Agamemnon's Daughter: A Novella & Stories

Product Information

Ovid, Metamorphoses XII-XV". www.gutenberg.org. Archived from the original on 2022-03-03 . Retrieved 2021-05-18. The Iliad tells the story of the quarrel between Agamemnon and Achilles in the final year of the war. In Book One, following one of the Achaean Army's raids, Chryseis, daughter of Chryses, one of Apollo's priests, is taken as a war prize by Agamemnon. Chryses pleads with Agamemnon to free his daughter but meets with little success. Chryses then prays to Apollo for the safe return of his daughter. Apollo responds by unleashing a plague over the Achaean Army. The Prophet Calchas tells that the plague may be dispelled by returning Chryseis to her father. After bitterly berating Calchas for his painful prophecies, first forcing him to sacrifice his daughter and now to return his concubine, Agamemnon reluctantly agrees. However, Agamemnon demands a new prize from the army as compensation and seizes Achilles' prize, the beautiful captive Briseis. This creates deadly resentment between Achilles and Agamemnon, causing Achilles to withdraw from battle and refuse to fight. The people of Tauris/Taurica facing the Euxine Sea [14] worshipped the maiden goddess Artemis. Some very early Greek sources in the Epic Cycle affirmed that Artemis rescued Iphigenia from the human sacrifice her father was about to perform, for instance in the lost epic Cypria, which survives in a summary by Proclus: [15] "Artemis ... snatched her away and transported her to the Tauroi, making her immortal, and put a stag in place of the girl [Iphigenia] upon the altar." The goddess swept the young princess off to Tauris where she became a priestess at the Temple of Artemis. Agamemnon is a character in William Shakespeare's play Troilus and Cressida, set during the Trojan War. The myth of the sacrifice of Iphigenia has had a rich afterlife, inspiring famous adaptations by Racine, Goethe, and many others. [1] Key Facts Who were Iphigenia’s parents?

Dictys Cretensis, The Trojan War. The Chronicles of Dictys of Crete and Dares the Phrygian, translated by R. M. Frazer (Jr.). Indiana University Press. 1966.However, the overarching analogy is the one the narrator uncovers while reading Graves' Greek Myths and the one tempting him to liken Suzana's destiny (as well as the destiny of Stalin's eldest son Yakov Dzhugashvili) to the one of Agamemnon's daughter, Iphigeneia – all victims of "a tyrant's cynical ploy", one which, instead of humane and exemplary, served only to the cause of giving the tyrants – Agamemnon, Stalin, Hoxha, or the designated successor in this case – "the right to demand the life of anyone else" in the future. In Madeline Miller's The Song of Achilles, Iphigenia comes to Aulis under the belief that she is to marry Achilles. Instead, she is unwillingly sacrificed to appease Artemis. Agamemnon and Clytemnestra have three remaining children, Electra, Orestes, and Chrysothemis. After growing to adulthood and being pressured by Electra, Orestes vows to avenge his father Agamemnon by killing his mother Clytemnestra and Aegisthus. After successfully doing so, he wanders the Greek countryside for many years constantly plagued by the Erinyes (Furies) for his sins. Finally, with the help of Athena and Apollo he is absolved of his crimes, dispersing the miasma, and the curse on house Atreus comes to an end. [24] Other stories [ edit ] Clytemnestra and Agamemnon, by Pierre-Narcisse Guérin, 1817, on display at the Musée des Beaux-Arts d'Orléans, Orléans With Achilles’ withdrawal, the Greeks lost their best fighter and consequently suffered heavy losses at the hands of the Trojans. In the end, though, Agamemnon and Achilles reconciled their differences. Achilles returned to the fighting, and the Greeks eventually won the war.

Probably the most important ancient cult of Iphigenia was at Brauron in Attica, where she was worshipped in connection with Artemis. There Iphigenia and Artemis were said to preside over the initiation rites of young girls. Some sources traced the origins of this cult to the myth of Iphigenia’s sacrifice. There was also a dark side to Agamemnon’s power and wealth. His family carried a terrible curse, originally incurred by the cruel and violent feuding between Agamemnon’s father, Atreus, and uncle, Thyestes. This curse—usually known as the “Curse of Atreus”—haunted Agamemnon throughout his life; according to many traditions, it led him to sacrifice his daughter and ultimately die at the hands of his wife and her lover. Iconography

Possible Answer

Robert Graves’s book dealt at length with the issue of Calchas. According to the oldest sources, his personality was as puzzling as could be. It was known that he was a Trojan, sent over by Priam with the specific task of sabotaging the Greeks’ campaign. Eventually, though, he’d gone over to the other side, become a turncoat. So you couldn’t avoid wondering whether he was a genuine renegade, or whether his new allegiance was just a strategic cover. It was equally possible, as often happens in circumstances of this kind, that after facing numerous dilemmas in the course of a war whose end was nowhere in sight, Calchas had ended up a double agent. [ 21] This flight into the remotest past was undoubtedly a major turning point for me. From then on, I needed to take only a modest step to see in the sacrifice that Suzana had been talking about something similar to the fate of Iphigenia. [ 15]

Fusing the moods of Kafka and Orwell", [3] the diptych Agamemnon's Daughter/ The Successor is considered by Kadare's French publisher, Fayard's editor Claude Durand, "one of the finest and most accomplished of all Ismail Kadare's works to date". [1] Describing it as "laceratingly direct" in its criticism of the totalitarian regime, in a longer overview of Kadare's works, James Wood calls Agamemnon’s Daughter "perhaps [Kadare's] greatest book" and considers it, along with The Successor, "surely one of the most devastating accounts ever written of the mental and spiritual contamination wreaked on the individual by the totalitarian state". [2] See also [ edit ] End of the war [ edit ] The suicide of Ajax depicted on Greek pottery by Exekias, now on display at the Château-musée de Boulogne-sur-Mer The Sacrifice of Iphigenia by Giovanni Battista Tiepolo (1757). Villa Valmarana, Bolzano Vicentino, Italy. Electra, opera by Johann Christian Friedrich Haeffner, Libretto by Adolf Fredrik Ristell after Nicolas Francois Guillard Svich, Caridad. " Iphigenia Crash Land Falls on the Neon Shell That Was Once Her Heart (a rave fable)" . Retrieved February 13, 2023.Agamemnon laid claim to a number of important epithets in Greek literature. These include anax andrōn, “lord of men”; eury kreiōn, “wide-ruling”; and poimēn laōn, “shepherd of the people.” Agamemnon was often also known by his patronymic, Atreidēs, meaning “son of Atreus.” Attributes Kingdom Croisille, J-M (1963) Le sacrifice d'Iphigénie dans l'art romain et la littérature latine, Latomus, Brussels, v. 22 pp.209–25 In Greek mythology, Iphigenia ( / ɪ f ɪ dʒ ɪ ˈ n aɪ . ə/; Ancient Greek: Ἰφιγένεια, Iphigéneia, [iːpʰiɡéneː.a]) was a daughter of King Agamemnon and Queen Clytemnestra, and thus a princess of Mycenae. The three are Chrysothemis, Laodice (the double of Electra) and Iphianassa. In Iliad ix, the embassy to Achilles is empowered to offer him one of Agamemnon's three daughters, implying that Iphianassa/Iphigenia is still living, as Friedrich Solmsen 1981:353 points out. Iphigenia as a priestess of Artemis in Tauris sets out to greet prisoners, amongst which are her brother Orestes and his friend Pylades; a Roman fresco from Pompeii, 1st century AD

After a stormy voyage, Agamemnon and Cassandra land in Argolis, or, in another version, are blown off course and land in Aegisthus's country. Clytemnestra, Agamemnon's wife, has taken Aegisthus, son of Thyestes, as a lover. When Agamemnon comes home he is slain by Aegisthus (in the oldest versions of the story) [18] or by Clytemnestra. According to the accounts given by Pindar and the tragedians, Agamemnon is slain in a bath by his wife alone, after being ensnared by a blanket or a net thrown over him to prevent resistance. [19] Orestes slaying Clytemnestra Agamemnon's mare is named Aetha. She is also one of two horses driven by Menelaus at the funeral games of Patroclus. [30] But in one tradition, Agamemnon and Menelaus disagreed on what to do after their victory. Menelaus wanted to sail home immediately, while Agamemnon wanted to stay and offer sacrifices to the gods. In the end, the fleet split up: Menelaus and several others left without sacrificing (and were punished for their impiety with a storm sent by the gods), while Agamemnon stayed behind. Because of this, the Greek heroes did not all arrive home at the same time. [48] Death Iphigenia and her mother Clytemnestra are brought to Aulis, under the pretext that Achilles will marry the girl. They discover the truth. In some versions of the story, Iphigenia remains unaware of her imminent sacrifice until the last moment. She believes until the moment of her death that she is being led to the altar to be married.

The Tomb of Agamemnon, by Louis Desprez, 1787, on display at The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York Athenaeus tells a tale of how Agamemnon mourns the loss of his friend or lover Argynnus, when he drowns in the Cephisus river. [26] He buries him, honored with a tomb and a shrine to Aphrodite Argynnis. [27] This episode is also found in Clement of Alexandria, [28] in Stephen of Byzantium (Kopai and Argunnos), and in Propertius, III with minor variations. [29] Pausanias, Pausanias Description of Greece with an English Translation by W.H.S. Jones, Litt.D., and H.A. Ormerod, M.A., in 4 Volumes. Cambridge, Massachusetts, Harvard University Press; London, William Heinemann Ltd. 1918. Online version at the Perseus Digital Library. Decharme, P. "Iphigenia" In: C. d'Auremberg and E. Saglio, Dictionnaire des Antiquités Grecques et Romaines v.3 (1ère partie), pp.570–72 (1877–1919) Sheri S. Tepper's The Gate to Women's Country contains a similar theme, with a play named Iphigenia at Ilium running through the novel as a leitmotif.