral feast,’ for both of them, ‘to the
Argives
17.’
Two points distinguish this Homeric legend from later versions.
First, Aegisthus is the principal criminal
18. Clytaemnestra's part is altogether
subordinate to that of her paramour. Secondly, the vengeance of
Orestes is regarded as a simple act of retributive justice. It is
not said that he slew his mother; the conjecture is left open that
she may have died by her own hand. Nothing comes into the Epic view
which can throw a shadow upon the merit of the avenger. The goddess
Athena herself exhorts Telemachus to emulate the example and the
renown of Orestes
19.