Trish's Reviews > The Greek Myths 2

In the early days of Goodreads, I initially chose a user name for myself that was long-lived, historical, distinctive, and not often chosen by others. I chose the name Clytemnestra. I didn’t really know anything about her; I vaguely remembered there was some violence attached to her name. When a couple of people mentioned that user name when they contacted me, I thought, you know, that I should really find out more about Clytemnestra before I couple her name with my own.

Years later, I have this lovely, dense paperback written by Robert Graves, poet, historian, novelist, memoirist. In it, Graves explains that the story of Clytemnestra—her death at least—is not fixed exactly, and is still disputed. Suffice it to say that she was killed, somehow, by her son Orestes, some say for good reason. However, I am more inclined than ever to couple her name with mine and may again one day, after learning what I have about her life in this book.

Unless I am missing something, it appears Clytemnestra was married to Tantalus, King of Pisa, when Agamemnon killed him in battle and forcibly married Clytemnestra as war spoils. Clytemnestra was Helen of Troy’s sister, and therefore, we deduce, not as lovely as the famed Helen but perhaps not so far behind in terms of beauty and skill. Clytemnestra’s brothers, The Dioscuri, came to rescue her from Agamemnon in Mycenae, but Clytemnestra’s father Tyndareus forgave Agamemnon and allowed him to keep Clytemnestra.

Clytemnestra bore Agamemnon one son, Orestes, and three daughters: Electra, Iphigeneia, and Chrysothemis. Iphigeneia may have been Clytemnestra’s niece, daughter of Helen and Theseus, whom she adopted. When Agamemnon set sail with Menelaus for Troy to bring Helen back after she left with Paris, winds whipped up by Artemis prevented them from getting to Troy, and so Agamemnon decided unilaterally to sacrifice—as in kill—Iphigeneia to appease Artemis.

Clytemnestra, who already hated Agamemnon for killing her first husband and forcing her into marriage against her will, was beside herself for Agamemnon’s killing an innocent teen she looked upon as her daughter. In the ten years Agamemnon was away, Clytemnestra had a sexual relationship with a man who also had a reason to hate Agamemnon, Aegisthus. When she learned from a provocateur wishing to inflame her feelings of vengeance that Agamemnon planned to bring back the King of Troy’s daughter Cassandra and the children she bore to Agamemnon, Clytemnestra’s thoughts turned bloody.

Up to this time, Clytemnestra is entirely blameless. She slept with a man not her husband, but her current husband had killed her first husband, forced her into marriage, and was spreading his seed far and wide. It is said she would have been happy had Agamemnon never returned, but he did, and she beheaded him in the bath after pretending to welcome him home. Clytemnestra was unafraid of divine retribution, thinking her own acts retribution in themselves.

So what of the children from the union of Clytemnestra and Agamemnon? Orestes was raised by his grandparents Tyndareus and Leda. He was ten years of age and not at his mother’s place when Agamemnon returned from Troy. When he learned Agamemnon had been killed and his body disrespected in burial, Orestes felt he had to avenge the death. Aegisthus, Clytemnestra’s lover, lived for seven years in Agamemnon’s place, but was subservient to the true ruler of Mycenae, Clytemnestra, who finally came into her own as a ruler and leader.

When Orestes had grown to manhood and consulted the Delphic Oracle, he learned Apollo’s answer, authorized by Zeus, that he must avenge the death of his father lest he become an outcast from society and stricken with leprosy. At the same time, the Furies would not look kindly on matricide, so Orestes must defend himself against the Furies with a special bow of horn, which Apollo gave to Orestes. Some twenty years later, he returned to his mother’s house. Clytemnestra did not recognize her son. After Orestes had killed Aegisthus, whom he had tricked into letting down his guard, Clytemnestra saw he was her son. Some versions say he beheaded her at her own home, some say he gave her over to a court of law and they convicted her to death. (Why do I mistrust this version?) Another version says that Electra entices Clytemnestra to visit her home with news that she bore a child to her peasant husband. Clytemnestra, eager to see a grandson, was killed by Orestes who was hiding in Electra's house. This one actually breaks my heart.

Electra, Clytemnestra’s first daughter, had been betrothed to Castor of Sparta, but Aegisthus was afraid she might bear a son to avenge his grandfather and wanted to kill her. Clytemnestra forbade this, but allowed Aegisthus to force Electra to marry a Mycenaean peasant who was then afraid to consummate the marriage. (It is said he feared Orestes' wrath.) Electra was thus powerless, kept in poverty, and threatened with imprisonment and banishment if she called Clytemnestra and Aegisthus ‘murderous adulterers.’

Her sister, Chrysothemis, unmentioned in this telling and despised by Electra for her subservience and disservice to her father’s memory, is a fascinating child of myth. In some viewpoints since this myth came into being, Chrysothemis was the pious and noble daughter according to the matrilineal law still golden in some parts of Greece at this time. (Who knew?) Ignorant as I am, I must have picked up in various places the notion that Clytemnestra was perfectly within her rights to kill the philandering, murdering husband who left her. Call it matrilineal if you must, but at some point you must call a spade a spade.

This is what the notes by Graves have to say:

1. This is a crucial myth with numerous variants. Olympianism had been formed as a religion of compromise between the pre-Hellenic matriarchal principle and the Hellenic patriarchal principle; the divine family consisting, at first of six gods and six goddesses. An uneasy balance of power was kept until Athene was reborn from Zeus’s head, and Dionysus, reborn from his thigh, took Hestia’s seat at the divine Council; thereafter male preponderance in any divine debate was assured—a situation reflected on earth—and the goddesses’ ancient prerogatives could now be successfully challenged.

2. Matrilinear inheritance was one of the axioms taken over from the pre-Hellenic religion. Since every king must necessarily be a foreigner, who ruled by virtue of his marriage to an heiress, royal princes learned to regard their mother as the main support of the kingdom, and matricide as an unthinkable crime. They were brought up on myths of the earlier religion, according to which the sacred king had always been betrayed by his goddess-wife, killed by his tanist, and avenged by his son; they knew the son never punished his adulterous mother, who had acted with the full authority of the goddess whom she served.

Is this relevant to the world we live in today? It could very well be relevant. I’d had no idea about matrilineal law in ancient Greece, and somewhere along the way this got superseded with a patrilineal system, a kind of law I like far less well. Matrilineal law has always made sense to me, not just because I am a woman.

Crucial myth, indeed. Graves tells us the Furies had always acted for the mother only: Aeschylus is “forcing language” when he speaks of The Furies avenging paternal blood. Moreover, the White Goddess Leprea inflicts or cures leprosy, not Apollo or Zeus. “In the sequel,” Graves tell us, not all the Furies accept Apollo’s Delphic ruling and Euripedes “appeases his female audience by allowing the Dioscuri to suggest Apollo’s injunctions had been most wise.”

I will read Euripedes’ plays. I may have, in ignorance, chosen the perfect avatar in Clytemnestra, situated as she in between a society who reveres and respects matrilineal rule and and the struggle with a patrilineal line. Clytemnestra was not especially kind to the children she bore with Agamemnon, and this is regrettable. I would have preferred she love her children regardless of where they were sourced, but since she is not the one who gets to tell the story, we’ll never know the truth of it. She intervened to prevent overt harm to her children several times; we must take this at least at face value.