The Agamemnon of Aeschylus

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Title: Agamemnon
Author: Aeschylus
Release Date: December 22, 2004 [EBook #14417]
Language: English
Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
? START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK AGAMEMNON ***
Produced by Paul Murray, Charles Bidwell and the PG Online Distributed Proofreading Team
THE
AGAMEMNON
OF
AESCHYLUS
TRANSLATED INTO ENGLISH RHYMING VERSE
WITH EXPLANATORY NOTES BY
GILBERT MURRAY
REGIUS PROFESSOR OF GREEK IN THE UNIVERSITY OF OXFORD
TENTH THOUSAND
LONDON: GEORGE ALLEN & UNWIN LTD.
RUSKIN HOUSE, 40 MUSEUM STREET, W.C.
PREFACE
The sense of difficulty, and indeed of awe, with which a scholar approaches the task of translating the _Agamemnon_ depends directly on its greatness as poetry. It is in part a matter of diction. The language of Aeschylus is an extraordinary thing, the syntax stiff and simple, the vocabulary obscure, unexpected, and steeped in splendour. Its peculiarities cannot be disregarded, or the translation will be false in character. Yet not Milton himself could produce in English the same great music, and a translator who should strive ambitiously to represent the complex effect of the original would clog his own powers of expression and strain his instrument to breaking. But, apart from the diction in this narrower sense, there is a quality of atmosphere surrounding the _Agamemnon_ which seems almost to defy reproduction in another setting, because it depends in large measure on the position of the play in the historical development of Greek literature.
If we accept the view that all Art to some extent, and Greek tragedy in a very special degree, moves in its course of development from Religion to Entertainment, from a Service to a Performance, the _Agamemnon_ seems to stand at a critical point where the balance of the two elements is near perfection. The drama has come fully to life, but the religion has not yet faded to a formality. The _Agamemnon_ is not, like Aeschylus' _Suppliant Women_, a statue half-hewn out of the rock. It is a real play, showing clash of character and situation, suspense and movement, psychological depth and subtlety. Yet it still remains something more than a play. Its atmosphere is not quite of this world. In the long lyrics especially one feels that the guiding emotion is not the entertainer's wish to thrill an audience, not even perhaps the pure artist's wish to create beauty, but something deeper and more prophetic, a passionate contemplation and expression of truth; though of course the truth in question is something felt rather than stated, something that pervades life, an eternal and majestic rhythm like the movement of the stars.
Thus, if Longinus is right in defining Sublimity as "the ring, or resonance, of greatness of soul," one sees in part where the sublimity of the _Agamemnon_ comes from. And it is worth noting that the faults which some critics have found in the play are in harmony with this conclusion. For the sublimity that is rooted in religion tolerates some faults and utterly refuses to tolerate others. The _Agamemnon_ may be slow in getting to work; it may be stiff with antique conventions. It never approaches to being cheap or insincere or shallow or sentimental or showy. It never ceases to be genuinely a "criticism of life." The theme which it treats, for instance, is a great theme in its own right; it is not a made-up story ingeniously handled.
The trilogy of the _Oresteia_, of which this play is the first part, centres on the old and everlastingly unsolved problem of
The ancient blinded vengeance and the wrong that amendeth wrong.
Every wrong is justly punished; yet, as the world goes, every punishment becomes a new wrong, calling for fresh vengeance. And more; every wrong turns out to be itself rooted in some wrong of old. It is never gratuitous, never untempted by the working of Peitho (Persuasion), never merely wicked. The _Oresteia_ first shows the cycle of crime punished by crime which must be repunished, and then seeks for some gleam of escape, some breaking of the endless chain of "evil duty." In the old order of earth and heaven there was no such escape. Each blow called for the return blow and must do so _ad infinitum_. But, according to Aeschylus, there is a new Ruler now in heaven, one who has both sinned and suffered and thereby grown wise. He is Zeus the Third Power, Zeus the Saviour, and his gift to mankind is the ability through suffering to Learn (pp. 7 f.)
At the opening of the _Agamemnon_ we find Clytemnestra alienated from her husband and secretly befriended with his ancestral enemy, Aigisthos. The air is heavy and throbbing