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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 11 February 2009
Agamemnon returns victorious from Troy; the Argive Elders who form the chorus of the play greet and praise him. On a first reading the praise seems lukewarm, the passage as a whole rambling and uninteresting.1 Is the address unimportant because our eyes are intent upon Agamemnon and his retinue? If so, the tone of these anapaests would still be puzzling, in giving the king's arrival the effect of an anticlimax, particularly considering the duration and nature of the dramatic preparation for it.
I am indebted to Margaret Williamson for her advice and comments.
1 Although the address is quite distinct from the preceding ode it picks up the theme of deceptive appearances from the lion-cub fable and that of Helen as destroyer from the opening stanza.
2 The disease metaphor, by which Agamemnon as doctor, assisted by the Elders, will endeavour, with cautery or with ‘the cruel compassion of the surgeon's knife’, to remove the suffering caused by illness, can only apply to something wrong in the body politic; the metaphor thus conveniently illustrates Agamemnon's concern for the well-being of the community and his unawareness of the true location of danger.
3 In Agamemnon understanding of the true meaning of events is withheld from the hero as he goes to his death and reserved for Cassandra, the knowing victim.
4 Antithesis: e.g. 786 and the sound of mourning contrasted with the look ofo; rejoicing, 790 ff. Repetition of key words: πρo;βατo;γνὡμων γνὡσηι; δίκην δικαίως; καιρόν ⋯καίρως; δo;κєîν δo;κo;ὓντ'; єὔфρoνoς єὔфρων
5 On hearing 788–9 one would suppose, wrongly, that the initial questions were rhetorical.
6 01. 4. 5.
7 Pyth. 2. 82 σαίνων πo;τί πάντας. Burton, R. W. B., Pindar's Pythian Odes (Oxford, 1962) p. 111, uses words that with little change could apply to our passage: ‘Pindar speaks not as an obsequious court-poet who relies on the arts of the flatterer, but as a candid counsellor, convinced of his own integrity and of the rightness of the instruction he feels called upon to give to a king who has allowed himself to be influenced by jealous, ill-disposed persons.’ Cf. Pyth. 1.51–2 σ⋯ν
, which brings to mind not only 
фιλóτητι (Ag. 798) but also 
(Ag. 725–6). For the use of καιóρς see for example Pyth. 1. 42 ff., 57, 81. The image of Ag. 786–7 finds parallels in Pindar, e.g. at Ol. 13. 9 and Nem. 6. 27–8. For the conventions of epinician, and in particular their application to the interpretation of the Second Pythian, an ode addressed to Hieron, see H. Lloyd-Jones, JHS 93 (1973), 109 ff., and works there cited.Google Scholar
8 See B. M. W. Knox, ‘The lion in the house’, CP (1952), 17 ff., for the interpretation of the fable in the context of the trilogy as a whole. See now also R. Friedrich, AJP 102 (1981), 120 ff., who discusses Homeric lion similes used critically; in the present context, Od. 6. 130 f., which likens Odysseus to a lion whose ‘belly commands him to enter the thronged dwelling’, and Od. 22.401, where he stands among the slaughtered suitors, spattered with blood, like a lion which has feasted on an ox, are particularly significant.
9 See Taplin, O., Greek Tragedy in Action (London, 1978); it is useful to recall the importance in Aristophanic theatre of the idea made visible, the godlike Socrates in the Clouds, or the ‘weight’ of Aeschylus' poetry in the Frogs.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
10 The motif of silence, the antithesis of Clytemnestra's volubility, is suggested in the watchman's speech (36–9) and made ‘visible’ when Cassandra confronts Clytemnestra.
11 For animal imagery in the Oresteia see A. Lebeck, The Oresteia (1971), and J.-P. Vernant and P. Vidal-Nacquet, Mythe et tragédie en Grèce ancienne (1973).
12 J. M. Redfield, Nature and Culture in the Iliad (1975), pp. 193 ff.; see also M. Faust, Glotta 48 (1970), 8 ff., S. Lilja, Dogs in Ancient Greek Poetry (1976), and J. A. Scott, CW 41, 226 ff. The’ poetic relationship’ of Odysseus and Telemachus with their dogs is discussed by G. P. Rose, TAPA 109(1979), 215 ff.
13 Redfield, p. 195.
14 The fawning action is described fully in Hesiod, Theog. 769 f., quoted below, n. 19; see also Sophocles, fr. 687 Pearson, which probably also describes Cerberus ‘ wagging his tail and letting. his ears droop’, and Od. 17. 302; the dog Snatcher enters court ‘grinning’, Wasps 901.
15 Cf. Bacchylides fr. 24, σαίνєι κέαρ for the joy of greeting; the bright eye of Ismene recalls the lion cub (φαιδρωπ⋯ς, Ag. 725). In Sophocles’ Antigone, 1214, Creon. recognizing Haemon's voice, says 
, ‘it is my son's voice, I must hurry’. Jebb ad loc. Compares Euripides, Hippolytus 862 ff.
16 The greed of dogs and their theft of food is well illustrated in the trial scene of Aristophanes' Wasps, 891–1008. Sexual appetite is mentioned below, n. 29; wolves and lions fawn on Aphrodite also, H. Hymn Aphro. 69–72. For the fawning, flattering sycophant or politician see J. Taillardat, Les Images d'Aristophane (1965), pp. 403 ff.
17 cf. Seven against Thebes 383, 704 for the meaning ‘cringe from’. Deprecatory fawning may not succeed: see the difficult lines in Libation-bearers (418–22) where there seems to be a contrast between fawning and appeasing.
18 The word order of the Greek suggests the movement from friendly seduction to final death in a trap, and this is lost in English. Electra, seeing what she hopes may be a lock of Orestes’ hair, says 
(Cho. 194). She means ‘hope entices me to believe but I may be led astray by my hopes’.
. See further below, 17.
20 The Erinyes ‘enter as a pack of hounds tracking their victim by his bloody spoor’ (Lebeck, 66).
21 Orestes’ terror at pursuit by 
Libation-bearers 1044–62; warrior-hunters pursue Helen, Ag. 694–8.
22 It should be noticed that Agamemnon picks up the image in his address to his wife as ‘custodian of my house’ (Ag. 914).
23 This is the behaviour of the dogs in the similes of the Iliad (e.g. 13. 468 ff. and 11. 284 ff., where they are subordinate to Hector) and of those pictured on Achilles’ shield (18. 577–8), where nine dogs fail to press home their attack on two lions.
24 In the early scenes of Agamemnon Clytemnestra acts as substitute for the absent king, rather than as wife, mother or mistress. In Aristophanes’ Wasps (970–2) the house dog bites.
25 Not ‘farmstead’, as Fraenkel proposes in his note on the line, but ‘fold’.
26 Odysseus’ disguise was penetrated instantly, without test or token, by Argos and only by Argos.
27 See Fraenkel ad loc. for interesting parallels between the watchman and the guard dog. Electra in the following play (444–9), also lacking freedom of movement, says she had been shut up ‘like a dog’, closely echoing the watchman (Ag. 3, 1093).
28 Fraenkel maintains at length that here and at 1625 f. 
do not convey ‘the idea of watching’. He argues that the original idea had been weakened by this time to the meaning of ‘keeping at home’ and he adduces examples of the weakened meaning, particularly in abuse of the effeminate stay-at-home. To my mind his examples do not prove the complete disappearance of the original meaning; in some passages the presence of a word like 
strongly suggests that the 'stay-at-home’ is a watchful protector. Here we have an allusion to a woman who guards a house in her husband's absence and who watches over the community as substitute for the king.
29 The Homeric use of ‘dog’ and ‘dog-faced’ for wanton female sexual behaviour is relevant here, particularly the application of κυνᾣπις to Aphrodite, Helen and Clytemnestra herself: see for full references and discussion the article by G. P. Rose cited above, n. 12.
30 Her speech displays false sorrow (‘crocodile tears’), then false joy, exactly fulfilling the Elders' warning (859–94, cf. 790; 895–913, cf. 793). Lloyd-Jones, H. is commenting on 895 in his translation of the Agamemnon (New Jersey, 1970). When we hear this speech its adulatory repetitions are the more obvious because they have been preceded by the controlled economy of the Elders' greeting.Google Scholar
31 Taplin, O., The Stagecraft of Aeschylus (Oxford, 1977), pp. 307 f. Cassandra calls the houseGoogle Scholar 
(1291). Earlier in the scene (1228–30) Cassandra had described Clytemnestra's fawning speech as the work of a destructive bitch.
32 Theog. 769–73, quoted above, n. 19.
