Jenelle Fiori; Agamemnon

This weekend I read Poetry, by Aristotle, The Preface to Agamemnon and Agamemnon. I read these three things in this order because it really did help me to understand what exactly was going on in the story and to understand the differences between a tragedy and an Epic. I also had a better knowledge of the characters from The Iliad. In reading Agamemnon, I have realized that a lot of the Greek tragedies portray characters that are very immature in their reaction to certain events. Such include Clytemnestra, who in response to her daughter’s murder by her husband, kills Agamemnon and his lover, Cassandra. In the beginning of the story, the woman seems to be loving and faithful of her husband when he returns home from the Trojan War, but this is a fake emotion because for the years that Agamemnon was gone, she was having an affair with Aegisthus and plotting Agamemnon’s murder. It is very rare in Greek tragedies that a woman would play such a keen role in the plot or be portrayed as such a violent character. Normally, they are portrayed as beautiful, innocent and weak, without saying a word. In this tragedy, however, Clytemnestra speaks out quite often, especially to the chorus when he speaks to her as a mere woman. In fact, this story should have been named “Clytemnestra” because she plays more of a role in the plot than Agamemnon did.