Aegisthus

Book XI: Odysseus and his men travel from Circe’s island to the house of Hades. Odysseus makes the drink and animal offerings that Circe had ordered him to. He prays to the dead, promising to make more sacrifices when he returns to Ithaca. The ghosts of the dead then begin to appear around the blood of the sacrificed animals, but, just as Circe advised him, Odysseus draws his sword and keeps all of them away until Teiresias drinks of it. Odysseus is first asked by the ghost of Elpenor, a boy…

The essay question tells me to look at the role of the Gods or the role of the fates. However, in my opinion, I believe that they are intertwined, fate is the will of the gods. For the ancient Greeks, Fate embodied a startling, unrelenting force. The gods in Greek literature were portrayed in diverse manners, from irrelevant to much more significant roles. The smaller roles might have included a chorus or a character referring to god in their speech, or suggestions throughout the play that the…

men. Odysseus would never have been away from home in the first place Helen hadn’t been bewitched by a god to run away to with the prince of Troy, (23.246-49). We are told that even though Clytemnestra, wife of Agememnon, wants to remain faithful, Aegisthus strips her of her protector and she is powerless against his charms (3.303-10) which leads to Agememnon’s death. Even the lowly swineherd, Eumaeus, was once a beloved prince only brought low because of the treachery of a woman seduced “by a…

The Oresteia tells the story of a killer getting killed, the killer of this killer getting killed, and the killer of that killer finally going to court instead of being killed. Aeschylus presents it in this matter to show the absurdly long chain of killings, among other problems, caused by the former system of justice. For the final killer, however, he presents a new system and shows its superiority. The justice shown in the beginning of The Oresteia matches the system in Homer’s Iliad nearly…

Sophia Vietti Ms. Hickey Latin II May 18th 2018 The oresteia and the Athenian legal system The Oresteia, an Ancient Greek manuscript, is a follow up of the book The Iphigenia and follows Agamemnon’s wife, Queen Clytemnestra, murder of Agamemnon after the Trojan war. The story of the Oresteia is a long Greek play made to explain the new Athenian legal system supposedly made by the goddess Athena in the third act of the play. The main idea of the Oresteia is that injustice and…

In Euripides’ play, Heracles, and in Sophocles’ play, Electra, there is constant interference from gods into human lives. By having both an understanding and a basic background of the timer period and location in Greece are key in understanding why the gods interfered with mortal lives the way they did. The divine intervention in both stories can be compared and similarities can be drawn from both. The exploitation of the deus ex machina demonstrated by Apollo in Electra and Hera in Heracles,…

motherhood instincts. As a woman in the patriarch society of that time who has lost her child to male power, she plans to kill the king secretly. In comparison with Antigone, she acts in a smarter way that does not end in her death. She seeks help from Aegisthus to achieve her goal. She somehow uses the help of a male character, embodying male values, to fight with the king and his polis-based ideology. As she murders Agamemnon, she considers this act as the justice of their daughter’s death,…

Everyone loves to go to the beach, the sound of waves crashing onto the shore, the scorching sun, sound of seagulls flying above, and everyone enjoys playing a game of beach volleyball and meeting new people. But every once in awhile those beautiful beach days can turn for the worst. The waves that were once playful become violent and the sun is hidden by the dark angry clouds fast approaching. In today's society we would just be mad at ourselves for not checking the weather, but for ancient…

Medea and Clytemnestra are two iconic transgressive female characters in classic literature. In Euripides’ Medea, the female powerhouse Medea is presented as a ruthlessly strong female whose actions can make the audience squirm. In Aeschylus’ Agamemnon, Clytemnestra is painted as a bold female who seethes revenge and successfully gets it. Both women are undeniably strong, and given their situations, Clytemnestra is the more sympathetic character. As for the theme of feminism in the plays…

1. Callimachus, Hymn 5, on Teiresias: ACM p. 79, lines 97-122. Described here is a long account made by Athena towards one of her nymphs, Chariclo, after the blinding of the nympth’s son, Teiresias, after he inadvertently witnesses the goddess bathing. Chariclo laments and beseeches Athena to reverse her son’s new disability but Athena describes that is not she that had done the deed but in fact the result of one of Cronos’ laws, and as a gift for a friend, she bestows Teiresias the ability of…