Classical Wisdom Litterae - April 2019

“I gave a third and final blow, my thanks for prayers fulfilled, to Zeus.” More disturbing still is her mania at the point of triumph: “With cough and retch there spurted from him bloody foam in a fierce jet, and spreading, spattered me with drops of crimson rain”. This is not a chronicle of a horror, or even victorious crowing, but feels more like Clytemnestra reveling in a disturbing and distasteful orgasm of blood: “[W]hile I exulted as the sown cornfield exults drenched with the dew of heaven when buds burst forth in Spring.” Lust and blood-lust are intermingled to such an extent that they sully and demean the justice of vengeance.

Especially in regard to the fact that

Above: The Funeral Procession of Agamemnon, by Louis-Jean Desprez, 1787

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