Clytemnestra

The notorious Queen who avenged her daughter and had no regrets about it.

For this send of the newsletter, we’re going to take it back a few thousand years to a mythological figure that one of my favorite authors, Madeline Miller (Circe and The Song of Achilles), called “the most notorious woman in Greek mythology” after Medea.

Clytemnestra was first introduced in the three-part tragedy Oresteia by Aeschylus, which was first performed in 458 BCE. For those who may be unfamiliar with this story, it’s about a wife who gets vengeance on her husband, and is likely where the “protective mother lioness” image sprung from. This was a novel concept at the time, as women were often treated as second-class citizens who performed domestic tasks, while men were in authority and protectors of the household. Even today, the word “mother” still doesn’t typically evoke power (although recently, the culture has started to redefine the moniker as being synonymous to an iconic woman who slays).

In the most famous Ancient Greek myths, mortal women are usually not the heroes. Things happen to them; they’re the victims. This is even baked into Queen Clytemnestra’s lineage. She’s the daughter of Queen Leda, who was sexually assaulted by Zeus in swan form, and she’s also the half-sister of Helen of Troy, who was either kidnapped or seduced by Paris (depending on which version you read).

Our story starts with Queen Clytemnestra married to King Agamemnon of Mycenae. And Agamemnon has a problem — he’s trying to sail for Troy to help his brother rescue Helen, but there’s no wind. His priest tells him that the goddess Artemis is preventing him from leaving. To get the goddess on his side, the priest advises him that he should sacrifice his daughter Iphigenia. However, the king’s daughter is not just going to willingly waltz to her own death so her father can save her aunt (who might not even want to be rescued). So Agamemnon tricks Clytemnestra into sending Iphigenia down to his boat with the false promise that the handsome warrior Achilles is going to marry her. By the time Clytemnestra discovers the lie, Iphigenia is already dead and her husband has sailed out of the harbor. 

The Trojan War lasts 10 years, which gives Clytemnestra plenty of time to come up with a punishment fit for the crime her husband committed. She shacks up with his cousin Aegisthos—who also had a few family members murdered by Agamemnon—and he becomes her lover and partner in revenge, taking over Agamemnon’s kingdom in his absence. 

When Agamemnon finally returns with his Trojan slave and concubine — Princess Cassandra, who readers might know for her ability to see into the future (she also has a complicated, horrible journey to Mycenae that is for a later newsletter) — Clytemnestra is all smiles. After some convincing to come inside (and a prophecy uttered by Cassandra sealing their fate), Agamemnon and Cassandra are murdered by the triumphant Clytemnestra, who proclaims justice has been delivered. 

But the Ancient Greeks can’t let a woman righteously kill her husband and get away with it (though Cassandra really did not deserve that). In the final play, Clytemnestra and Agamemnon’s son Orestes is convinced by his sister, Electra, that he needs to kill his mother, continuing the cycle of revenge (though I wonder where he was when his other sister was murdered, but I digress). He slays her and Aegisthos — but that’s not the end of the story. From the underworld, Clytemnestra’s ghost is so powerful and enraged at her son’s betrayal and loyalty to his father that she manages to send the Furies (the goddesses of revenge, yet another topic for another newsletter) to torture him. Hell hath no fury like Clytemnestra. 

There are still debates as to who was justified in their actions within this story. Some say they were all terrible, while others say that Clytemnestra deserved what she got for not just accepting the death of her daughter as the will of a God, callously cheating on her husband, and then murdering her husband and a woman who didn’t deserve to die. Personally, I don’t think that there are any winners in this tragedy, but when I initially read the story in high school, I remember my teacher made it seem like Clytemnestra was unhinged and gleefully violent rather than a mother suffering under waves of grief and betrayal. In the play, she defends herself to the Chorus, which is a stand-in for society:

“...Where were you when this man killed?

Where were you when, like any lamb from the flock,

he picked his own daughter to sacrifice to the weather?

To him, our child was one casual two-minute spasm:

to me, my dearest and my longest labor.

So now you rush to judgment, being witnesses

how I have made him pay the price of her blood.

Why didn't you banish him from this fatherland? 

And if it comes to threats, then hear this threat:

I'm ready too. You want me to submit?

Then make me. But remember: god above

may give the victory instead to me to rule—

a harsh late lesson for some slow old fools.”

Clytemnestra’s speeches read as surprisingly modern and would not be out of place in a movie or book today. They’re surprisingly direct and powerful. However, Clytemnestra is frequently called masculine in this story by the Chorus, which is meant as a back-handed compliment near the beginning of the play and seen by the Chorus as a perversion by the end. She takes action like a Greek man would, which she is vilified for, while the men are made heroes or at least tragically complex. Surely, murdering your daughter’s killer is a righteous act of justice, especially if done by a man. Clytemnestra isn’t afraid of calling out these double standards either, which she does while threatening the Chorus in the speech above. 

Clytemnestra is killed by her own son in what is seen by the Greek society as a course-correcting move. She was too powerful, too “masculine,” and too furious to remain alive. In this version of the story, she directly called out the double standards that allowed her husband to remain alive and be welcomed back like a king for killing her daughter and enslaving another woman, while she was essentially sentenced to death. In the Greek world, this was all very radical (honestly, today, it’s still kind of shocking). Clytemnestra’s story is ripe for a modern take à la Circe to give this myth of a flawed female character its due.