#aeschylus oresteia

[thhouseofblack]

ELECTRA OF MYCENAE | BRUTUS

🎨 Frederic Leighton, mushyooms, William Blake Richmond, notacluedo, Charles-Auguste van den Berghe, hlblng, mohtz, Angelica Kauffman, Charles-Auguste van den Berghe, Felix-Joseph Barrias, John Downman, Tyler Miles Lockett, mameomal | thhouseofblack, kokofi | thhouseofblack

[palamedestragedy]

Then Agamemnon, our general for good reason, mastered himself, with painful words: If I obey the goddess, my own daughter has to die. If I deny the goddess, this whole army has to dissolve. If I obey the goddess, and kill my daughter—what do I become?

A monster to myself, to the whole world, And to all future time, a monster—wearing my daughter’s bloody dress like a turban. The King of cruelty. Painting my royal palace afresh with her blood, the blood of Iphigenia. Perfuming my bath, after the battle, with the blood of Iphigenia. Filling the drinking cups of my family with the blood of Iphigenia—this is how I shall live on in men's minds.

But if I deny the goddess, then what happens? Will it be worse? An utter defeat for us all. And for me—disaster. As if I deserted this army, disguised, a traitor to my oath, shorn of honour, shunning men, shunned by men, and wherever men gossip together a term of contempt. An outcast on the earth. The rest of my life skulking in corners, afraid of my own name.

If my daughter dies—the winds change, Artemis is happy. Our allied armies revive, as at a word the sail fills with a breath. And I have done no more than sacrifice myself—myself, not only my daughter but also my daughter's father. So ought every warrior to live—as if already dead.

— Chorus in Aeschylus' Agamemnon, Transl. Ted Hughes

[spastoid]

real.

[thhouseofblack]

I miss my favourite doomed siblings.

[palamedestragedy]

rewatching peter hall's oresteia

[palamedestragedy]

not sure how to phrase this to seem mildly normally but my tablet got stuck inside my treadmill while i was watching a production of the oresteia so now it sounds like clytemnestra possessed my treadmill