Cho. Woman, thou speakest wisely as a man,
And kindly as thyself.[[13]]
Clytemnestra’s speech is significant. She knows the nature of the king, and she fears that his victory over Troy has been a brutal one, pushed even to the last extremity of insult to the country’s gods. That impious pride is her uppermost thought; with it, she steels her heart; and when the herald arrives, she listens in ominous silence as his tale confirms her utmost fears.
Her. Agamemnon
Comes, like the sun, a common joy to all.
Greet him with triumph, as beseems the man
Who with the mattock of justice-bearing Jove
Hath dug the roots of Troy, hath made its altars
Things seen no more, its towering temples razed,
And caused the seed of the whole land to perish.
... His hand hath reaped
Clean bare the harvest of all bliss from Troy.[[13]]
If anything were needed to confirm Clytemnestra’s resolution, surely it lay in these words. Agamemnon, the ruthless slayer of his daughter, the destroyer of Troy, who had no fear of the gods and no pity for man, would have no mercy upon her. She must kill or be killed; and she must act quickly.
Even while the herald spoke came the sound of the procession which was bringing the king up from the ships. First, his own chariot, surrounded by his guard and by the people who had gone out along the road to welcome him. Then, following close behind, a chariot containing the solitary figure of a woman, seated amid the spoils of war. She was Cassandra, a prize of battle, brought home by Agamemnon to be his slave-wife. But she was no ordinary slave. Daughter of Priam, King of Troy, and virgin priestess of Apollo, she had been torn from the altar of the god by her captor; and Clytemnestra, watching her wild eyes, knew that Agamemnon had filled up the measure of impiety to the gods and insult to herself.
Agamemnon uttered a laconic greeting to the people, while the queen stood tense and still. By no word or sign did he acknowledge his wife: only, in perfunctory terms, hailed his country and his country’s gods, and thanked the people for their welcome.
Then Clytemnestra, holding tremendous passions in the leash, began her formal speech of welcome.
Cly. Men! Citizens! ye reverend Argive seniors,
No shame feel I, even to your face, to tell
My husband-loving ways.[[13]]
The hour has come for which she has waited so long: her desperate plan is formed: all that may have been needed to strengthen it has been heaped upon her in the pride and insolence of the king. But she must dissemble a little longer; she must force herself to speak lovingly, to appear faithful before the people, and to lull suspicion in Agamemnon’s mind. In her husband’s speech there had been a veiled menace: and now, after the first conventional phrases of affection, her words, too, take on a double meaning; and an undercurrent of bitter irony runs through them. On the surface lies the obvious meaning, to meet the exigency of the moment; just below it lay another sense, designed to leap to life and plead for her when the deed that she is contemplating shall be accomplished.
“There comes a time when all fear fades and dies.