Chapter 3 - Prophecy on the Banks of the Acheron

Summary

In the Oresteia’s central scene, Cassandra tells of being cursed by Apollo to foretell the future but be disbelieved. The Trojan princess, who “cheated” the god in a violent sexual encounter, who survived her city’s extirpation, goes to her own known doom bravely, predicting Agamemnon’s death and vengeance to come. Yet there is an unexplored aspect to this famous and moving scene – Cassandra’s hint of her own continuation in the afterlife. It seems (eoika) to her that she will soon be singing prophecies in Hades. This chapter argues that attention to Cassandra’s potential afterlife changes how we view her prophecies of death and vengeance, her rebellion against Apollo and Clytemnestra, her bravery, her language of closure, and the ironies each of these entail. Moreover, the “poetics of plurality” uncovered in Cassandra’s statement and its uncertain status sophisticate and perhaps even reverse our understanding of her fate.

Introduction

Death as the ultimate ending is the structuring assumption in the intensely moving Cassandra scene. Aeschylus reinvented this minor character from previous myths as a prophetess whom Apollo has cursed to be disbelieved.¹ Cassandra’s overwhelming constraints are the emphasis from the start of the scene, the Agamemnon’s longest (1035–330).² The Trojan princess is already marked as a war captive, a concubine to Agamemnon, and a foreign house-slave to Clytemnestra (950–5, cf. 1035–71). The tense prelude to her first words involves uncertainty about her ability to comprehend what is said. The audience watches as Apollo’s curse imposes physically coercive prophecy on Cassandra, which erupts from her in poetic cries. The greatest of Cassandra’s oppressions is her preternatural knowledge of her fate (e.g. 1139, 1260–4). With no meaningful choices or agency, the enslaved prophetess of the Agamemnon appears uniquely powerless.³

Aeschylus exploits these immense constraints for three dramatic effects. First, Cassandra’s foreknowledge is integral to the ironies woven into her past and present.⁴ After the audience learns of the rejection of her prophecy at Troy (1210, 1212), they watch the dynamic slowly repeat at Argos. Cassandra can reveal the future to the Chorus, yet she is unable to affect either her own or Agamemnon’s imminent slaughter. The sense of prophetic fulfillment redoubles when the fall of Troy is reenacted in their deaths, the last Trojan and the conqueror of Troy now corpses on stage. A second reaction to her immutable fate involves Cassandra resisting her killer, Clytemnestra, in the paltry ways allowed to her. She greets Clytemnestra’s words with stubborn silence and chooses to walk on her own terms to the fateful door. For this the Elders term her “brave” (e.g. 1302). Despite being doomed, Cassandra exercises an aspect of volition, which is recognized within the play.⁵ Last, Cassandra, as she goes to her death, predicts vengeance for herself as well as for Agamemnon, at least the latter of which comes to pass.⁶ She emphasizes the finality of her own death (1291–4, 1327–9) and is never again mentioned by name. Cassandra’s prophesied and fulfilled death thus triggers a set of ironies, conditions her unexpected bravery, and facilitates a feeling of closure.⁷

There is, however, an element of her scene that casts doubt on Cassandra’s endpoint as a character and therefore ought to provoke reconsideration of these three themes. Cassandra depicts herself as continuing in the realm of Hades as she did in life (Ag. 1160–1):

νῦν δ᾽ ἀμφὶ Κωκυτόν τε κ᾿Αχερουσίους

ὄχθους ἔοικα θεσπιῳδήσειν τάχα.

Now by the Cocytus and the banks of the Acheron

it seems I will soon be singing prophecies.

This couplet has not drawn critical attention, being perhaps too brief and allusive.⁸ Yet it transforms Cassandra’s fate from ending in her murder to persisting in the afterlife, not only as a shade bereft of characteristics, but as an active prophetic figure. Close attention to the couplet raises a critical set of questions: If Cassandra continues to exist beyond her death, what becomes of the theme of foretold fate? What of the irony, resistance, and vengeance that depend on her immediate end?

In order to investigate the consequences of shifting Cassandra’s end, one must conscientiously parse the couplet itself. Is her reference to the underworld simply a synonym for death, or does it literally refer to her afterlife? If the latter, we must investigate whether it is an actual prophecy or Cassandra’s own deduction of her fate. The following sections thus examine the immediate context, meter, and vocabulary of the couplet. This chapter then investigates how the possibilities reconfigure our understanding of the three major dynamics arising from her inexorable death. First is how they affect the human and divine constraints that structure Cassandra’s doom and consequent ironies. Second is their effects on her emphasis on closure. Last is how they shift the valences of her resistance. Attention to this afterlife couplet uncovers ethical nuances of her scene and complicates its well-known themes with previously unexamined aspects.

Cassandra’s Rivers

The larger passage from which it is taken demonstrates the tensions between possible readings of the couplet. It is nearly a précis of Cassandra’s life, as it refers to her childhood and includes the destructive marriage that began the Trojan War (Ag. 1156–61):⁹

ἰὼ γάμοι γάμοι Πάριδος ὀλέθριοι φίλων·

ἰὼ Σκαμάνδρου πάτριον ποτόν·

τότε μὲν ἀμφὶ σὰς ἀιόνας τάλαιν᾽

ἠνυτόμαν τροφαῖς·

νῦν δ᾽ ἀμφὶ Κωκυτόν τε κ᾿Αχερουσίους

ὄχθους ἔοικα θεσπιῳδήσειν τάχα.

Woe, the wedding, the wedding of Paris, destructive of kin!

Woe, the ancestral drink of the Scamander!

Back then by your banks, wretched woman,

I was nourished to adulthood.

Now by the Cocytus and the banks of the Acheron

it seems I will soon be singing prophecies.

Cassandra links the flow of her life to the Scamander at Troy and its ebb to the Cocytus and Acheron, those pain-filled rivers of Hades.¹⁰ The final couplet, if taken literally, indicates that Cassandra will continue beyond death. Whereas this world’s currents drag her to her prophesied demise, the rivers at the end of the couplet betoken further suffering: Cassandra’s curse could abide, even below the earth.

Cassandra’s own second sight provides the first encounter with supernatural continuity of the dead within the Oresteia. Shortly after this passage, the prophetess literally sees the ghost Children of Thyestes (ὁρᾶτε τούσδε τούς … νέους, Ag. 1217–18). The couplet fits squarely, therefore, within the concerns of the trilogy about the afterlife, as will become evident in later chapters. Important to mention here, however, is Cassandra’s link to Clytemnestra, her killer. Cassandra gives Clytemnestra the multilayered epithet, “mother of Hades” (Ἅιδου μητέρ᾽, Hadou mēter’, 1235). In part this refers to Clytemnestra engendering death, but more figuratively it is also borne out by the queen’s descriptions of and return from the underworld.¹¹ When living, Clytemnestra claims that Iphigeneia will embrace and kiss her killer, Agamemnon, by the river Acheron (Ag. 1555–9), a phrasing that echoes Cassandra’s earlier reference to the same river.¹² Reinforcing but also reversing the dynamics, when Clytemnestra returns as a ghost in the Eumenides, she complains that she is the one haunted by those she killed.¹³ This can be seen as a reference to Cassandra continuing in the afterlife, for the priestess is one of the two bodies over which Clytemnestra gloats on stage.

This comparison with Clytemnestra demonstrates how characters’ perspectives on the afterlife juxtapose with each other. The witnesses themselves have various degrees of believability and may even present conflicting stories. Clytemnestra is an admitted liar and murderer, whereas her ghost gives a different version of the afterlife than she did while alive. Further, beyond even the ghost children – who are passive and appear only to Cassandra – Clytemnestra’s return from the underworld presents a dead character carrying on with similar speech and concerns as in life (Chapter 6). On the one hand, the Ghost of Clytemnestra’s allusion to Cassandra in Hades supports the possibility that Cassandra’s couplet is literally true. On the other hand, it has a far different emphasis from Cassandra’s self-depiction of her cursed existence, by hinting that she takes part in Clytemnestra’s punishment – acting as her own avenger.

A third possibility for Cassandra relates to the afterlife as a place of ethical retribution. One of the three choral references to punishment in the underworld can also apply to her. In the Eumenides, the chthonic Erinyes explicitly reveal that the god Hades punishes every mortal who transgresses (Eum. 267–75).¹⁴ Cassandra’s acts in life can be seen to fall into the category of “dishonoring a god” (θεόν … ἀσεβῶν, theon … asebōn, Eum. 270).¹⁵ Cassandra recounts that her curse is due to somehow “conceding/consenting to” (ξυναινέσασα) and then “cheating” (ἐψευσάμην, Ag. 1208) Apollo’s sexual advances.¹⁶ Whereas the nature of each of these actions is left undefined, it is clear that in the living world she is punished by the god for frustrating him in a sexual context (see further below, pp. 79–80). The naming of impiety against a divinity as a cause for punishment in the Eumenides passage revives the possibility that Cassandra will continue to suffer in the afterlife.

Named figures exist in the realm of Hades, but whether they are punished or actively punish, whether they have power or demand action in the living world all depends on the speaker. With these contradictions, the Oresteia avoids a definitive stance on what happens to a person after death. It forces audiences to consider multiple perspectives, each in its context, but also in interplay with one another. These explicit references to others’ afterlives and allusions to Cassandra’s potential continuations provide the background for a closer examination of how her couplet functions on its own terms.

Prophecy or Deduction? Divergent Possibilities for Cassandra

Cassandra is the only “seer” in tragedy who literally sees – both a past that did not happen to her and the future for the house beyond her death.¹⁷ The stanza we are concerned with contains, by contrast, visual images related solely to her – memories of her own childhood and her own potential continuation after death. As with other personal information in her scene, this stanza is thus differentiated from her supernatural knowledge concerning the house of Atreus. The question of authoritativeness concerning Cassandra’s vision of herself in Hades rests on whether one considers it to be a product of her superhuman sight or her human deduction.¹⁸

Cassandra’s markers of emotion are the first elements in need of scrutiny. The emphatic repetition of the exclamation ἰώ (“woe,” 1156, 1157) indicates the emotional charge of the passage and ties it to lamentation.¹⁹ These cries of woe may also relate to her inarticulate howls and shrieks whenever she prophesies.²⁰ Comparable is an earlier passage beginning with ἰὼ ἰώ (1136–9), in which she first grieves for her own circumstances (with the pleonasm κακόποτμοι τύχαι, kakopotmoi tukhai “ill-fated fortunes,” 1136), then struggles to determine why Apollo has brought her to the house of Atreus, and at last determines that she is to die with Agamemnon (1139). The Chorus claim, precisely at this point, that Cassandra is out of her mind and divinely possessed (1140–5, 1150–5).²¹ Analogously, her cries in the afterlife stanza may indicate that she is in a trance. The rivers of Hades she names (1160) would then be marked as images before her, in line with the emphasis on vision in her other prophecies. In this reading of her laments, the afterlife couplet is part of her visionary speech that causes an almost physical response of woe. It would thus be a prophetic, divinely guaranteed representation of her fate.

The scene, however, keeps the opposite perspective in tension. For the language surrounding the couplet could also indicate that the basis for Cassandra’s declaration about the afterlife is not a divine vision. The Chorus proclaim that Cassandra is intelligible for the first time directly thereafter (1162–7).²² Taking their usual, overly literal approach, with its emphasis on clear communication, they now understand her mention of Hades as only referring to death. They refer specifically to being struck by a “deadly” or “murderous” (φοινίῳ, 1164) bite on account of her painful fate (δυσαλγεῖ τύχᾳ, dusalgei tukha 1165).²³ Their response suggests that the couplet is metaphorical, nonprophetic speech.

In addition to the choral response, another clue is that Cassandra begins the larger passage (1156–61) by tapping into her own memory. She recalls her childhood by the river Scamander, which she links to the rivers of Hades. The balanced correlative construction, “then by (your banks) … now by (the banks of)” (τότε μὲν ἀμφί … νῦν δ᾽ ἀμφί, tote men amphi … nun d’ amphi, 1158, 1160) marks an analogy. This suggests Cassandra’s mind at work, rather than an induced vision. The earlier passage (1136–9) could be seen as a parallel regarding this point as well. There she asks a question (“why have you brought miserable me here?” 1138) only to answer it herself with a deduction clearly not linked to any visual language (“for no reason except to die with another, what else?” 1139).²⁴ If the two passages were truly akin, Cassandra’s language in the afterlife couplet would have to be read as figurative. That is, even if the image refers to her literal afterlife – rather than death – Cassandra would be speaking on her own authority; she would be speculating about what will happen to her in the hereafter. Yet there is no way to choose between these two distinct ways of reading her cries of woe and visual image of the underworld. That very fact shows that neither the markers of emotion nor the invocation of her past resolves whether the passage is literal or metaphorical, a prophecy or human inference.

Does the difference, then, relate to whether Cassandra’s prophetic lines are sung or spoken? That is, can the meter of these lines determine their register? The couplet is in iambic trimeter (1160–1), whereas the earlier lines of the stanza are lyric (1156–9). Cassandra includes trimeters from 1080 onward within her four exchanges with the Chorus, of which this stanza is the penultimate. The lyric verses are sung, but it is not clear whether the trimeters are. Scholars generally agree that, at the very least, Cassandra’s trimeters “indicate a note of restraint.”²⁵ McClure locates Cassandra’s transition away from lamentation and “involuntary” speech at her full shift to trimeters (1178ff.), which occurs only after the stanza in question.²⁶ However, Morgan (1994, 128) points to Cassandra’s later “prophetic frenzy, even though she continues to speak in trimeters (1215ff.).” This is clearly accurate, as 1214–16 are verses filled with lamenting cries and references to prophetic agony (δεινὸς ὀρθομαντείας πόνος, 1215) preceding her vision of the dead children.

The issue of the afterlife couplet then turns on whether the trimeters indicate speech that the character delivers in her own voice, whereas the lyric portion is “inspired.” In fact, the correlative construction (τότε μὲν ἀμφί … νῦν δ᾽ ἀμφί, tote men amphi … nun d’ amphi, 1158, 1160) crosses this metrical boundary. It is doubtless possible that these two parts of a single construction are delivered in different registers, but is it plausible that Cassandra would sing about her Trojan childhood and then speak her prophetic vision of the underworld? This would contradict the rest of her prophetic scene. It is therefore impossible to prove that there is a rigid correspondence between meter and content here. Meter, for us readers at least, can provide no certain guide as to the inspired status of the couplet.

A third element that indicates ambiguity traces back to the language at the heart of the couplet. The verb ἔοικα (eoika, “I seem” or “it seems that I,” 1161) bears a great deal of interpretive weight in determining whether Cassandra sees herself in Hades or deduces that she will continue there. This verb crowds the Cassandra scene, occurring five times in fewer than 120 lines, more than in any other scene in Aeschylus.²⁷ The general range of meanings of ἔοικα relates to comparison: “to be like,” “to liken,” “to seem,” “to be seemly or fitting,” and so on.²⁸ In some Homeric uses, ἔοικα with the dative means “looks like,” indicating that the comparison concerns something literally visible to the speaker.²⁹ When used with a participle or an infinitive, it tends to stress the intellectual activity of comparison or conjecture: “to seem to do something,” “to be like.”³⁰ Of course, the comparison still relies on sensory input, since there must be physical indications for one thing to resemble another or for someone to seem to do something.³¹ Yet the observable component of something that “seems about to happen” is not generally emphasized.³² It would be especially difficult, typically, to read a visual meaning into the use of eoika with a future infinitive, since humans cannot “see” the future to compare it to the present. Thus, for Cassandra’s couplet, the normal translation of ἔοικα θεσπιῳδήσειν (eoika thespiōdēsein) would be, “I seem about to sing prophecies” or, in the impersonal translation, “it seems that I will sing prophecies.” This understanding of eoika points toward Cassandra’s mental deduction, not a literal vision.

The notion of “seeming” is not a neutral one in the Agamemnon, however.³³ In several other uses in the Cassandra scene, the verb eoika itself is part of a web of words and concepts indicating precisely the questioning of vision, communication, and knowledge.³⁴ In the first two instances of the verb, both spoken by the Elders about Cassandra, eoika almost immediately indicates the unreliability of what appears to be the case (Ag. 1062–3 and 1083):

ἑρμηνέως ἔοικεν ἡ ξένη τοροῦ

δεῖσθαι·

The foreigner seems (eoiken) to need some clear interpreter.

χρήσειν ἔοικεν ἀμφὶ τῶν αὑτῆς κακῶν·

She seems (eoiken) about to prophesy concerning her own troubles.

In both quotations, eoiken with the infinitive establishes audience expectations about Cassandra, only for her to promptly subvert them. Cassandra does not, in fact, need an interpreter to understand Greek, as she “seems” to the Elders to need at first. Neither does she immediately prophesy about her own troubles after they declare that she “seems” about to (with the future infinitive χρήσειν). Rather, Cassandra surprises the Elders by communicating in Greek her uncanny knowledge of the history and future of the house of Atreus (1085–1129). The Elders’ use of eoika thus marks their mistaken deductions about Cassandra.³⁵ On a more general level, the Elders’ struggle to process her prophecy and their consequent inability to act on it both emphasize their limited, merely human understanding of the present, past, and – especially – future.³⁶ In this scene, they are a foil to the infallibility of Cassandra’s prophetic knowledge, which is exempted from human epistemic uncertainty.³⁷

Two possible readings of eoika in the afterlife couplet emerge, each with its own implications. If Cassandra’s use of eoika with the future infinitive is not marked as prophetic, she would be stitching an afterlife onto the end of her life without the authority of revelation. The term eoika would exemplify human mental deduction, what “seems” to be the case, and would thus partake of uncertainty. The second possibility derives from the warping of normally unproblematic language due to Cassandra’s abnormal abilities.

As detailed above (p. 74), Cassandra is precisely the one figure able to see the future. The example of the Children of Thyestes illustrates this, for they appear to her “bearing the forms of dreams” (ὀνείρων προσφερεῖς μορφώμασιν, 1218). The phrasing emphasizes that they are observable by the senses, having forms, yet are also somehow beyond perception; they are dreams seen by only the one with second sight, while she is awake and communicating to others. The disparity between Cassandra’s literal vision and that of other humans is brought to the fore by her question to the Elders about the children: “do you see?” (ὁρᾶτε, horate, 1217).³⁸ They, of course, do not. The exceptional abilities of Cassandra, then, prompt us to be wary of interpreting eoika in this scene based on its regular usage. Due to Cassandra’s second sight, eoika with the future infinitive may indicate that she is having a literal vision of her own future in Hades, precisely the unseen realm. From the mouth of the still-robed priestess of Apollo, this statement about continuing in the afterlife would gain sanction from a chain of authority leading to the highest supernatural powers of the Greek pantheon.³⁹

The ethical and dramatic implications of these two possibilities for the afterlife couplet require the reexamination of the three major components of her scene in greater detail. Each of them depends almost exclusively on Cassandra’s death as total ending: the dynamics of compulsion and fate, Cassandra’s own emphasis on closure at death, and the rhetoric of resistance to fate. At the end of the final section, I will also draw out a further afterlife possibility for Cassandra. These interrelated aspects of Cassandra’s death undergo profound reversals when her possible afterlife is taken into account. Moreover, the two separate readings of her couplet we have outlined interact disparately with each theme in the scene.

Compulsion, Fate, Irony

Over the course of her scene, Cassandra reveals the increasingly powerful forces constraining her, from human coercion to divine determination. The intimations of forced marriage in three temporal realms mark her sexual, political, and supernatural captivity. In the past, Cassandra denied Apollo in connection with an aggressive erotic encounter;⁴⁰ in the present, she is an enslaved concubine to Agamemnon, the destroyer of her country; and in the future, she will be a “bride of Hades.”⁴¹ The supremely violent, sexualized depictions of this subjugated woman must be kept near to fully grasp her emotionally laden scene.

The duress of foreseeing her early death further cleaves Cassandra from the rest of humankind, who are spared the knowledge of their final day.⁴² In performance, her braided prophetic garb enmeshes her with the very god to whom she has lost her freedom.⁴³ Metaphorically, it is a net that indicates she will soon be dragged down to the underworld.⁴⁴ Yet if, as she claims, Apollo has sent her to death (1275–6), a force more pervasive than his curse oversees her demise as well – fate.⁴⁵ For Cassandra’s scene reverberates with terms that overlap in their references to destiny and death: ἀνάγκη (anankē, “necessity”), τύχη (tukhē, “fortune”), and μοῖρα (moira, “portion/lot/fate/death”).⁴⁶ Ostensibly, Cassandra lacks all self-determination and choice.

Although there is much scholarship on tragic fate, Cassandra’s situation differs significantly from other instances of divine compulsion in the Oresteia.⁴⁷ As discussed in the Introduction, the trilogy contains a number of scenes in which characters are driven by both divine constraints and human considerations into a choice between two abhorrent alternatives. As such, the decision in these fated moments is sometimes assimilated to the tragic agent’s character, both their personality and political or familial role.⁴⁸ Yet the decision is also one for which the individual will suffer, the recurrent theme of drasanti pathein.⁴⁹ Cassandra, however, is neither a political actor nor one who can choose between sets of consequences. She frames her own situation as one without alternatives: Cassandra does not describe her cheating of Apollo as one of two paths, nor does she articulate any extenuating circumstances.⁵⁰ Cassandra also offers little by way of family curse or inherited traits by which to judge her actions toward Apollo and on stage.⁵¹

Bereft of choices, knowing her inexorable fate in advance, Cassandra is, in some respects, an exemplar of dramatic irony. The major ironies are in the disparity between the knowledge of the audience and that of the characters, dramatized in Cassandra’s miscommunication with the Chorus and their failure to act on her prophecies. We get the sense that audience members ought to believe Cassandra, for their own knowledge of the story from Homer should make them fairly certain that her prophecy about Agamemnon will be fulfilled.⁵² Similarly, there seems to be a Greek literary convention about prophecy – that it always comes true, but that the characters do not know this.⁵³ Aeschylus manipulates such expectations masterfully. As elsewhere in the Oresteia, the staged action first correlates to the off-stage story and then puts a twist on it. The Chorus of Elders affirm Cassandra’s preternatural knowledge of the past (1106, 1242–4) and, unlike the Trojans, claim to believe her (1212–13). Painfully, poetically, the cursed prophetess on stage unfurls the future in (eventually) comprehensible terms. Yet, to her frustration (1254), she ends up misunderstood, pitied, and still unable to convince her interlocutors to act. Instead, the Elders try to evade the revelations (1247). They cannot and will not prevent Agamemnon’s death – or Cassandra’s. The ironies of the scene therefore also depend on the rupture between the uncertainty of human knowledge and the certainty of divine inspiration in literary convention.

Cassandra’s prophecy provides a further set of ironies concerning her own continuity beyond death. She claims that there will be vengeance against the killers for Agamemnon and herself. This demonstrates her ability to transcend her human oppressors through knowledge that extends past her murder. It also shows that Cassandra is not meant to be seen as a futile character, for her prophecies are continually fulfilled. They structure the action of the rest of the Agamemnon and the Choephoroi. Yet there is no further mention of Cassandra by name after her death. Once Orestes closes the circle of prophecy by taking vengeance, Cassandra seems to have entirely discharged her dramatic function and to have been lost in the process.⁵⁴ The distance between Cassandra’s impassioned prophecy of vengeance for herself and the later disregard for her creates a sense that her words were in vain. The dynamics of prophecy within the scene and following it reenacts Cassandra’s curse. Yet foretold doom and foretold vengeance both depend on Cassandra’s death as her endpoint.

Shutting the Prophetic Eye, Silencing the Swan’s Song

Cassandra’s language itself heavily emphasizes death as closure. Despite the appearance of the ghost children and her couplet about singing in Hades, Cassandra seems to annul her unique connection to the afterlife. The three examples of Cassandra’s use of the term “Hades” instantiate this theme. In each, it can be treated as a simple metonym for death, which translators generally do. Her first use of Hades is in a rhetorical question: “is it some hunting-net of Hades?” (1115). Here, “of Hades” (Ἅιδου, Hadou) only operates as a synonym for “of death/deadly.” More layered is her description, mentioned above, p. 72, of Clytemnestra as a “mother of Hades” (Ἅιδου μητέρ᾽, Hadou mēter’, 1235). Despite its multiple possible allusions, the modifier, on its surface, acts as a synonym for “murderous.”⁵⁵ Lastly, Cassandra apostrophizes the entrance into the house of Atreus: “I address these as the gates of Hades” (Ἅιδου πύλας, Hadou pulas, 1291). This reference is to both the entryway of the blood-soaked house and the gates of the underworld as a geographical place, with its well-known gates.⁵⁶ However, again there is no mention of souls or an afterlife existence. References to the underworld might call attention to the possibility of continuity, yet in the Cassandra scene, aside from the couplet in question, neither the Elders nor Cassandra touch on human existence in the afterlife. Instead, in these three references, “Hades” in the genitive attaches to a noun that represents the closure of life: the fatal net, the deadly agent, and the doors that lead to death.⁵⁷ Rather than calling attention to the underworld, these phrases are focused on death as ending.

The restriction to life can also be seen in the sole reference to divine judgment in the scene. The Elders had alluded to punishment after death before Cassandra arrived (Ag. 461–7). Yet when Cassandra refers to divine judgment and its results, she locates it before death (Ag. 1288–9):

                                       οἳ δ’ εἷλον πόλιν

οὕτως ἀπαλλάσσουσιν ἐν θεῶν κρίσει

                                    Those who took the city

are coming off thus in the judgment of the gods

That is, Cassandra makes the divine punishment of the sackers of Troy coterminous with Agamemnon’s impending murder.⁵⁸ This is consonant with the Children of Thyestes, who seem to seek Agamemnon’s death, as does Clytemnestra in Cassandra’s prophecy. It is also the reasoning behind Cassandra’s repeated calls for vengeance against her murderers to take place in life. Through these, she appears to utterly deplete the prophetic power inherent in her last moments.⁵⁹ Cassandra’s own curse and the violence against others in her prophecies reinforce the idea of one’s lifetime as the locus of retribution.

Cassandra’s statements concerning vengeance are analogous to her couplet about the afterlife. She attributes them neither to a vision nor to speech from a god. Her predictions occur after she throws off her prophetic accoutrements. Their phrasing, too, makes it difficult to see them as theologically authoritative. Cassandra’s reference to judgment by an unnamed collective of deities (ἐν θεῶν κρίσει, en theōn krisei, 1289) is more akin in its vagueness to speculation by human choruses than to divinely inspired knowledge. Yet her declarations still carry weight; their source is a prophetess, herself on the verge of death, condemned by a god in life. Cassandra’s statements about judgment in this life are thus tensely poised between divine revelation and human speculation. There is an unresolved contradiction between two possibilities of authority that mirrors the one in her couplet about the underworld. Despite the emphasis on closure, there is a pattern of doubtful authority behind Cassandra’s statements. Such uncertainty may enable audiences not to take them at face value when they concern matters beyond her death.

Finally, in the last part of her scene Cassandra repeatedly describes her own death as a definitive end (1292–4):

ἐπεύχομαι δὲ καιρίας πληγῆς τυχεῖν,

ὡς ἀσφάδᾳστος αἱμάτων εὐθνησίμων

ἀπορρυέντων ὄμμα συμβάλω τόδε.

I pray to receive a mortal stroke,

as one unstruggling; my blood having poured out

with easy death, let me close this eye.

The termination of vision in verse 1294, a physical sign of death, cuts off Cassandra’s insight simultaneously with her life. It seems to contradict the notion that she could continue as a seer in Hades. Her prayer for the relief of an easy, good death (ἀσφάδᾳστος, εὐθνησίμων) may also be seen as an attempt to obviate any punishment thereafter. For the remainder of her scene, she maintains this emphasis on total oblivion. Near her last lines, Cassandra utterly renounces living (“Enough of life!” ἀρκείτω βίος, 1314; cf. 1327). When exiting the stage into the palace, she compares mortal existence to a shadow (σκιᾷ, 1328) and its end to a picture wiped out (1329).⁶⁰ There is no hint of a shade or soul that could continue in an afterlife. In encountering her death, Cassandra wishes for closure, for a rest from struggle.

The trilogy itself reinforces the theme of closure for Cassandra. In the rest of the Oresteia, Cassandra goes unnamed and almost unaccounted for. The three remaining references to her are all by Clytemnestra. The third was discussed above, pp. 72–3, the first two are sexualized and give her no form of continuity.⁶¹ But there is a significant aspect to the first, in which after murdering her, Clytemnestra claims that, like a swan, Cassandra has sung her last song (Ag. 1440–7). By so powerfully closing off the voice of the prophetess, Clytemnestra negates the idea of Cassandra “singing prophecies” in the afterlife. Together, these references to closure at death – both desired by Cassandra and imposed on her from the outside – create a potent feeling of ending. In killing Cassandra, the trilogy seems to exchange her cursed sight for eternal blindness, her singing for silence.

Resistance, Bravery, and the Possibility of Glory

In contrast to both the ironic futility of her fate and the quiet closure of her death is the theme of Cassandra’s defiance, emphasized in more recent scholarship. Cassandra resists human and even divine forces as much as she can within the parameters of her situation. Her silence in the war-chariot dramatically foils Clytemnestra’s verbosity.⁶² Cassandra’s journey into the house also reverses the dynamics of Agamemnon’s earlier exit along the same path. The king loses the battle of language to Clytemnestra, defiles with his boots the rich fabrics she lays before him (repeating his sacrilege at Troy), and knows nothing of his coming murder. The enslaved prophetess, conversely, repels the deceptive language of the queen, strips off Apollo’s prophetic robes, and leaves the stage with full knowledge of her fate.⁶³ Trampling her robes and other prophetic implements signals Cassandra’s rebellion against Apollo.⁶⁴ Her protest is predicated on her upcoming death, as can be seen in her apostrophe to those accoutrements of the god: “I will destroy you before meeting my fate (μοίρας, moiras)” (1266). These scraps of resistance are a crucial element of Cassandra’s scene – they return to her a measure of agency before she succumbs to doom. In broad outline, then, Cassandra’s resistance in response to her known demise counterpoises the irony of unheeded superhuman knowledge.

The fruits of such resistance lead back to the afterlife theme, for they could continue beyond the end of her life through glory. Cassandra’s attitude toward suffering and her confrontation with fate earns distinction from the Elders for bravery. As she nears her death, over some thirty verses the Chorus and Cassandra exchange assonant words with τλ- and τολμ- roots meaning “suffering,” “daring,” and “being courageous.”⁶⁵

Within this range, the Chorus even posit that Cassandra’s death is glorious (εὐκλεῶς, eukleōs, 1304). This implies that her death could have a positive outcome. Yet Cassandra herself challenges these evaluations in her exchange with the Chorus (1300–5):

Χο. ὁ δ’ ὕστατός γε τοῦ χρόνου πρεσβεύεται.

Κα. ἥκει τόδ’ ἦμαρ. σμικρὰ κερδανῶ φυγῇ.

Χο. ἀλλ’ ἴσθι τλήμων οὖσ’ ἀπ’ εὐτόλμου φρενός.

Κα. οὐδεὶς ἀκούει ταῦτα τῶν εὐδαιμόνων.

Χο. ἀλλ’ εὐκλεῶς τοι κατθανεῖν χάρις βροτῷ.

Κα. ἰὼ πάτερ σοῦ σῶν τε γενναίων τέκνων.

Chor. Nevertheless, the last moment is most honored.

Cass. The day has come. I will profit little by fleeing.

Chor. But know that you are courageous from a daring heart.

Cass. None of the fortunate hears these things said of them.

Chor. But I say to you it is a favor for a mortal to die gloriously.

Cass. Woe, father, for you and your noble children!

Cassandra’s political and personal circumstances force scrutiny of the terms the Elders choose. When could one who has lost her city and family enjoy the “favor” or “boon” (χάρις, kharis, 1304) of a glorious death?⁶⁶ Commendations for bravery and the promise of kleos are both inherently problematic for someone about to be murdered. This difficulty is brought to the fore by Cassandra’s insistence that she “will profit little” (σμικρὰ κερδανῶ, smikra kerdanō, 1301) by staying alive any longer.⁶⁷ The Chorus imply that such glory ought to comfort her before death, but Cassandra’s negativity in verse 1303 directly refutes them. Her claim that no actually fortunate person would “hear” (ἀκούει) such things said about themselves focuses on the living.

Along these lines, Cassandra’s lament to her dead family in verse 1305 has generally been interpreted as either denying a glorious death to them – and by extension, to herself – or as a non sequitur, completely ignoring the previous statement of the Chorus.⁶⁸ Yet her response, having no adversative particle, could instead connect her upcoming death to that of her family in the Trojan War.⁶⁹ Read this way, Cassandra is not absolutely denying her own glory but might be implicitly supporting it by invoking the nobility of her dead siblings (γενναίων, 1305). Since at least some of them died in war, they are presumably eligible for the very “boon” and “glorious death” about which the Chorus speak.⁷⁰ However, Cassandra does not differentiate them nor mark their fate as positive; rather, her lamenting response to the Chorus (ἰώ, 1305) indicates that she considers that even those who died bravely in war have encountered a sorrowful fate. On this reading, Cassandra’s words deny the very premise that glorious death is a boon, either to those fallen in battle or to their living relatives. None of her responses show Cassandra taking comfort in the Elders’ offer of glory. She focuses, instead, on living misfortune, anguish at the moment of death, and the lamentable memory of her family.

Cassandra’s rebuttals against the benefits of bravery and kleos in her last moments evoke another possibility. The Elders’ positive valuation of her bravery at death could be directed to Cassandra’s status after her life’s end. This is an idea explicitly stated in a previous Aeschylean play, when Eteocles defends his decision to face his own brother in battle (Sept. 683–5). Eteocles addresses the possibility of death in a situation also framed as supernaturally imposed (in the context of a curse coming to fulfillment, ἀραὶ τελεσφόροι, Sept. 655). For him, the enjoyment of “profit” (κέρδος, kerdos) and “glory” (εὐκλείαν, eukleian) occurs specifically only after life is over (“among the dead,” ἐν τεθνηκόσιν, 684–5).⁷¹ Cassandra’s statement about profiting little by extending life allows for the prospect that she, too, could benefit from glory, but only if she could continue to exist after death. Cassandra’s afterlife couplet then opens up the possibility that she might enjoy the positive outcome of glory for a brave death, in addition to the possibility that it would be merely an extension of her curse.

Summations/Connections

In line with how afterlife notions impact the rest of the Oresteia, the two options for interpreting Cassandra’s couplet affect the reading of fate, irony, resistance, and bravery in her scene and beyond. On the one hand, if the vision of the underworld is Cassandra’s own speculation – if her verses mean she “thinks it likely” that her punishment will continue even after death – Cassandra’s actions on stage would indicate meaningful resistance. An unspoken reason for Cassandra trampling her prophetic implements would be in order not to sing prophecies in Hades. They represent her accursed role, and she rejects them not only for her last few moments but also into her possible continuity in the afterlife. Cassandra would thus extend into the future her control over her own voice, an observable theme from her silence to Clytemnestra and her discursive language to the Chorus. By desecrating the tokens of Apollo’s priesthood, she would be trying to forestall an eternal continuation of compelled speaking.

In this reading, Cassandra’s actions on stage have an aspect of volition beyond the recognized ones of initial silence and walking willingly to her death. While claiming there is no way to delay her final day, Cassandra battles her fate after all. She thus expands her limited opportunity for heroism and its rewards in an unexpected way. This branch of possibilities beyond the end of her time on stage allows an audience to consider that she could enjoy the kleos the Chorus offers if her resistance to divine forces were successful. These actions could allow Cassandra to achieve her desired oblivion, escape from punishment through her resistance, or gain the satisfaction of recognized bravery in an existence beyond. Such a bettering of one’s fate after death is a clearly stated possibility for other main characters. Agamemnon’s children and the Chorus of the Choephoroi make every effort to reverse his dishonored death, going so far as to envision him as an honored king in the afterlife (Chapter 4). Orestes claims heroic powers after death (Chapter 5). Clytemnestra’s Ghost seeks a change in her honor below despite her murderous actions above (Chapter 6). Much in the same way, Cassandra’s actions would overturn the narrative of her death. It becomes possible that she liberates herself from the hold of fate.

The situation would be radically different if Cassandra’s vision were understood as divinely inspired. In that case, her fate would be truly ineluctable, even after death; none of her actions could thwart it. Divine provenance would unproblematically run its course using Cassandra only as a mouthpiece for prophecy. Dramatically speaking, Cassandra would be situated within the theistic structure of the Oresteia so that, once her prophecy is completed by the vengeance she predicts, she is forgotten.⁷² For Cassandra as a character, however, a divine fulfillment of her vision would forcibly reclothe her in the very priestly garments she trampled; her eyes would reopen, her mouth would sing again. Cassandra would gain no reprieve for her suffering through biological death, no kleos through bravery, and no relief from the curse of Apollo. Her afterlife could be understood as a second round of punishment.⁷³ Even the sense of completion from the trilogy’s later consummation of Cassandra’s prophecies would be partially undercut, since she would, presumably, be issuing new ones.⁷⁴ Perhaps her ignored prophecy would continue forever, extending the ironies of her life – there is no indication otherwise. All praise of Cassandra’s resistance while living would also contribute to irony, since only punishment awaits her. In the nullification of her agency and in suffering for eternity, she would lose any reward for heroism and much of her relatable humanity.

As was demonstrated, the afterlife couplet is ambiguous between these two possibilities. Moreover, there is another option in interpretive tension with both: The couplet could be metaphorical, simply referring to death. One can thus deny any possibility of an afterlife, considering the closure and forgetting Cassandra seeks as the last word on her fate. Yet the trilogy itself does not let Cassandra rest; it revisits her afterlife through the Ghost of Clytemnestra’s reference. This hint presents a third and different understanding of Cassandra’s afterlife, from an undead character who herself continues below, who still has a voice after death (Chapter 6). Taking these indications about Cassandra’s afterlife seriously returns us to the key question of this and the following chapters: What is the reason for maintaining multiple possibilities concerning continuation after death?

Instead of Cassandra’ foretold ending, the couplet hints at alternatives through deliberately multivalenced vocabulary, meter, and content. The continual slipperiness of tragedy’s poetic language has a role in undercutting the certainty of her speech, yet far more specific to Cassandra’s couplet is the ambiguity concerning whether her end is truly her end.⁷⁵ The two readings of Cassandra’s afterlife each present her as an open-ended problem. It is precisely through the tension between each possibility that Cassandra’s scene can interact in a more layered way with the idea of fixed fate she herself presents.

This polysemy of endings sophisticates our understanding of her extreme constraints. Cassandra’s choices become significant again – to the point that her rebellious living actions may even alter her envisioned situation in Hades. The theatrical audience may understand that Cassandra’s prophecies are fulfilled, but even this does not close off her character. If she continues in the afterlife, there is always the possibility of her suffering punishments or singing new prophecies. During life, she ineffectively resists the political and divine narratives in which she is caught up; conversely, the story of her haunting Clytemnestra in Hades suggests a continuing agency, resistance, and retaliation against her own murderer. Cassandra’s potential continuation also returns the possibility of some reward for her bravery, the enjoyment of which may be feasible in the afterlife. Aeschylus thus mediates between an entirely deterministic view of fate and this tragic character’s humanity.⁷⁶ The enslaved, doomed seer accrues pathos in direct proportion to how nondefinitive her future is. Only thus does Cassandra circuitously reenter the contingency that envelops the rest of humankind. The afterlife multiplicity in her scene keeps even the prophetess synonymous with a fated end from being subsumed by it. Cassandra’s potential for existing in the beyond reestablishes the barest basis for her freedom.