We come now to the heroines of Attic Tragedy. The women of Homer, with all their romantic beauty and charm, gleam on us from a far distance. A new type of heroine has arisen, reborn out of the legends of the remote past into a new age; and evoked by a poetic genius which is greatly different from that of the Homeric epics.

In the interval which had elapsed since the epics were composed, civilization had advanced, life had grown more complex, and women had attained to a fuller and freer existence. It was the Great Age of Greece; and as in our own Elizabethan Age, the poetic genius of the time was impelled to find expression in dramatic form.

From all these causes, we shall find that the women of Attic Tragedy are possessed of a stronger and more vivid personality than their Homeric forerunners. They are resolute, purposeful, passionate—women of action as well as of feeling. Physical beauty they do possess, as well as grace and charm. Neither do they lack the gentler qualities which are usually supposed to be peculiarly feminine. Indeed, we could probably find an eminent example of every so-called feminine virtue if we went through the range of the heroines. But the stress is not now laid merely on beauty and the gentler graces. It is laid rather on a combination of these qualities with strength of intellect and will, generous emotions, and a soaring spirit.

Such a change would appear to be right and natural—in fact, almost inevitable. We should expect that the passage of the centuries in an advancing civilization would give the woman time and space ‘to bourgeon out of all within her’; and that with a more harmonious development she would definitely gain in mental height. We should expect, too, that the dramatic genius would create a more clear-cut individuality than that given by the epic poet in a long narrative chiefly concerned with the doings of menfolk. So that we are not surprised to find the women of tragedy possessed of great vitality, and occupying a very large share of the dramatists’ attention. What does surprise us, however, is to discover that many of these newer heroines are the very women whom we have already met in the Homeric poems: that they have been taken straight over from the heroic age, out of the ancient heroic themes, and made to live over again, a new and vastly different life.

This brings us to a point which it is well to keep in mind. Sometimes the heroines of Greek Tragedy do very terrible things and are placed in situations of appalling horror. Those acts, and the circumstances out of which they spring, not only repel us but seem to be at variance even with the spirit of the poet himself. Sometimes the heroine is the victim of tyrannic physical force, and frequently again there is the clash of motive, for which death seems to be the only solution. Strange crimes, unheard of and almost unthinkable, sometimes darken the atmosphere around them. Age-old curses and hereditary feuds pursue them: the terrible gift of beauty weighs them down; and over all broods fate, a lurking, indefinable power against which, in the last resort, they are powerless to stand.

There is then, sometimes in the heroines themselves and almost always in their environment, an element of barbarism which troubles us. The touch of savagery repels us all the more from its contrast with the exquisite poetry in which it is enshrined, and the noble spirit of that poetry. We wonder why the dramatist should have placed creatures so sensitive and highly wrought in situations which are so crudely appalling; and the incongruity is not shaken off until we remember the nature of the material upon which the poet is constrained to work. For the Attic dramatists went for the subjects of their poetry directly to stories out of the primitive past—old legends which, though sometimes very beautiful, nearly always contain elements of cruelty and horror. The reason why they did this is interesting, and explains some curious points about Greek Drama.

To us it seems strange that these poets, whose ideas were probably as ‘advanced’ to their contemporaries as our modern Drama is to us, did not take their themes out of the vastly interesting and even momentous life of their own day. Very occasionally they did this, as we know from the drama of Æschylus called The Persians, which deals directly with that tremendous event of Greek history the Persian Invasion. But almost always, as we have said, they turned away from their own time, and looked back upon the ancient past for the subject-matter of Drama. It is probable that poetical motives influenced them to some extent—the same that made Milton turn back to the Hebrew story of the creation, and Tennyson occupy himself for nearly fifty years with the Arthurian legend. But there was another, and more compelling reason; and it lay in the religious character of the Attic theatre.

Greek Drama was a ritual, performed in honour of the gods. It had its origin in the worship of the Thracian god Dionysus or in a still older cult of ancestor-worship; and it had an established convention that its themes should be taken from legendary heroic subjects. So that the poet, however he might modify character, was bound by tradition to the main outline of the early stories. As we shall see, he imbued those themes and characters with new significance. Just as Milton puts the Reformation spirit into the story of Adam and Eve, and Tennyson makes the Arthur of Celtic legend into an ideal of modern gentlehood, Æschylus and Sophocles and Euripides vitalize the old legendary forms with the spirit of their own age. The spirit of that age was profoundly interested in religion—perhaps because it was beginning to lose its religion. It was passing out of unquestioning belief in the old Olympian hierarchy; but it had not yet attained to a new belief with any clearness. And an extremely interesting fact is that here in the drama, in the very cradle of religion, the new thought begins to manifest itself quite clearly, despite the trammels of convention. Each of the three tragedians represents some phase of it; each shows, in greater or less degree, evidence of the transition period in which old superstition was being broken down; but each steadily maintained, through the crash of falling faith, the sanctity of the moral law. It is this clear view, this austere purpose and steady aim at the highest, which gives Attic Tragedy its grandeur, and the women of Attic Tragedy their surpassing interest.

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What has been said above about the barbarity of the legends on which Greek Drama is based, applies particularly to the story from which the figure of Clytemnestra was taken. It was a history of wrongdoing, of foul guilt going back for generations: or rather, the history of a sin which, to use the words of the poet himself, begot more sin in each succeeding generation. Æschylus wrote his greatest work around this theme, a trilogy of three dramas called the Agamemnon, the Choephoroe, and the Eumenides. The first two of these dramas furnish the material for the story of Clytemnestra. The last deals with the remorse of Orestes, her son, and the atonement by which the long record of crime is finally closed and a new era of hope begins. Clytemnestra is, as it were, the last sacrifice demanded by the Furies which had pursued the house of Tantalus so long, and she represents in herself the two forces by which that vengeance had always been effected—a wrong done and a wrong suffered. For Æschylus makes us see that it is not only by the first sin of Tantalus that all his descendants have been relentlessly pursued; but that each in his turn has added something of his own—some crime of passion or of pride—to bring the penalty on himself.

It is from this standpoint that we must look at Clytemnestra and judge of her action. She was the instrument of a power beyond herself, the dread fate which had marked Agamemnon the king, her husband, as another victim of the hereditary curse. But she was not merely an instrument. She had fallen prey to her own unlawful passion, and when she struck the blow which fate ordained, it was not impelled by the single motive of revenge for the sacrifice of Iphigenia, but a confusion of passionate anger and conscious guilt.

The Agamemnon opens with the joyful announcement of the fall of Troy. The scene is laid in the wealthy city of MycenÆ, in the palace of Agamemnon the king, where a watch had been kept for many months for the return of the Greek fleet. Ten years before, when the fleet had sailed for Troy to avenge the carrying-off of Helen, there had been left behind in the royal home a mother stricken by an awful grief. For the King Agamemnon, delayed at Aulis by adverse winds, and in brutal haste to be gone, had offered up to the gods a human sacrifice—the sacrifice of his own young daughter Iphigenia. The prayers of Clytemnestra the queen, and the tears of the beautiful girl herself, could not prevail upon him. Iphigenia’s life was forfeited to a hideous superstition, and the host sailed away, leaving Clytemnestra overwhelmed with sorrow and wrath. Here then are the two contributing elements to the tragedy—the wrong done and the wrong suffered. Agamemnon, driven on by the curse which lay over his house, blinded by his own pride and headstrong impatience to the true nature of the crime that he was committing, was forging the weapon of his own destruction. And here too we have the deed which accounts for and explains Clytemnestra—making of her not the mere savage murderess of tradition, without a touch of humanity, but an outraged mother, the avenger of her child.

It is necessary to emphasize this point a little because we have been used to regard Clytemnestra as a mere monster of cruelty. It is therefore a shock of surprise, when we come to Æschylus for her story, to find that he has made her quite human. He is not concerned in her case, any more than with the other persons of his Drama, to expose intricate motive, or to paint delicate shades of character. In his task of hewing out dramatic form—of virtually creating Drama—he left subtlety and ingenuity and stagecraft to be perfected by his successors. Hence he is not exercised very much about making his plot a plausible one, or to explain how its incidents are effected. He has a great religious purpose; and this, with the ritual form in which he had to work, subordinates the purely dramatic elements. But he does clearly let us see—and this is all the more important from his usual reticence—that the whole course of Clytemnestra’s action was determined by Agamemnon’s inconceivable cruelty.

This point eludes us often, because we accept the sacrifice of Iphigenia as an act belonging to a barbarous age. So it is, but we forget that the age of Agamemnon had practically left barbarism behind it. The slaughter of Iphigenia must have been almost as revolting to the ideas of that time as it is to us; and although in times of national crisis fanatical minds may have been capable of reviving the savage custom of human sacrifice, that is no justification of Agamemnon. And that he submitted to the superstitious frenzy, and offered up the life of his child, was the act which armed Clytemnestra against him.

The deed was, however, of a piece with his character. He was haughty, passionate, headstrong, brooking no resistance and no rivalry: a man of tremendous force of character who had grown too great and who in his pride had even dared to dishonour Apollo himself in the person of his votaries. To such a man, who after ten years’ preparation found his fleet hindered by unfavourable gales, the slaying of his daughter was merely an unpleasant step toward the fulfilment of his purpose. Her beauty and her youth were of little account, and her mother’s tears and entreaties were brushed aside as weakness.

The story of Clytemnestra, then, rightly begins here. She too was passionate and proud, with a will of iron: a nature of strangely blended strength and tenderness. When the blow came from the hand which should have shielded her, it struck dead her gentler self. She gave herself up to thoughts of revenge; and hearing from Troy as the years passed tidings of Agamemnon’s infidelity, the last link between them was broken. Other news would come to her ears: of sedition amongst the people, left so long without a ruler; of the country suffering from the need of its strongest men, who were all away at the war; and of a certain Egisthus, her husband’s enemy, who had returned from exile. There would be a bond of sympathy between Clytemnestra and this Egisthus. Had he not a feud against her husband? Was he not wronged by Agamemnon, too? Had his father not suffered at the hands of Agamemnon’s father? There would be a meeting between them, followed by other meetings, while they made common cause against the king; and presently the two were united, not only in a plot for Agamemnon’s overthrow, but in the bonds of guilty love.

When the news came of the fall of Troy and the return of the army, Clytemnestra had matured her plans for vengeance. For years she had nursed her wrath, and plotted with all the subtlety of her mental powers. And for years she had hoped for and dreaded the day which would bring back the king to MycenÆ. Her love for Egisthus was common knowledge in the palace. Her sin would doubtless be proclaimed to Agamemnon immediately after his arrival, even if he did not already know of it; and she knew that the penalty of it would be death. So every instinct and impulse of her nature, and every consideration of self-defence too, demanded instant action. Vengeance for the murder of her daughter, her love for Egisthus, and the need of self-preservation all combined to nerve her for what she had to do. Agamemnon’s arrival was imminent; she must be ready, and when the moment came she must not falter. But meanwhile, before the old senators who had gathered to welcome him (and who form the Chorus of the drama) she must play the part of a loving wife.

When the first part of the Trilogy (the Agamemnon) opens, beacon-lights announce the fall of Troy. The news flies through the palace, and there is instant excitement. The old senators come thronging out; and as they sing, wonderingly and half-doubting, Clytemnestra the queen suddenly enters. She stands for a moment to confirm this amazing news, and the old men turn to address her. But she makes no answer: it is as though she has not heard them—as though nothing but the words “The king is coming” clamour in her ears, and bring a rush of emotion that stifles speech. She goes out silently; but while the old men are singing of the doom of Troy, she reappears. Her entrance now is resolute and majestical: her purpose is taken, and in firm tones she declares to the Senators that the news they have heard is true. As she speaks, the tide of emotion rises again and carries her on to utterance that is almost prophetic:

Clytemnestra’s speech is significant. She knows the nature of the king, and she fears that his victory over Troy has been a brutal one, pushed even to the last extremity of insult to the country’s gods. That impious pride is her uppermost thought; with it, she steels her heart; and when the herald arrives, she listens in ominous silence as his tale confirms her utmost fears.

If anything were needed to confirm Clytemnestra’s resolution, surely it lay in these words. Agamemnon, the ruthless slayer of his daughter, the destroyer of Troy, who had no fear of the gods and no pity for man, would have no mercy upon her. She must kill or be killed; and she must act quickly.

Even while the herald spoke came the sound of the procession which was bringing the king up from the ships. First, his own chariot, surrounded by his guard and by the people who had gone out along the road to welcome him. Then, following close behind, a chariot containing the solitary figure of a woman, seated amid the spoils of war. She was Cassandra, a prize of battle, brought home by Agamemnon to be his slave-wife. But she was no ordinary slave. Daughter of Priam, King of Troy, and virgin priestess of Apollo, she had been torn from the altar of the god by her captor; and Clytemnestra, watching her wild eyes, knew that Agamemnon had filled up the measure of impiety to the gods and insult to herself.

Agamemnon uttered a laconic greeting to the people, while the queen stood tense and still. By no word or sign did he acknowledge his wife: only, in perfunctory terms, hailed his country and his country’s gods, and thanked the people for their welcome.

Then Clytemnestra, holding tremendous passions in the leash, began her formal speech of welcome.

The hour has come for which she has waited so long: her desperate plan is formed: all that may have been needed to strengthen it has been heaped upon her in the pride and insolence of the king. But she must dissemble a little longer; she must force herself to speak lovingly, to appear faithful before the people, and to lull suspicion in Agamemnon’s mind. In her husband’s speech there had been a veiled menace: and now, after the first conventional phrases of affection, her words, too, take on a double meaning; and an undercurrent of bitter irony runs through them. On the surface lies the obvious meaning, to meet the exigency of the moment; just below it lay another sense, designed to leap to life and plead for her when the deed that she is contemplating shall be accomplished.

The time has indeed come to put aside fear, but for a reason that these senators cannot see yet, any more than they can conceive the real nature of the burden that she had borne so long. To say that Clytemnestra’s speech is not really that of a faithful wife, that it is too loud in its protestations of joy, too insistent and eager in its avowal of fidelity, is beside the mark. For not only is Agamemnon in all probability aware of Clytemnestra’s sin, but she realizes that he may be aware of it. Hence the deep irony of the situation; and hence too the fact that these protestations, begun calmly and deliberately with the object of deceiving the crowd, gradually take on a different tone. The king’s manner to her from the moment of arrival had been cold, even repellent. The conviction grows that he has been forewarned, and with that conviction, the sense of danger to herself is heightened. As her speech proceeds we seem to feel her quickening pulse and tingling nerve, we seem to share the rush of fear that sweeps away restraint and carries her along a torrent of language that is wild, vehement, and almost frenzied.

At this point she seeks relief in action from the stress of emotion:

Self-control is clearly returning. There is profound significance in her closing words, an invocation to Justice to lead Agamemnon to his doom. There is an inner motive, too, as well as awful irony, in the invitation to the king to walk on ‘priceless crimson.’ She must contrive that he will commit himself still further before the people, who are already stirred by faction and chilled by his hauteur. In the full light of what she is about to do, she sees that this is Agamemnon’s last public act; and has determined that the man of blood shall walk to his death along a crimson path. The deed is almost sacrilege; but after some protest, Agamemnon yields to her entreaties.

He has a consciousness of what he is doing, and his mind misgives him; but he who could deny to the mother the life of her child, cannot refuse this indulgence to his pride. Clytemnestra, in exultation that she can hardly conceal, reassures him. In lines of exquisite poetic beauty, but weighted with a meaning that he does not see, she declares that this honour is his due; that it is a sacrifice for his return. Then, as Agamemnon passes within the palace, she remains for one instant outside. The fire of exultation dies away. She forgets the people standing round, the need for dissimulation, the danger of discovery. One thought sweeps everything else away—the thought of the stupendous deed that she is about to attempt, its horror and its peril. She raises her hands and utters an awful prayer:

Then she follows Agamemnon into the palace. But there remains one person whom she has overlooked, Cassandra, priestess and prophetess of Apollo. As the Chorus takes up a lovely song full of foreboding, the queen returns and calls to Cassandra to come within. But there has fallen upon Cassandra a prophetic vision of the crime. She is distraught with fear and horror, and can find no answer to the imperious queen. Clytemnestra, to whom every moment is of infinite importance, suddenly loses all her dignity in mere rage at the silent, helpless girl.

As Clytemnestra passes a second time within doors, the poor captive begins to wail a prophecy of what is about to be enacted there. She mourns for the awful curse upon the house.

She foresees the death of Agamemnon, and her own fate beside him. Twice she approaches the palace and twice recoils in horror. But at last, committing herself to Apollo, she rushes within; and instantly there rises a dreadful cry. It is the voice of the king.

The old men stand paralysed with fear; and before they can move a step to help, the agonized voice cries a second time:

There is an instant uproar and outcry. The palace becomes noisy with hurrying feet and clamorous voices; the old men feebly rush this way and that, unable to decide, in their weakness and senility, how to act. In the midst of the disorder, the doors of the palace are thrown open, and Clytemnestra is revealed, weapon in hand, bending over the body of Agamemnon. A dreadful hush falls; and the queen, drawing herself up before the people, deliberately confesses to the deed and declares her motives.

But to the Senators only one thing is clear. A terrible crime has been committed: their king has been foully slain. All Clytemnestra’s pleas in extenuation of the deed are wasted words. To them the situation is tragically simple: her guilt is plain; there is but one word that fits her—murderess. There is no question for them of reason or of motive. What she claims to be a righteous judgment upon Agamemnon, they declare to be a crime demanding punishment. But they are not strong enough to enforce their will; and when they threaten Clytemnestra with banishment, she answers with scorn.

Then, as the elders mourn the death of the king and the demon of vengeance that haunts the house, Clytemnestra, in passionate conviction, declares that she has been merely an instrument of that spirit of vengeance.

She comforts herself with the thought that now at last the Furies are appeased. No doubt of her own motives assails her: no warning hint that crime is not cancelled by fresh crime. In the first glow of triumph she has no premonition of the return of an avenging son. She proposes to herself a reign of peace with Egisthus which shall erase all memory of the past.

On this note of false security the Agamemnon closes; and for the fate of Clytemnestra, which now becomes bound up with the story of Electra, we must go to the second drama of the trilogy, the Libation-bearers.

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