Cassandra in Agamemnon Cassandra: Prophecies

Cassandra in Agamemnon

Cassandra: Prophecies of Doom and Reflections of the Whole in Agamemnon

Cassandra's speech in Agamemnon, when she prophecies the death of the Grecian king, reflects both the beginning of the drama when the chorus chants its opening lines as well as the whole of the Oresteia by Aeschylus. Her prophecy is a warning of murder and also a curse: it is a reflection of the way the gods punish when their will is not obeyed. Cassandra's speech stands out because it richly and vividly foreshadows the immediate future and fills the audience with dread. This seemingly innocent person is dragged into the bloody murder that Clytemnestra has planned for Agamemnon -- and yet despite being a foreigner she knows all too well (better than anyone else in fact) what awaits the joyous king and his (deceiving) wife. This paper will look at the speech of Cassandra and examine it in structure, imagery, tone, voice, and syntax.

The tone of Cassandra's lament is one of agony: she appears to bemoan not only her fate but also the fate of the Greeks who think their days may finally be happy. Little do they know that the wife of Agamemnon has been plotting revenge for the death of her daughter at the hands of her husband. The chorus reveals some of this to us in the beginning of the drama by establishing the dramatic structure (which Cassandra builds upon): "Heaven sends the vengeful fiends of hell. / Even so doth Zeus, the jealous lord and guardian of the hearth and board, speed Atreus' sons, in vengeful ire, / 'Gainst Paris -- sends them forth on fire, / Her to buy back, in war and blood, / Whom one did wed but many woo'd!" The Chorus lays out the premise of Aeschylus' Agamemnon: the theme of revenge; the fact that the war Agamemnon has gone off to fight was one based on vengeance (Paris had stolen Helen for Agamemnon's brother, so all of Greece had gone to get her back). Troy fell, but Agamemnon's wife now had her own score to settle: she has been waiting for the return of her husband so that she can exact her own revenge -- for sacrificing their daughter to the gods! Here is the structure of the drama, and Cassandra simply erects another story upon it.

Cassandra furthers the drama by lamenting in piteous tones, revealing to the Elder how Apollo cursed her with the gift of prophecy (unheeded): "Oh, oh! Agony, agony! / Again the awful pains of prophecy / Are on me, maddening as they fall… / Ye see them there…beating against the wall?" The syntax she uses reinforces the idea that she wishes to convey information: she repeats things twice, doubles up on images, rhymes her words to hammer them home.

The imagery she uses also reflects the pain that she experiences as she envisions the murder about to take place and the fact that she too will killed: she speaks of Clytemnestra as a lion: "Vengeance broodeth still, a lion's rage, which goes not forth to kill / But lurketh in his lair, watching the high hall…" Then she speaks of her as a wolf and as a serpent. The imagery is repeatedly of deadly animals, culminating in this terrible prophecy: "Some Skylla, deep / Housed in the rock, where sailors shriek and die, / Mother of Hell blood-raging, which doth cry / On her own flesh war, war without alloy…" Cassandra equates the revenge that Clytemnestra seeks with the revenge that the Greeks sought against Paris at Troy. War follows war -- even when peace is supposed and expected.