Opening Agamemnon — Aeschylus in Plato Scroll…
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Aeschylus · Herbert Weir Smyth (Loeb Classical Library, 1926)
[Image: ]The “Mask of Agamemnon,” discovered at Mycenae by Heinrich Schliemann in 1876 WHEN THAT HELEN had fled with Paris to Troyland, her husband Menelaüs and his brother Agamemnon, the sons of Atreus and two-throned Kings of Argos, sought to take vengeance on him who had done outrage to Zeus, the guardian of the rights of hospitality. Before their palace appeared a portent, which the seer Calchas interpreted to them: the two eagles were the Kings themselves and the pregnant hare seized in their talons was the city which held Priam’s son and Helen and her wealth. But Artemis, she that loves wild things of the field, was wroth with the Kings: and when all their host was gathered at Aulis and would sail with its thousand ships, she made adverse winds to blow; so that the ships rotted and the crews lost heart. Then the seer, albeit in darkling words, spake to Agamamnon: “If thou wilt …
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