FEMALE VILLAINS IN GREEK MYTHOLOGY
Clytemnestra
mnamon menis teknopoinos - rage, remembering, child avenging
Clytemnestra is not well known. However, she is famous adjacent; her sister is Helen of Troy, and her husband, Agamemnon, is the ruthless king of the Spartans. Her story, if shared, gets reduced to one statement. She killed her husband by trapping him in a net in the bathtub -how embarrassing! Her story begins before the trojan war when her husband killed a deer in the sacred grove of Artemis. Artemis then enacted revenge by not letting Agamemnon’s ships take sale towards Troy. To appease the goddess and get his ships moving, he would need to sacrifice a young woman, his daughter to be specific- as his priest explained. They fooled Iphigenia (daughter in question) into thinking it was her wedding, and when she realized it wasn’t, they gaged and slaughtered her before sailing off to Troy.
Mixing bowl (calyx krater) with the killing of Agamemnon, 460 B.C. MFABoston
Red-figured Krater: Death of Agamemnon, 350/400 BCE, The State Hermitage Museum
In Agamemnon’s absence, Clytemnestra became respected in democracy and made some changes in her home life. The first was taking a lover, Aegisthus, and the second was sending her son away for protection and education. Because of her new power, Clytemnestra could keep tabs on the Trojan War and was one of the first to know when it ended. By the time Agamemnon gets home, nearly ten years after the death of Iphigenia, Clytemnestra has been simmering in her rage. But, she welcomes him with open arms and a speech about the difficulties and loneliness of being the wife of a man away at war. This speech has some foreshadowing, but our kingly Agamemnon is too thick to notice.
" In war, the first casualty is truth."
Aeschylus, Agamemnon, 459 BCE
John Collier, Clytemnestra, 1882, Guildhall Art Gallery, City of London
When Agamemnon moves to get out of the chariot, Clytemnestra insists that he walk his final stretch on a hand woven red tapestry. This screams hubris. Only a man without regard for the gods would publicly treat himself as a god. Yet, Agamemnon walks on the tapestry. As he makes his way into the home, he tells Clytemnestra to care for the war bride, Cassandra - a priestess of Troy who has the gift of prophecy but the curse of not being believed. She reveals that she and Agamemnon will die at the hands of Clytemnestra and her lover, Aegisthus.
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To make Agamemnon feel more at home, Clytemnestra draws him a bath. But when he gets in, she throws a purple (costly dye) robe/net over him and stabs him to death. The robe/net is a fun touch because, in ancient Greek life, the perfect wife would be an excellent weaver and make things such as nets, robes, and tapestries. Unfortunately, another trope of ancient Greece is sons avenging their fathers -even if they were crap people. So Clytemnestra is eventually killed by her son and second daughter.
You were born to a king, but you marry a tyrant. You stand by helplessly as he sacrifices your child to placate the gods. You watch him wage war on a foreign shore, and you comfort yourself with violent thoughts of your own. Because this was not the first offence against you.
Costanza Casati, Clytemnestra, 2023
John Collier, Clytemnestra, c.1914.