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Again Klytaimestra's Weapon*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 February 2009

A. H. Sommerstein
A. H. Sommerstein
Affiliation:
University of Nottingham
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Extract

Malcolm Davies, CQ 37 (1987), 65–75, has argued strongly for the view, almost universally discarded since Fraenkel's Agamemnon appeared, that Aeschylus envisaged Klytaimestra as killing her husband with an axe. He succeeds in establishing a strong probability that, among the various pre-Aeschylean versions of the story of Agamemnon's death, those which had him killed in his bath with the help of an entangling robe always made Klytaimestra use an axe, not a sword, to strike the fatal blows; and Sophocles and Euripides when they specify the weapon invariably specify it as an axe. All that this proves, however, is that if Aeschylus did make Klytaimestra kill Agamemnon in his bath with a sword, he was innovating. We have still to determine whether he did in fact so innovate. It is fair to treat the pre- and post-Aeschylean evidence as establishing a presumption in favour of the axe, but a presumption only: if there is unambiguous evidence in the text of the Oresteia that the Aeschylean Klytaimestra used a sword, it must be taken as outweighing any amount of external evidence which can show only that other Klytaimestras, imagined by other poets and artists, did not use one.

Type
Research Article
Information
The Classical Quarterly , Volume 39 , Issue 2 , December 1989 , pp. 296 - 301
Copyright
Copyright © The Classical Association 1989

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References

1 Fraenkel, E., Aeschylus: Agamemnon (Oxford, 1950), iii.806–9Google Scholar.

2 Soph, . El. 99Google Scholar; Eur, . Hek. 1279Google Scholar, El. 160, 279, 1160, Tro. 361–2. The reference to a sword in Eur, . El. 164 is doubtless to be understoodGoogle Scholar, with Davies (p. 71 n. 50), as envisaging Aigisthos stabbing a dead or dying Agamemnon with his sword after Klytaimestra had ‘struck the first, and perhaps the mortal, blow’ with the axe of line 160.

3 This is the transmitted reading, for which Denniston–Page cite convincing parallels; Davies prints Spanheim's conjecture ἕρξεν without any comment.

4 cf. Prag, A. J. N. W., The Oresteia: iconographic and narrative traditions (Warminster, 1985), pp. 61–7Google Scholar and pl. 39–43.

5 Note especially 561 τ⋯ν οὔποτ' αὐχουντ': the Erinyes' victim is one who had boasted, as Klytaimestra does, that he would never suffer for his acts.

6 cf. Ag. 1608, 1634–7.

7 It should be said that Garvie, finding it ‘hard to see why … Aegisthus is mentioned at all’, suspects Aἰγ⋯σθου of being ‘an explanatory gloss’. But Aἰγ⋯σθου seems to be what Euripides read (cf. El. 164–5). The suggestion of E. W. Whittle (ap. Garvie) that the mention of Aigisthos is a ‘hint of Clytaemestra's adultery [which] adds to the heinousness of her crime’ seems a satisfactory explanation.

8 Lloyd-Jones, H., Aeschylus: Oresteia. The Choephoroe (London, 1979), p. 68, on line 1011Google Scholar.

9 This consideration tells strongly against Davies' (in any case tortured) attempt to break the close argumentative link between the sentence μαρτυρεῖ δ⋯ μοι κτλ. and the preceding question ἂδρασεν ἢ οὐκ ἔδρασε; (in which he rightly takes the understood subject to be Klytaimestra) by taking δ⋯ to be ‘continuative or contrasting’ and rendering ‘did she do the deed or not? (Of course she did) and furthermore [or “but by contrast”] the robe reminds me that Aegisthus (did not do the deed but) stabbed the corpse’ (p. 71 n. 52). ‘Reminds me’ in any case will not do for μαρτυρεῖ, especially in the Oresteia where the theme of the witness (in the full legal or quasi-legal sense) recurs over and over again (twice in this very scene: 987, 1041). Note further that when in Eum. 460–1 Orestes again mentions the robe and its silent ‘testimony’, it is to the murder that the robe is said to have testified (λουτρ⋯ν ⋯ξεμαρτ⋯ρει φ⋯νον), not to any injury done to the victim posthumously. To justify his killing of Aigisthos Orestes feels no need of witnesses: Aigisthos has merely suffered the customary fate of the adulterer (Cho. 989f.), and in Eumenides his very existence is forgotten.

10 I am not suggesting that spectators who at the end of Ag. saw Klytaimestra with a sword and Aigisthos without one would consciously reason out the conclusion that he must have lent his sword to her; the scene would have its desired effect (see the last two paragraphs of this paper) quite apart from any such inference. It is rather the author, in constructing his plot, who has decided that Klytaimestra shall commit the murder with Aigisthos' sword, and, as one might expect, has seen to it that both the action and the words of his drama are fully consistent with this. And the action in Ag., vividly recalled in retrospect, will make the words of Cho. readily intelligible, especially as the stage-picture from the midst of which Orestes speaks (two corpses, the bloodstained robe, the killer making his apologia) is itself so strongly reminiscent of the latter part of Ag.

11 Taplin, O. P., The Stagecraft of Aeschylus (Oxford, 1977), p. 359Google Scholar. Fraenkel's discussion of the weapon-problem unfortunately ignores the visual dimension altogether, and treats the text of Ag. 1372-end as if it were the script of a radio play.

12 For Agamemnon's body, cf. 1397 ⋯δε, 1404 οὖτ⋯ς ⋯στιν Aγαμ⋯μνων, 1414, 1433, 1446, 1500–1, 1522, 1525, 1539 τ⋯νδ' ⋯πιδεῖν, 1580–1, 1590, 1603, 1608, 1611, 1613, 1634, 1638, 1643; for Kassandra's body, 1440 ἢ τ' αἰχμ⋯λωτος ἥδε; for the bathtub, 1534–40 τ⋯νδ ⋯πιδεῖ;ν ⋯ρλυροτο⋯χου δρο⋯της κατ⋯χοντα χ⋯μευναν; for robe, 1492 = 1516 ⋯ρ⋯χνης ⋯ν ὑφ⋯σματι τῷδ, 1580–1 ἰδὼν ὑφαντοῖς ⋯ν π⋯πλοις Ἐριν⋯ων τ⋯ν ἄνδρα τ⋯νδε κε⋯μενον. 1611; for bloodstains on Klytaimestra's clothing, 1389–1390.

13 When the Sophoclean Ajax appears in his grisly ‘murder-tableau’, the text makes it clear that the slaughtered animals are visible (Aj. 346–55, 364–6, 453, 546) but no mention is made throughout the scene of the sword with which he killed them (Aj. 10, 30, 95) and which he will later take to the seashore to be the instrument of his own death. Does it follow that in Aj. 346–595 the audience saw no sword? In Cho. 973–1064, too, nothing in the text shows that Orestes has a sword: the reader (as distinct from the spectator) learns this only at Eum. 42–3, where he finds that Orestes as a suppliant at Delphi still has a sword in his hand which he has presumably brought with him from Argos. The classic case of an important property that goes long unmentioned in the text is the Queen's carriage in Persians: we know that she entered in a carriage at Pers. 150 only because in a later scene (607) she makes a point of mentioning that this time she has come without it.

14 But it is an exaggeration to say, as Fraenkel does with Davies' enthusiastic approval, that ‘in order to heighten the significance with which Aeschylus invests the unique and characteristic instrument of woman's treachery, the splendid festal robe which turns into a net of death, he will not allow the weapon which actually deals the fatal blow to obtrude itself in any way upon the consciousness of the audience.’ Even if we ignore the question whether the weapon itself was seen on stage, it and its strokes are frequently referred to, directly or indirectly, in the scene following the murder, namely at 1379 ἔπαισ', 1384–7, 1405—6 δεξι⋯ς χερ⋯ς, 1430 τ⋯μμα, 1433 ἔσφαξ', 1496 = 1520; in addition to which we all but hear the two blows at the moment they are struck when we hear Agamemnon's cries (the three lines marking the moment of the murder, 1343–5, contain five words referring to a blow from a weapon: π⋯πληγμαι … πληγ⋯ν … πληγ⋯ν … οὐτασμ⋯νος … πεληγμ⋯νος).

15 Recent discussions of this passage (Stinton, T. C. W., PCPhS 21 [1975], 82–93Google Scholar; Seaford, R., CQ 34 [1984], 251–2CrossRefGoogle Scholar), while finding Fraenkel's interpretation unsatisfactory in some respects, have agreed with him that μηχαν⋯ματι must be taken as governed by λαβο⋯σα, not by τὐπτει; and with λαβο⋯σα it can only denote the robe. Stinton (pp. 88–9) further argues that in any case μηχ⋯νημα would not be appropriate in sense to denote a sword or axe here: ‘a weapon is too straightforward an object to be so described, without the assistance of a functional epithet’ (such as is present in Seven 131 where Poseidon's trident is called ἰχθυβ⋯λῳ μαχανᾷ)

16 cf. Ag. 1377 ⋯γὠν ⋯δ' οὐκ ⋯φρ⋯ντστος π⋯λαι

17 Unless with the MSS we give him 1652 ⋯λλ⋯ κ⋯γὼ μ⋯ν πρ⋯κωπος …: but that would require 1651 to be assigned to the chorus-leader, which is impossible since it would entail the chorus wearing swords. In addition to the arguments of Denniston–Page on 1650–1653, it may be remarked that the feebleness of the Elders' reaction to the murder (1346–71), which has earned them and Aeschylus a fair amount of criticism as it is, would be quite incomprehensible if they were armed, as indeed would their helplessness before Klytaimestra in the ensuing scene.

18 If Thomson is right, as he may well be, in attributing 1651 not to Aigisthos (let alone the chorus-leader: see previous note) but to the captain of the bodyguard (see also Brown, A. D. Fitton, CR 1 [1951], 133–5Google Scholar), a further touch of baseness would be added to the picture of Aigisthos: he not only instigates a massacre (or what would have been a massacre had not Klytaimestra intervened), he does so as if attempting to evade personal responsibility, saying merely τοὖργον οὐχ ⋯κ⋯ς τ⋯δε and leaving the captain to translate this hint into specific action. (This attribution of 1651 is sometimes mistakenly credited to Verrall; Verrall was indeed the first to make the captain a speaking character, but the lines he assigned to him were those now numbered 1650 and 1653.)

19 Dr Davies comments that he finds it ‘hard to parallel the significantly absent sword [here] alleged for Aegisthus’. One may note, however, that at the beginning of Seven the crowd of Theban citizens are in armour (the urgent tone of 31 ⋯ρμ⋯σθε π⋯ντες, σο⋯σθε σὺν παντευχ⋯ᾳ indicates that they are being ordered to the walls and gates at once, not told to go home first and get their equipment) and Eteokles is not (so rightly Hutchinson on 674–6) because as the ‘helmsman’ of the ship of state he does not intend to fight in person. In Eumenides, again, Orestes, who at Delphi has a sword (42–3), may no longer have it when he reaches Athens; at any rate when he thinks (746) of committing suicide if the Athenian jury's verdict goes against him (see my Aeschylus: Eumenides [Cambridge, 1989] ad loc.Google Scholar), the method he envisages is not the sword but the noose.

20 On this see Winnington-Ingram, R. P., JHS 68 (1948) 130–40CrossRefGoogle Scholar (revised in Studies in Aeschylus [Cambridge, 1983], pp. 101–19Google Scholar) and Zeitlin, F. I., Arethusa 11 (1978), 150–60Google Scholar.