Meantime, to assist the reader to realise with somewhat greater
precision the bearing of the foregoing remarks, it may be worth while to
give an outline sketch of one of the most celebrated of the Greek
tragedies, the _Agamemnon_ of Aeschylus.
The hero of the drama belongs to that heroic house whose tragic history
was among the most terrible and the most familiar to a Greek audience.
Tantalus, the founder of the family, for some offence against the gods,
was suffering in Hades the punishment which is christened by his name.
His son Pelops was stained with the blood of Myrtilus. Of the two sons
of the next generation, Thyestes seduced the wife of his brother Atreus;
and Atreus in return killed the sons of Thyestes, and made the father
unwittingly eat the flesh of the murdered boys. Agamemnon, son of
Atreus, to propitiate Artemis, sacrificed his daughter Iphigenia, and in
revenge was murdered by Clytemnestra his wife. And Clytemnestra was
killed by Orestes, her son, in atonement for the death of Agamemnon. For
generations the race had been dogged by crime and punishment; and in
choosing for his theme the murder of Agamemnon the dramatist could
assume in his audience so close a familiarity with the past history of
the House that he could call into existence by an allusive word that
sombre background of woe to enhance the terrors of his actual
presentation.
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