{"title":"False Reports and Waiting Wives on the Home Front in Aeschylus’ Agamemnon and Sophocles’ Trachiniae","authors":"E. Weiberg","doi":"10.1086/718677","DOIUrl":null,"url":null,"abstract":"Nostos plays such as Aeschylus’ Agamemnon and Sophocles’ Trachiniae can be productively read within the context of the fifth-century Athenian home front. Focusing on wives’ receipt of false reports about their husbands in Agamemnon and Trachiniae, this article argues that Clytemnestra’s and Deianeira’s tense interactions with messengers both register Athenian wives’ anxieties about receiving untrustworthy information during their husbands’ absences and dramatize a double bind for wives on the home front, whose initiative in response to such reports is both demanded and condemned in the new circumstances presented by Athens’ fifth-century military revolution.","PeriodicalId":46255,"journal":{"name":"CLASSICAL PHILOLOGY","volume":"117 1","pages":"282 - 302"},"PeriodicalIF":0.7000,"publicationDate":"2022-04-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":"0","resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":null,"PeriodicalName":"CLASSICAL PHILOLOGY","FirstCategoryId":"1085","ListUrlMain":"https://doi.org/10.1086/718677","RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"历史学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":null,"EPubDate":"","PubModel":"","JCR":"0","JCRName":"CLASSICS","Score":null,"Total":0}
引用次数: 0
Abstract
Nostos plays such as Aeschylus’ Agamemnon and Sophocles’ Trachiniae can be productively read within the context of the fifth-century Athenian home front. Focusing on wives’ receipt of false reports about their husbands in Agamemnon and Trachiniae, this article argues that Clytemnestra’s and Deianeira’s tense interactions with messengers both register Athenian wives’ anxieties about receiving untrustworthy information during their husbands’ absences and dramatize a double bind for wives on the home front, whose initiative in response to such reports is both demanded and condemned in the new circumstances presented by Athens’ fifth-century military revolution.
期刊介绍:
Classical Philology has been an internationally respected journal for the study of the life, languages, and thought of the Ancient Greek and Roman world since 1906. CP covers a broad range of topics from a variety of interpretative points of view. CP welcomes both longer articles and short notes or discussions that make a significant contribution to the study of Greek and Roman antiquity. Any field of classical studies may be treated, separately or in relation to other disciplines, ancient or modern. In particular, we invite studies that illuminate aspects of the languages, literatures, history, art, philosophy, social life, and religion of ancient Greece and Rome. Innovative approaches and originality are encouraged as a necessary part of good scholarship.