Through all the
triumph of the conqueror, this _Aga_ abides.

The greatest and most human character of the whole play is Clytemnestra.
She is conceived on the grand Aeschylean scale, a scale which makes even
Lady Macbeth and Beatrice Cenci seem small; she is more the kinswoman of
Brynhild. Yet she is full not only of character, but of subtle psychology.
She is the first and leading example of that time-honoured ornament of the
tragic stage, the sympathetic, or semi-sympathetic, heroine-criminal.
Aeschylus employs none of the devices of later playwrights to make her
interesting. He admits, of course, no approach to a love-scene; he uses no
sophisms; but he does make us see through Clytemnestra's eyes and feel
through her passions. The agony of silent prayer in which, if my
conception is right, we first see her, helps to interpret her speeches
when they come; but every speech needs close study. She dare not speak
sincerely or show her real feelings until Agamemnon is dead; and then she
is practically a mad woman.

For I think here that there is a point which has not been observed. It is
that Clytemnestra is conceived as being really "possessed" by the Daemon
of the House when she commits her crime. Her statements on p. 69 are not
empty metaphor. A careful study of the scene after the murder will show
that she appears first "possessed" and almost insane with triumph, utterly
dominating the Elders and leaving them no power to answer. Then gradually
the unnatural force dies out from her. The deed that was first an ecstasy
of delight becomes an "affliction" (pp. 72, 76). The strength that defied
the world flags and changes into a longing for peace. She has done her
work. She has purified the House of its madness; now let her go away and
live out her life in quiet. When Aigisthos appears, and the scene suddenly
becomes filled with the wrangling of common men, Clytemnestra fades into a
long silence, from which she only emerges at the very end of the drama to
pray again for Peace, and, strangest of all, to utter the entreaty: "Let
us not stain ourselves with blood!" The splash of her husband's blood was
visible on her face at the time. Had she in her trance-like state actually
forgotten, or did she, even then, not feel that particular blood to be a
stain?

To some readers it will seem a sort of irrelevance, or at least a blurring
of the dramatic edge of this tragedy, to observe that the theme on which
it is founded was itself