Then finally, at the very end of the play, Clytemnestra’s lover Aegisthus comes onstage, revelling in the excellence of the day. He explains that his father, Thyestes, had a long-running feud with Agamemnon’s father, Atreus. Thyestes tried to take Atreus’ kingdom from him, and Atreus repelled his attack. The two men apparently reached a détente and Thyestes was welcomed back into Atreus’ house for a feast. But the dinner contained a stomach-churning dish: Thyestes’ own children had been murdered and their hands and feet were served up to him. He ate them unknowingly. Aegisthus, his youngest child, survived the bloodbath because he was only a baby when it took place. He, too, is acting in the spirit of revenge: he claims credit for planning the murder. If Clytemnestra is punishing her husband for his terrible acts as a father, Aegisthus is punishing him for whose son he is. Like Clytemnestra, he claims to have acted with Justice on his side. And he too is unapologetic in the face of societal disapproval. Death would seem fine to him, he says, now he has seen this man caught in Justice’s snare. The chorus are not persuaded by Aegisthus’ arguments any more than they were convinced by Clytemnestra’s defence and attack. Aegisthus is unbowed by their criticism and threatens them with imprisonment and starvation. Whatever else drew Clytemnestra and her lover together – sexual desire, a common enemy – we see that they are tremendously well suited in terms of their dispositions. The chorus try to wound him the only way they know how: he planned the murder, they say, but didn’t have the courage to carry it out. He left that to a woman.17
The chorus are on the verge of all-out combat with Aegisthus and his men, but Clytemnestra will allow no further bloodshed. Again, we are left in no doubt who has taken control of the palace, of the city, in the aftermath of the king’s death. Aegisthus may claim to be the mastermind of the day, but when it comes to actual power, it rests in the hands of the queen. She stops Aegisthus – ‘dearest of men’ – from doing any more damage. The use of this endearment surely helps to persuade the chorus that they have nothing to gain by venting further anger and distress. She tells them to leave. They issue one last barb – you wait till Orestes gets home.
Have the chorus remembered Cassandra’s prophecy, that her own death would be followed by the death of a woman and a man? Have they understood that, however much Clytemnestra and Aegisthus believe they were serving the goddesses of Justice and Vengeance, they now may be destroyed by those same goddesses in turn? This is the dark shadow at the centre of the house of Atreus. Every crime committed requires an act of retribution to satisfy the dead: Iphigenia, Thyestes’ older children. But every act of retribution then requires another: Clytemnestra’s daughter is avenged but her surviving children – Orestes and Electra – are now in an impossible bind, as the Choephoroi, or The Libation Bearers, the next play in the trilogy, will make clear. If they fail to avenge their father, his spirit will torment them because he has been murdered and his killer goes unpunished. But if they kill his murderer, they themselves will be committing the unforgivable crime of matricide. Retributive justice is all very well, but when such horrors take place within the family, there is no solution which does not worsen the already intolerable position.
Clytemnestra may prevent fighting from breaking out between her lover and the chorus of Argive men, but she ends the play with no hint of humility or apology. Ignore their worthless barking, she tells Aegisthus, effortlessly dehumanizing the old men: they are no more important to her than dogs, their words contain no more merit than animal howls. And she literally has the last words in the play: I, and you, rule this house now. The word order may pain English grammarians, but Clytemnestra means it. I rule the palace, the city, its people, and so do you. Aegisthus is not quite an afterthought, but she certainly isn’t giving him top billing. The play concludes with yet another motive for killing Agamemnon: the acquisition of power.
The play is disquieting now, and it must have been even more so when it was first performed. It is hard to measure the impact of something by the absence of work it inspires, but there are surprisingly few vase paintings which show this part of Agamemnon and Clytemnestra’s story, even fewer which show the specifically Aeschylean version. Have we just been unlucky in what has survived? Or might there be a reason for the scarcity? These ornate wine cups and bowls were often used by men at parties attended by other men, as well as women who were not their wives. Plato’s Symposium gives us a very high-minded, idealized version of this kind of night: philosophical discussion, drinking, the arrival of a late guest accompanied by flute-girls. It’s not beyond the stretch of our imagination to conclude that perhaps men at these kinds of parties might not be desperate to be reminded of the murderous anger of a wife left waiting at home for her husband. If you wanted a wine bowl decorated with axe-wielding women, you might well choose the Amazons in a battle rather than a raging wife cutting down a single unarmed man.