Mythology

by Edith Hamilton

  Poor wretch, when he had learned the deed abhorrent,

  He cried a great cry, falling back—spewed out

  That flesh, called down upon that house a doom

  Intolerable, the banquet board sent crashing.

  Atreus was King. Thyestes had no power. The atrocious crime was not avenged in Atreus’ lifetime, but his children and his children’s children suffered.

  AGAMEMNON AND HIS CHILDREN

  On Olympus the gods were met in full assembly. The father of Gods and Men began first to speak. Zeus was sorely vexed at the mean way men perpetually acted toward the gods, blaming the divine powers for what their own wickedness brought about, and that, too, even when the Olympians had tried to hold them back. “You all know about Aegisthus, whom Agamemnon’s son Orestes has slain,” Zeus said, “how he loved the wife of Agamemnon and killed him on his return from Troy. Certainly no blame attaches to us from that. We warned him by the mouth of Hermes. ‘The death of the son of Atreus will be avenged by Orestes.’ Those were Hermes’ very words, but not even such friendly advice could restrain Aegisthus, who now pays the final penalty.”

  This passage in the Illiad is the first mention of the House of Atreus. In the Odyssey when Odysseus reached the land of the Phaeacians and was telling them about his descent to Hades and the ghosts he encountered, he said that, of them all, the spirit of Agamemnon had most moved him to pity. He had begged him to say how he died and the chief told him that he was killed ingloriously as he sat at table, struck down as one butchers an ox. “It was Aegisthus,” he said, “with the aid of my accursed wife. He invited me to his house and as I feasted he killed me. My men, too. You have seen many die in single combat or in battle, but never one who died as we did, by the wine bowl and the loaded tables in a hall where the floor flowed with blood. Cassandra’s death-shriek rang in my ears as she fell. Clytemnestra slew her over my body. I tried to lift up my hands for her, but they fell back. I was dying then.”

  That was the way the story was first told: Agamemnon had been killed by his wife’s lover. It was a sordid tale. How long it held the stage we do not know, but the next account we have, centuries later, written by Aeschylus about 450 B.C., is very different. It is a great story now of implacable vengeance and tragic passions and inevitable doom. The motive for Agamemnon’s death is no longer the guilty love of a man and a woman, but a mother’s love for a daughter killed by her own father, and a wife’s determination to avenge that death by killing her husband. Aegisthus fades; he is hardly in the picture. The wife of Agamemnon, Clytemnestra, has all the foreground to herself.

  The two sons of Atreus, Agamemnon, the commander of the Greek forces at Troy, and Menelaus, the husband of Helen, ended their lives very differently. Menelaus, at first the less successful, was notably prosperous in his later years. He lost his wife for a time, but after the fall of Troy he got her back. His ship was driven all the way to Egypt by the storm Athena sent to the Greek Fleet, but finally he reached home safely and lived happily with Helen ever after. It was far otherwise with his brother.

  When Troy fell, Agamemnon was the most fortunate of the victorious chieftains. His ship came safely through the storm which wrecked or drove to distant countries so many others. He entered his city not only safe after peril by land and sea, but triumphant, the proud conqueror of Troy. His home was expecting him. Word had been sent that he had landed, and the townspeople joined in a great welcome to him. It seemed that he was of all men the most gloriously successful, after a brilliant victory back with his own again, peace and prosperity before him.

  But in the crowd that greeted him with thanksgiving for his return there were anxious faces, and words of dark foreboding passed from one man to another. “He will find evil happenings,” they muttered. “Things once were right there in the palace, but no more. That house could tell a tale if it could speak.”

  Before the palace the elders of the city were gathered to do their king honor, but they, too, were in distress, with a still heavier anxiety, a darker foreboding, than that which weighed upon the doubtful crowd. As they waited they talked in low tones of the past. They were old and it was almost more real to them than the present. They recalled the sacrifice of Iphigenia, lovely, innocent young thing, trusting her father utterly, and then confronted with the altar, the cruel knives, and only pitiless faces around her. As the old men spoke, it was like a vivid memory to them, as if they themselves had been there, as if they had heard with her the father she loved telling men to lift her and hold her over the altar to slay her. He had killed her, not willingly, but driven by the Army impatient for good winds to sail to Troy. And yet the matter was not as simple as that. He yielded to the Army because the old wickedness in generation after generation of his race was bound to work out in evil for him, too. The elders knew the curse that hung over the house.

  … The thirst for blood—

  It is in their flesh. Before the old wound

  Can be healed, there is fresh blood flowing.

  Ten years had passed since Iphigenia died, but the results of her death reached through to the present. The elders were wise. They had learned that every sin causes fresh sin; every wrong brings another in its train. A menace from the dead girl hung over her father in this hour of triumph. And yet perhaps, they said to each other, perhaps it would not take actual shape for a time. So they tried to find some bit of hope, but at the bottom of their hearts they knew and dared not say aloud that vengeance was already there in the palace waiting for Agamemnon.

  It had waited ever since the Queen, Clytemnestra, had come back from Aulis, where she had seen her daughter die. She did not keep faith with her husband who had killed her child and his; she took a lover and all the people knew it. They knew, too, that she had not sent him away when the news of Agamemnon’s return reached her. He was still there with her. What was being planned behind the palace doors? As they wondered and feared, a tumult of noise reached them, chariots rolling, voices shouting. Into the courtyard swept the royal car with the King and beside him a girl, very beautiful, but very strange-looking. Attendants and townspeople were following them and as they came to a halt the doors of the great house swung open and the Queen appeared.

  The King dismounted, praying aloud, “O Victory now mine, be mine forever.” His wife advanced to meet him. Her face was radiant, her head high. She knew that every man there except Agamemnon was aware of her infidelity, but she faced them all and told them with smiling lips that even in their presence she must at such a moment speak out the great love she bore her husband and the agonizing grief she had suffered in his absence. Then in words of exultant joy she bade him welcome. “You are our safety,” she told him, “our sure defense. The sight of you is dear as land after storm to the sailor, as a gushing stream to a thirsty wayfarer.”

  He answered her, but with reserve, and he turned to go into the palace. First he pointed to the girl in the chariot. She was Cassandra, Priam’s daughter, he told his wife—the Army’s gift to him, the flower of all the captive women. Let Clytemnestra see to her and treat her well. With that he entered the house and the doors closed behind the husband and the wife. They would never open again for both of them.

  The crowd had gone. Only the old men still waited uneasily before the silent building and the blank doors. The captive princess caught their attention and they looked curiously at her. They had heard of her strange fame as a prophetess whom no one ever believed and yet whose prophecies were always proved true by the event. She turned a terrified face to them. Where had she been brought, she asked them wildly—What house was this? They answered soothingly that it was where the son of Atreus lived. She cried out, “No! It is a house God hates, where men are killed and the floor is red with blood.” The old men stole frightened glances at each other. Blood, men killed, that was what they, too, were thinking of, the dark past with its promise of more darkness. How could she, a stranger and a foreigner, know that past? “I hear children crying,” she wailed,

  … Cry
ing for wounds that bleed.

  A father feasted—and the flesh his children.

  Thyestes and his sons… Where had she heard of that? More wild words poured from her lips. It seemed as if she had seen what had happened in that house through the years, as if she had stood by while death followed death, each a crime and all working together to produce more crime. Then from the past she turned to the future. She cried out that on that very day two more deaths would be added to the list, one her own. “I will endure to die,” she said, as she turned away and moved toward the palace. They tried to hold her back from that ominous house, but she would not have it; she entered and the doors closed forever on her, too. The silence that followed when she had gone was suddenly and terribly broken. A cry rang out, the voice of a man in agony: “God! I am struck! My death blow—” and silence again. The old men, terrified, bewildered, huddled together. That was the King’s voice. What should they do? “Break into the palace? Quick, be quick,” they urged each other. “We must know.” But there was no need now of any violence. The doors opened and on the threshold stood the Queen.

  Dark red stains were on her dress, her hands, her face, yet she herself looked unshaken, strongly sure of herself. She proclaimed for all to hear what had been done. “Here lies my husband dead, struck down justly by my hand,” she said. It was his blood that stained her dress and face and she was glad.

  He fell and as he gasped, his blood

  Spouted and splashed me with dark spray, a dew

  Of death, sweet to me as heaven’s sweet raindrops

  When the corn-land buds.

  She saw no reason to explain her act or excuse it. She was not a murderer in her own eyes, she was an executioner. She had punished a murderer, the murderer of his own child.

  Who cared no more than if a beast should die

  When flocks are plenty in the fleecy fold,

  But slew his daughter—slew her for a charm

  Against the Thracian winds.

  Her lover followed her and stood beside her—Aegisthus, the youngest child of Thyestes, born after that horrible feast. He had no quarrel with Agamemnon himself, but Atreus, who had had the children slaughtered and placed on the banquet table for their father, was dead and vengeance could not reach him. Therefore his son must pay the penalty.

  The two, the Queen and her lover, had reason to know that wickedness cannot be ended by wickedness. The dead body of the man they had just killed was a proof. But in their triumph they did not stop to think that this death, too, like all the others, would surely bring evil in its train. “No more blood for you and me,” Clytemnestra said to Aegisthus. “We are lords here now. We two will order all things well.” It was a baseless hope.

  Iphigenia had been one of three children. The other two were a girl and a boy, Electra and Orestes. Aegisthus would certainly have killed the boy if Orestes had been there, but he had been sent away to a trusted friend. The girl Aegisthus disdained to kill; he only made her utterly wretched in every way possible until her whole life was concentrated in one hope, that Orestes would come back and avenge their father. That vengeance—what would it be? Over and over she asked herself this. Aegisthus, of course, must die, but to kill him alone would never satisfy justice. His crime was less black than another’s. What then? Could it be justice that a son should take a mother’s life to avenge a father’s death? So she brooded through the bitter days of the long years that followed, while Clytemnestra and Aegisthus ruled the land.

  As the boy grew to manhood he saw even more clearly than she the terrible situation. It was a son’s duty to kill his father’s murderers, a duty that came before all others. But a son who killed his mother was abhorrent to gods and to men. A most sacred obligation was bound up with a most atrocious crime. He who wanted only to do right was so placed that he must choose between two hideous wrongs. He must be a traitor to his father or he must be the murderer of his mother.

  In his agony of doubt he journeyed to Delphi to ask the oracle to help him, and Apollo spoke to him in clear words bidding him,

  Slay the two who slew.

  Atone for death by death.

  Shed blood for old blood shed.

  And Orestes knew that he must work out the curse of his house, exact vengeance, and pay with his own ruin. He went to the home he had not seen since he was a little boy, and with him went his cousin and friend Pylades. The two had grown up together and were devoted in a way far beyond usual friendship. Electra, with no idea that they were actually arriving, was yet on the watch. Her life was spent in watching for the brother who would bring her the only thing life held for her.

  One day at her father’s tomb she made an offering to the dead and prayed, “O Father, guide Orestes to his home.” Suddenly he was beside her, claiming her as his sister, showing her as proof the cloak he wore, the work of her hands, which she had wrapped him in when he went away. But she did not need a proof. She cried, “Your face is my father’s face.” And she poured out to him all the love no one had wanted from her through the wretched years:—

  All, all is yours,

  The love I owed my father who is dead,

  The love I might have given to my mother,

  And my poor sister cruelly doomed to die.

  All yours now, only yours.

  He was too sunk in his own thought, too intent upon the thing he faced, to answer her or even to listen. He broke in upon her words to tell her what filled his mind so that nothing else could reach it: the terrible words of the oracle of Apollo. Orestes spoke with horror:—

  He told me to appease the angry dead.

  That who hears not when his dead cry to him,

  For such there is no home, no refuge anywhere.

  No altarfire burns for him, no friend greets him.

  He dies alone and vile. O God, shall I believe

  Such oracles? But yet—but yet

  The deed is to be done and I must do it.

  The three made their plans. Orestes and Pylades were to go to the palace claiming to be the bearers of a message that Orestes had died. It would be joyful news to Clytemnestra and Aegisthus who had always feared what he might do, and they would certainly want to see the messengers. Once in the palace the brother and his friend could trust to their own swords and the complete surprise of their attack.

  They were admitted and Electra waited. That had been her bitter part all through her life. Then the doors opened slowly and a woman came out and stood tranquilly on the steps. It was Clytemnestra. She had been there only a moment or so when a slave rushed out screaming, “Treason! Our master! Treason!” He saw Clytemnestra and gasped, “Orestes—alive—here.” She knew then. Everything was clear to her, what had happened and what was still to come. Sternly she bade the slave bring her a battle-ax. She was resolved to fight for her life, but the weapon was no sooner in her hand than she changed her mind. A man came through the doors, his sword red with blood, whose blood she knew and she knew, too, who held the sword. Instantly she saw a surer way to defend herself than with an ax. She was the mother of the man before her. “Stop, my son,” she said. “Look—my breast. Your heavy head dropped on it and you slept, oh, many a time. Your baby mouth, where never a tooth was, sucked the milk, and so you grew—” Orestes cried, “O Pylades, she is my mother. May I spare—” His friend told him solemnly: No. Apollo had commanded. The god must be obeyed. “I will obey,” Orestes said. “You—follow me.” Clytemnestra knew that she had lost. She said calmly, “It seems, my son, that you will kill your mother.” He motioned her into the house. She went and he followed her.

  When he came out again those waiting in the courtyard did not need to be told what he had done. Asking no questions they watched him, their master now, with compassion. He seemed not to see them; he was looking at a horror beyond them. Stammering words came from his lips: “The man is dead. I am not guilty there. An adulterer. He had to die. But she—Did she do it or did she not? O you, my friends. I say I killed my mother—yet not without reason—she was
vile and she killed my father and God hated her.”

  His eyes were fixed always on that unseen horror. He screamed, “Look! Look! Women there. Black, all black, and long hair like snakes.” They told him eagerly there were no women. “It is only your fancy. Oh, do not fear.” “You do not see them?” he cried. “No fancy. I—I see them. My mother has sent them. They crowd around me and their eyes drip blood. Oh, let me go.” He rushed away, alone except for those invisible companions.

  When next he came to his country, years had passed. He had been a wanderer in many lands, always pursued by the same terrible shapes. He was worn with suffering, but in his loss of everything men prize there was a gain, too. “I have been taught by misery,” he said. He had learned that no crime was beyond atonement, that even he, defiled by a mother’s murder, could be made clean again. He traveled to Athens, sent there by Apollo to plead his case before Athena. He had come to beg for help; nevertheless, in his heart there was confidence. Those who desire to be purified cannot be refused and the black stain of his guilt had grown fainter and fainter through his years of lonely wandering and pain. He believed that by now it had faded away. “I can speak to Athena with pure lips,” he said.

  The goddess listened to his plea. Apollo was beside him. “It is I who am answerable for what he did,” he said. “He killed at my command.” The dread forms of his pursuers, the Erinyes, the Furies, were arrayed against him, but Orestes listened calmly to their demand for vengeance. “I, not Apollo, was guilty of my mother’s murder,” he said, “but I have been cleansed of my guilt.” These were words never spoken before by any of the House of Atreus. The killers of that race had never suffered from their guilt and sought to be made clean. Athena accepted the plea. She persuaded the avenging goddesses also to accept it, and with this new law of mercy established they themselves were changed. From the Furies of frightful aspect they became the Benignant Ones, the Eumenides, protectors of the suppliant. They acquitted Orestes, and with the words of acquittal the spirit of evil which had haunted his house for so long was banished. Orestes went forth from Athena’s tribunal a free man. Neither he nor any descendant of his would ever again be driven into evil by the irresistible power of the past. The curse of the House of Atreus was ended.