Clytemnestra and Aegisthus kill Agamemnon

[iceskatergurl]

Where is Cassandra?

[Sasoriscarecrow]

Wait! Orestes is supposed to be in Phocus at this time. Why is he there?

[Sasoriscarecrow]

10 years ago The sons of Atreus Menelaus and Agamemnon Both Divine kings Assemble a thousand ships And sail across the sea to punish Priam Two brothers, ravenous for war. Their hunger for war went up, like the screaming of eagle. Two eagles in agony, over a crag. Anguish tares their throats. They scream it in heaven, and in heaven, Some god hears it.

[zibeddy]

"agamemnon" what a name. 

[xXSquishySquishyXx]

are there any more movies that are closely related to the story of Agamemnon? I am somewhat studying him and Odysseous for a class paper and though i have the books to read it would be nice to watch a few movies that will make the books easier to understand.

[ligreekguy]

Why do they not show the scene of Clytaemnestra also killing Cassandra, whom Agamemnon has brought home as a concubine?

[vince0was0here]

that musta hurt...

[hollywoodwerewolf]

Clytemestra nursed a grudge for almost ten years? And Agamemnon, high king, leader of the Achaens, sacker of Troy, slain in his bathtub? What a sad fate. But that was the will of the gods and no mortal can gainsay them.....

[hollywoodwerewolf]

Am I right in saying it ends badly for Aegisthus as well? I thought I read that somewhere. Maybe in the Odyssey?

[TigerLilacs17]

@hollywoodwerewolf yes, in Sophocle's Electra - she, her brother Orestes, and Plyades kill both Clytemnestra and Aegisthus

[Autumnbreeze3000]

Great performance - wrong costumes and bath. Clothes were in the Minoan fashion and bath would have been terra cotta. In another version of the story, Agamemnon was killed at the feast table. I'm working on a documentary reconstruction on the same subject (Agamemnon's murder) in which I reconstructed the Megaron - the main meeting room of a Mycenaean palace and the clothes and fashion of the Late Bronze Age Greeks from the upper class -to see the first scene pls go to Mycenae - War without Peace

[Autumnbreeze3000]

Great performance - wrong costumes and bath. Clothes were in the Minoan fashion and bath would have been terra cotta. In another version of the story, Agamemnon was killed at the feast table.

[DCHammett]

This is very well done! I have to show this to my Classical Studies teacher ahah

[ahedoooo]

Why did Clytemnestra kill Agamemnon?

[valondia]

because Agamemnon had killed her daughter Iphigenia. But this is from another tragedy, from Iphigenia in Aulis!

[violetsky35]

ooo ! thanks :) i gotta read that

[troopix9]

a vengeance of killing her daugher for sacrified

[dreamboynyc2]

For revenge of his killing of their young daughter Iphegenia in order to get graces from the gods for his travel to Troy.

[mambagr]

Klytaimnhstra (Greek spelling) also had a lover. Ifigeneia was not really dead she was magically transported elsewhere during her sacrifice. By the way in this part of the movie the exterior scenes are shot at the original Acropolis - Palace of Mhkynai, Agamemnon's Palace.

[Autumnbreeze3000]

@mambagr There are several different accounts about what happened to Iphigenea. Two of them say that she was saved, the others that she was not. If it really happened, what would you believe was the end? Archaeology suggests that there were instances of human sacrifice even as late as in the Late Bronze Age, that is at the time of the Trojan War.

[mambagr]

My opinion is that human sacrifice is not really a part of Greek culture. I would suggest that Iphigeneia was not killed. There is of course another play about her fate. We are lucky even to know this much for the period anyway...

[hollywoodwerewolf]

@mambagr The Greeks sacrificed animals. I think the sacrifice of Ipheginia was dramatic license. It was in a way similar to the Bibical tale of God asking Abraham to sacrifice his son.

[theinkbrain]

then too, the fact that clytemnestra was a votary of Dionysus raises an interesting speculation... i am a fervent admirer of robert graves, and he has some provocative theories about regicide...

[Iphigenia86]

I call my laptop Clytemnestra :) aha- she keeps screwing up on me.

[theinkbrain]

and why is clytemnestra portrayed unsympathetically

when she was only only avenging the murder of her oldest child? that is an honorable act and a very 'greek' thing to do. if it happened today no court in the land would condemn her. if she was guilty once, agamemnon was guilty a hundred times. he deserved to die.

i like the fact that he was 'sacrificed' like an animal after its ritual cleansing. his death was ignoble as his life. there is no glory here.

[Iphigenia86]

Because the mindset that the Greeks of the 4th Century BC had was that, vengence or not, powerful women were to be *feared* and not admirable at all. Think of the Amazons= NOT good.

Not only that but Agamemnon did not kill Iphigenia out of choice- the gods told him too/ or the prophecy.

[CanoPinto]

I cant agree, any court in the land would condemn her, cause Justice isnt private matter... BTW, as greeks told this history, Clytemnestra wasnt a good mother and exiled their son and another daughter, Elektra, trying to avoid their revange - she fails, and was murdered by Elektra.

[theinkbrain]

then we must agree to disagree.

there is no question of justice here. only one of vengeance.

there was nothing 'just ' about agamemnon's homicidal provocation. iphigenia was innocent. he was despicable in all respects, and his behaviour throughout was beneath contempt. even the concept of 'harmatia' cannot excuse his actions.

[theinkbrain]

sorry - i cant let this go.... we are talking about JUSTICE - as in a court of law right? here is a  partial rap sheet for agamemnon...

trespassing, criminal mischief, poaching, destruction of property, cruelty to animals, conspiracy, murder, genocide, hate crimes, abduction, kidnapping, rape, mutilation of a corpse, and accessory to infanticide, and abduction and pillaging. and what about the moral issues?

clearly the sob got off easy. too bad.

but i guess these were all private matters...

[CanoPinto]

Obviouly, Agamemnon is a criminal, but justice dont allow us, citzens, to execute criminals. Punishement belongs to State, privete execution is murder or hate crime. BTW, Clytemnestra and Aegisthus - her lover - killed Cassandra and exiled Orestes, a child. To ancian greeks, Agamemnon wasnt a villain.Trespassing,poaching,d­estruction of property,conspiracy,murder,abd­uction and pillaging, even corrently are allowed to powerfull men - it is exacly what Bush is doing LOL.

[dkw12002]

In the Bible, Jephtahah sacrificed his daughter to God in order to win at war too. Something God seems to have thought was A-OK. When Abraham gets ready to sacrifice his son for God, he never asks why God would want him to kill his own son. Why? Sacrifice of family was what ancient people did. Clytemnestra is buying none of this crap.

[theinkbrain]

thank you for your sane and soothing response. these stories have endless appeal and the proof is that we can still get worked up when we discuss them today. in some ways family values have not changed a whole lot. i cant help thinking that homer knew darned good and well that he wasnt presenting the greeks as noble of heroic. i think his real point was that what happens in life is largely a matter of fate, and in the case of the bible it was angry god punishing foolish and blundering man.

[dkw12002]

I think Homer would agree with Socrates who called religion "the noble lie" meaning it keeps the people in line even though it is myth. Fine, if everyone is on the same page, but agnostics don't play by the religious rules. This hasn't changed, but at least we have the benefit of hindsight and history to look at....provided we're not blinded by our own faith. No doubt many Greeks saw Zeus and Apollo as real as present-day theists do their god. There's a lesson there that Clytemnestra understood.

[theinkbrain]

interesting point about the greeks thinking of apollo and zeus as 'real'. i liked greek concept of god, because they are as flawed as humans. besides their immortality makes them prey to boredom, and then they have to meddle in human affairs. i think the scale of greek 'theism' was far less grandiose than that of western religion, and if we can believe julian jaynes, their gods could have been extensions of their own psyches... hence the always humanistic greek scale of things....

[dkw12002]

I think all gods are manifestations of humans. After all man created god in his own image, and not the other way around as the Bible suggests. I often thought more modern religions scewed by not envisioning a return to Eden where there were real earthly pleasures rather than some ethereal gold-lined streets where you praise god all day. Somehow, the latter has no appeal at all to me...but pomegranites, figs, naked women. Idealism is in the eye of the beholder, apparently.

[Autumnbreeze3000]

@dkw12002 Exactly. I'm making a movie more from Klytemnestra's perspective (and ours) In this one the performance is excellent but the costumes and bath all wrong. In 1250 BC the upper-class people's clothes were in the Minoan fashion and the bath in the palace would have been a deep terra cotta sitting bath. In another version of the story, Agamemnon was killed at the feast table. I have uploaded to YouTube the first (introductory) scene (Mycenae - War without Peace

[Regenerator777]

@dkw12002 Well actually Jephtah didn't literally sacrifice his daughter, he actually sacrificed her right to marry (God does not like human sacrifice, but since Jephtah vowed he would sacrifice the first thing that met him after his return, he had to keep it somehow. Thats why you don't make rash promises).

And God didn't want Abraham to kill Isaac, he was testing Abraham to see if he trusted him enough to follow His will.

[dkw12002]

@Regenerator777 Human sacrifice is a Judeo-Christian tradition. Christianity is based on it. "This is my blood and this is my body" says it all as weird as that concept is....that one person can be held accountable for the crimes of another or that sacrifice appeases the gods and brings good luck. The other half of the weird concept is original sin. No, it flies in the face of accountability and justice. You are NOT accountable for the sins or crimes of your forefathers.

[Kinglovesyoutodeath]

@dkw12002 As desperately we want to deny we did inherit sinful nature from what Adam and Eve did; when our genome is mutated, the genome passes on the mutation. Original sin, along with all sins of past, present, and future have been washed away by Jesus Christ, because he is biologically human, flesh, like us. God was brilliant in combining the sinful nature in man with His own divinity, making Jesus fully homo sapiens, but also divinely sinless.

[Kinglovesyoutodeath]

@Kinglovesyoutodeath We aren't accountable for their sins, and their sins aren't ours, but unfortunately we did inherit their sinful nature. Adam and Eve knew what death was. The consequence (as told before) was death. By embracing death and disobeying God's commandment, they were spitting at all the good God had provided them and flirting with punishment. So, evil entered the world. They knew exactly what they were playing with.

[Kinglovesyoutodeath]

@dkw12002 Abraham grew neglectful of the very God who gave his precious son Isaac in the first place. God wanted to test Abraham, to see if He was still Abraham's first love. "You shall not murder" is the commandment of the God of Israel. God intervened and stopped Abraham from striking Isaac. God actually condemns the various peoples who sacrifice their children and declare them as evil.

[theinkbrain]

why is agamemnon portrayed so sympathetically here? he was thoughtless(killing the deer in the grove) deceitful ( tricking his wife into surrendering iphigenia) misguided -(involving the greeks in an insane war), and brutal( killing his own daughter)

he was unfaithful to his wife (with briseis whom he stole from achilles).

[joet66]

actually he wasnt un faithful with Brisies. He swore that he never touched her, when he was trying to get Achilles to fight for him again. He was however unfaithful with Cassandra i think.....

The only thing i cnt really get is how he could sacrifice his own daughter....

[theinkbrain]

i can think of two reasons - consistent with the greek idea of harmatia - there was a seed of insanity lurking in him - in his case perhaps the same type of schizophrenic imbalance that prompted abraham to hear voices and prepare to sacrifice his son - the second is a cold blooded pragmatism of a general who had to rally his troops with an awesome ritual gesture. in any event, i despise him, and dislike him, and the thought of this young girl being murdered and burnt to ashes is horrifying to me

[joet66]

Yeah i cant deny tht he is a hard character to like, he is the modern definition of evil. The only heor of the Iliad i truly liked was Ajax Telamon and Diomedes

[WarriorXgirlXO]

the sacrifice of the eldest daughter meant that the Greeks would have fair winds for sailing towards Troy, he killed Iphigenia out of thoughtless greed to win the war and win over Troy

[Atromitos888]

Every person in the world should be made to watch these plays by force.

[CanoPinto]

LOL, by force LOL. Grece, land of democracy !!!! ^^

[Nic33rd]

Intense stuff. I like it.