Some neglected Aspects of Agamemnon's dilemma

Interpretation of the Agamemnon in general and of its first choral sequence in particular has tended to proceed on two assumptions: first, that Aeschylus could have given an answer (not necessarily a simple answer) to the question, ‘Was Agamemnon free to choose whether or not to sacrifice his daughter?’; and secondly, that he composed the play in such a way that if we try hard enough we can discover his answer. I submit in this paper an interpretation which replaces both these assumptions with an alternative trio of hypotheses for which, I think, a case can be made: first, that Aeschylus was well aware that in real life we cannot know the extent to which an agent was able to choose whether or not to commit a particular act; secondly, that in Ag. 104–257 he has portrayed realistically the manner in which people respond to the commission of an extraordinary and disagreeable act by a respected agent; and thirdly, that the aspect of Agamemnon's predicament which made the most powerful impression on Aeschylus and his audience is an aspect to which modern interpreters of the play have seldom alluded even by implication. I would not be so rash as to assert that Aeschylus never concerned himself with the question of responsibility, nor that his concepts of justice and retribution are of small interest, but I am not satisfied that ‘with all the powers of his mind’, as Professor Lesky puts it, ‘he wrestled with the problem arising from the conflict between human existence and divine rule’, nor do I take the view that a dramatist passionately involved in metaphysics and theology is a wiser and greater man than one who devotes the powers of his mind to concrete problems of poetic and theatrical technique. The scale of values adopted by interpreters of early Greek tragedy has certainly been affected, and has perhaps been somewhat distorted, by the dominant position of philosophy in European culture and education.