Rolling stars Agamemnon 2-21.

The Agamemnon opens with the watchman's anticipation. He's on the look-out for the sumbolon, a prearranged fiery relay carrying the good news that Troy has been taken. He talks at some length about that long lonely wait, and how, doglike, he fights sleep, boredom, and dreams. But before that, he speaks of how he's come to understand the assembly of stars (astron).

ἄστρων κάτοιδα νυκτέρων ὁμήγυριν, 

5

καὶ τοὺς φέροντας χεῖμα καὶ θέρος βροτοῖς 

λαμπροὺς δυνάστας, ἐμπρέποντας αἰθέρι 

ἀστέρας, ὅταν φθίνωσιν, ἀντολάς τε τῶν. 

καὶ νῦν φυλάσσω λαμπάδος τό σύμβολον, 

αὐγὴν πυρὸς φέρουσαν ἐκ Τροίας φάτιν 

10

ἁλώσιμόν τε βάξιν:

I have learned well the gathering of the night´s stars, bringers of winter and summer to mankind, those radiant ruling stars conspicuous in the night sky, whenever fading or rising. 

So now I am still watching for the signal [sumbolon] of the flame, the gleaming fire that is to bear word from Troy and tidings of its capture. (Ag. 4-10 - Smyth Nagy - modified.)

In his aside, he looks up and first sees gatherings of stars bringing the frosts of winter and heat of summer. He uses two words for stars in this brief aside: Commonplace stars that form the gatherings are ἄστρων. Ruling stars conspicuous in the night sky, fading or rising, are ἀστέρας.

His nod to the heavens is brief, yet the watchman manages to include a nuanced appreciation of these fires in the sky -- the commoners bearing the seasons and temperatures, then, his tone heightens as he speaks of the radiant giants. It's a quick moment, and one might wonder why Aeschylus bothered. Why not just have the watchman speak of what he's waiting for, and why?

One possible motive for a seemingly gratuitous nod to the stars is its effect within this speech. It sets the gallery of lights up there as a stable and predictable but distant realm. It's a point of reference -- far, but not entirely beyond, our earthly existence; orders of magnitude larger, especially if we are likened to dogs. Stars bear larger tasks than we do, but even the brightest undergo regular routines of change. From his nightly chore the watchman feels on familiar terms with them.

As he turns from the night sky to the horizon and his work of watching, the fiery object of his watch, unbenknownst to him, is already racing across the dark waters between the Troad and Argos, about to blaze into view.

He speaks of fighting off sleep, trying to keep a sharp line between dream and waking, and wishes for this ponos to end:

νῦν δ᾽ εὐτυχὴς γένοιτ᾽ ἀπαλλαγὴ πόνων  

εὐαγγέλου φανέντος ὀρφναίου πυρός.  

But tonight may there come a happy release from these ordeals [ponoi] of mine!
May the fire with its glad tidings flash through the gloom!

The signal fire suddenly flashes out.

ὦ χαῖρε λαμπτὴρ νυκτός, 

Oh welcome, you blaze in the night . . .

He reads the light, welcoming it as the good news he's been expecting. This fire appearing out of the murk (φανέντος ὀρφναίου πυρός) is his lucky star. It will reorient Argos, it will the watchman's longeurs and bring the great ruler home.

But this star of good tidings won't have the enduring serene stability of the astron or the asteras. It'll be more comet than star.

A tentative interpretation: Aeschylus interpolates the watchman's view of the heavens on line 4 to establish the first moment of a pattern in the Agamemnon.  Those heavenly stars bearing gradual change seem distant and aloof, but what if that distance suddenly vanished? What comes rolling into view certainly seems a star blazing out of the East, double speaking of Troy past and of something veiled, yet to be disclosed.

In the Agamemnon, everything is connected to everything. The watchman's seeming "aside" about the stars proves more: it's a marker in the syntax of his world, where what seems far off, or a dream, can suddenly, powerfully turn from familiar vertical hierarchic stability into a jolting usurpation of fundamental human order.

Sign and symbol [sumbolon] carry a lot of freight in this play. The shining good news from Troy "means" the triumph of General Agamemnon, until the very same sign means the rising of his Queen and the murder of the conqueror of Troy wrapped in purple, in the bath.

The watchman underscores this in another simile:

ὅταν δ᾽ ἀείδειν ἢ μινύρεσθαι δοκῶ, 
ὕπνου τόδ᾽ ἀντίμολπον ἐντέμνων ἄκος, 
κλαίω τότ᾽ οἴκου τοῦδε συμφορὰν στένων 

. . . and whenever I care to sing or hum 
(and thus apply a remedy of song in place of sleep), 
then my tears start forth, as I bewail the fortunes of this house of ours, 

Whenever he tries to sing or hum a tune -- μινύρεσθαι can mean "to hum" or "warble" like a nightingale -- then this use of song as substitute (ἀντίμολπον) for sleep, which he intricately compares to chopping an herb's roots (ἐντέμνων) to prepare a stimulant, turns the song as it is sung into a wail.

Later the chorus will sing of heart pains dripping as we sleep; building wisdom from suffering while we're not even paying attention. The watchman's song comes out as an uncontrolled, arrhythmic croak. Beauty is undone in this house; the song and croaking sorrow are one.

At this moment, he sees the fire.

In contrast to the organic, vocal link of choking pain, disruption, and awareness he just experienced, the watchman, having seen the unambiguous sign of fallen Troy (ὡς ὁ φρυκτὸς ἀγγέλλων πρέπει --  as this beacon unmistakably announces l.30), speaks of a lucky roll in a game of chance. The ambiguity of the symbol resolves, he believes, into clear good news.

That purported clarity has him spring into a jig, prelude to the dance of the chorus that enters as he descends from the roof into the house to relay the sign to Clytaemnestra.

αὐτός τ᾽ ἔγωγε φροίμιον χορεύσομαι. 
τὰ δεσποτῶν γὰρ εὖ πεσόντα θήσομαι 
τρὶς ἓξ βαλούσης τῆσδέ μοι φρυκτωρίας. 

And I will join the khoros in a prelude upon my own account; 
for my lord’s lucky roll of the dice I shall count to my own score, 
now that this beacon has thrown me triple six. 

Best to stay awake in Argos, where a placid starry messenger moving on high turns to a burning comet moving over dark seas, seeming sign of a lucky cast. In the quicksilver light of symbol and signifier, presumptive closure bears watching.

Agamemnon line 1

. . . until times within living memory the exponents of Aeschylus were necessarily and properly engrossed by the preliminary difficulties of language and grammar ~ A.W. Verrall

The opening line of the Agamemnon has the watchman begging the gods to free him -- from πόνος:

θεοὺς μὲν αἰτῶ τῶνδ᾽ ἀπαλλαγὴν πόνων  Ag. 1

I ask the gods for release from these ordeals [ponoi] of mine,

He opens this tragedy spying light, fire relayed from the burning city of Troy to Agamemnon's Mycenae. His reads that light, which opens into a question of ultimate cause and import, as a signal. We see him no more - his prayer has been answered, the light has freed him from his πόνος.

The word signifies work, labor, but then broadens to aggregate all kinds of difficulty:

II. stress, trouble, distress, suffering, Il.19.227; “Τρώεσσι πόνον καὶ κήδε᾽ἔθηκεν” 21.525; “ἦ μὴν καὶ π. ἐστὶν . .” 2.291; ἐν τούτῳ τῷ π., of a storm, Hdt.7.190; ὁ Μηδικὸς [π.] the trouble from the Medes, Id.4.1; “παῦροι ἐν πόνῳπιστοί” Pi.N.10.78: freq. in Trag., “πόνος πόνῳ πόνον φέρει” S.Aj.866 (lyr.); “πόνον ἔχειν” Id.OC232 (lyr.), etc.: in pl., sufferings, A.Pr.66, 328, etc.; πόνους πονεῖν (cf. “πονέω” B.1.2); “διά τινα πόνους ἔχειν” Ar.Ec. 975 (lyr.); also of disease, “κατέβαινεν ἐς τὰ στήθη ὁ π.” Th.2.49; “πλευρᾶς πόνοι καὶθώρακος καὶ ἥπατος” Dsc.1.2; ἰσχίων π. καὶ πλευρᾶς ib. 73.

2. pain, esp. physical, “δύο π. ἅμα γενομένων, μὴ κατὰ τὸν αὐτὸν τόπον, ὁ σφοδρότερος ἀμαυροῖ τὸν ἕτερον” Hp.Aph.2.46, etc.

A few lines further along, the watchman repeats his plea for release, using the same words, and makes a wish -- for good news:

νῦν δ᾽ εὐτυχὴς γένοιτ᾽ ἀπαλλαγὴ πόνων 

εὐαγγέλου φανέντος ὀρφναίου πυρός.  (Ag 20-21)

But tonight may there come a happy release from these ordeals [ponoi] of mine!

May the fire with its glad tidings (εὐαγγέλου) flash through the gloom!  (Smyth, Nagy et al)

The light that frees the watchman from his care will determine the courses of the city and its king, and the lives of his successors and heirs. The signal from Troy -- a compound of intelligible light and potent flame, carries a seething contagion through the lives of all who think it is "good news" -- a message of freedom from πόνος, of hope and a turn toward peace.

The opening is the experience of this news -- that is, its portentous power turns on what this light reveals, what lies in shadow -- thus upon reading and misreading, and on what it can and will set ablaze. Behind this telegraph contrived to give earliest notice of the supreme triumph of Agamemnon will lurk love, betrayal, vengeance, hubris, murder of children, political choices, war, spoils, destruction, interpretation of signs, prophecy, bad manners, and the beginnings of a superceding order.

If Aeschylus is anything, he's a firehose of Greek insight, myth, rigor, valor, and poetic power. His text is difficult, corrupt, and long was a mystery to most readers, well after Sophocles and Euripides had been knowledgeably edited, as noted (above) as recently as 1889 by A.W. Verrall. In short, he presents ponos -- difficult interpretive work both for what he did make, and for all the garbled, missing, interpolated things he didn't. He brings news -- it will be a while before we have any idea whether it's the kind of liberating news we're happy to hear.

Leda's children

Leda and the Swan - Francesco Melzi, from a lost work of Leonardo da Vinci

The Greek fascination with symmetrical pairs is latent in this myth of Leda giving birth to two eggs, each holding twins. One egg held the Dioscuri, Castor and Polydeuces. As with the tale of Theseus, the parentage of the Dioscuri was uncertain. It seems Castor was actually the child of Tyndareus, and therefore mortal. Polydeuces was the immortal son of Zeus.

So much for the oversimplified phrase, "point of origin."

The same goes for the other egg, which contained Helen and Clytaemnestra -- Helen, of Zeus, and Clytaemnestra, of Tyndareus. These "twin" sisters married the brothers, Menelaus and Agamemnon, sons of Atreus and Aerope. 

Aerope, daughter of Catreus and therefore granddaughter of Minos, contributed to the horrific division between Atreus and Thyestes. Indeed, traced in detail, the trajectories of Catreus and his descendants had fateful impacts not only on the Pelopids, but later down the line on Menelaos, Agamemnon and Cassandra.

The Killing of Agamemnon

The Killing of Agamemnon

Calyx krater, Dokimasia Painter, 460 BC:

Here Agamemnon, diminished in stature and dripping wet, is trapped in a net, while Aegisthos stands over him, ready to strike with his sword. Behind Aegisthos, Klytaimnestra carries a double ax to lend a hand. A larger image and other views of the krater can be found at this link.

The other side features the vengeance of Orestes upon Aegisthos. Elektra is there. Klytaimnestra enters with her double ax (the labrys).

Theater at Side

Theater complex at Side, built in second century A.D. seating 15,000-20,000

Agamemnon: Some translators

A few basic resources for Agamemnon.

For the text in Greek with two English translations, one by Robert Browning, see the Agamemnon on the Perseus site, where the Greek text is hyperlinked to four dictionaries. The other translation there, by Herbert Weir Smyth, is the one used in the Loeb edition of the play. That dual language Loeb edition can be found online in a pdf format here.

There's also a version of Smyth that was revised by Nagy and others. Key words are often allowed to remain in Greek, which can be helpful. That revision is here.

Clytemnestra killed by Orestes

Below is a comparison of lines 8-20 - these are difficult, highly figurative lines, a challenge for any reader:

Here's Browning's version:

And now on ward I wait the torch's token,
The glow of fire, shall bring from Troia message
And word of capture: so prevails audacious
The man's-way-planning hoping heart of woman.
But when I, driven from night-rest, dew-drenched hold to
This couch of mine -- not looked upon by visions,
Since fear instead of sleep still stands beside me,
So as that fast I fix in sleep no eyelids --
And when to sing or chirp a tune I fancy,
For slumber such song-remedy infusing,
I wail then, for this House's fortune groaning,
Not, as of old, after the best ways governed.
Now, lucky be deliverance from these labours,
At good news -- the appearing dusky fire!

Here's Smyth's prose:

So now I am still watching for the signal-flame, the gleaming fire that is to bring news from Troy and [10] tidings of its capture. For thus commands my queen, woman in passionate heart and man in strength of purpose. And whenever I make here my bed, restless and dank with dew and unvisited by dreams—for instead of sleep fear stands ever by my side, [15] so that I cannot close my eyelids fast in sleep—and whenever I care to sing or hum (and thus apply an antidote of song to ward off drowsiness), then my tears start forth, as I bewail the fortunes of this house of ours, not ordered for the best as in days gone by. [20] But tonight may there come a happy release from my weary task! May the fire with its glad tidings flash through the gloom!

There is also a free Google Book version of an older (1889) edition of the play. The Greek text with notes in English is followed by a translation by A. W. Verrall. It can be found here.

For some basic orientation and sensible reading, perhaps a good place to begin would be H.D.F. Kitto's two books: Greek Tragedy, and Form and Meaning in Drama: A Study of Six Greek Plays and of Hamlet.

With luck from a foreknowledge of fate

As we'll soon be beginning the Oresteia, this post from the splendid Sententiae Antiquae suggests some of the richness of Aeschylus's text:

In a choral ode from Aeschylus’ Agamemnon, we find a folk etymology implied for Helen’s name. Where I have translated “killer”, the Greek has versions of the aorist of αἵρεω (εἶλον) which, without its augment looks like the beginning of Helen’s name (ἑλ-).

 Aeschylus, Agamemnon 684-696

“Whoever pronounced a name
So thoroughly true?
Wasn’t it someone we’d not see
Guiding the tongue with luck
From a foreknowledge of fate?
Who named the spear-bride,
Struggled-over woman
Helen?
For, appropriately,
That ship-killer [hele-nas], man-killer [hel-andros]
City-killer [hele-ptolis], sailed
From her fine-spun, curtains
On the breath of great Zephyr
and many-manned bands
Of shield-bearers followed
The vanished journey struck
By the oars to the banks
Of leafy Simois
For a bloody strife.”

Helen disarms Menelaos

Χο. τίς ποτ’ ὠνόμαξεν ὧδ’
ἐς τὸ πᾶν ἐτητύμως—
μή τις ὅντιν’ οὐχ ὁρῶ-
μεν προνοί-
αισι τοῦ πεπρωμένου
γλῶσσαν ἐν τύχᾳ νέμων; —τὰν
δορίγαμβρον ἀμφινεικῆ
θ’ ῾Ελέναν; ἐπεὶ πρεπόντως
ἑλένας, ἕλανδρος, ἑλέ-
πτολις, ἐκ τῶν ἁβροπήνων
προκαλυμμάτων ἔπλευσε
Ζεφύρου γίγαντος αὔρᾳ,
πολύανδροί
τε φεράσπιδες κυναγοὶ
κατ’ ἴχνος πλατᾶν ἄφαντον
κελσάντων Σιμόεντος
ἀκτὰς ἐπ’ ἀεξιφύλλους
δι’ ἔριν αἱματόεσσαν.

The blog post goes on to cite other suggested etymologies for "Helen."

Earth in view: Ars Amatoria I

Our next few weeks will be devoted to an amor somewhat less all-encompassing than that of Dante's Commedia. We'll be looking at Ovid's Ars Amatoria. As we already have an Ovid blog, posts devoted to that reading will appear there.

So far over there, there's just a note about translations. While the poetic matter might rather quotidian, nothing about Ovid is obvious or dull; he pushes genre rules and stylistic experiments to extremes, and can turn from an excursus upon Roman losers' foot hygiene to a visionary processional of Dionysus on a dime.

Difference in toto: Paradiso 32-33

Top: Birth of Dionysus Below: Triumph of Dionysus

ἢ ὥσπερ Σαπφώ, ὅτι τὸ ἀποθνῄσκειν κακόν·

οἱ θεοὶ γὰρ οὕτω κεκρίκασιν· ἀπέθνησκον γὰρ ἄν.

As Sappho says, death is a great evil

and the gods have judged it so: for they do not die

While reading Paradiso 32 I floated the idea that the two final canti of the Commedia stand in relation to each other, in their poetics as well as in other ways, in much the same manner as the Old Testament to the New:

Canto 32 is unadorned and fails to have an ending because it stands in relation to Paradiso 33 as the Old Covenant to the New. (Wounds of Time)

The thrust of canto 32 is toward the particular and unique. Each unbaptized infant has its own place, and all had been fixed before time began. We are given assorted proper names, individuals, but no clear sense of why these and not others. It displays the seemingly arbitrary predilection that the Old Testament God shows for his chosen people.

As we have seen, Paradiso 33 reaches a crescendo of polymorphic figuration teetering on open-ended linguistic arbitrariness. But there's more.

Canto 33 begins with Bernard's prayer, an act chosen in that moment to pray for Dante's accession to the totality. As when she chose in turn to consent to the wish conveyed by Gabriel, so Mary here chooses to consent to Bernard; Beatrice and all of heaven support the petition.

The freedom of the acts is fundamental: Dante's "wings" carry him upward, his gaze penetrates into the final vision, because they're propelled by the volition of the community of the saved. For one who had lived a life of exile, this vote of communal acceptance brings him into the longed-for fold.

Canto 33 dramatizes inclusion. In contrast, canto 32 has Bernard tracing all the differentiating walls and excluding fissures of divine providence,  the features and fixed destinies of the innocents. It's a discourse chilling enough in its precise fixities to evoke the immobilized denizens beneath the frozen lake of Satan's tears.

The possibility of Canto 33 issues from the Virgin's consent to the divine wish depicted in canto 32. The act of choice links the two canti, and it is choice that enables Dante ultimately to have his desire (il mio disio) moved with the will ('l velle) as the sun and the other stars (Barolini) are moved by l'amor. 

The full assertion of both singularity and totality, I believe, lies behind the charged syntax of the difficult tercet discussed in the previous post about canto 33. The insistence of differentiating oneness is never negated or subsumed -- in fact it betrays a certain trauma, even a frisson of sublime horror, as it beholds the totality:

ma per la vista che s'avvalorava
in me guardando, una sola parvenza,
mutandom' io, a me si travagliava. (112-114)

The vision of a gloria that moves all, yet chooses to allow piu e meno, subtends the Commedia from end to end.

==========

There is no end to what one could say about this poem. I'll append one suggestion that seems relevant. Dante often echoes ancient myths solely in order to differentiate the nature of his world from that of the ancients. 

For example, the figure of wings recurrent in Paradiso both relates to his name -- ali-ghieri -- and to the power of heaven. The classical myth of Ganymede is all about desire and force -- the boy is so beautiful he's rapt by Zeus to serve the table of the gods.

Ganymede's will is negated in his trip to Olympus. He is prey. Dante has wings because we have will.

Yet that will is insufficient to reach the godhead.

When Dante the pilgrim and the alta fantasia of the poet cannot get there, 

ma non eran da ciò le proprie penne:
 se non che la mia mente fu percossa
 da un fulgore in che sua voglia venne.

The fulgore comes from the other, yet its power fulfills the voglia of Dante.

Yet another myth brings us to a defining irony of the Commedia: When Zeus promised Semele her heart's wish, it meant the fulgore of her own destruction. From that insemination came the god of Tragedy, the anti-Apollo, the obliterator of difference.

The true story for this poet has it otherwise: Mary asks nothing of God. Courtly Gabriel asks her consent to bear the Son of God, and after a bit of questioning, she chooses to say yes. The absolutism of mythic power is not here.

Obliterating all trace of its origin, the fulgore grants a wish that Dante's wings couldn't actualize under their own steam. With the same respect for the other that was apparent at the Annunciation, the illimitable power leaves room for the comedic persistence of a certain Florentine, b.1265 - d.1321.