Agamemnon - Blog Posts
Iphigenia
A lot of modern takes seem to like making Agamemnon an all out bad guy, and I’m not saying he’s secretly a sweetheart or anything g or even that he didn’t deserve to die, but I am of the opinion that he’s more complicated that just being an arrogant douche. For one thing, I wholeheartedly believe that he loved his daughter. The sacrifice of Iphigenia acting as his punishment would not make sense if he didn’t love her. It was beyond cruel that he chose to kill her and I defiantly think Clytemnestra was justified in killing him (not for some of the other thing she did, but definetly for that specific act), but however pathetic and insufficient it turned out to be, he did love her.
in middle school during my Intense Greek Mythology Phase, Artemis was, as you can likely guess, my best girl. Iphigenia was my OTHER best girl. Yes at the same time.
The story of Iphigenia always gets to me when it's not presented as a story of Artemis being capricious and having arbitrary rules about where you can and can't hunt, but instead, making a point about war.
Artemis was, among other things--patron of hunting, wild places, the moon, singlehood--the protector of young girls. That's a really important aspect she was worshipped as: she protected girls and young women. But she was the one who demanded Agamemnon sacrifice his daughter in order for his fleet to be able to sail on for Troy.
There's no contradiction, though, when it's framed as, Artemis making Agamemnon face what he’s doing to the women and children of Troy. His children are not in danger. His son will not be thrown off the ramparts, his daughters will not be taken captive as sex slaves and dragged off to foreign lands, his wife will not have to watch her husband and brothers and children killed. Yet this is what he’s sailing off to Troy to inevitably do. That’s what happens in war. He’s going to go kill other people’s daughters; can he stand to do that to his own? As long as the answer is no—he can kill other people’s children, but not his own—he can’t sail off to war.
Which casts Artemis is a fascinating light, compared to the other gods of the Trojan War. The Trojan War is really a squabble of pride and insults within the Olympian family; Eris decided to cause problems on purpose, leaving Aphrodite smug and Hera and Athena snubbed, and all of this was kinda Zeus’s fault in the first place for not being able to keep it in his pants. And out of this fight mortal men were their game pieces and mortal cities their prizes in restoring their pride. And if hundreds of people die and hundred more lives are ruined, well, that’s what happens when gods fight. Mortals pay the price for gods’ whims and the gods move on in time and the mortals don’t and that’s how it is.
And women especially—Zeus wanted Leda, so he took her. Paris wanted Helen, so he took her. There’s a reason “the Trojan women” even since ancient times were the emblems of victims of a war they never wanted, never asked for, and never had a say in choosing, but was brought down on their heads anyway.
Artemis, in the way of gods, is still acting through human proxies. But it seems notable to me to cast her as the one god to look at the destruction the war is about to wreak on people, and challenge Agamemnon: are you ready to kill innocents? Kill children? Destroy families, leave grieving wives and mothers? Are you? Prove it.
It reminds me of that idea about nuclear codes, the concept of implanting the key in the heart of one of the Oval Office staffers who holds the briefcase, so the president would have to stab a man with a knife to get the key to launch the nukes. “That’s horrible!,” it’s said the response was. “If he had to do that, he might never press the button!” And it’s interesting to see Artemis offering Agamemnon the same choice. You want to burn Troy? Kill your own daughter first. Show me you understand what it means that you’re about to do.
young menelaus and agamemnon + clytemnestra & agamemnon sketches i did for funsies :3
LOOK AT THESE TAROT CARDS I MADE BASED OFF OF THE ILLIAD FOR MY CLASS‼️
just ya know… ignore the armor.. i beg
Agamemnon = The Devil card because it (based off of google) represents obsession,being seduced by the material world, and sometimes jealousy. hmmm… this is starting to really sound like a certain greedy fuck thats name starts with “Agamem” and ends with “non” 🤔
Achilles = Death card because of the prophecy that he had to choose between a long but unremembered life, or a short but glorious one. and of course ya know… he chose the latter cuz he’s a man.. Thetis his mom and sea goddess is behind him with a water veil that covers her face which hides a skull because she’s the one to tell him about his possible death.
alright i’ve finished nerd-ing out ✌️😃
Mamma mia but Donna is clytemnestra and instead of getting remarried she fucking kills him
Someone should write something where it's the Greek heroes from the Iliad watching odysseus during the odyssey from the afterlife. like achilles and company just being like yea fuck that guy up man. u got that. or he's crying over missing penelope and telemachus and they just feel bad for him or smth.
could also be them all listening/watching the epic songs/animatics 🦭
(even tho a lot of them don't die it's a fun idea in theory)
i feel like sometimes ppl forget Helen is a spartan woman, spartan women exercised and did sports, unlike most women in greece. So i made her a bit buff🙏
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dw, my immediate impulse is also to bite agamemnon (unaffectionate)
lion man // agamemnon
πάθει μάθος
< paa-they maa-thos >
"Suffer to understand"
- Aeschylus, Agamemnon
Famous quotes expressed in a memorial way in Agamemnon of Aeschylus, when the chorus intones the famous Zeus' Hymn.
" But who to Zeus with joy raises the epinikion shout Will bring fully the widsom to Zeus who led the mortals to be wise, who put as solid law "widsom through pain" also in the sleep oozes before the heart an anguish mindful of sorrows: well as who does not, widsome comes. "
Aeschylus faces theme like evil, pain and fear that hit men in their intimacy relationships with Deities and society. According to a first conception of evil and pain, they were determined only by Gods' envy, the Hybris (hy-brys), but later they gained a new value, becoming an instrument to educate men to justice, since only through the pain they can ackwonledge deep inside themselves.
The tragic experience is, according to Greeks, internalization of knowledge. Aristotle few times emphasises how the pain leads the men "from no-knowledge to knowledge."
By the way, no one can escape from the face-off of the pain. How Greek widsome teaches us, one must be courageous and accept the involvement in it: what is next is the greatest mystery which we go against.
