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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 11 February 2009
When the death-cry of Agamemnon is heard, the Chorus talks, but does nothing. This is the locus classicus of a Chorus which, in a situation that seems to demand effective intervention, is debarred from intervening by the necessity of remaining a Chorus. Did Aeschylus and his audience feel a difficulty here? No, says Professor G. Thomson; it is merely that modern taste is influenced by ‘the crude realism of the Elizabethan drama’. But this will not do, for it is Aeschylus himself, through the Chorus, who raises the issue of their entering or not entering the palace, which they discuss in the most realistic way. Assuming that a technical difficulty exists, with what skill and success did the dramatist handle it? Criticism has on the whole been adverse.
page 23 note 2 Thomson, (Oresteia, ii. 136) ascribes the modern reader's difficulties to two other causes also, (i) The employment of proverbs and quasi-proverbial expressions is strange to us. But, as elsewhere in Aeschylus, it is not the employment of proverbs tiiat matters so much as die end to which diey are employed. (ii) The dialogue appears prolix in a literal rendering, because of the explicit nature of Greek idiom. Yet Aeschylus could be brief when he wished—witness any of the brilliant passages of stichomythia in this trilogy. I would suggest that the length of die debate is due in part to the need for interposing (as it were) an insulator between Cassandra and Clytemnestra. This is die kind of function which a choral ode often performs, but in this case Aeschylus was, for obvious reasons, unwilling to separate the exit of Cassandra from the death-cry of Agamemnon by more than a few lines of anapaests.Google Scholar
page 23 note 3 By Headlam ap. Thomson, loc. cit.
page 23 note 4 If indeed they are. ‘A council of regency’ they certainly are not (see Fraenkel, ii. 144 f., 398 ff.). A consultative council they might be—had the regent queen cared to consult them. But at 844 ff. Agamemnon states that he will take counsel, not with the elders, but 
Nowhere is tiiere a clear indication that they have a constitutional status. What is more to the point, then, is that here are men exercising their male function of taking counsel—with complete futility in face of the woman with the 
(v. infra)(Note that they are less futile in face of Aegisdius.)
page 23 note 5 I have already suggested this in C.R. lx (1946), 59.
page 24 note 1 Since, unlike the lock (194), the foot Prints are not associated textually with the heme of hope, we need not go into the question of the genuineness of Cho. 205 ff. (v. Fraenkel, , iii. 815 ff.).Google Scholar
page 24 note 2 
is of course far more vivid than 
(Schütz) would have been, since 
is the epithet essentially of the messenger (cf. 21, 264, 475, 646). As to the sentence as a whole, the intention of the speaker seems to be rightly explained by Fraenkel ad loc. I cannot help thinking, however, that Aeschylus has cast the sentence in this rather strange form in order to suggest a further alternative, not in the speaker's mind. There is news: but is it really good or bad?
page 24 note 3 It is not easy to choose between Karsten's emendation (printed above) and Prien's punctuation of the traditional text. H. L. Ahrens's objection to the latter (v. Fraenkel ad loc.) is hardly decisive: 
(352) clearly does refer to this line, but might, surely, refer as easily to 
and 
taken in separation as to 
taken together.
page 24 note 4 
, the third word of this root, means primarily ‘persuasive, convincing’. In view of the preceding 
and of what is said below about the use of 
and 
-compounds in the trilogy (see p. 28 n. 2) I suspect that it also carries the sense of ‘persuading of good’ (here and also at 982). In any case there is the implication that the queen is too easily persuaded to believe what she wishes to be true.
page 24 note 5 Unless the speaker has forgotten 
, it must be implied that a 
, like a dream, might have a divine origin (though the sensible man would not too readily put his trust in either).
page 24 note 6 Fraenkel (ii. 183 f.) well describes the function of the queen's second speech in carrying conviction to the elders.
page 25 note 1 Fraenkel discusses this passage at length in ii. 245–9. It is good that he rejects the view of the Chorus as ‘merely an accompanying instrument’ and finds their doubts ‘based on true psychology’. I suggest that the psychology is both simpler and more precisely related to the context than he makes out.
page 25 note 2 So too 
(475) recalls 262, 264; and 
(479) is a retractation of their 
(351; cf. 275, 277). 485–7 
are very difficult. Is 
active or passive in sense? Fraenkel has shown that only the active sense ‘accords widi the bulk of the evidence from the earlier period’. Is ȯpos genuine? If so, what does it mean? These are the principal questions, but we must also ask of 
Where does the ‘fire’ spread? Whither does it travel so fast? If we read 
(which in some other respects has its attractions), it is the fire of desire spreading in the woman's soul, perhaps with the further suggestion of desire-kindled belief outrunning the evidence: there can be no idea of the topographical dissemination of rumour and belief. Yet nothing is more characteristic of Aeschylus than to repeat at the end of some self-contained section (e.g. a speech, an ode, or a scene) a theme or words from the beginning. When, therefore, we find 
at the beginning of this epode and 
at the end, 
at the beginning and 
at the end, it is virtually impossible to resist the conclusion that 
also refers to the swift spreading of the rumour through the city. But it is not so easy to obtain die required sense from 
either by interpretation or by emendation. Fraenkel defends 
in the sense of decree or ordinance, but there are serious objections. ‘A woman can easily talk men round.’ Yes, but not by issuing orders; nor could the speeches of Pericles, when Persuasion sat upon his lips, be described as 
. A woman's ordinance, qua ordinance, is not more persuasive or swifter-travelling than a man's. Further, this meaning is at once too close to 
and too remote from it. ‘A woman's ordinance travels fast, but a woman's rumour dies fast’ is not good writing. 
We must admit that the problem is not yet solved. This means we cannot be sure whether 
refers to persuasion exercised on or by Clytemnestra. Both are relevant to our theme.
page 25 note 3 The point is not affected by the doubtful interpretation of 
On 
in the Oresteia see Gnomon xxiii (1951), 419 n. 1.Google Scholar
page 26 note 1 J.H.S. lxviii (1949), 130–47.Google Scholar
page 26 note 2 Ibid. 131, n. 15.
page 26 note 3 It is perhaps not fanciful to find in it a formula for the tragic art itself.
page 26 note 4 One illustration may serve. The first half of the Watchman's speech is dominated by evil (culminating in 18 f.: 
), but closes with a prayer for good (20 f.: note 
). The theme of the second half is good (
, 28; 
32), but it reverts to evil at the end (
36; 
39). The silence of the Watchman is later paralleled by the concealments of the Chorus and the Herald.
page 27 note 1 I can see nothing in 500 to suggest that the elders are ‘still distrustful and full of sinister forebodings’; (Fraenkel, ii. 252), except in so far as there is always an undertone of foreboding. But the form of their prayer, with its repeated 
, is intended to convey the opposite impression. 
is both confident and inconsistent widi the tone of 484.
page 27 note 2 
(583) describes equally well their reaction to Clytemnestra's speeches. In 584, though the primary sense of 
is ‘ease of learning’, I strongly suspect that the idea of ‘learning good news’ is present also (see p. 28 n. 2).
page 27 note 3 568 ff.; note especially 
, the full significance of which does not appear until he makes his final speech. It means more and worse than 
(517).
page 27 note 4 Thus 
(582) is a lie; and, since he has just mentioned the generals (in the plural), he must know it. Why did the truth have to be dragged out of him? Because 
(636 f.).
page 27 note 5 Aeschylus, 221.
page 27 note 6 
whatever the precise meaning, ‘the context points to something depreciatory’ (Fraenkel).
page 28 note 1 In 1196 
can be regarded as certain (see Fraenkel ad loc).
page 28 note 2 The employment of 
and 
compounds in the trilogy deserves a separate study. A good example of a slight shift between two meanings of 
is to be found in 1187 (quoted above). In other cases there seems to be a deliberate ambiguity (see p. 24 n. 4 and p. 27 n. 2 above). So insistent is this small syllable that 
comevery close in places to meaning the saying of 
. This kind of literal ‘euphemism’ characterizes the closing lines of the Eumenides, where the syllable can at last be reiterated without fear of sinister disclosures, for good has unequivocally prevailed.
page 28 note 3 ‘There can be no doubt that … the word 
means “healer, physician” (Fraenkel ad loc); nor that there is a reference to Apollo, who is here represented as exercising in person the function he delegates at 1202 (
). Apollo was invoked by Calchas (146) and by the Herald (512) in his capacity of healer. But it is not in that capacity that he directs Cassandra's prophecies. He is, rather, the destroyer: 
(1081) and 
(1257) —a title associated with violence and destruction, though obscure in its precise relevance. (That the function of Apollo should be in debate prepares for the Choephori.) This explanation does not, however, by itself provide a link with the preceding words of the Chorusleader. The link is perhaps twofold, (i) The Chorus, which had referred with distaste to the evil terms in which prophecy is couched (1132 ff., 1154f.), now demands a 
that would make prophecy impossible, (ii) 
is characteristic of the paean (see references in Fraenkel), a song closely associated with Apollo as healer and averter of misfortune. But that is not the song appropriate to this occasion. The connexion of thought is subtle, but it is made easier to follow by the opening of the Cassandra-scene, which has already raised the issue of what type of song and cry is appropriate to Apollo. Cassandra invoked him with 
, to the astonishment of the Chorus, who use the term 
(1078). When they say (1075, 1079) that he has no concern with 
and 
, they imply that his proper invocation is 
(cf. 146), his proper song the paean. Out of this contrast of songs Aeschylus makes a grim paradox at 645 
and, very explicitly, at Cho. 150 f. (The dramatist's references throughout the trilogy to song, hymns, and ritual cries, demand a separate study.)
page 29 note 1 Though we may no longer be able to recover what precisely they said at 1338 ff.
page 29 note 2 In 1347 
been emended with certainty. Headlam adopted Donaldson's 
for 
(pointing to the converse error at 552), and it has its attractions: the weak 
recalls the 
of 1249, while to say 
after the admitted death of Agamemnon is the reductio ad absurdum of evasion and thus prepares us for the course which the debate will follow.
page 29 note 3 ‘Fortunately unanimity has been reached on this point, a rare phenomenon in these studies’ (Fraenkel, iii. 633).
page 29 note 4 
(1353): a tiny point, perhaps, of individual characterization. No doubt, like Aegisthus (Cho. 854), he prides himself upon this quality.
s He underestimates his companions!
page 29 note 5 It may not be certain, but it is surely probable, that the last speaker is the Chorusleader. If so, what he says may carry special weight. The sense of 
is obscure: it is very doubtful whether it could mean (not
so much ‘I follow’ as) ‘I am supported by’ a 
or majority. That is not to say, however, that a majority of the Chorus is still in favour of action. Just as the effect of 1358–61 is counteracted by 1362–5, so the final and decisive impression upon the audience is made by the unanimity of the last three speakers. It would have been easy in production to convey by gestures the acceptance by the Chorus as a whole of this temporizing policy; and, though it cannot be proved, I think it very likely that this was done.
