Day 5: The Tomb of Clytemnestra

Καλημέρα! (Good morning!)

    It has been a long trip so far. I don't think that I have ever been this far away from home for this long. Not being able to keep in touch with my family, and knowing that I left my dog, who is basically my child, at home and wishing that she could experience this with me. We went to Mycenae today and I finally got to see the tomb of Clytemnestra. This was one of my favorite mythologies thus far. 

    For some background, Agamemnon is the first play in a trilogy, the Oresteia,  which is perhaps one of the greatest Greek tragedies. From the beginning, a sense of impending doom is felt through the Watchman's opening speech. This play is centered around the theft of Helen wife of Greek king Menelaus, to which the Trojan War followed; again and again. After 10 years of war, Troy did eventually fall to Greece and the King's brother, Agamemnon, is called to come swiftly by his wife, Clytemnestra, only after finding out a terrible storm seized the Greek Fleet on the way home and left the King and others missing. Unfortunately, news from the chorus, recall how Agamemnon sacrificed their daughter, Iphigenia to the god Artemis to obtain favorable outcomes for the Greek fleet. Agamemnon did not return home empty handed however, but with a woman named Cassandra who was a prophecies and a bitter attitude towards his wife.

    The play goes on with the chorus expressing a sense of trepidation, and Clytemnestra eventually calls Cassandra inside. Cassandra tells the new Queen of incoherent prophecies about a curse on the house of Agamemnon. Cassandra tells the chorus how they will see the King dead; and how she is fated to die, all the while seeming very content about this. After speaking these prophecies, she seems content with her fate and leaves the chorus in fear. Soon, they hear Agamemnon cry out in pain from inside, and the door swings open with Clytemnestra standing over the corpses of her husband and Cassandra, declaring that she killed him to avenge Iphigeneia. Clytemnestra and her lover, Aegisthus, Agamemnon's cousin take over the government and the chorus declares that Clytemnestra's son, Orestes will return from exile to avenge her.

    Looking at this tragic play from a feminist point of view, I recognize the misogynies that are inadvertently present. I'll start with how Clytemnestra is represented. Clytemnestra is represented as this character who within the first few lines of the play are described by the watchman as a "woman in passionate heart and man in strength of person." This statement shows a clear distinction between gender roles but also presents Clytemnestra as having 'manly' qualities. You can clearly observe these 'manly' qualities particularly in her use of language in her monologue, specifically in the line "Right where I struck, I stand, on my achievement I acted - I'm not going to deny it - to trap him so he couldn't fight off death." It seems that in Greek mythology, women are oppressed, evil or portrayed as manly. 

    It is true that Clytemnestra is represented as all the above. In the case of Clytemnestra. Reading the line, of "woman in passionate heart," seems like a gentle way for the watchman to say "oh you know women, always emotional." Some readers might read this tragedy and think that Clytemnestra overreacted, asking why kill Cassandra too? Maybe it was a mercy kill, Cassandra prophesized that she was fated to die anyways! Another interesting point brought up by a peer, that Cassandra and Clytemnestra alike were portrayed to be evil. Cassandra with her prophecies, in that time were considered to be witches and were considered as evil, and Clytemnestra is portrayed as this meditative murderer, i.e, evil. 

   We did much more today, like wine tasting, however, that did not stand out to me like the fortress of Mycenae. And even though, we are unsure of if this is the real tomb of Clytemnestra, I felt oddly very connected to her while we were in this tomb.