plays which have survived of
the ninety that he wrote, according to Suidas; and Aristophanes would
not have put that expression in his mouth had it not been true of the
others, too. To us it seems extraordinary that an author should boast
of having kept out of his writings the element which constitutes the
greatest fascination of modern literature; but after reading his seven
surviving tragedies we do not wonder that Aeschylus should not have
introduced a woman in love, or a man either, in plays wherewith he
competed for the state prize on the solemn occasions of the great
festivals at Athens; for love of an exalted kind, worthy of such an
occasion, could not have existed in a community where such ideas
prevailed about women as Aeschylus unfolds in the few places where he
condescends to notice such inferior beings. The only kind of sexual
love of which he shows any knowledge is that referred to in the
remarks of Prometheus and Io regarding the designs of Zeus on the
latter.

An apparent exception seems at first sight to exist in the cordial
reception Clytaemnestra accords to her husband, King Agamemnon, when
he returns from the Trojan war. She calls the day of his return the
most joyous of her life, asserts her complete fidelity to him during
his long absence, declares she is not ashamed to tell her fond
feelings for her spouse in public, and adds that she has wept for him
till the gushing fountains of her eyes have been exhausted. Indeed,
she goes so far in her homage that Agamemnon protests and exclaims,
"Pamper me not after the fashion of women, nor as though I were a
barbaric monarch.... I bid thee reverence me as a man, not a god." But
ere long we discover (as in the case of Achilles), that all this fine
talk of Clytaemnestra is mere verbiage, and worse--deadly hypocrisy.
In reality she has been living with a paramour, and the genuineness
and intensity of her "fond feelings" for her husband may be inferred
from the fact that hardly has he returned when she makes a murderous
assault on him by throwing an artfully woven circular garment over
him, while he is taking a bath, and smiting him till he falls dead.
"And I glory in the deed" she afterwards declares, adding that it "has
long since been meditated."

Agamemnon, for his part, not only brought back with him from Troy a
new concubine, Cassandra, and installed her in his home with the usual
Greek indifference to the feelings of his legitimate wife, but he
really