Cassandra's importance in Oresteia

Aeschlyus’s trilogy, The Oresteia, is a tragic manifesto that painfully paints a bloody chain of murder and revenge within the royal family of Argos. In the first respective play of the trilogy, “Agamemnon,” the character of Cassandra plays a vital role to the play and the trilogy as a whole, in numerous distinct ways. Cassandra, as seer and prophetess, connects the present with the past, and more importantly, draws a foreshadowing veil of doom for the future. In her short yet powerful scene after meeting Clytaemnestra, the mischievous wife of Agamemnon, Cassandra gives a voice, a past, and a portrait to each of the three plays in the trilogy. Moreover, she is able to accomplish this remarkable feat in a divinely poignant manner. Cassandra possesses a woeful vulnerability as victim to both Apollo, her architect of prophecy, and Clytaemnestra, her murderer.

“Agamemnon,” the first play of The Oresteia follows the ill fate of the victorious King of Argos, Agamemnon. Upon arriving home from war, royal mistress, Cassandra, at his side, Agamemnon is brutally murdered by his own wife, Clytaemnestra and accomplice, Aegisthus. Clytaemnestra distraught and enraged over Agamemnon’s affair with Helen of Troy, coupled with his

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After seeing her future death, Cassandra strips away Apollo’s seer garments and regalia, stomping them on the ground, in an act of defiance. Aegisthus thrusts the responsibility of the actual murder upon the shoulders of Clytaemnestra, thus Cassandra names him a heartless lion for not doing the heartless deed, himself. A wanderer, a fugitive

Driven off his native land, he will come home

To cope the stones of hate that menace all he loves. As a result of her curse and her eventual murder by both God and mortal, Cassandra creates emotion and empathy into an audience that very well would not have been prevalent.

The fate of Agamemnon becomes mixed with her own, as Cassandra looks into the black soul of Clytaemnestra. “The gods have sworn a monumental oath: as his father lies / upon the ground he draws him home with power like a prayer” (1306-1307). Although she never refers to the killers by name, she makes certain that we all know whom she’s speaking of. More importantly, she was able to erect a window into the past, present, and future, and create an infinite amount of sympathy and compassion for all of the inhabitants of the doomed house of Argos. (1288-1296)

Finally, to come to terms with Agamemnon’s and her own death, she breathes hope into herself and the audience with the prophecy of justice that will occur. It is through this initial plea that we are able to glimpse into the vulnerability of this poor prophet. After Clytaemnestra is out of sight, Cassandra screams in frenzied horror to her prophetic creator, Apollo, pleading for a reason why he has led her to this house of death. After once again connecting the past with the present and immediate future, by rousing up memories, Cassandra rips into Aegisthus dubbing him, “a lion who lacks a lion’s heart” (1232). While Clytaemnestra works her word magic, luring Agamemnon into their dark home, Cassandra is seated in a chariot listening intently.

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. She is victim to god and mortal alike, awaiting her demise with frenzied horror.

Approximate Word count = 1742
Approximate Pages = 7 (250 words per page double spaced)

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