There are theories that Cassandra is the "net" cast upon Agamemnon in his bath, to tangle him up for the killing stroke. For I will slay him and lay waste his home to avenge my father's and my brothers' death. (In various places in the Troy cycle, Agamemnon talks about putting concubines above his wife.) So, jealousy in the form of resentment.Īlthough Cassandra laments in the Aeschylus play, she rejoices in this fate as a means of vengeance against the killer of her family:ĬASSANDRA: O mother, crown my head with victor's wreaths rejoice in my royal match lead me and if you find me unwilling at all, thrust me there by force for if Loxias is indeed a prophet, Agamemnon, that famous king of the Achaeans, will find in me a bride more vexatious than Helen. In the Aeschylus, Clytaemestra sees as both an insult and a threat. For he lies thus while she, who, like a swan, has sung her last lament in death, lies here, his beloved but to me she has brought for my bed an added relish of delight. The two-footed lioness is Clytaemestra and the wolf is Aegisthus, Agamemnon's cousin, who was prophesied to be his killer.ĬLYTAEMESTRA: Here lies the man who did me wrong, plaything of each Chryseis at Ilium and here she lies, his captive, and auguress, and concubine, his oracular faithful whore, yet equally familiar with the seamen's benches. Brewing as it were a drug, she vows that with her wrath she will mix requital for me too, while she whets her sword against her husband, to take murderous vengeance for bringing me here. In that society where values were different from ours, Cassandra alive is valuable property, to be put to work or, if Clytemnestra already has enough slaves or does not want Cassandra around, to trade her for cattle or other things of value.ĬASSANDRA: This two-footed lioness, who mates with a wolf in the absence of the noble lion, will slay me, miserable as I am. If Clytemnestra loved her husband Agamemnon and wanted to be with him she might have resented Cassandra as a rival for his attention, yet that does not seem to apply as Clytemnestra does not love Agamemnon nor want to live with him as his wife.Ĭassandra, an enslaved member of a conquered people, seems no threat. However, why does Clytemnestra kill Cassandra too? However, Agamemnon is no sooner home than his wife, Queen Clytemnestra, murders both Agamemnon and Cassandra.Ĭlytemnestra has several reasons to kill her husband Agamemnon: revenge for things he did before the War, to enjoy supreme power herself and to be free to live with her lover Aegisthus. In Greek mythology King Agamemnon of Mycenae, leader of the Greeks in the Trojan War, returns home victorious after the War, having captured the Trojan princess Cassandra to be his slave.
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