A Refiection on Homeric Dawn in the Parodos of Aeschylus, Agamemnon
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 9665688 |
|---|---|
| Authors | M George-Lynn (University of Alberta, corresponding author) |
| Year | 1993 |
| Volume | 43 |
| Issue | 1 |
| Pages | 1-9 |
| Publication date | 1993-05-01 |
| Open Access | Yes |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | The Classical Quarterly (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 0009-8388 • E-ISSN: 1471-6844 |
| Publisher | Cambridge University Press (CUP) (PUBLISHER) |
| DOI | 10.1017/s000983880004413x |
| OpenAlex | W2080483770 |
| Language | EN |
| References cited | 9 |
Aeschylus' account of the sacrifice of Iphigeneia in the Agamemnon has elicited an extraordinarily wide range of interpretations–a critical response which, in its veryproductivity, may signal a central aspect of the description itself. While more recent explications have been profitably informed by research in cult and ritual, there remains, I would like to suggest, an important literary possibility which merits consideration, particularly in a text where so much has been shaped from a close and profound engagement with the Homeric tradition. The description of the sacrifice ( Ag. 228–47) is forcefully carried by enjambement from one stanza into another by the sheer weight, as it were, of the force that crushingly silences, βίαι χαλινὦν τ ̓ άναύδωι μ⋯νει (238). In the midst of much that is dark and difficult to construe, the composition yields a sudden effusion of colour, a striking trail of saffron. The sense of concealment, of a figure enveloped or enshrouded, which has been suggested by the phrase πέπλοισι περιπετή (233), opens on to an image of unfolding, the falling spread of a robe caught in itsflow towards the ground, κρόκου βαφάς δ ⋯ς πέδονχέουσα (239)
Art · Literature · Sacrifice · Theology · Ancient Mediterranean Archaeology and History · Classical Antiquity Studies · Historical, Religious, and Philosophical Studies · Philosophy
| Highly cited | No |
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