Agamemnon

Agamemnon is the king of Argos—Mycenae, in earlier sources such as Homer’s epics—and the husband of Clytemnestra. In Aeschylus’s play, his part was most likely played in the classical era by the same actor who played the watchman, the herald, and Aegisthus.

Agamemnon, the titular character, is central to the play, but his time onstage is very brief. He is an ambivalent figure. While he is at Troy, he is anxiously awaited by the people of Argos, including the watchman and the chorus. However, the characters who yearn for the return of their king also acknowledge a certain darkness in his nature; his sacrifice of his daughter in exchange for a wind that would blow the Greek fleet to Troy highlighted his focus on victory, regardless of the means required to achieve it. As the chorus admits just before Agamemnon’s arrival onstage:

When you marshaled this armament

For Helen’s sake, I will not hide it,

In ugly style you were written in my heart

For steering aslant the mind’s course

To bring home by blood

Sacrifice and dead men that wild spirit (799-804).

Agamemnon’s actions are not virtuous or just, but the chorus indicates that he is viewed as a capable leader or king. When he finally returns in the third episode, his moral character remains ambivalent. He delivers a speech in which he thanks the gods for his successes, but his words are also self-aggrandizing. While he is initially reluctant to commit hubris by stepping on the tapestries, his wife’s encouragement quickly overcomes his attempt at humility. His vulnerability to excessive pride allows his subsequent murder by Clytemnestra to be presented as a just punishment from the gods.

Cassandra is the daughter of the Trojan king Priam and a priestess and prophet of the god Apollo. According to a well-known myth, after she refused Apollo’s sexual advances, he cursed her as punishment, preventing her prophecies from being believed. The curse of Cassandra is central to Aeschylus’s portrayal of her character. In her interchange with the chorus in the fourth episode, Cassandra provides a detailed prediction that she and Agamemnon will be murdered, using both symbolic and plain language to communicate what will happen. The chorus, however, is incapable of understanding her, in part because it interprets her prophecies in reference to the past atrocities of Agamemnon’s father, Atreus. Cassandra passes from a state of near-frenzy or “divine madness,” in which she delivers her lines in song, to a state of resigned calm, presenting them in iambic tetrameter, the standard “spoken” meter of Attic tragedy. Cassandra ultimately acknowledges that because of her curse she cannot make the chorus understand her, and she has no choice but to accept her fate. She finally enters the palace, despite knowing that she will be killed when she does so.

Aegisthus, who was often played in classical theater by the same actor as the watchman, the herald, and Agamemnon, is the son of Thyestes. Thus, he is Agamemnon’s cousin. He is also Clytemnestra’s lover, having begun an adulterous relationship with her while Agamemnon was away at Troy. Aegisthus’s mythical backstory is important in understanding his role in Aeschylus’s play: Aegisthus’s father was the brother—and rival—of Agamemnon’s father, Atreus, and Aegisthus helped Thyestes murder Atreus. Atreus’s sons, Agamemnon and Menelaus, then banished him from Argos. Long an exile, Aegisthus relishes the opportunity to return to Argos and take revenge on Agamemnon by helping Clytemnestra.

In Aeschylus’s play, Aegisthus plays a secondary role in the murder of Agamemnon: It is the woman, Clytemnestra, who leads the plot against him and his lover and actually commits the murders. This distribution of roles highlights Clytemnestra’s departure from traditional depictions of female characters. Aegisthus, like Clytemnestra, views his actions as just, as he emphasizes in the speech in which he exults in the death of Agamemnon. In taking control of Argos, Aegisthus displays tyrannical qualities, threatening the chorus and forcing it to submit to him. His actions following the murders make his representation of himself as a just figure much less convincing, and the end of the play alludes to his and Clytemnestra’s murders at the hands of Agamemnon’s son, Orestes, in later works in the series.

The chorus, made up of elderly men of Argos, plays a central role in the play. The chorus is almost a developed character in its own right, which is also a distinctive quality of the chorus in Aeschylus’s other plays. From the men’s first appearance onstage, the chorus adopts an attitude of apprehensive hope, looking forward to Agamemnon’s return and hoping that things will turn out well when he does, yet dreading some terrible catastrophe. The chorus acknowledges its ambivalent feelings toward Agamemnon but is horrified when Clytemnestra and Aegisthus murder him; the chorus warns them that “there shall be no escape” (1615) for them and that they will be punished for their actions. At the end of the play, the chorus prays that Orestes, Agamemnon’s son, will return to avenge his father.

The watchman delivers the Prologue speech and sets the tone for the play. He is posted on the roof of the palace to watch out for the beacon fires signaling the fall of Troy. The watchman has been at this task for 10 long years when the play begins, and he is exhausted from his interminable vigil. When he sights the beacons at last, the watchman is filled with hope but also with dread and apprehension: Though he hopes for the best, he fears the worst—an attitude that is shared by the other supporting figures of the play, including the herald and the chorus.