The Omen of the Eagles and the HQOS of Agamemnon

Dados Bibliográficos

ID3939463
AutoresJohn Peradotto (autor correspondente), John J Peradotto
Ano1969
Volume23
Fascículo3
Páginas237
Data de publicação1969-01-01
Peer ReviewedSim
Open AccessNão
TipoARTICLE
PeriódicoPhoenix (JOURNAL)
Identificadores do periódicoISSN: 0031-8299 • E-ISSN: 1929-4883
EditoraJSTOR (PUBLISHER)
DOI10.2307/1086242
OpenAlexW2333144291
IdiomaEN
Citações recebidas11

THERE IS A KIND OF DRAMA which lays claim to some degree of universality. It is, in a sense, the syllogism of literary art. An undistracted rigour governs its movement from premises to conclusions, from cause to effect. It can little afford the exuberance of comedy or the expansive digressions and unhurried pace of epic. A preoccupation with the chain of cause and effect, with responsibility, dominates this kind of tragic composition and forces it to strip away chance, the fortuitous, the coincidental, leaving only a perception of naked law.' The Oresteia is just such a dramatic syllogism, and the first premise of its poetic logic is the omen of the eagles feasting on the pregnant hare, together with two closely allied events-the anger of Artemis and the sacrifice of Iphigeneia-in the parodos of the Agamemnon (109-247). The whole trilogy is structured on this incident; images and verbal motifs from this scene recur again and again throughout the work. It sets the problem; the remainder of the trilogy develops a solution. Since this problem is a profoundly moral one, involving the concrete issue of Agamemnon's guilt as well as ultimate questions about the nature of the gods, man, and the world, a misunderstanding of the oblique, oracular terms in which this scene is written will seriously compromise even the most careful reading of the rest of the trilogy, and vitiate its poetic logic. Just how important this passage is can be assessed in some measure by the fact that in most cases a critic's interpretation of this portent turns out to be a capsule-version of his total view of Aeschylean moral and religious thought.2 And in recent years the most literal and, for that reason, misleading interpretations of this scene have been proposed by

Ancient history · Archaeology · Art · Geography · Omen · Classical Antiquity Studies · History