THE ROLE OF CASSANDRA IN THE ORESTEIA OF AESCHYLUS D.M. LEAHY, M.A. SENIOR LECTURER IN GREEK IN THE UNIVERSITY OF MANCHESTER AMIDST the principal human characters of the Oresteia of .IjLAeschylus one stands unique in her situation and in the feelings which she evokes in the spectator Cassandra. All the others appear to fall into one of two classes. In the case of Clytemnestra and of Aegisthus we feel that, no matter how grim the fate that befalls them, their actions, their motives and the way in which they are presented alienate them from our sympathy ; and despite the efforts of Professor Fraenkel,1 few will be disposed to exclude Agamemnon himself from this category. Orestes and Electra, on the other hand, also have to do and to suffer terrible things, but we are allowed to sympathize with them and to feel it appropriate that their miseries should have a happier issue. Only Cassandra seems to stand apart. A captive taken in a war for which she was not personally responsible, she has become involved in the bloody tragedy of a house which is not her own. Her whole life blighted, first by the perverted gift of prophecy and the mockery which it brought her, then by the loss in war of all those whom she loved, she comes at last helpless, yet not without dignity, to be the victim of the murderous wife of her captor. Nor is it only her situation which enlists the sympathy of the spectator : the very language used emphasizes the piteous- ness of her condition. Thus the scene opens with the Chorus expressing its pity for her-eyw §/ €7roLKripa> yap, ov dv/jLcoao^ai2- and closes with Cassandra herself reading in her own unhappy destiny proof of the pitiful weakness of humanity : (7/aa TLS av TTpeifseizv. et 8e ts vypcbaacw cmoyyos cbXeaev ypa<f>TJv. l ravr' 6K€cva)v fjidXXov oiKripa) TroAu.3 Professor Thomson is apt in his assessment ; " The keynote of the scene is pity."4 1 Agamemnon, ii. 372, 430 fi., 441 ff. 2 1069. 3 1327-30. 4 Headlam-Thomson, The Oresteia, i. 29. 144 CASSANDRA IN ORESTEIA OF AESCHYLUS 145 But if the very effectiveness of the scene in arousing this emotion is not to obscure its relevance, we must consider two questions to which it gives rise firstly, what is Aeschylus' pur pose in presenting this scene, and secondly, how is Cassandra's plight to be related to the economy of the trilogy as a whole ? And we must bear in mind that the answer to the second question is likely to be effected by that which we give to the first. The most obvious reason for the presence of the scene is that it provides a great dramatic stroke for Cassandra's prediction of Agamemnon's murder and her own achieves something very like a messenger-speech in advance,1 foretelling with tremendous power instead of reporting the horrors within the palace, and going on to foreshadow the pattern of the Choephoroe by the references which it includes to the coming vengeance. But more than this, Cassandra is presented here to reveal the theological implications of what has gone before. She tells us for the first time that behind all that we have so far seen and heard there stands the supernatural power for evil2 (represented by the Erinyes3) which overshadows the House of Atreus and has its 1 Cf., e.g. E. Fraenkel, Agamemnon, iii. 516: K. Reinhardt, Aischylos als Regisseur und Theologe, p. 101 : E. T. Owen, The Harmony of Aeschylus, p. 85. 2 I use this somewhat cumbrous phrase in view of the objections raised by N. G. L. Hammond (" Personal freedom and its limitations in the Oresteia ", JHS,\xxxv (1965),42-43) against the obvious and commonly-used term " curse ". No actual curse is explicitly mentioned, as Hammond points out, until that of Thyestes in 1601 ; but this, when it comes, merely reinforces the pre-existing evil, exactly as Oedipus' curse reinforces the evil heritage of Laius' sin in the Septem (cf. 709 and 742 ff.) There is also in the Agamemnon something else, mentioned earlier in the play, which does approximate closely to a curse the angry speech of the citizens : fiapeia o'daTwv (f>a.Tis £vv KOTO). orjiJ.OKpa.TOv o'apas rivet xpe'o?. (456-7) (It is this aspect of popular anger, as adding a further supernatural element to Agamemnon's burden of guilt, which makes the passage important, not the fact that it is " the first step towards revolt" (Fraenkel, Agam., ad loc.) : for the actual political security of Agamemnon never becomes a determining factor in the play.) But in this case also, the occasion of the anger (the Argive losses at Troy) is later than the original guilt of the House of Atreus. 3 The Erinyes are the most notable element in what is evidently a whole group of supernatural powers. Also included are the TraAcuo? opipvs dXdarajp (1501), n&as'Aprjs (1511) and the oaipwv TTAetaflevtSav (1569): though some of these may be different names for the same thing. The force which these powers represent is treated as one in what follows. 10 146 THE JOHN RYLANDS LIBRARY origins in that nexus of guilt which comprises both the adultery of Thyestes (the Trpwrapxos arrj) and the brutal murder of the children which avenged it.1 The significance of this revelation has been disputed : it is a commonly-held, and I believe correct, view that what Cassandra tells us about the supernatural element is a decisive factor in the action, and the importance of her revelation for the shape of the play as a whole has been stressed (though perhaps without all the implications being full brought out2). Doubts have, however, been cast upon the validity of this interpretation. There is admittedly much wisdom in Fraenkel's warning : " It would be absurd to attempt an exact calculation as to the degree of efficacy in each of the elements that work together towards Agamemnon's fatal end "3; but it is unwarranted, I believe, to go beyond this and to argue that, just because Cassandra's revelation comes late in the play, the supernatural element must be regarded as of secondary importance and, by implication, that this aspect of the scene is not crucial. This was to some extent hinted at by Fraenkel4: Professor Hammond in a recent study of the problem of freedom and determination in the Oresteia elevates it to an absolute principle : "If the curse is to come first and to be the fons et origo of the ensuing actions in a living drama, then it must be presented early in the drama by the playwright."5 It is however far from self-evident that this is a necessary principle of play construction, and Hammond offers no arguments to support his assertion. Obviously some playwrights have pre ferred to indicate in advance supernatural factors which are going to condition the action of the human characters notably Euri pides ; but this is far from being the only method of constructing a plot. Progressive revelation is in fact a keynote of the Agamemnon : even on the human plane, it is to be noted that Clytemnestra has dominated the stage for a large part of the play 1 This is a fundamental point for the meaning of the Agamemnon. See especially Fraenkel's discussion, Agam., iii. 546-7. 2 So especially H. D. F. Kitto, Form and Meaning in Drama, pp. 27-32 (on which however cf. also below, p. 149): H. Lloyd- Jones," The guilt of Agamemnon" CQNS, xii (1962), 198. 8 Agam., iii. 625. 4 Ibid. pp. 624-5. 5 Op. dtp. 42. CASSANDRA IN ORESTEIA OF AESCHYLUS 147 and murdered her husband off-stage before she offers any ex planation at all. It is, I believe, demonstrable by the shape of the Agamemnon that the supernatural factor is of the greatest import ance, and in this the Cassandra scene is fundamental. The action of the play may be said to culminate in the murder of Agamemnon, but the overall illumination of the meaning cul minates in the Cassandra scene, and the scenes following the murder, which might otherwise have been something of an anti climax, derive their significance largely from Cassandra. It is a platitude of the commentaries that Agamemnon himself does not appear until the play is almost half-over, that everything which has gone before leads up to his appearance ; and that much of what is affirmed by the Chorus about Paris and Troy is by implication referable to Agamemnon and the House of Atreus.1 The uneasiness of the Chorus in its references to Agamemnon and his Trojan expedition (reinforced by the news from the herald2) coalesces with its description of the effect of such powers as Ate and Peitho on those who in consequence of older wickedness are led to wrong-doing and through it to disaster.3 The culmination of the suspicions which have thus been roused in the audience is reached in the tapestry scene, where the behaviour of Agamemnon manifests him to be precisely such as the Chorus has described, a 1 Cf. e.g., Headlam- Thomson, Oresteia, i. 21-2; Denniston-Page, Agamemnon, p. 104. It is worthy of note at this point, to save confusion later, that there appears to be no special distinction drawn in the play between the effect of sin on members of a city and on members of a family. (Just so, there appears to be no distinction drawn between the city of Troy and the family of Priam cf. e.g., the second stasimon, which refers three times to the city (699, 710, 737) and once to the Priamidae (747), apparently without any significant difference.) It therefore seems justifiable to speak of " communal guilt " as referring to both types of community. 2 Even if we omit 527 (and the case for doing so is far from conclusive cf. Denniston-Page, Agam., ad loc.) the destruction of the shrines is clearly implied by the herald's report of the wreck of the fleet, since Clytemnestra's warning (338 ff) expressly links the danger to the returning Greeks with such a sacrilege. 3 The way in which this inter-relation is worked out is deferred for dis cussion at a later stage (pp. 167 ff). What is to be stressed here is that thecrucial first stasimon shows that Paris' abduction of Helen stands not at the beginning but at a distance along a causal chain of wickedness, and that Paris was at the time of the abduction in some degree deluded because of what had gone before. (Cf. Denniston-Page, Agam., p. 104). 148 THE JOHN RYLANDS LIBRARY man doomed and deluded, yet in some way still committing a crime that will merit punishment: olos xai flapcs.1 Until the moment when he treads the tapestries it remains (in theory at least) just possible that the fears of the audience may prove unjustified that Agamemnon will vindicate himself and show that he is not, after all, another Paris. In the event, these fears are confirmed, and Agamemnon's death is certain.2 But even now the revelation is not complete. It is clear that Agamemnon has acted wrongly, and at the same time that he is a man in the grip of Ate ; but the original reason for this remains obscure. The Watchman in his forebodings has hinted that the House has things which it could tell o i/cos" 8'av CLVTOS, el (frdoyyrjv AajSot, I / y « \ // 3 acupearar av Aegetev. 1 I follow the common opinion that what Agamemnon does in walking on the tapestries constitutes an act of hybris. This view has been challenged by R. D. Da we (" Inconsistency of plot and character in Aeschylus ", CPSP., NS (1963), 48, n. 2), who stresses instead the amount of discussion concerning simple waste of property. This criticism seems to me to be in danger of viewing Agamemnon's treading on the tapestry precisely as Clytemnestra deliberately misrepresents it in e.g. 958-62. Agamemnon knows better, though he fails to act in accordance with that knowledge cf. 921-5. Dawe's argument that hybris is disproved by the failure of the Chorus to sing of it in the following ode is not cogent: on the way in which the Chorus of the Agamemnon fails to comment directly on the substance of scenes which it has just witnessed, and the reason for this, see Kitto, Form and Meaning, pp. 200-1. 2 As will be readily apparent, I do not accept R. Lattimore's description of the tapestry scene (Story Patterns in Greek Tragedy, p. 39) as a " curious little scene " portraying a choice irrelevant to the subsequent action. A distinction must be made between the logic of a narrative account and the requirements of dramatic representation. Though logically Agamemnon's past career may have already provided sufficient reasons both human and supernatural for his death, it is still dramatically desirable that we should see him epitomize, in one telling scene, the process by which he has earned this fate, and have it visually demonstrated to us that he is what we had already suspected. A similar, though simpler, example of the same principle is to be observed in Hippolytus' first appearance in Euri pides' play, which serves to demonstrate that his character is as Aphrodite has previously described it. However the power of the Agamemnon scene is vastly greater, not least because Aeschylus, by allowing the first fulsome overtures of Clytemnestra to meet with a rebuff, raises momentarily the desperate chance that despite all we have heard Agamemnon may yet prove capable of resisting tempta tion. (On the dramatic tension of this scene, cf. esp. Reinhardt, op. cit. pp. 90 ff.). 3 37-38. CASSANDRA IN ORESTEIA OF AESCHYLUS 149 and in Cassandra there comes the one person to whom the House can convey its tale. She alone, with her inspired vision, sees on the palace the figures of the children butchered years before, and identifies the Erinyes who haunt the place, singing of the Trpwrapxos arrj. The revelation is complete. The first cause of Agamemnon's condition is made clear; and it only remains for him to die. In a sense, the play up to this point resembles a syllogism, of which the Chorus' generalization about the effect of past sin on individuals represents the major premiss and Cassandra's revelations the minor: with the death of Agamemnon following as the logical conclusion. But still, the significance of the Cassandra scene is not ex hausted. The revelation of supernatural evil which Cassandra makes places the audience in possession of greater knowledge than the main actors, and this conditions the pattern of what follows. Though only one new piece of information is introduced (Clytemnestra's personal motive for murdering Agamemnon, already hinted at in Calchas* prophecy) to say with Professor Kitto that " What remains of the play is not development but repetition "x scarcely does justice to the last 300 lines of the play. In a scene outstanding in Greek tragedy for the way in which it represents the development in the attitude of a character on the stage2 Aeschylus shows Clytemnestra moving gradually from the assertion of her own full responsibility for the killing of her husband to a perception of what is already known by the audience because of Cassandra, that she has after all been acting in con junction with a supernatural force. In the process of this realization, her exultation fades, and it is with a weariness of bloodshed that she expresses the hope that this force will now be satisfied, and even offers to buy it off.3 But at the very moment when she makes this offer, Aegisthus enters, the one wholly despicable character in the whole trilogy. Complacent, cow ardly and brutal, he parades his claim to a vengeance which he has left a woman to exact, and by his use of a bodyguard to 1 Form and Meaning, p. 35. 2 A. Lesley, " Decision and responsibility in the tragedy of Aeschylus ", JHS, Ixxxvi (1966), 80. (Referred to hereafter as " Decision and responsibility ".) 3 1567ff. 150 THE JOHN RYLANDS LIBRARY threaten the Chorus epitomises the tyranny which is to be imposed on Argos. A shallower character than Clytemnestra, he never realizes the power of the supernatural forces which the audience now know to be active over him. His version of the Thyestean feast repeats what Cassandra has already revealed, but with a significant omission : he describes Atreus in a vague phrase as djLH^i'AeKTos' £>v Kpdrei,1 giving no hint that (as the audience already knows, thanks to Cassandra) Thyestes had himself com mitted the first act of criminal folly, and that Aegisthus' own side of the family is therefore also enmeshed in the ancestral guilt. Thus, because of Cassandra's prior statement, it is clear to the audience that, whatever claims Aegisthus may have in terms of the vendetta, he is himself involved in the consequences of his father's crime, even though he is not conscious of this.2 Over these last two scenes, therefore, the Cassandra scene casts its shadow; and indeed their juxtaposition itself demon strates dramatically the truth of her words. The K&fios of the Erinyes was described by her as SuaTre/zTrros1 e£eu,3 and Aeschylus could hardly have represented this more effectively than he does by causing Clytemnestra's prayer that the Evil Spirit of the House will now be satisfied to be followed immediately by the entry of Aegisthus.4 Far from being able to call a halt to the progress of supernaturally-directed misery and confusion, Clytemnestra is now visibly forced to take upon herself the evil and disastrous consequences of her act, maintaining her position by the protec tion of an adulterer, coward and tyrant: a character for whom the Chorus (which had previously been perplexed when faced with Clytemnestra's own claims to have acted justly) displays only anger and contempt. M585. 2 Our relation to Clytemnestra is thus somewhat similar to what it is towards Oedipus in the Oedipus Tyrannus, seeing a character come to a perception of what we, the audience, already know : in respect of Aegisthus, on the other hand, a closer parallel is afforded by the Troades, where the Greeks remain throughout the action ignorant of the disaster which, thanks to the prologue, the audience knows to be awaiting them. 3 1189-90. 4 This is not always been given due weight: cf. A. J. P. Waldock's comments, Sophocles the dramatist, pp. 49-50, where the Aegisthus scene is regarded as ex traneous to the design of the play. CASSANDRA IN ORESTEIA OF AESCHYLUS 1 5 1 So important then is Cassandra to Aeschylus' purpose that he would almost have been justified if he had made no further attempt to integrate her personal tragedy into the economy of the trilogy, and had been content to put before us the prophetess fated never to be believed simply because of the dramatic possi bilities which this offered, and without regard for its consistency with the rest of his theology. That Aeschylus did precisely this is a view which has been maintained.1 However, a further in spection of the Cassandra scene suggests that her position has in fact been carefully integrated into the play. Cassandra is the only Trojan to appear on the stage, although we have heard much in the earlier part of the play about Troy and its people ; and just as Agamemnon, when at last he appears, exemplifies the man in the grip of Ate of whom we heard in the Choral odes, so Cassandra by her presence enables us to see what we have hitherto heard about the Trojans. Like them, she cries out against the evil marriage of Paris which has brought disaster on his kin.2 Moreover, her reference to the ineffectiveness of her father's sacrifices las TrpoTTVpyoi dvaiai Trarpos fioTOJV 7TOLOVO[J,tt>V. CLKOS 8' TO fj,r) iroXiv jitev oMrrrep ovv e makes specific and more vivid what the Chorus has already affirmed when, thinking of Paris and Troy, it described the downward course to ruin which sin causes : Xirdv S'aKovei /zev ourts1 Oe&v*. Aeschylus might have left it at this. He might have been content to portray Cassandra as a personally innocent victim of Troy's wickedness and consequent destruction.5 Such an 1 H. J. Rose, " Theology and mythology in Aeschylus ", Harvard Studies in Theology xxxix (1946), 5-6, where the Cassandra scene is singled out to exemplify Aeschylus' use of a myth without regard for anything but its immediate con venience. 2 1156(cf. 709ff). 3 1168-71. 4 397 (cf. also 69-71). 6 Hammond appears to come close to this view (op. cit. p. 54). One might ask further whether Cassandra is to be visualized as having a personal share in that public guilt which is the origin of Trojan sorrows. There is indeed a certain 152 THE JOHN RYLANDS LIBRARY interpretation would have been quite in keeping with the theo logical views of Aeschylus' predecessors, Hesiod and Solon, both of whom visualize the gods as making individuals who are per sonally innocent suffer for the sins of their rulers or forefathers.1 However, Aeschylus does not leave the fate of Cassandra to be explained in these terms : for he complicates the issue by inter weaving into the scene references to the part played by Apollo in her history. It is, in fact, difficult to disentangle the reasons for Cassandra's murder. As she gives them (and her statement must be accepted as valid, for the truthfulness of what she reveals is fundamental to the trilogy) they appear to be twofold and not explicitly connected.The obvious reason for her plight is that as a Trojan woman she is involved in the disaster precipitated by Paris, and therefore becomes the property of Agamemnon and is slain with him; and in two stanzas (1156ff. and 1167ff.), Cassandra seems to imply this (although in the latter the meaning is somewhat obscured by textual corruption). But in addition she asserts three times (1080-7, 1138-9, and 1275 ff.), with greater explicitness and greater emphasis, that Apollo is responsible for her approaching death. As elsewhere in the Oresteia, an event has more than one cause. In this case, the complication involves further difficulties, because the god who destroys Cassandra is the very same god who later in the trilogy provides the first hope of a new and better order. How are we to reconcile these two aspects of Apollo, and why has Aeschylus placed himself in this situation ?2 ambivalence in Aeschylus'attitude to the Trojans en masse : on the one hand, there is a corporate hybris, born of wealth (cf. above, p. 147, n. 3), yet equally the sign of the pregnant hare suggests innocent and helpless victims (cf. p. 168, n. 1 .) Hammon is probably right (loc. cit.) in regarding the women-folk of Troy as suffering for the acts of others ; and though Cassandra is a princess, there is nothing in her portrayal to suggest any personal responsibility for Trojan hybris : indeed such indications as there are seem consistent with the traditional picture of her as isolated from the corporate activities of Troy and vainly warning against the follies of her people, (cf. Agam., 1210-2). iHesiod W. D., 240-7, 260-2 (rulers): Solon, fr. 1 (Diehl) 25-32 (fore fathers : cf. above, p. 147, n. 1). 2 The place of Apollo in the trilogy is not made any simpler to explain by his performance in the Eumenides. His impressive first appearance in that play con trasts with his later eclipse, and he is certainly less wise than Athena. However, to suppose that Aeschylus wishes to present a predominantly critical view of CASSANDRA IN ORESTEIA OF AESCHYLUS 153 One thing can be immediately asserted, and that is, that Aeschylus is not simply the prisoner of tradition. Indeed it is, in the present state of our knowledge, quite possible that the story of Cassandra's treatment by Apollo as given here was in fact Aeschylus' own invention1; and even if it was not, certainly his bold re-shaping of accepted myths elsewhere in the trilogy2 makes it clear that he would hardly have felt obliged to give prominence to an inconvenient aspect of legend simply through faithfulness to tradition. Interpretations of the treatment of Cassandra by Apollo have varied between two extremes between condemning Apollo as brutal3 and finding him justified. The former is the more obvious reaction : our attitude to the story of a mortal woman suffering because of a god's love, such as Cassandra here reveals, may very easily be to stress the unfairness of it all the impor tunity of the god, and the helplessness of the woman : in short, we may be disposed to criticize in the vein of Euripides.4 Much more subtle, and completely contrary, has been the attempt to find in the Cassandra scene the logical forerunner of the unex ceptionable sentiments which Apollo voices in the Eumenides concerning the relations between the sexes, and thus to transfer Apollo (as is suggested by R. P. Winnington-Ingram, " The role of Apollo in the Oresteia ", CR, xlvii (1933), 97-104) is, I believe, erroneous. Despite some ill- judged utterances when he goes beyond his function as the mouthpiece of Zeus, Apollo renders assistance to Orestes second only to that of Athena. 1 J. Davreux, La legende de la prophetesse Cassandre, p. 31 : P. G. Mason, " Kassandra ", JHS, Ixxix (1959), 85. 2 Notably the opening speech of the Eumenides with its revised history of the Delphic oracle, and Athena's " foundation speech " concerning the Areopagus in the same play (especially 685-9) : probably also the siting of the Agamemnon and Choephoroe in Argos. 3 In addition to Kitto's discussion in Form and Meaning (for which see below, pp. 155 ff.), other indications of a similar attitude can be found elsewhere, e.g. Reinhardt, op. cit. pp. 104-5. Lesley's description of Apollo (Greek Tragedy, p. 78) as'' the god who has forced her into his dreadful, thankless service as a prophetess seems likewise very weighted in favour of Cassandra: strictly speaking, the dreadfulness and thanklessness stem not so much from the original prophetic gift as from its subsequent modification after Cassandra had offended Apollo. (Cf. Agam., 1212 with 1269.) Kitto (Poiesis, p. 5) cites Jones as holding a similar view of the scene : cf. On Aristotle and Greek Tragedy, p. 173 : it is not however certain from the context that Jones is at this point interpreting Aeschylus. 4 E.g. 7on,881ff.