Stabbed in the bathtub

9 y.o. me was entranced by a quip in Mad magazine "Caesar was stabbed in the forum . . . also the duodenum and the heart".  That was a satire on the glib pubquiz-level 'knowledge' most of us have about the classical tales of the Western Canon. We are legitimately confused because classical and modern authors have mangled the characters and their interactions to suit the plot. The relationships - who is related to whom - are more generally agreed; but the motivations and moral standings are up for grabs. Because Sophocles and Shagsper are wrestling with difficult ethical problems. One of the tragedies of our current age is that too many people are certain that they are right . . . and that Others are wrong. Not enough Metanoia, lads!  [changing your mind].

For Christmas I was given a signed-by-author copy of House of Names by Colm "Enniscorthy's own" Tóibín. It is another reworking of the Orestia a tangled tale of faith, bad-faith, betrayal, loyalty, incest, justice and murder. My last encounter with a modern version of a Classic tale was compelling my lab-mates to watch Seamus Heaney's version of Sophocles' Antigone in the Abbey Theatre 22 years ago. Like everyone else, Tóibín takes what he wants from the old story to give it his own twist. Hopefully, he and we-the-readers can make the result relevant to our lives today and come out the better for it. I bet you sixpence that he had a particular Wexford garden, with stone steps, in mind when he wrote the scene for the climactic matricide. 

Agamemnon, the Patriarch at the centre of the tale, is a) a mighty warrior b) the brother of Menelaus c) married to Clytemnestra. When Menelaus' wife Helen runs off to Troy with Paris, Agamemnon is obliged (with other Greek chieftains - 1,000 ships are launched) to voyage to Troy to get her back. Whoa problem!: none of the ships can leave Greek ports because of contrary winds. It is announced that [note passive tense] a favourable wind can be achieved IF Agamemnon sacrifices his elder daughter Iphigenia. The girl's mother Clytemnestra is pissed off at this [peculiar to modern eyes] bargain but, as a woman in a world of testosterone-driven blokes, she cannot avert the outcome: neither slaughter-daughter nor coincident wind.

Clytemnestra hesitates before killing the sleeping Agamemnon; Aegisthos pushes her on. Pierre-Narcisse Guérin (1774–1833) [see L]. While Agamemnon et al. have been battering at each other and the walls of Troy, Clytemnestra has shacked up with her husband's first cousin Aegisthos. Of Iphigenia's siblings, Elektra is hanging out, somewhat enigmatically, in the Palace; but Orestes, the son-and-heir, is somewhere off stage. Troy having been sacked and Helen parcelled up and returned to her husband, Agamemnon is ready for a triumphant return to his patrimony. Clytemnestra more or less immediately murders her husband in the bath and cements her relationship with Aegisthos. Orestes feels obliged to avenge his father's death by killing his mother. Just as his father felt obliged to kill his own daughter.

That's never going to end well. Reciprocal atrocity has not promoted universal well-being: not during The Troubles, not in WWII, not in Gaza. It's after the end of Tóibín' verrsion, but in ancient versions of the Orestes tale has him judged for his matricidal tendencies . . . rather than revenge-killed out of hand. This is said to indicate evolution in society towards a system governed by agreed rules of law rather than right-of-might and blood-debt. But sensitive moderns might also note that the outcome is much harsher when women kill men, than when men kill women. The part played by Elektra in the matricide is more ambiguous: different authors give her more or less destructive agency.

dramatis personnae and further scandalous behaviour below the fold:

			Pelops  m	Hippodamia
			/	\
	Aerope	m	Atreus	Thyestes	m	Pelopia
		|			|
Clytemnestra	m	Agamemnon			Aegistus
/	|	\
Iphigenia	Elektra	Orestes

There are some 'interesting' backstories before we get to Agamemnon and his murderous nuclear family. Atreus and Thyestes were exiled from their home place for killing their more favoured and better looking half-brother Chrysippus [aka Golden Horse]. But these bad boys soon fell out when Aerope, the wife of Atreus, had a bit on the side with her BiL Thyestes. 

In revenge [never enough revenge back then] Atreus killed his three nephews Aglaus, Orchomenos & Calaeus, then filleted and served them up in a stew for their father. When Thyestes had finished his meal of long pig Atreus brought out the the boys' heads and hands to show his bro what had been missing from dinner.

Rather than attacking his miscreant brother immediately, Thyestes 'consulted an oracle' which advised that IF Thyestes got his own daughter with child THEN the son would kill Atreus. Hey, Revenge is a dish best served cold. That son was Aegisthos, 1st cousin to Agamemnon, and reader, he did dispatch his uncle Atreus. I touch on his other sins in the main article.

Orchomenos Ὀρχομενός does not mean tiny testicles, though: rather vine-row of the mind.

The End