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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 11 February 2009
Few portions of Eduard Fraenkel's commentary on Aeschylus′ Agamemnon have been so influential as the three and a half ages On the Weapon with which, according to the Oresteia, Agamemnon was murdered.1 In contrast with the controversy and disagreement stirred by his remarks on The Footprints in the Choephoroe,2 his thesis concerning Clytemnestra's murder-weapon has met with almost universal approva and the matter is widely regarded as settled. It is symptomatic that within the past twelve months two important books should have appeared4 which independently assume the unquestionable Tightness of Fraenkel's conclusion: the weapon envisaged by Aeschylus was a sword, not an axe.
1 Appendix B in Aeschylus Agamemnon3 (Oxford, 1950), pp. 806ff.
2 Appendix D (pp. 815ff.). For an up-to-date summary of the controversy see the recent commentary on Aeschylus′ Choephoriby A. F. Garvie (Oxford, 1986), pp. 86ff.
3 Fraenkel's treatment seems to have inhibited further discussion of this subject (let alone disagreement), and the nearest one gets to dissent would seem to be in the Denniston-Page commentary on the Agamemnon(Oxford, 1957), which refers (p. 171) to Clytemnestra's ‘deadly instrument, her sword or axe’. Note too the muted criticism by Lesky, WS1 (1967), 20f. On Burkert, GRBS 1(1966), 120 (‘Clytemnestra throws a net over him and strikes him down with the axe’) see below n. 17.
4 Garvie's commentary on the Choephori(see above n. 2) on v. 889 (p. 289); A. J. N. W. Prag's The Oresteia: Iconographic and Narrative Tradition(London, 1985), p. 82. Dr Prag's General Index s.vv. ‘Axe’, ‘Sword’, and ‘Weapon’ gives handy access to much information.
5 Aischylos Interpretationen(Berlin, 1914), p. 173 n. 1 (cf. Griech. Tragodien2.40 etc.).
6 Hermes66 (1931), 132 n. 2 =Kl. Schr.p. 270 n. 34.
7 Hermes71 (1936), 64 n. 1 =Hellas und Hesperien(1960), p. 205 n. 2.
8 Abhandl. Preuss. Akad., phil.-hisl. Kl.1 (1941), 22 =Kl. Schr. zur kl. Altertumskunde,p. 628.
9 Hermes66 (1931), 193 =Ges. Schr.pp. 94f., from an article largely superseded by his later treatment of the topic (cited above, n. 3).
10 Die Antike20 (1944), 132 =Die Entdeckung des Geistes4(1975), p. 109. For further bibliography on either side of the issue see Fraenkel, p. 806. (Add to the proponents of the sword H.Goldman, HSCP,21 [1910], 114.)
11 As cited above (n. 1), p. 808.
12 P. 809.
13 See in particular A. Lebeck, The Oresteia: a study in language and structure(1971), pp. 66ff. and 8Iff. See too G. Devereux, Dreams in Greek Tragedy: an ethno-psychoanalytical study(Oxford, 1976), p. 330, R. Seaford, ‘The Last Bath of Agamemnon’, CQ34 (1984), 247ff., etc.
14 P. 809.
15 P. 808.
16 On these ‘Verse voll von Schwierigkeiten’ see in particular Lesky, sup. cit. (n. 3), 16f.
17 See Lesky's discussion (sup. cit. n. 3). An ingenious idea that is at least as old as O. F. Kleine (Stesichori Himerensis Fragmenta[Berlin, 1828], p. 86 n. 2; cf. too Wilamowitz, Griech. Trag.2, p. 40 n. 1 etc.) and has been revived by E. G. Pemberton, AJA70 (1966), 377f., supposes the phrase 
(Od.4.535 = 11.411) to imply the axe version of Agamemnon's death. It is indeed true that one would naturally slaughter an ox with a hatchet rather than a sword (cf. P. Stengel, Opferbrauche der Griechen[1910], pp. 113ff., Burkert, Homo Necans,pp. 154ff. [Engl. transl. pp. 136ff.]) and it would certainly fit my theory to see here an inadvertent allusion to a tradition which Homer has elsewhere suppressed. But I could not refute the counter-claim that the comparison is with the helplessness of a noble beast, not with the mode of its death. Walter Burkert, sup. cit. (n. 3), pp. 119f., observes of Agamemnon's murder ‘This is in fact how a bull was killed’ with reference to ‘the famous gold cup from Vaphio’ (cf. Boardman, Greek Gems and Finger Rings[1970], p. 100 [pi. 67]) which ‘shows the bull struggling in the net’. His belief that ‘the myth of the death of Agamemnon was connected with a sacrificial ritual, a bull-sacrifice - 
’ is highly pertinent to my argument, though it raises too many issues for discussion here.
18 One should presumably connect this inexplicitness and reticence with Homer's general reluctance to dwell on stories of killing within the family: see e.g. G. Murray, The Rise of the Greek Epic4(Oxford, 1934), pp. 134f. (‘The crimes of the great wicked heroines... are kept carefully away from the Iliad,and allowed only a scanty mention in the Odyssey′),J. Griffin, JHS97 (1977), 44 etc. It will be clear why I think that R. Seaford's question (sup. cit. [n. 13], p. 248) ‘Why then did Aeschylus abandon the version, traditional and highly apt for tragedy, of the killing…of Agamemnon at the banquet... ?’ highly misleading.
19 In his note on Ag.1382 (sup. cit. [n. 1], p. 648). Note that Sophocles takes over the motif of death at a feast (El.194, 203) but has the axe as murder weapon (99).
20 On which see, e.g., Garvie, sup. cit. (n. 2), p. x, Prag, sup. cit. (n. 4), pp. 68ff.
21 ‘Od.3.234, where 
must refer to Agamemnon's house, is an exception’ according to Garvie, sup. cit. (n. 2), p. x n. 5. The stress in this particular passage (spoken by the disguised Athena to Telemachus) is on the possibility that Odysseusmay on returning home be killed 
(‘ like Agamemnon’): hence the assimilation of Agamemnon's actual, to Odysseus′ feared, fate.
22 Emily Vermeule, AJA70 (1966), 11 refers to the ‘unsettling implications’ of the story: ‘even the scene as the Dokimasia Painter handles it [see n. 32 below] is frightening as ‘narrative’. This doubtless helps explain why the murder of Agamemnon was relatively rarely depicted in the visual arts (for further speculation about this theme as ‘an undesirable subject for the vase-painter’ see Goldman, sup. cit. [n. 10], pp. 114f.).
23 As J. R. Klima and K. Ranke observe in Enzyklopädie des Märchenss.v. ‘Bad, baden’ (1.1139): ‘Badende sind wehrlos’. They quote several instances from myth and folk-tale, including Agamemnon. The source they cite for the latter (1.1141 n. 19) is ‘Kl(einer) Pauly1.112 (nach Stesichoros)’. Although this reminds one of the criticism advanced by Walter Burkert in his review of the first two volumes of the invaluable Enzyklopädie (Gnomon46 [1982], 713: ‘Zu wunschen bleibt, dass mehr noch der direkte Zugang zu den Quellen eröffnet wird, statt der Verweise auf andere Enzyklopadien oder gar elementare Nachschlagewerke wie "Kleiner Pauly’"...), in this particular case the emphasis happens, I think, to be right. For further examples of helpless deaths in baths see J. N. Bremmer, Mnemos.39 (1986), 418; cf. n. 43 below.
24 Fr. 217 P from the Oresteiamakes clear that Stesichorus anticipated the use of a lock of Orestes′ hair in the recognition of brother by sister. In the following account I stick to essentials, reserving a more detailed treatment of the fr. for my forthcoming commentary on Stesichorus.
25 See, for instance, the article by Lesley mentioned above (n. 3), 20 n. 33: ‘D a s Schwert fahrt in den Leib des Gegners, die Axt trifft sein Haupt.’ Robert's thesis was expressed most fully in Bild und Lied(Berlin, 1881), pp. 149ff.
26 Sup. cit. (n. 4), p. 75.
27 As accepted by the scholars mentioned in nn. 5–10 above, Blass in his commentary on Aesch. Cho.886ff. etc.
28 Sup. cit. [n. 1), p. 809.
29 For these see Fraenkel, p.809 and Tarrant's note on Seneca, Ag.897.
30 El.154;Or.26, 367. Prag, sup. cit. (n. 4), p. 82 finds ‘interesting…the speed with which the axe, like the net, got into the tradition of Agamemnon's and Cassandra's deaths afterAeschylus, both in the younger tragedians and in the Marlay Painter's cup in Ferrara’ (cf. Fraenkel, p. 138 n. 2). On my interpretation there is no such surprising speed.
31 For a recent survey of this see in particular Prag, sup. cit. (n. 4), passimesp. pp. 134ff. Also Odette Touchefeu inLexicon Iconographicum Mythologiae Classicaes.v. Agamemnon (1.1.271f.), and R. M. Gais ib.s.v. Aigisthos (1.1.372ff.).
32 Boston, Museum of Fine Arts 63.1246 -.ARK21652: Prag Catalogue A6 (p. 135), Touchefeu, sup. cit. (n. 31), B 89 (p. 271). The vase is datable c.470–465 B.C.
33 Further detail in my forthcoming commentary on Stesichorus (see above, n. 24). For the present cf., e.g. J. Boardman, Athenian Red Figure Vases: the Archaic Period(1975), p. 137: ‘The Agamemnon, with the king enveloped in a cloth, recalls Aeschylus′ treatment of the story, but on conventional dating the vase is earlier than the production of the Agamemnon(456 B.C.) and we should therefore suppose this version of the story to be the invention of an earlier poet’.
34 By Vermeule, C. C.Boston Museum of Fine Arts, Annual Report(1963), 40f.; then fully by E. Vermeule, sup. cit. (n. 22).Google Scholar
35 For an up-to-date survey of these vases see Prag, sup. cit. (n. 4), pp. 136ff., Gais, sup. cit. (n. 31), pp. 372ff.
36 Sup. cit. (n. 25).
37 See above, n. 32.
38 Prag, sup. cit. (n. 4), Catalogue C 17 (p. 140).
39 The artefact is not to be found, for instance, in Touchefeu's list of depictions of Agamemnon's murder (above, n. 31).
40 Sup. cit. (n. 1), p. 832.
41 Prag. sup. cit. (n. 4), Catalogue A3 (p. 134), Touchefeu, sup. cit. (n. 31), 92 (p. 271).
42 In particular the famous terracotta plaque from Gortyn c. 630–610 B.C. (Prag, sup. cit. [n. 4], Catalogue Al [p. 134], Touchefeu, sup. cit. [n. 31], 91 [p. 271]). Cf. in general Prag, pp. Iff. and Garvie, sup. cit. (n. 2), pp. xiif. and xvif. It should further be noted that none of these artefacts is Attic, and that the only depiction of Agamemnon's murder which is (the Boston Krater) gives Clytemnestra an axe.
43 Perhaps axe and bath are inseparably linked motifs. For the axe as an appropriate weapon against a victim in a bath Professor Rudolf Kassel refers me to Schiller, Wilhelm TellI i 90 and 97: ‘Ich hatte Holz gefallt im Wald,… und mit der Axt hab ich ihm's Bad gesegnet’. Certainly an axe will produce a better performance against a man enswathed in a sleeveless robe.
44 On the technique used in representing Agamemnon's head on the Boston Krater as suggesting the ‘dilute strands’ of the hair of someone who has just emerged from a bath see Vermeule, sup. cit. (n. 22), p. 4.
45 Fraenkel's phrasing here (sup. cit. [n. 1], p. 807) seems to echo that of Tierney, CQ30 (1936), 103 with his reference to three ‘unequivocal passages’. Tierney's brief treatment anticipated much of Fraenkel's argumentation.
46 Sup. cit. (n. 2), p. 289.
47 For a sensible general discussion of the relationship between the text of a Greek tragedy and its effect in performance see Taplin, O., The Stagecraft of Aeschylus(Oxford, 1977), pp. 12ff. [ and (in particular) 28ff. (on ‘Text and Stage Action’).Google Scholar
48 Both Tierney, sup. cit. (n. 45) and Fraenkel, sup. cit. (n. 1) for instance.
49 Sup. cit. (n. 2), p. 332. Garvie disposes of Paley's notion that Clytemnestra could be subject of the verb 
(‘she dyed Aegisthus′ sword’). In addition to his arguments note that the idiom in question (for which cf. also West, BICS26 [1979], 111) always has the subject ‘dipping’ a weapon in, on, at or within something.
50 In his note on Cho.1011 (Aisch. Orestie…Das Opfer am Grabe[1896], p. 244); see too his Homerische Untersuchungen(Berlin, 1884), p. 103. There is a similar distinction between axe (presumably wielded by Clytemnestra) and Aegisthus′ sword at Eur. El.160ff., where it is hard not to agree with Denniston ad loc.that 
refers to Aegisthus′ mutilation of the corpse.
51 ‘Aigisthos hat nach dem Geschafte der Verstiimmelung sein Schwert an dem Gewande abgewischt: daher der Fleck.’ Misunderstood by Schuursma, J. A., de poetica vocabulorum abusioneapudAeschylum(Amsterdam, 1932), p.79: ‘sc.ita ut Aegisthus Agamemnonem, securis ictu a Clytamestra adacto iam morientem, gladio insuper vulneraverit’: against this compromise see Fraenkel, sup. cit. (n. 1), p. 806 n. 2.Google Scholar
52 See his translation of the Choephoriwith brief commentary(Aeschylus′ The Libation Bearers(Prentice-Hall [1970] = 2Duckworth [1979]), p. 68. Lloyd-Jones translates the lines in question: ‘Did she do the deed or not? This robe is my witness as to how Aegisthus′ sword dyed it’. On any interpretation of the passage Clytemnestra must be the subject of 
Paley (in his 1855 commentary on Aeschylus) should not have toyed with the idea that ‘the subject to 
might seem to be Aegisthus′ for he has only once been mentioned (in passing at 989) in the previous part of this episode. But the 
in the following 
can easily be continuative or contrasting after the rhetorical question about Clytemnestra: ‘did she do the deed or not? (Of course she did) and furthermore [or ‘but by contrast’] the robe reminds me that Aegisthus (did not do the deed but) stabbed the corpse’.
53 J. A. Schuursma, sup. cit. (n. 51).
54 As allowed by Tucker, T. G.(a strong supporter of the sword) in his commentary on the Choephori(Cambridge, 1901), p. 265.Google Scholar
55 To quote Garvie, sup. cit. (n. 2) on Cho.354–62.
56 Garvie as cited in previous note.
57 See Schuursma, sup. cit. (n. 51).
58 See Prag, sup. cit. (n. 4), p p. 61 ff. for artistic depictions of the sacrifice of Iphigeneia involving a sword; cf. Touchefeu, sup. cit. (n. 31), pp. 263ff.
59 For a recent discussion of the more general problems raised by these lines see T. W. C. Stinton, PCPS21 (1975), 82ff. Fraenkel on 1127 (sup. cit. [n. 1], pp. 51 Iff.) had argued, largely on linguistic grounds, that 
goes with 
and refers to the net/robe. He is followed by Burkert, sup. cit. (n. 3): ‘Agamemnon…the 
caught in the "black-horned device", the net’) even though that scholar believes (cf. n. 17 above) the king was struck with an axe. Denniston-Page, sup. cit. (n. 3), objected that 
thus explained ‘defies all reasonable interpretation’. Stinton seeks to resolve the dilemma by replacing the dative with ‘the genitive 
"taking him in robes, the (a, her) black-horned one's trap, she smites " … ’ (p. 90). This wins the approval of Seaford, sup. cit. (n. 13), pp. 25If. Though my argument is best served by the simple equation of 
… 
with the axe, it is not incompatible with Stinton's approach (see below, n. 63) or even Fraenkel's (p. 514: ‘the notion of the cow is continued in a characteristic adjective’).
60 Sup. cit. (n. 1), p. 808.
61 Sup. cit. (n. 6).
62 See, for instance, A. B. Cook, Zeus2.513ff., M. P. Nilsson, The Minoan-Mycenaean Religion(Lund, 1950), pp. 169ff., 231f., Burkert, Griechische Religion,pp. 74f. Greek Religion,p. 38.
63 Animal imagery is common in the trilogy and in the context of oracular language, but why should cow and bull in particular feature here? Pind. Pyth.4.142f. (
)is associated with our lines by commentators Aeschylean and Pindaric, but these two passages alone can hardly suffice to prove the existence of an idiom whereby the word can be used (to quote LSJs.v. 
1.2) ‘metaph. of any damor mother’.Fraenkel, sup. cit. (n. 59) thought of Od.11.411 (see above n. 17) where ‘Agamemnon…says "Aegisthus together with my wife killed me
"’.But there the circumstances are very different and Clytemnestra's rôle is pushed far into the background (see above, n. 18). The identification of Clytemnestra with the cow does not emerge at all naturally from the Odyssean version.
64 Latte, sup. cit. (n. 6), p. 132 = p. 270 (following and developing Blass's remarks in his edition of the Choephorl).So too e.g. Fraenkel, sup. cit. (n. 1), p. 807 (an axe ‘is always ready to hand in the inner rooms of the house’), A. Sideras, Aeschylus Homericus (Hypomnemata31 [1971]), 22 n. 19, Prag, sup. cit. (n. 4), p. 82 (‘a typical emergency weapon’). It is strange that none of these scholars cites the closest mythological analogy: when Tereus discovers he has had the flesh of his son Itys served to him for a meal, he snatches up a double axe and chases after Procne and Philomela, the culprits (Apollod. 3.14.8, 
cf. Burkert, Homo Necans,pp. 201f. [Eng. transl. pp. 180f.]).
65 Tierney, sup. cit. (n. 45), p. 103; cf. Lesky, sup. cit. (n. 3), p. 21. Tierney thinks that ‘it would be very appropriate, and very characteristic of Aeschylus, if the Queen did in fact at this supreme crisis demand, as if unconsciously, the weapon with which she had committed her crime’, but his interpretation of the relevant passages will not permit him to acquiesce in his tempting scenario.
66 For Aeschylean exploitation of this dramatic device of‘false preparation’ see Taplin, sup. cit. (n. 47), pp. 94–6,342, and Index (iii) s.v. ‘preparation... false’. The picture of Aegisthus killed on the throne he has usurped is probably derived from Stesichorus’ Oresteia:cf. Robert, sup. cit. (n. 25) etc.
67 Cf. Garvie, sup. cit. (n. 2), p. 290: ‘[Aeschylus] doubtless chooses the axe because it is part of the traditional version of Clytemnestra's defence of Aegisthus against Orestes... by his borrowing of the axe-motif he creates a momentary suspense as to whether Clytemnestra will in fact resist her murder’.
68 See further Sideras, sup. cit. (n. 64), pp. 21f.
69 See Schuursma, sup. cit. (n. 51), pp. 77ff. for a full survey of the other passages which refer to the murder weapon in a similarly inexplicit manner.
70 Especially when he is so eager (sup. cit. [n. 1], p. 809) to accept the even more arbitrary claim of the scholia on Pindar, Pyth.11.20 = 25C (2.257 Dr.) that 
refers to a sword 
.
71 This does notnecessarily entail that in the original production Clytemnestra stood with an axe in her hand at Ag.1372ff. I am not clear why Garvie, sup. cit. (n. 46) supposes that Clytemnestra here displays the murder weapon. Given Aeschylus′ deliberate vagueness as to its precise nature and the close link between text and performance in Greek Tragedy (see above, n. 47) one would expect the inexplicitness of text to be matched by production, and no weapon to be on view to distract from the sight of the robe. Taplin's detailed analysis of the Agamemnon's‘ murder tableau’ (sup. cit. [n. 47], p. 325f.) has nothing on it, and in discussing the visually similar scene at Cho.973ff. he specifically says (p. 359) ‘in Ag.there is no sign of a weapon’. I think Prag is wrong, then (sup. cit. [n. 4], p. 82), to state ‘the actual implement would of course become clear on the stage anyway’.
72 Sup. cit. (n. 54), p. 266.
