The Podcast of the Lotus Eaters - PREVIEW： Chronicles #7 ｜ Agamemnon with Stelios

00:00:00.000 Hello, and welcome to this next episode of Chronicles, where I'm going to be talking about

00:00:18.200 Agamemnon, the first play of Aeschylus' Oresteia. And I thought for some ancient Greek texts,

00:00:25.860 what better thing to do than bring in the Greek, the Stelios himself? Thank you very much. Thanks,

00:00:31.500 Luca. It's my first time in Chronicles. Yeah, well, it's great to have you here for it. So

00:00:36.820 we're quite lucky with the Oresteia. We were saying this before we're coming on, 0.99

00:00:41.180 that it's actually the only surviving trilogy of plays from the Greek world, right? Even though

00:00:48.880 we have, honestly, a generous amount of ancient Greek theatre that has survived. Of course,

00:00:55.860 what has survived down the ages is, of course, a very small fraction of what once existed. For

00:01:01.800 example, with Aeschylus, it's believed that he wrote between 70 and about 80 plays. And of course,

00:01:09.780 we have seven of them in the whole. But one of them happens to be this trilogy from the Oresteia,

00:01:17.520 obviously talking about mainly focusing around Orestes, the great Greek hero Orestes. And although

00:01:24.940 he doesn't really feature in this first one that we were going to talk about, but I thought it's

00:01:29.380 for the only surviving Greek trilogy, it deserved the necessary depth. And so over however long it

00:01:38.440 takes, we'll just go over them individually until we've done it. The amount of what has been lost is

00:01:44.340 staggering. So for instance, when it comes to epic poetry, we think we have Homer's Iliad, the Odyssey,

00:01:53.160 and also Hesiod's Theogony and the Works and Days. But there were many more epics. We only had

00:02:02.440 five epics between the events of the Iliad and the events of the Odyssey. I think that the next one was

00:02:10.800 one with an Amazon called Panthessileo that was slain by Achilles and then he fell in love with her.

00:02:17.460 Then we had another epic with the destruction of Troy.

00:02:22.560 And the Trojan horse, is that where that one was supposed to fit in?

00:02:25.900 Yes, because the Trojan horse is not in the Iliad. And it's definitely not in the Odyssey. And sadly,

00:02:31.460 we only have one or two fragments from most of them. So the amount of what has been lost is

00:02:39.700 staggering. It's way more than what survives. And you're correct. This is a trilogy by Aeschylus.

00:02:48.360 And I think that to understand each part of it, it's better to have the whole in mind.

00:02:54.580 Definitely. One other thing just to say about the nature of this being a trilogy

00:02:58.900 is that this is a comprehensive story, right? You know, Agamemnon is the first play and it is very

00:03:05.820 much the beginning of the story. And then you have the middle play and, you know, and the last one for

00:03:10.520 the end. But that's not necessarily the rule for just all trilogies of ancient Greek plays. So what

00:03:17.540 would have happened would have been, there would have been the festival of Dionysus, you know,

00:03:22.400 Dionysia, and a magistrate would have, of Athens, would have chosen some playwrights to basically take 1.00

00:03:31.640 part in a festival, in a competition. And I do believe that this one won first prize back in its

00:03:39.340 day. So it was one of the first, first Oscar winners for best screenplay. Yeah. Back in the

00:03:44.960 ancient Greek days. Yeah. Back in the ancient Greek days. But Aeschylus himself also had quite an

00:03:51.080 extraordinary life. He was, he grew up in a village called, um, Eloysus, I think it was. If I...

00:03:58.780 Elipsus. Yeah. Yeah, that's it. And... I like how you pronounce it.

00:04:01.840 Eloysus. And, um, about 17 miles out of Athens. So he was a, it was a local boy. But, um, if you

00:04:09.500 believe the legends... Local patriot. Yeah. Local patriot, Aeschylus. Uh, if you believe the legends,

00:04:15.020 and I do, uh, when he was in his mid-twenties, uh, Dionysus himself came down and basically told

00:04:23.720 him that it was his destiny to become a playwright. Uh, and I believe that. I think that's exactly

00:04:29.060 what happened. And then from there he started writing plays. And actually, even though it's

00:04:34.820 not one of the ones we'll be talking about today, the oldest surviving play that we have

00:04:39.580 is an Aeschylus play. That is the Persians. Yes. And so that, that is actually the second

00:04:44.820 play of a trilogy, the rest of which is being lost. So, um, but yeah, it was something that

00:04:51.260 mattered to him greatly. He was actually a veteran of Marathon and, uh, and Salamis and Plataea.

00:04:57.860 Yes. So an incredible patriot and military career on top of being an exquisite playwright.

00:05:03.980 So we have the three major tragedians who were Aeschylus, Sophocles, and, uh, Euripides.

00:05:10.740 Yes. Or Euripides, how you pronounce it. And Aeschylus was the older one. He is considered

00:05:17.140 to be the, to one extent, the driest one because, uh, he represents titanic struggles and, uh, lots

00:05:27.300 of people think that he isn't the most relatable tragedian. Speaking of the Persians, the Persians,

00:05:33.660 the Persians has a very important, um, place in the Western canon because it's considered

00:05:40.980 by many to be the first play where there was a conscious division between West and East.

00:05:47.820 Obviously this division that we constantly talk about has taken many forms, many different

00:05:53.660 forms in the ancient world to a very large extent. It has to do with Greeks and Persians than

00:06:00.160 it was between, uh, Western and Eastern Christianity. And then it has different, it has assumed different

00:06:06.840 meanings, but that was considered to be one of the first conscious distinctions between

00:06:12.360 West and East. And, uh, what was interesting was that in Persians, Aeschylus isn't someone who

00:06:22.480 presents Persians as, you know, filth because you could say that, you know, the year 479 BC was

00:06:34.640 probably one of the worst years in Greek history of all time. And, um, they won the Persians then in, 0.99

00:06:42.720 in, in, in Marathon in 490 BC, then in, then in, uh, we had the events of Thermopyla and the Battle of Salamis at 480 and then the Battle of Platea at 479.

00:06:56.720 So the Persians were responsible for lots of, you know, decline and decay and evil in Greece. 1.00

00:07:04.040 But Aeschylus is someone who gives a very charitable view of Persians. And he does represent Xerxes as having

00:07:13.280 bit more than he chew, more than he could chew. But that wasn't, number one, that wasn't

00:07:20.560 something that we didn't see everywhere in Greek mythology, because that's the main thing, right?

00:07:27.040 There's the order of Zeus. So someone breaks away from it and justice must be restored. And this happens

00:07:33.680 in various manifestations. It, we were, we are definitely going to talk about it today and I hope

00:07:39.960 in the future, but he didn't represent Xerxes in substantially different ways than Greeks represented

00:07:47.840 Greeks. And also I think he, he does speak highly of Persians and especially Xerxes's mother and,

00:07:56.240 and, and, and in some cases, Darius.

00:08:00.320 The, um, so let's begin to talk about this trilogy itself. I'm sure actually we'll probably come back to

00:08:06.400 the Persians another time, but, um, the, so the thing that I find, uh, fascinating about, uh, Agamemnon

00:08:14.640 as a, as a plot is that not a lot happens in it, right? Not a lot actually happens in the play.

00:08:22.160 Uh, it begins with, um, a monologue from the watchman looking out from the, from the parapets

00:08:29.840 of Argos, um, Agamemnon city, basically watching for the beacons to be set alight. You know, uh,

00:08:35.600 these beacons almost like in, um, in the Lord of the Rings, you know, these, this line of beacons

00:08:40.560 will be lit and it'll signal to, to the people of Mycenae that, uh, Troy has fallen and that Agamemnon

00:08:46.720 has been victorious and that he'll return home. And, uh, it's just, it's one of those, uh, great

00:08:52.560 things that actually to say that this is a tragedy, it actually begins quite comically. It begins, uh,

00:08:59.200 you know, you really feel a sense of, um, these are quite fun characters in a way. I love the fact

00:09:06.160 that, um, he said, obviously we'll have different translations, but, um, he basically says, I've

00:09:11.200 been standing here for 10 years and I'm sick of the constellations. I'm tired of the sky itself

00:09:18.160 at this point. Yes, exactly. Yeah. He, he also said this, but he also said that there has been tremendous

00:09:25.440 mismanagement at the house of Argos. Yes. And, uh, I think what is a bit comical is after the elders of

00:09:32.720 Argos who come and they're very much against Clitam Nistra who was Agamemnon's wife. And you can

00:09:39.360 definitely see them as you know, the people just stood there sitting, doing nothing and just complaining

00:09:45.920 about things. That was what I found, uh, very funny about it, but they're just like any other play.

00:09:55.760 We have the Watchmen looking at the signals and telling us basically that there has been mismanagement at

00:10:02.320 the house of Argos, which implies that basically there is something that needs to be addressed.

00:10:08.960 There is an injustice that has to be somehow mitigated. And if anyone should be able to arrive

00:10:16.640 on the scene and redress these injustices, it should be Agamemnon. Yeah. Because he is a king

00:10:22.240 and he is a great leader of men. You know, of course he was, it was he and Menelaus who went to Troy.

00:10:31.040 He is, but the question is whether he got the credit for other people's actions,

00:10:35.200 like Achilles' actions. Of course.

00:10:36.880 And the Iliad doesn't exactly paint a good picture of Agamemnon.

00:10:42.000 No, no, I don't think it does. No, I don't think it does.

00:10:44.880 So, you know, he, he got all the credit for what the others did, you know.

00:10:48.640 Yeah. So I, I just wanted to read, uh, this bit because, uh, literally second, third page of it,

00:10:56.320 because it really sets the tone for one of the major themes, uh, which we're going to be presented

00:11:02.080 with throughout the rest of the play where, so the chorus, uh, retail re basically catching the

00:11:08.960 audience up on where they are in the timeline, what's happened so far. And of course, all of the,

00:11:14.160 uh, the Athenian citizens would have known the tales, but it's just for, for their benefit.

00:11:20.160 But there's an interesting bit here. It says, Greece and Troy with bellowing effort,

00:11:24.720 lock their limbs in that accursed marriage and labor at the killing. Spearshaft splinter in 0.98

00:11:30.720 twisting bodies. Strong men kneel in their own blood under weights of darkness. And what is happening

00:11:37.440 cannot be otherwise, cannot not happen. Fate holds every man of these two embattled armies

00:11:45.520 by the scruff of the neck and jams his face helpless into what has to happen.

00:11:52.400 Right. So you get very, very early in the story, the idea of a predestiny of some outcome that really,

00:12:02.400 these men, yes, they are their own heroes and they do have their own valor, but they are all ultimately

00:12:08.720 puppets, um, of the gods and the gods design and whatever the gods plans are for them. And of course,

00:12:16.240 this is a, uh, a major part of the, the play because one of the things that it comes to very quickly

00:12:25.280 is the fact that it recounts that Agamemnon, in order to gain the favorable winds that would take him

00:12:31.520 and his army to Troy, he has to, um, sacrifice his own daughter, uh, Iphigenia, if I'm pronouncing

00:12:38.400 that correctly. Um, Artemis decrees that that's what has to happen. And so we get the first great moral

00:12:46.480 quandary of, of the play. So as you said, it's basically a sort of Chad Jack-ish play because not

00:12:54.960 that much happen, happens. And, uh, we have the chorus and the watchman saying in the beginning that,

00:13:00.720 you know, we're waiting for 10 years and basically nothing happens. Yes. So it's to an extent a sequel,

00:13:10.560 because the chorus is very extended. In other tragedies, especially for instance, in Sophocles,

00:13:16.560 the dialogue starts almost instantly. But here we have very extended choruses and it just goes on and

00:13:24.480 on and on and on because the chorus gives us simultaneously the idea that something bad has

00:13:31.040 happened at the house of Argos, you know, the kingdom of Agamemnon. But also they tell us what

00:13:38.960 happened and they try to bring, so Aeschylus tries to bring into the mind of his, uh, spectators,

00:13:49.520 people who watched the play, the context. And as you said, yes, Agamemnon had to sacrifice his daughter

00:13:57.840 for favourable wins because that was what the oracle told him, the gods want. Yes,

00:14:03.840 Calchas, isn't it? Yes. And what is very much interesting to remember is that there is

00:14:15.360 something that is really close to the odyssey here. In the ancient Greek mindset, I have to say

00:14:22.480 two things. Number one, about hospitality. Number two, what you said about fate. Yes. Which I, is where

00:14:29.920 I deviate from several scholars of antiquity. Okay. And I'll say why and for what reason. Yes, please.

00:14:36.560 So when it comes to hospitality, one of the main features of ancient Greek mythology, especially

00:14:44.720 after it had been codified by Hesiod, was that the rule of Zeus is just because Zeus, unlike Cronus and

00:14:53.520 Uranus, combines unmatched power with wisdom. So he swallows Metis, who was his wife and represented 0.98

00:15:02.080 wisdom. And out of that event, Athena was born. That's why, as you'll see, Athena has always a very

00:15:09.520 easy time convincing Zeus. Yes. About everything. So she calls the shots, basically. He has a very soft

00:15:16.000 spot for her. And she is contrary to Ares, who you could say is just the god of war. And in that respect,

00:15:24.000 he is really close to the Titans, who are just about raw power. Yep. Athena represents raw power and

00:15:32.080 wisdom because she was also the goddess of warfare and wisdom. Yes, of course. So she's much closer to

00:15:38.000 Zeus, where Ares is a bit closer to Cronus and the Titans. One way in which

00:15:44.320 philosophy becomes a bit more, you know, interesting in mythology is you go from the more general to the

00:15:51.520 more specific. So it's one thing to say, don't violate Jesus' order, don't violate justice.

00:15:58.320 And quite another thing to tell people what justice demands. Because if I tell you be good and be

00:16:04.480 virtuous, you're going to ask, yeah, okay, please enlighten me. Yeah. What is that? What is that? To you.

00:16:11.360 Yeah. So that has all sorts of ramifications. One interesting ramification is hospitality.

00:16:23.120 Zeus wants people to be hospitable, but he also wants guests to not abuse hospitality. So for instance,

00:16:31.200 in the Odyssey, I'll be very quick. I'll start from the Odyssey and then move to the Aedid and then to the

00:16:36.240 the Oresteia. And I'll be very brief. In the Odyssey, we have two parties that violate this law.

00:16:43.920 Polyphemus, the Cyclops, who was a host and he was bad to his guests. Yes, he was.

00:16:52.400 Okay. And he paid for it. And then we have the suitors who abused Odysseus' hospitality.

00:17:00.720 Mm-hmm. That was essentially the injustice that had to be addressed. And both Odysseus and Telemachus

00:17:08.800 were the instruments of divine justice. But the same thing happens before the Aedid. The same thing

00:17:16.960 happens with Paris. He abuses the hospitality of Menelaus by taking Helen. Absolutely, yes. Yes. So that was

00:17:26.720 something that suggested that the order of Zeus has been violated and has to be addressed. That's why

00:17:35.520 Calchus told Agamemnon, essentially, this must happen. Unless you do this, you violate Zeus' order and

00:17:44.000 you are also one of the forces of chaos, essentially. And Menelaus, no, Agamemnon was caught with that

00:17:53.840 horrible dilemma whether to be unjust and violate Zeus' order, which was the big no-no of the moral

00:18:03.920 system of the mythological times, or sacrifice his daughter. And he chose to do the latter.

00:18:10.640 Yeah. He talks about the passages here where it's Agamemnon weighing it up. He says,

00:18:15.840 If I obey the goddess and kill my daughter, what do I become? A monster to myself, to the whole world, 0.99

00:18:22.880 and to all future time, a monster, wearing my daughter's bloody dress like a turban, 0.97

00:18:28.560 the king of cruelty, painting my royal palace afresh with her blood, the blood of Iphigenia, 0.99

00:18:34.880 perfuming my bath after the battle with the blood of Iphigenia, filling the drinking cups of my family

00:18:41.680 with the blood of Iphigenia. This is how I shall live on in men's minds. But if I deny the goddess,

00:18:49.600 then what happens? Will it be worse, an utter defeat, for us all, and for me, disaster, as if I

00:18:56.800 deserted this army, disguised, a traitor to my oath, shorn of honour, shunning men, shunned by men,

00:19:04.000 and wherever men gossip together, a term of contempt, an outcaster on the earth, the rest of my life

00:19:11.200 skulking its corners, afraid of my own name." So one of the things that I find most interesting

00:19:19.920 about that is that in both of those scenarios where he weighs up what will happen if he does this act,

00:19:28.400 Agamemnon seems to be less concerned with the moral decision of which it is, and more with

00:19:37.360 what will his reputation be, based on which one he does. Yes, that is something that definitely comes

00:19:47.360 out, but I don't know to what extent this is supposed to be lack of care about morality as such,

00:19:55.520 instead of being adherence to a moral code of the times. Because for instance, the same concern with

00:20:06.880 reputation is arguably the major concern of Achilles. So we have that Homeric ideal, which

00:20:17.040 I don't know to what extent we can talk about it as if it was just one ideal,

00:20:22.480 or if it was a fully formed moral code. But that was expected in a way from the Homeric heroes. All the

00:20:33.520 Homeric heroes wanted to have a very good reputation, because reputation and status was the fundamental

00:20:43.040 thing in their society. Of course. It wasn't so much a private society where people said,

00:20:49.040 well, I'll retreat into my private sphere and I won't care how people see me. How people saw you

00:20:56.320 was your status. It was you. Because you didn't have that. And especially if you were a king,

00:21:03.760 how people saw you and how people saw you as a leader could mean the difference between life and death.

00:21:09.360 Yes. Including your own families.

00:21:11.120 So it's something that it's easy to look at it from a modern perspective and say, yeah, they care about

00:21:19.360 something that is completely inferior from our standpoint. And quite another thing to try and

00:21:25.920 understand them with their own way of looking at things. Of course. No, I didn't really bring

00:21:34.720 it up as a judgment on him as more of just an interesting point to his character and how he

00:21:39.120 weighs things up. And it didn't come out as such. So I was just adding it for the audience's sake.

00:21:45.200 But one thing to say about Agamemnon, to add to what you said before, is that he is fundamentally

00:21:54.080 confronted with a lose-lose situation. Yes, it is. Hence the tragedy. And that's also why Homer can be seen

00:22:00.800 as a tragedian as well. And also, this comes down to Aristotle's point, doesn't it, in the

00:22:08.240 Poetics, where he talks about the source of all tragedy is having a great man or a great woman

00:22:15.120 making a great error. It's not just a matter of some frivolous vice. It's a decision that is forced

00:22:23.280 on them. And they make one. And especially when you're put under divine law, under the divine

00:22:30.080 law of the gods. Because as we see here, in making this choice, the winds rise again. Agamemnon,

00:22:35.600 Menelaus, they're able to go to Troy with all of their men. The Iliad plays out. They get all that

00:22:41.840 glory. It's one of them. We still talk about Troy today and all of that. But it comes with the cost

00:22:48.880 of what's waiting for him on his return. And the most charitable interpretation of Agamemnon, who I'm not

00:22:55.200 a fan of, I must say, but I'll try to be very charitable for this, is that if you look at the

00:23:02.000 ancient Greek lore, violating the order of the gods almost invariably had bad implications for your

00:23:12.080 family. Always. I'll just give the OG example of an effed up family is Oedipus. Yes, of course.

00:23:19.680 He violated the order of the gods without even necessarily being responsible for it. Yeah.

00:23:25.600 That's the other bit about faith. In a nutshell, I forgot to say it before. I don't think that the

00:23:33.280 ancient Greeks had a very good fleshed out view of faith and how it comes with responsibility.

00:23:41.920 Some scholars like Alasdair MacIntyre look back at the Homeric apex and they say, well,

00:23:49.120 it's compatible to be responsible for what you're doing, even if the gods are making you doing it.

00:23:54.560 But I think that this neglects how the problem of free will developed, essentially from bits and

00:24:03.920 pieces from Aristotle, then Epicurus, and then most fully fleshed out, and the Stoics, and Alexander

00:24:11.680 of Aphrodisius. I think when we look at it, it's not that they had a very grand coherent system

00:24:20.480 through which they view life. That took philosophy to build slowly and steadily. Of course. And

00:24:26.080 philosophers always disagreed about things. If you enjoyed this piece of premium content

00:24:30.720 from the Lotus Eaters, head to our website where you can find more.

The Podcast of the Lotus Eaters - July 26, 2025

PREVIEW： Chronicles #7 ｜ Agamemnon with Stelios

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