Melizein Pathe or the Tonal Dimension in Aeschylus’ Agamemnon: Voice, Song, and Choreia as Leitmotifs and Metatragic Signals for Expressing Suffering

The article opens out the ways in which voices of both characters and chorus struggle to express hope for order and renewal at Argos even as so many forces threaten to tear the society apart. Attempts to sing the ritually correct produce perverted forms, and songs of suffering and lament enact rather than manage the violence they address. Repeated references to the chorus and song of the Furies culminate in the powerful scene of the prisoner prophetess Cassandra, at first silent in the face of Clytemnestra’s taunts but eventually bursting forth in almost inarticulate cries that weave themselves into a lament, discordant to the ears of the chorus but prophetic of both her own fate and that of the house she enters. The author finds in these self-referential performances in the Agamemnon vocal threads that lead on to the laments of Choephoroi and the terrifying chorus of Erinyes that nonetheless can bring the Eumenides to a successful conclusion.