Three things Clytemnestra

 

What are the three things Clytemnestra achieves over her husband to hasten his doom? How do the chorus arouse to the impending catastrophe?

 

 Ans. Clytemnestra is cunning, crafty and firmly resolute in her mission of vengeance. She decides to execute her plan as soon as Agamemnon returns from Troy. So her plan to take on her husband is premeditated-first of all we find her to demonstrate her personal ascendancy over her powerful husband. The second thing she achieves is planting of conscious guilt in his heart. The third one is very important. She demonstrates successfully before the people of Argos as well as the audience, that none but Agamemnon himself was responsible for inviting his impending doom. He had, in his arrogance and pride, forgotten the truth that to a Greek the essence of piety is humility and humble submission that gods are greater than men.

 

The Chorus or the elderly citizens are now thoroughly conscious of the impending catastrophe. This evil could have been easily averted by paying the due respect to the gods. But the king's utter disrespect to them as well as shedding the blood of innocent Iphigenia have already accumulated his debt.

 

Meanwhile Clytemnestra fails to persuade Cassandra to follow her to the palace to take part in household rituals. For Cassandra what Apollo left untouched, Agamemnon violated.

 

Now possessed by prophet-god Cassandra speaks of her vision in lurid pictorial flashes which the chorus, the elder citizens, will not, or dare not to decipher. Soon after the palace door opens to reveal Clytemnestra standing unperturbed over the bleeding corpses of Agamemnon and Cassandra.