Clytemnestra- Greek FigureMortal"Queen of Mycenae"

Origins and Lineage

Clytemnestra was the daughter of Tyndareus, king of Sparta, and Leda. On the same night that Zeus visited Leda in the form of a swan, she lay with her husband, and the double conception produced two pairs: Helen and Polydeuces from Zeus, Clytemnestra and Castor from Tyndareus. Helen was half-divine. Clytemnestra was fully mortal.

A darker tradition, recalled by Clytemnestra herself in Euripides' Iphigenia at Aulis, records that she was first married to Tantalus, son of Thyestes. Agamemnon killed both husband and infant to claim her. This was not the first violence of the house of Atreus: Agamemnon's father Atreus had killed the sons of his brother Thyestes and served them to their father at a feast. Aegisthus, the sole surviving son of Thyestes, had been conceived for revenge. The blood ran back generations before Clytemnestra entered it.

The Sacrifice of Iphigenia

When the Greek fleet assembled at Aulis to sail against Troy, Artemis becalmed the winds. The seer Calchas declared that Agamemnon had offended the goddess by killing a deer sacred to her, and only the sacrifice of his eldest daughter Iphigenia would appease her wrath. Agamemnon sent word to Clytemnestra summoning Iphigenia under the pretext of marriage to Achilles.

Clytemnestra arrived in festive spirits, expecting a wedding. She discovered the truth. In Euripides' telling, she pleaded with Agamemnon to spare their daughter, arguing that punishing a child for her father's war would destroy their household. Agamemnon chose the army. Iphigenia was led to the altar.

Aeschylus describes the sacrifice: the girl's saffron robe falling to the ground, her mouth stopped to prevent any curse upon the house. She who had often sung at her father's well-laden table looked up at each of her sacrificers. Euripides told another ending: Artemis substituted a deer at the last moment and carried Iphigenia to the land of the Taurians. But Clytemnestra was never told of any rescue.

Ten Years of Rule

For the ten years of the Trojan War, Clytemnestra ruled Mycenae. In Aeschylus's telling, she was the architect of everything. She established a chain of beacon fires stretching from Mount Ida near Troy across the Aegean islands and mainland peaks to Mycenae, a relay of signal stations that would announce Troy's fall on the very night it occurred. The watchman who opens the Agamemnon has been posted on the palace roof for a year, waiting for that flame, and he speaks of a "woman of man-counselling heart" who commands the household.

Aegisthus had entered her bed. He was Thyestes' last surviving son, raised to avenge his father. In the Odyssey, he is the mastermind of the murder to come. In Aeschylus, he is a footnote. The chorus calls him a coward who let a woman do the killing.

The Murder of Agamemnon

In Aeschylus's Agamemnon, Clytemnestra greeted her returning husband with a speech of welcome. She spoke of the suffering of a wife who waits through years of rumour. She spread purple-dyed cloths for him to walk upon from his chariot to the palace door, fabrics of a colour reserved for the gods. Agamemnon hesitated, recognizing the impiety. She persuaded him. He walked the crimson path into his house.

Inside, she led him to a bath. She cast an endless garment over him as he stood in the water, pinning his arms, and struck him with an axe. Three blows. Clytemnestra emerged from the palace spattered with blood and addressed the chorus in triumph. She compared the spray of blood to the rain that Zeus sends on crops at flowering time.

Homer tells a different murder. In the Odyssey, Agamemnon's ghost describes an ambush at a feast: Aegisthus set twenty men upon him, and they cut him down "like an ox at the manger." Clytemnestra killed Cassandra beside him, then turned away without closing her husband's eyes or shutting his mouth. His ghost warns Odysseus: "There is nothing more deadly or more vile than a woman who stores her mind with acts that are of such sort."

Mother and Daughter

In Sophocles' Electra, Clytemnestra argues that the sacrifice of Iphigenia gave her the right to kill Agamemnon. Her daughter is unpersuaded. Electra insists her mother acted from lust for Aegisthus, not grief for her dead sister.

Euripides sharpened the scene. His Clytemnestra is lured to her death by a false report that Electra has given birth. She comes to help her daughter. Orestes is waiting with a sword.

Death at Orestes' Hands

Orestes arrived at Mycenae in disguise, bearing false news of his own death to gain entry. Stesichorus gave Clytemnestra a warning dream: a serpent with a bloodied crest, the omen of the son who would return. Aeschylus expanded it in the Choephoroi: Clytemnestra dreams she has nursed a serpent at her breast, and when it bites, blood flows with the milk.

When the deception was revealed, Clytemnestra faced her son. She bared her breast and asked whether he could kill the woman who nursed him. Orestes hesitated. He turned to Pylades, who spoke his only three lines in the entire trilogy, reminding him of Apollo's command. Orestes killed his mother.

In the Eumenides, Clytemnestra's ghost appeared to the sleeping Erinyes and roused them to hunt her son. Even dead, she would not let him go unpunished.