Abstract

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