Clytemnestra: the tacit tolerance

Abstract

In this paper I introduce Clytemnestra’s revenge against her husband, Agamemnon, and its gender interpretations. Her earlier “honorable” behavior, the well-known (e.g. Iphigenia’s sacrifice), but also the lesser-known aspects of her earlier and conjugal life with Atreides (Agamemnon’s earlier crimes against her first husband, Tantalus, and their child) hint at a new dimension of the myth: that of Clytemnestra’s tacit tolerance. Inevitably, the heroine, through various versions of her myth in antiquity, from a simple partner in crime without emotional motivation (mainly in Homer), turns into a main guilty with personal and psychological triggers (in Aeschylus and Euripides).

Clytemnestra is shown as a male gender’s punisher in general. This fact, but also the overall evolution of her form can serve as a mirror of the socio-political changes in relation to the position of women in ancient Athens (see new position of the priestess, Pericles’ law ἐξ ἀμφοῖν ἀστοῖν, as well as the possibility of female participation, as an audience, at the theater).