Atreus

Aristotelian vs. Modern Perception of the Protagonist Affinity toward a character is often skewed by one’s own personalities and beliefs, such as the view of characterization within Aeschylus’ Agamemnon. In order to properly assess the protagonist within this play, first the thoughts of Aristotelian theory of tragic heroes will be overviewed, and their involvement in plot development. Next, this theory, and a specific main character approach by Aristotle, will then be applied to The Agamemnon,…

It was because of those generous, hospitable, and god fearing characters that Odysseus was able to survive throughout his rough journey on the wrathful sea. In her writing “What Pains are Fated to Fill Your Cup: The Role of Food, Drink, and Xenia in the Homeric Epics”, Amanda Urban states, “ This crucial moral principle was often exercised through the sharing of feasts, wine, and gifts between guests and their hosts. It is unsurprising then that The Odyssey is rich with examples: Odysseus, the…

na Djunisijevic Prof. Klaassen CLCV 2010A March. 14th, 2018. The Portrayal of Revenge as a Mean of Preservation Seeking vengeance is one of the central themes in Agamemnon and The Medea. Both Euripides and Sophocles explore human nature by examining the human psyche. In the two plays, Clytemnestra and Medea are vengeful and ruthless in their pursuit of justice because of the disloyalty wrought upon them by their male partners Agamemnon and Jason. By preserving themselves through actions of…

Chronicling the fate of the House of Atreus - a bloodline destined to beget suffering and bleed until it is bled dry - the closing moments of Aeschylus’ Oresteia depict, more optimistically, the very best of what Aeschylus hoped society could be. Yet to ignore the issues of gender and sexuality - the binary opposition and conflicting gendering of its two female ‘heroines’ and their subsequent inversion of societal norms, for example - is to confine the text and its characters unnecessarily. It…

Structure and form were of great concern to the ancient Greeks. This can be seen from the many conventions that are found in a Greek epic. These epics are long stories or poems that are spoken in hexameter. This paper will discuss the gods and heroes, who are prominent figures in epics. It will also describe the theme of an epic, what the setting of an epic entails, and the major events in an epic, how epics use extended similes, and what it means for an epic to begin in medias res. The theme of…

hardships recurrently. Achilles gets disrespected by the leader of the Achaeans during the Trojan War. Odysseus is trapped on the island of the sea goddess Calypso. When Achilles’ prize woman gets stolen, he says to his mother: “For wide-ruling Agamemnon, Atreus’ son, has shamed me, has taken away my prize, appropriated it for his own use.”(The Iliad pg. ln.). He is in the middle of a war and all he is worried about is his prize. Countless Achaean soldiers are dying, because his feelings are…

The Divine Sacrifice Although it is believed that ancient Greeks did not practice human sacrifice, the concept itself occupied a large space of Greek drama, which raises questions about its meaning(s), function(s), and how it has contributed to the human-deity relationship in Greek Drama. Human sacrifice, as a thematic frame, is common within the works of the three Greek tragedians, who employ it as a mean to create a dilemma in their plays, add a layer of meaningful depth to the human death…