This is an excerpt from Homer’s Odyssey, Book of the Dead or Book 11. To make matters simple I will provide you with some information on what is actually taking place. Odysseus, the much-debated epic hero, journeys to Hades’ Kingdom of Decay where he meets the murdered king Agamemnon’s spirit. Agamemnon’s spirit tells him of how Clytemnestra, the former king’s wife, assassinated him upon his homecoming from Troy.

“ I raised my hands, but then beat them on the ground, dying, thrust through by a sword. The bitch turned her face aside, and could not even bring herself, though I was on my way to Hades, to shut my eyes with her hands or to close my mouth. There is nothing more degraded or shameful than a woman who can contemplate and carry out deeds like the hideous crime of murdering the husband of her youth. I had certainly expected a joyful welcome from my children and my servants when I reached my home. But now, in the depth of her villainy, she has branded with infamy not herself alone but the whole of her sex, even the virtuous ones, for all times to come.”

The story of Agamemnon and Clytemnestra is enriching, although not as fulfilling as one would expect. There are no absolutes, never does one seem to settle on an opinion as to who is to blame for the tragedy. Following is what Clytemnestra has to say in the play Agamemnon, of the Oresteian Trilogy, this one by Aeschylus.

“ The guile I used to kill him
He used himself the first,
When he by guile uprooted
The tender plant he gave me,
And made this house accurst.
When on my virgin daughter
His savage sword descended,
My tears in rivers ran;
If now by savage-sword thrust
His ageing days are ended,
Let shame and conscience ban
His boasts, where he pays forfeit
For wrong his guile began.”

Agamemnon, as clarified by the Philip Vellacott in the introduction he put forward for The Oresteian Trilogy as Penguin Classic of the year 1959, had faced technical and moral problems while attempting to get to Troy.

“When everything was ready for the start, the wind changed to the north. The usual fair-wind sacrifices failed to have their effect. Days lengthened into months, and still northerly gales kept the fleet harbour-bound, till food-supplies became an acute problem. At length the prophet Calchas pronounced that the anger of the virgin goddess Artemis must be appeased by the sacrifice of Agamemnon’s virgin daughter Iphigenia.

Agamemnon protested, and was taunted by his fellow-kings with faint-heartedness. In the end he wrote to Clytemnestra saying he had arranged for his daughter to be married to Achilles, and commanding her to be sent to Aulis. Iphigenia came, and was duly slaughtered. The wind veered, and the fleet set sail. In the ninth year of the siege Paris was killed in battle. In the tenth Troy was captured by the ruse of the wooden horse; all adult males were killed, the women and children enslaved, and the city reduced to ashes.”

For a conclusive touchup, I shall quote the Chorus in the tragedy Agamemnon, and deliver a contrast between what they say of the king’s behavior and how they regard that of the Queen’s.

Addressing the king, who had just appeared before them in person after ten years’ absence away from his homeland, the Chorus say:

“ Well, a wise shepherd knows his flock by face;
And a wise king can tell the flatterer’s eye—
Moist, unctuous, adoring—
The expressive sing of loyalty not felt.
Now this I will not hide: ten years ago
When you led Greece to war for Helen’s sake
You were set down as sailing
Far off the course of wisdom.
We thought you wrong, misguided, when you tried
To keep morale from sagging
In superstitious soldiers
By offering sacrifice to stop the storm.
Those times are past; you have come victorious home;
Now from our open hearts we wish you well.”

Yet they say to Clytemnestra after she kills Agamemnon:

“ Vile woman! What unnatural food or drink,
Malignant root, brine from the restless sea,
Transformed you, that your nature did not shrink
From foulest guilt? Argos will execrate
Your nameless murder with one voice of hate,
Revoke your portion with the just and free,
And drive you outlawed from our Argive gate.”