Agamemnon: The Names Have Changed but the Players Remain the Same

Greek philosophers, literature and history... who studies this stuff any more? I'd have to admit that Greek lit and history had little interest to me much of my life. I do remember studying the Odyssey at some point in high school, but it wasn't until much later that its significance struck a chord.

Many of the names from these ancient stories have glittered across pop culture, from Achilles to Zeus, Ulysses to Sysiphus, Poseidon to Prometheus, and Aphrodite to Helen of Troy, the face that launched a thousand ships. (See; Backstory on the Trojan War.)

It was Andre Gide's Two Legends: Oedipus and Theseus that first brought to life in a seriously new way for me. In 2017 Harvard professor Richard Thomas, in his book Why Bob Dylan Matters, made many of us aware of how Bob Dylan had been immersed by or influenced by the Greek classics.

When I say "Greek classics" do you yawn? You might think, "What does a play written 2500 years ago have to do with life in the 21st century?" 

Let's start with who was Aeschylus? 

Aeschylus was a renowned ancient Greek playwright who lived from roughly 525 BC to 455 BC. He was widely regarded as the "father of tragedy." He's credited with introducing significant innovations to the genre, including the addition of a second actor to the stage, the development of dialogue between characters, and the incorporation of choral songs that explored themes of justice, fate, and the relationship between humans and the gods.

In his play Agamemnon there are four main characters plus a chorus. If you're familiar with. the Trojan War, you would know that Agamemnon was the brother of Menelaus, king of Sparta, whose wife Helen was abducted by Paris and taken to Troy. Agamemnon responded by assembling a coalition of Greek kingdoms to avenge this insult and ransack Troy.

So... here are the characters in the play. Do any of these sound familiar or resonate with people in our own time frame? ("If the shoe fits...")

Chrysus appeals to Agamemnon (ancient urn)

Agamemnon 
The highest-ranking official at the beginning of the play, he is its tragic hero. He's proud of his rank and accomplishments. Yet despite Agamemnon's leadership, he is less admired now by his subjects for fighting an unpopular war. He is portrayed as less intelligent and less forward thinking than his wife, believing prosperity will shield him from misfortune. Agamemnon attempts humility, saying he does not want to be treated as a god. But like other Greek tragic heroes, he is fatally flawed by hubris (pride).

Clytaemnestra 
Driven by the desire for vengeance and power, the shrewd, audacious Clytaemnestra is the play's most developed and complex character, even if her name is the most difficult to pronounce. She professes loyalty to Agamemnon and praises him at the same time as she plots his death. She also is argumentative, defending her thoughts and opinions to the Chorus when they disagree

Cassandra
Agamemnon's war captive, Cassandra is emotional and distraught by the destruction of her homeland. Given the gift of prophecy by Apollo, she can see accurately into the past, present, and future. However, after Cassandra refused to bear his child, Apollo cursed her so no one would believe these prophecies. (How much wisdom and insight is lost today because the voices of those most prescient are ignored?)

Aegisthus 
There's a sense in which Aegisthus is like Clytaemnestra. Both crave power and payback. Aegisthus, driven by the need to avenge some family wrongdoing, has this whole authoritative and menacing vibe. He's all about establishing a firm, in-control government, and he's not afraid to throw out threats about enslaving anyone who doesn't see eye to eye with him. Total power move, right? 

Chorus 
The Chorus represents the townspeople of Argos. They have a stake in whatever goes down and tend to drop some moral wisdom based on what the central characters decide. Aeschylus gives these Chorus folk their own opinions, throwing in a line or two, but it doesn't change how the drama unfolds. While they're generally Team Agamemnon, the big boss of Argos, they're not too keen on his war plans. When Agamemnon bites the dust, it makes an impact on the Chorus in a deep way.

The murder of Agamemnon

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See any parallels to what's happening today? I see plenty.

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For a full list of characters visit:
https://www.coursehero.com/lit/Agamemnon/characters/

If interested, read the plot summary here:
https://www.coursehero.com/lit/Agamemnon/plot-summary/

The character analysis above is based on this:
https://www.coursehero.com/lit/Agamemnon/character-analysis/

The deed is done.

The Sorites Paradox and the National Debt

I recently read about a phenomenon called the Sorities Paradox. It's something that has fascinated me for years, but I never had a label for it.

According to Standford.edu, "The Sorites Paradox is the name given to a class of paradoxical arguments, also known as little-by-little arguments, which arise as a result of the indeterminacy surrounding limits of application of the predicates involved. "

That's a lot of big words there. Here's a better way to put it. Call it the paradox of the heap, which is essentially about vagueness.

For example, take a pile of sand. If you remove a single grain of sand, is it still a pile? If you remove another grain, is it still a pile? And so on. If you continue removing grains of sand one at a time, at what point does this heap of sand stop being a pile? 

Another example might be the bald man illustration. Suppose you have a man with one hair on his head. Is he bald? Most would agree that that is pretty bald. But if you add another hair, is he still bald? And so on. If you continue adding hairs one at a time, at what point does this man stop being bald?

In short, the Sorites Paradox emerges when there is a lack of sharp boundaries. Take, for example, a haystack. If you keep removing hay one strand at a time, when is it really no longer a haystack? As one who has had goats and geese, I would suggest that this occurs before you get down to one, but the line of demarcation isn't specific.

WHAT GOT ME TO THINKING ABOUT THIS was our current debate about the debt ceiling. How much national debt is too much national debt? One of the reasons our decision makers can quibble over these things is because debt is a given, but too much is too undefined.

This vagueness applies to a lot of areas of governance. Take homelessness, for example. How much homelessness is too much homelessness. 

What about crime? As long as we have a degree of freedom, there will be some crime. Can we ever eliminate crime altogether? Yes, by eliminating our freedoms we can make our streets safer. Is that what we want? How far do you really want to. go with that?

* * * 

Now going back to the pile of sand, start with one single grain and add one, is that a pile? If you add another, is that suddenly a pile? The paradox is that there is no single moment with the sand heap is officially a pile.

Which incorrectly leads to the belief that adding an additional trillion dollars to the national is still not "too much" debt. By this fallacious thinking, it would be impossible to have too much debt, which is nonsense.

* * * 

For what it's worth, the word "sorites" is derived from a Greek word meaning "heap" which is another word for pile. 

Unlike the Pythagorian Theorem, which is named after the Greek philosopher/mathematician who proposed it, there is no person named Sorites.

* * *

If interested further see:  

https://plato.stanford.edu/Archives/Win2004/entries/sorites-paradox/#:~:text=The%20sorites%20paradox%20is%20the,application%20of%20the%20predicates%20involved.

Or Wikipedia:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sorites_paradox

It was in this article about Kylie Minogue where I first saw reference to this concept.

https://unherd.com/2023/05/kylie-minogues-glorious-artifice/?tl_inbound=1&tl_groups[0]=18743&tl_period_type=3&mc_cid=bf9a3b17ea&mc_eid=4056b47041

It’s a modern day sorites paradox: how many grains of sand make a heap? There’s no obvious cut-off point. Likewise, no one can say at what point precisely all the injections and incisions start making you look like a startled alien. Over several iterations, surgeons seem to gradually lose track of what the visual baseline ever was for a person. They start off replacing the timbers in Theseus’s ship but end up building a hovercraft.

The reductio ad absurdum of all such procedures is Madonna, who now resembles a living cartoon character. It was recently reported that she is looking for a surgeon to “return her to a more natural look”. This presents the intriguing possibility of a new market for the distressing of overworked celebrity faces, a bit like the deliberate antiquing of sideboards.

Dream of the Minotaur

Yesterday’s blog entry about mazes brought to mind a dream I once had related to the story of Theseus and the Labyrinth. What follows is what I recorded from that dream on July 24, 1999.

Dream of the Minotaur

A very rich man leads me behind his estate to where he has a long, narrow bull pen. Its dimensions I would estimate to be 10 to 15 feet wide and 200 yards long. The pen appears to be a maze of fencing with at least three narrow corridors going the length of the pen. At various places there are openings that would permit the bull to go from the interior section to the perimeter sections, and in certain places allow the bull to exit the fencing altogether.

My host leaves and it is my understanding that the object of this little game is survival. As I see the bull approaching from the far end, I begin examining the fencing to see where or whether I can climb over or whether the bull will be kept from me if he charges. It is mostly made of rickety slats and wire. I soon realize that since the bull can leave the maze of fencing, I must be able to enter it in order to escape, and suspect that the bull will be faster than I, so that survival will become a matter of wits for me, man against beast, as well as a matter of endurance, since I have no weapon. As long as I am pursued, I must make plans for escaping the bull's reach.

The central corridor is lower than the outer alleys. As I pass the bull, he is down below and I am safely able to reach and explore the complex fencing at the other end of the pen/cage/maze, which seems more elaborate, with higher fences. I see that I am able to climb up on the fencing here and perhaps find safety somehow.

Suddenly, the bull becomes a man. Another young man arrives, and after a brief hug (they appear to be old friends) they say a few words and this other man departs.

The bull / man turns to me now, a tall red-headed fellow with short dreadlock-like curls. We strike up a conversation. I learn that the rich man at the dream's beginning was the bull's father. He, the bull / man, is extremely interested in my life, my background, and especially my involvement in the arts. He wants to arrange a trip with me to New York City where we can go take in the New York arts scene.

I wake.


EdNotes: Visit Wikipedia for more information about the Minotaur of Greek mythology. For a compelling follow up read, find a copy of Andre Gide's Two Legends: Oedipus and Theseus.

Nietzsche’s Concept of Eternal Recurrence

"This life as you now live it and have lived it, you will have to live once more and innumerable times more; and there will be nothing new in it, but every pain and every joy and every thought and sigh and everything immeasurably small or great in your life must return to you-all in the same succession and sequence-even this spider and this moonlight between the trees, and even this moment and I myself. The eternal hourglass of existence is turned over and over, and you with it, a grain of dust." ~Friedrich Nietzsche

“Do you remember what you told me once? That every passing minute is another chance to turn it all around.” ~ Tom Cruise as David Aames, Vanilla Sky

Some people consider Friedrich Nietzsche one of the most exciting philosophers of all time. Certainly his ideas have been influential and his writing dramatic. And whatever your take on his point of view, the themes he addresses are provoking enough to give us something to gnaw on and make us think. And in the end, to some extent, maybe that was all he intended in a world where people generally just went about their business and accepted the values of the culture they were immersed in.

The quote above addresses one of his original constructs, the idea of life being an eternal recurrence. Christian teaching is not alone in giving weight to the decisions of this life by indicating their significance with regard to eternal outcomes. Nietzsche, on the other hand, chooses to suggest our decisions in this life have weight because how we choose to live today will be replayed over and over again unto eternity.

It’s a very unusual perspective in some respects, a variant on reincarnation, which also has us returning indefinitely, but in differing capacities. Scholars have argued whether the idea is meant as a serious conjecture or a concept to make us more thoughtful about our behavior here and now.

I would suggest that Nietzsche’s sole intent with this concept of eternal recurrence was to get us plugged in to the significance of our acts. His was a brilliant mind, but as far as I am aware he does not offer a supporting argument for the notion proposed. It is a certainty that he understood that even if we ourselves were recurring, our circumstances would not be, for times change, culture changes, history is unfolding all around us.

This theme of eternal recurrence is echoed in Cameron Crowe’s film Vanilla Sky. Once one grasps the film’s premise, the viewer is like Theseus following Ariadne’s thread to find his way through the labyrinth. In the film, David Aames is unaware that he is experiencing this “eternal recurrence”, but only knows that something is terribly wrong. The climactic scene on the rooftop brings a number of historically significant philosophical questions to the surface.

Of Nietzsche, we know that his ideas went on to influence innumerable existential philosophers and lay the groundwork for postmodern explorers. He lived passionately, a philosopher whose roots were less grounded in reason (the dominant theme of the Rennaissance and modern rationalism) and drawn more from the Dionysian, the experiential and the irrational.

While living in Italy, Nietzsche had a nervous breakdown while witnessing a man beating a horse. Embracing the horse, whose suffering was more than he could bear, Nietzsche fell apart and spent the last ten years of his life in a broken state.

Nietzsche’s writings are challenging to put your mind around in part because he did not believe it necessary to have a systematic, rational viewpoint. More than once he declares his distrust of systematizers. In this regard he may have foreshadowed the postmodernists who do not find it necessary to be altogether consistent in their own views. He may have even suggested that atttempts to be consistent are a waste of time.

What matters, he asserted, is not getting everything figured out, but experiencing our lives as fully as possible and becoming all we’re meant to be. “The present moment is all, so let us make the best use of it and of ourselves.” With that I would agree; the truth is true wherever it is found.

The two photos on this page are of the house where Nietzche lived in Turin, at via Carlo Albierto 6, when he had his nervous breakdown and of the plaque stating that Nietzsche lived there. In 1861Turin was the first capital of united Italy. The capital later moved to Florence and ultimately to Rome.

I painted the portrait featuring Nietzsche’s famous mustache, above right, this past weekend.