Clytemnestra and Iphigenia in Greek Tragedy: Strength and Honor

Women as Protagonists in Greek Tragedy

One of the most striking aspects of ancient Greek tragedy — particularly those works that draw on the Trojan War and its aftermath as their narrative background — is the portrayal of Greek women as central and very active protagonists and antagonists. Notable examples include Antigone in the play by Sophocles and Penelope in Homer's The Odyssey. For the most part, the heroines and anti-heroines portrayed in 5th-century Athenian tragedies served as a way to explore "the tensions inherent in the moral code of contemporary society" by strongly reacting to the violations of that code by men, especially those related to the Greek familial system (Martin, 132).

Undoubtedly, two of the most interesting women in all Greek tragedy are Clytemnestra, as portrayed in Aeschylus' play Agamemnon (produced sometime around 458 B.C.E. and based on the exploits of Agamemnon, the leader of the Greek armies in the Trojan War), and Iphigenia, as depicted in Euripides' Iphigenia at Aulis (circa 410 B.C.E.). In Agamemnon, Clytemnestra — the wife of Agamemnon — takes a lover and rules her city in her husband's place after Agamemnon subverts their marriage: first by sacrificing their daughter Iphigenia to appease an angry goddess who is holding up the Greek army, and then by staying away from home for ten years to besiege the city of Troy. When Agamemnon finally returns home, he brings with him a captive Trojan princess whom he intends to install in his household as a concubine. Enraged by this final insult to her status as an honorable Greek wife and mother, Clytemnestra murders Agamemnon, which "ensures tragic destruction for herself and her family while avenging her own honor" (Martin, 133).

Clytemnestra: Defiance and Emotional Strength

Perhaps the best example from Aeschylus' Agamemnon that demonstrates the emotional strengths of Clytemnestra can be found in her monologue, which represents some of the finest poetry written by a Greek tragedian in the 5th century B.C.E. Her emotional strengths are clearly linked to the roles assigned to men in ancient Greece, who culturally dominated nearly every aspect of women's lives, whether as daughters or as wives. For instance, in Demosthenes' Orations (59:122), a man speaking in a lawsuit declares, "We have companions for the sake of pleasure, ordinary prostitutes for the daily attention to our physical needs" (Martin, 139). This statement directly references Agamemnon's decision to bring a concubine into Clytemnestra's household — an act she interprets as a brazen violation of accepted Greek social norms governing marriage and household honor.

Conclusion

Ironically, it will be Agamemnon who sacrifices his own daughter; thus one wonders whether Iphigenia somehow, deep down, realizes this fact — which, if true, only increases her strength and honor as a tragic Greek heroine. Taken together, Clytemnestra and Iphigenia exemplify how 5th-century Greek tragedy used female characters to articulate the most profound moral tensions of ancient Greek society: the collision between patriarchal authority and the emotional, ethical claims of women who refused to be silenced.