Great Books, Mediocre Blog.

Clytaemnestra: A Moral Oddity In the first two book of The Oresteia (Agamemnon, and The Libation Bearers), a trilogy of greek tragedies written by the tragedian Aeschylus, Clytaemnestra is written as a complex character, invoking one of two extremes to the average reader: love or hate. However, once you analyze and attempt to understand the character, she becomes significantly more morally grey than one originally thought. Did she do the right thing in killing Agamemnon as revenge for her daughter? Maybe her motive was more than just her daughter’s death? Is an “eye for an eye” a fair justice system? Was Cassandra's murder fair? Agamemnon begins with Clytaemnestra in power while Agamemnon was away at war. It is revealed to us that Agamemnon sacrificed his daughter to Artemis so that he could safely sail to Troy for battle. Of course, the act of killing your daughter would anger any mother, no matter what the cause. It could be argued that what Agamemnon did was wrong. Howev...

Love: Emotional Warfare “She’d speak her heart but her voice chokes, mid-word./ Now at dusk she calls for the feast to start again,/ madly begging to hear again the agony of Troy,/ to hang on his lips again, savoring his story./”(4.96-99). Love is an overwhelming feeling. To long for someone to speak, hear a voice, or just to see a smile is a gift in the eyes of a person stricken with love. In The Aeneid , an epic written by Virgil (translated by Robert Fagles), The main plot point is for Aeneas to find Rome. In his quest, there are mentions of war and Fate, even Gods and destiny. But all of these things seem to be external forces. What about the internal equivalent of war, such as a conflict of love? Does Virgil portray it as such? Or at least shows that love leads to consequences matching war? Maybe he includes these love subplots just for the reader to better relate to the character? Virgil includes many examples of love, and most of them end in tragedy. Just one of the ma...