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Clytemnestra's Weapon Yet Once More*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 February 2009

A. J. N. W. Prag
A. J. N. W. Prag
Affiliation:
The Manchester Museum
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Extract

A good story bears retelling many times, and an appreciative audience will delight in debating its finer points; each participant is – of course – always convinced that only his memory, his understanding, of what the author said is the correct one.

Type
Shorter Notes
Information
The Classical Quarterly , Volume 41 , Issue 1 , May 1991 , pp. 242 - 246
Copyright
Copyright © The Classical Association 1991

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References

1 Malcolm, Davies, ‘Aeschylus' Clytemnestra; Sword or Axe?’, CQ 37 (1987), 65–71 (hereafter ‘Davies’)Google Scholar; Fraenkel, E., Aeschylus Agamemnon (Oxford, 1950), 3, Appendix B, pp. 806–9.Google Scholar

2 Most of the arguments are set out in chapter 8 of my book The Oresteia: Iconographic and Narrative Tradition (Aris, and Phillips, , Warminster and Bolchazy-Carducci, Chicago, 1985) (hereafter ‘Prag’), especially pp. 82–3Google Scholar; but since it was all but strangled at birth by the publishers, and is now only available in a limited number of copies, there may be some justification for rehearsing again something of what I said there.

3 Prag, pp. 1–2, 134, nos Al–2, pl. 1 = terracotta plaques from Gortyn, Heraklion Museum 11152 and unnumbered; ibid. pp. 2–3, 134 no. A3, pl. 2a = shield-band from Olympia, Olympia Museum B1654, also Davies, p. 69; Prag, pp. 2–3, 134 no. A4, pl. 2b–c = shield-band from Aegina, Aegina Museum I 61. The first piece perhaps more accessibly illustrated in LIMC i.271, pl. 202, the last two in Vermeule, Emily T., ‘The Boston Oresteia Krater’, AJA 70 (1966), pl. 7CrossRefGoogle Scholar figs. 20a–b. A third plaque, apparently from the same mould as the other two (and showing the same ‘double-stamping’, suggesting the mould itself had slipped in manufacture, rather than the plaques as had previously been thought) is now in Würzburg, : Simon, E. (ed.), Die Sammlung Kiseleffim Martin-von-Wagner-Museum… ii (Mainz, 1989), pp. 20–1Google Scholar, no. 28, pl. 11 (no. K1734) (my thanks to CQ's anonymous referee for drawing my attention to this piece).

4 Boston MFA 63.1246; Prag, pp. 3–4, 135, no. A6, pis. 3–4; Vermeule (art cit. n. 3), pls. 1–4.

5 I discuss this fully in Prag, pp. 68–73; see now also e.g. Garvie, A. F., Aeschylus' Choephori (Oxford, 1986/1988), pp. ix ffGoogle Scholar. On the literary tradition as a whole, Prag, ch. 8.

8 Od. 4.535.

7 Od. 11.423–4. See also Davies, pp. 66–7 with n. 17 for a comprehensive list of references – and for another view.

8 So Davies, pp. 67–8, with references; contra e.g. Fraenkel, op. cit. (n. 1), p. 809 n. 1; also Prag, pp. 44, 73–5, 143–4 no. E1, pl. 28 b (more readily in Zancani-Montuoro, P. and Zanotti-Bianco, U., Heraion alia Foce del Sele [Rome, 1951–1954], 2Google Scholar pls. xlvi, lxxxix).

9 Pindar, Pyth. 11.20; Fraenkel, op. cit. (n. 1), 2, p. 809; Schefold, K., Myth and Legend in Early Greek Art (London, 1966), p. 94Google Scholar; Prag, p. 79.

10 Prag, p. 82 for a discussion of the nuances.

11 Prag, pp. 82, 88–90; Davies, pp. 73–4.

12 Davies, p. 68 with n. 33; cf. Prag, p. 81.

13 Davies is correct in dismissing the Brygos Painter's cup Berlin F2301 (now lost) depicting Clytemnestra running towards a great door and grasping an axe from the ‘Agamemnon’ repertoire, and seeing it as an excerpt from the Death of Aegisthus: Davies, p. 69; Prag, pp. 19, 140 no. C17, pl. 11e.

14 Lugano (Bolla collection); Zurich, University 3477; Prag, pp. 95–6, pl. 44b–d (stamnoi).

15 For a fuller discussion, Prag. pp. 80–1 (also index s.v. ‘net-cloak’); Davies, pp. 69–70.

16 Especially, Prag, pp. 81–3; on Aeschylus and the overall iconographic tradition of the Oresteia, also pp. 47–57, 76, 79–81, 101, etc. Garvie, op. cit (n. 5), pp. xxiii–xxiv.

17 Davies, pp. 70–5; contrast Prag, p. 82 and now Sommerstein, A. H., ‘Again Klytaimestra's Weapon’, CQ 39 (1989), 296–301.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

18 Prag, pp. 88–90; also Garvie, op. cit. (n. 5), 289–90 on Cho. 889. Davies, p. 74 n. 64, is absolutely right in adducing Tereus' pursuit of Procne and Itys with an axe as a further example.

19 Sommerstein, art. cit. (n. 17), 296; Davies, pp. 71–2.

20 Art. cit. (n. 17), 299–301. His comment (p. 299 n. 11) that even Fraenkel ignored the visual dimension and treated the final 350 lines of the play, from Agamemnon's murder on, as if it were the script of a radio play, seems very apt, and might be applied to other commentators too.