The Odyssey's Dark Mirror
A Very Different Homecoming...
Dear Classical Wisdom Reader,
A while back, someone asked me where exactly should someone should start with Greek tragedy…
And I knew exactly what to tell him.
It’s a famous story, and I was glad to see elements of it make an appearance in the recent Odyssey film… even if it’s only in quick snippets.
In Nolan’s film, as in Homer, it’s a tale which serves as a dark parallel to both Odysseus and his family.
Yet if you want the FULL telling of this story, you definitely don’t go to Nolan, and you don’t even go to Homer.
You go to the Father of Tragedy, Aeschylus.
Across the trilogy of plays known as the Oresteia, Aeschylus presents us with something of an interlude between Homer’s two great epics, showing us events that happened after the Iliad and the fall of Troy, which also serve as a crucial background story for the Odyssey.
It’s a masterpiece of Greek tragedy, and its key players reflect potential dark fates for both Penelope and Telemachus, as well as Odysseus himself.
It all starts with the Agamemnon, a powerful play about a homecoming from war gone very wrong, with the famed seer Cassandra all too aware of what’s to come.
So read on below to discover the dark drama of the Agamemnon…
All the best,
Sean Kelly
Managing Editor
Classical Wisdom
The Dark Mirror of The Odyssey
by Ben Potter
Agamemnon, was the first of a trilogy of plays (the Oresteia), performed back to back during the Great Dionysia of 458BC; it focused on two generations of ‘The Cursed House of Atreus’. Regular readers will be well-aware of the bad blood flowing through, and often out of, the members of this unfortunate dynasty.
Tantalus (grandfather of Atreus) founded this woeful household of parricide, infanticide, cannibalism, incest and hubris. His sins that doomed his descendants? Not merely stealing from the gods, but also serving them his murdered son, Pelops for dinner.
His punishment? Eternal hunger and thirst in the darkest recesses of the underworld (Tartarus) and a bloodline with filth in its veins.
Aeschylus‘ trilogy begins three generations later. By its end, the family’s seemingly perpetual cycle of hubris and nemesis, sin and vengeance, betrayal and blood will have drawn to a close.
