The Mate Characters Of Euripides

The Mate Characters Of Euripides by
E M Blaiklock

Page 115

KING OF MEN

Agamemnon, too, shall die, die by her side, under the axe.
Beside himself with fear and rage the king rounds on the pathetic creature. The guards gag him, drag him out. Let them, fling him on some desert island, another Philoctetes when, lo, a breath of wind. The spell is broken, as it was at Aulis, by a maiden's sacrifice. Horrible with memory the air moves again. Fate has brought its royal victim round in full circle. And now for Argos the carpet and the bath.
It is necessary, in conclusion, to turn again to the Iphigenia.
If the Hecuba was written with Pylos still a vivid memory, Thrace, Mantinea, Decelea, Syracuse had now become names of history. None of the generals of those momentous years seem to have changed Euripides' view of the high command.
He is as convinced as ever that its honour does not of necessity go to moral worth. Why, if generals of Athens stood no higher than their brethren, should epic kings be otherwise regarded?
If brave men lived before Agamemnon, weakness and incompetence may also have antedated Nicias, and the ways of Lamachus lived long ago in other men. Hence, as we have already seen, Agamemnon. In this play of Euripides' closing years, the King of Men is found again, not fundamentally changed. The opening of the play was reviewed in an op earlier chapter, where we left Agamemnon helpless in the grip of his great ambition, and incapable of that act of self-sacrifice which might have set him free. He is the victim of deep self-deception.
Through the hours of morning, which fill the opening scenes of the play, Agamemnon has faced considerable moral stress.
The crisis in the controversy with Menelaus, however, is proof final that the leadership of the host, the cherished generalship, has never for a moment been a stake in the battle.
Whether Menelaus was sincere or not, his words at l. 473 present Agamemnon with a clear way out. He can preserve his daughter by dismissing the army. He will, of course, be no more the King of Men, but no crime will stain his soul.
Challenged thus, the man's insincerity is torn wide open. We cannot do that, he cries, 'Fate's necessity holds us. And what of Calchas? 'Kill him,' hints his brother. 'And Odysseus!' 'He cannot injure us' Excuse follows excuse. Agamemnon is desperately anxious to convince himself that he is in the grip of forces outside his control-when all that holds him in thrall is his own lust for power, a bond one act of will could break.
His letter to Clytemnestra, and his attempt to prevent Iphi-genia's arrival in the camp, were the last effort on Agamemnon's part to escape the dreadful issue. There was no virtue in the subterfuge. Weakness, the old weakness of the Hecuba, lay behind the desire. The captain of the host could deal manfully neither with his 'turbulent priest', nor with the "mob-partisan, that evil genius behind the scene, Odysseus,-nor, indeed, with himself. We have already remarked that his resistance to both wife and daughter, and his hardening of heart to the final act of cruelty were fundamentally acts of weakness. Agamemnon imagined them to be acts of strength. He was ever the self-deceiver, and thought, doubtless, that he spoke the truth when he wrapped his selfish ambition in words of patriotism.
The pathos of the play is that such high eloquence convinced Iphigenia. Or, as we have already asked, did she too deceive herself, and, dying in truth for a figment of the imagination, her idealised Achilles, did she, in most pitiable irony, cover her sacrifice with the very words she had heard from her father's lips? Utter honesty is a rare quality, and one to which human beings rarely attain. Over a long life Euripides had considered the tangled motives of men. Now with cynicism, now with pity, he had. witnessed the hollowness of their highest profession. He had watched the cruel tricks the heart can play upon the mind, the unconscious insincerities and the last infirmities of noble spirits. From the fruit of such wisdom he wrote the Iphigenia. It should be read with due appreciation of its extreme subtlety of characterisation.
The arrival of Clytemnestra and her daughter, and their meeting with the embarrassed king, is a most Euripidean scene.
The sustained dramatic irony in Agamemnon's words does nothing to improve our view of him. Menelaus has shown him the bold way out of all his pain and trouble. Iphigenia, seeing truth with the clear eyes of goodness, gives the same advice:
I. Stay, father, with thy children, stay at home!
A. I would. My wish is barred: there lies my grief.
I. Perish their wars and Menclaus' wrongs!
A. My ruin shall be others' ruin first.
(I. in A. 656-659. Way)

The agonising scene, with what Headlam describes as its
"fine irony', continues to 1. 740.

The irony of this passage, however, is not the irony of unconscious truth in the words of innocence and ignorance, so pathetic to the wider knowledge of the audience. Agamemnon hides his meaning like another Tiberius, and wins no credit for the self-control which can deceive the warm impulsive love of such a child. Euripides seems to prolong the scene, to keep the spotlight on the King of Men, until his audience is convinced. This, they say, is a weakling, and no man, and they are not unprepared for his defeat before Clytemnestra's determination to be present at her daughter's wedding:
A. Nay hear me-
C. No! by the Argives' Goddess-queen!
Go order things without: within doors I
Will order what is fitting for a bride.
(I. in A. 739-741. Way)

This is a flash of the Clytemnestra he was to meet ten years later. He has been defeated in all his schemes to cover up his guilt. Circumstances have conspired to make him bear the burden of his deed. It is to be Agamemnon who slays
his daughter, and no other, Agamemnon with no cover for his sin.
Achilles enters at 1. 801.

To appreciate the novelty of Euripides' characterisation it must be remembered that the audience in the Attic theatre knew Homer as well as the Puritans knew the Old Testament. In the Iliad the character of Achilles stands out with intense clarity. Socrates was on familiar ground when he quoted to his judges the young hero's knightly carelessness for life. 'Straightway', said he, may I die after doing vengeance on the wrongdoer, that I may not stand here jeered at beside the curved ships, a burden of the earth.’ They had wept with Ion, this same audience, when the rhapsodist's voice unfolded before them the scene in the tent, when old Priam on his knees kissed those dreadful hands which had robbed him of many sons. They had shuddered at the tale of battle and the ußpis of the conqueror dragging dead Hector, goodlest of the men of Troy, behind his chariot. For Euripides to depict Achilles as a spoilt and braggart boy was something near to blasphemy in the opinion of some who watched his play.
Clytemnestra enters as Achilles frets impatiently outside Agamemnon's tent. She greets him somewhat effusively. After all he is her destined son-in-law! He, too boyish and immature to conceal his embarrassment, earns prompt praise for his owpooúr. Clytemnestra is determined to see nought but virtue in him. They are not yet introduced. With a note of surpise that a woman should thus appear among men, Achilles asks who she is. She is Leda's daughter, Clytemnestra to wit, King Agamemnon is her husband. The revelation does nothing to relieve the situation. The young prig, young enough, indeed, to be the lady's son-in-law, expresses concern for his reputation.
He is ashamed to talk thus with women', and horrified when Clytemnestra offers him her hand. The passage is reminiscent of a comic Recognition Scene. The story of the espousals, however, emerges, and both the queen and the warrior realise that there is some trickery afoot. Its nature is revealed dramatically by the old servant, and Clytemnestra begs Achilles' aid.
How does he act? 'Does he', asks Norwoods pertinently, bestow three or four lines of hurried consolation on the distressed ladies, and then, brandishing his sword bound away to hew Agamemnon and his followers into a more reasonable frame of mind?' He certainly does not. For such a self-conscious character the moment is ripe for heroics. While agonised womanhood hangs upon his words, he says at length what he imagines is appropriate to the occasion. 'Magnanimously', he declaims, 'my heart is lifted on high; it knows how to be vexed at evil and to rejoice, not immoderately in lofty station.
Such men as I are led by deliberate reason to live their lives correctly with the help of discretion’ ( L. In A. 919-923. Norwood).
Thanks for reading my blog