#iphigenia the wronged

[iphigenia-thewronged]

[A knock on the door. It seems someone has come for a visit.]

((-@dream-of-elias ))

~ Iphigenia peers out the window and lights up when she see’s Elias outside. She opens the door for him, waving hello. ~

Elias!! Hello!!

~ She turns around and peers into the living room, where it looks like Scare and Bownes are watching a movie together on his laptop. Bownes waves hello from the couch and Iphigenia makes a shh motion with her finger. In a more hushed tone, she says; ~

Right, we must be quiet, they are watching theatre together. Moving picture.. moving.. movie, yes, they’re watching a movie.

[bownes-anon]

Heyyy buddd uh

Bad

Bad news

Huh? What happened?

~ Right now, it seems Bownes is cooking up grilled cheese and tomato soup for Iphegenia, who’s sitting on the couch reading a book on gardening Bownes gave to her. ~

[iphigenia-thewronged]

~ She lights up a little bit at her cue to talk about this stuff. Bownes seems interested too, although he’s familiar with many Greco-Roman classics, and by extension Hellenic mythology, he’s more than curious to hear it from someone who was from that period. ~

Mhm! Lady Demeter is the goddess of the harvest, and when Lady Persephone was abducted by Lord Hades, she turned the world into a great winter in her grief. Why Lady Persephone was in the underworld, she was tricked into eating a pomegranate, six seeds specifically, and so she became bound to Lord Hades realm. Eventually, Lord Helios- or maybe it was Arethusa -told Lady Demeter who kidnapped Lady Persephone, she went to the underworld to bargain with Lord Hades. Because she had eaten six pomegranate seeds, she would stay in the underworld for six months out of the year, which is when Lady Demeter is distraught so it’s autumn and winter. The other six months of the year, it’s spring and summer because Lady Demeter is happy to be reunited with her daughter.

~ She wonders if her own mother would’ve bought the world into a great winter upon her death. And that makes her think about something else. ~

I remember my mother showed me she had commissioned an artist to paint a scene on a vase for her wedding day. It showed Lady Persephone walking with Lord Hades to the underworld. Except, she didn’t look upset.

|| @that-one-anon ||

~ There’s a gentle, rhythmic knock at Scare’s door. ~

Heya, I made some cake for my birthday, I wanted to know if you wanted to come have some?

~..Huh. I didn’t even know it was his birthday. ~

- 🦷🎀 @bownes-anon

|/ theres some scrambling and a wierd groan heard before Scare is at their door. their floor, as per usual, is a mess. its a lot more messy by the bed. \|

"Oh, yeah yeah yeah!!"

|/ their ears then turn down a bit as they realize that they didn't know. \|

"Wait its your birthday?"

[motherhenna]

"This architect of vengeance / growing strong in the house / with no fear of her husband - / here she waits [...] / the stealth, the law of the hearth, the mother - / Memory-womb of child-avenging Fury!" - Aeschylus, "Agamemnon"

[false-guinevere]

I can’t decide if Electra looking like a gender-flipped Agamemnon or a carbon copy of Clytemnestra interests me more.

Either she’s deeply happy with her looks and even steals things of his thrown out to wear. If Agamemnon isn’t here then she’ll simply become Agamemnon. She consumes his memory and being until she can no longer tell where she begins and her father ends. Clytemnestra will not look at her and Electra’s never been more proud.

OR she absolutely despises her looks. Can barely bare to look in a mirror when all she sees is Clytemnestra. And eventually she decides she’ll become what she thinks her mother should be. She’ll be to Orestes what her mother should’ve been to her father. She is not Clytemnestra, she tells herself, as she puts on her clothes and jewelry. Orestes cannot look at her without seeing his mother’s dying face.

Both ways though, it makes her relationship with Clytemnestra even more fucked up. The personality is all Clytemnestra though.

[ironspdr6700]

WHY IS CLYTEMNESTRA JUST AND GUILTY AT THE SAME TIME (ACCORDING TO AESCHYLUS)?

Medical school, unfortunately, has been taking up more of my reading time than I'd like. But since we're on 14-HOURS blackouts now, it gives me time to at least read my favorite Greek tragedies in more detail. And of the big 3… My favorite by far is Aeschylus.

I recently read some passages from Gilbert Murray's book "Aeschylus: Creator of Greek Tragedy" and I can't recommend it enough for anyone who is a fan of the Oresteia, because you read Murray first and then you re-read Aeschylus in a totally different way and all the parts that seemed incomprehensible at first make sense. I've read a lot of posts here on Tumblr that defend or demonize Agamemnon or Clytemnestra or Electra, defending one, condemning the other or claiming that they are all equally bad, but I think the problem is that we read the saga of the house of Atreus from our modern perspective. And I think that shows that we don't know how to read Greek tragedies. Tragedy… AUTHENTIC GREEK TRAGEDY AS AN ARTISTIC CREATION, according to Aristotle, should provoke TERROR and COMPASSION in the viewer at the same time. Tragic heroes are different from the rest of traditional heroes because they are not worthy of being imitated, but are trapped in a situation that none of us would want to be in. And we regret that because if we were in their place we wouldn't know how to make a better decision.

Precisely because we are a modern audience, we feel more comfortable with Euripides' theatre, his criticism of mythology and the lack of ethics of the gods (don't get me wrong, I love his Medea and the Trojan Women, which is, in my opinion, one of the greatest treasures of universal literature), but we find it difficult to get into the thought of Aeschylus.

Because Aeschylus belongs to the last link of Archaic Greece, which was transformed into the Classical and rationalist Greece of Euripides, Socrates and Thucydices. Aeschylus was a deeply religious man who lived through decades of transformation: the passage from tyranny in Athens to aristocracy and then to democracy, the battles of Marathon and Salamis between the small Greek city-states against the "excessive" Persian empire and the beginning of the golden age of Athens marked his vision of the world that Divine Justice had an active participation in the world to always balance the scales.

And this also involves a transformation in the conception of Law and Justice in that period of Greek thought. Like the archaic idea that justice is only a synonym for revenge, it becomes a state-mediated process to maintain social peace. According to the archaic conception EVERY MURDER OF ANY MEMBER OF THE FAMILY MUST BE AVENGEANCE, it is not an option, it is an OBLIGATION. From that point of view, Clytemnestra has every right in the world to take revenge on Agamemnon for the sacrifice of Iphigenia, not even the Furies have anything against her because she is not Agamemnon's blood relative, which, superficially, would seem to close the cycle. The only problem is that this is a cycle of violence, and the more violence you add, the more times the cycle keeps repeating itself and the more the wheel of Ananke, the Need to satisfy the spilled violence, keeps turning.

Clytemnestra calls for help from Zeus, "Zeus, through whom all things come to an end", so that she can succeed in her plan. If Clytemnestra kills Agamemnon, it is because ZEUS HAS ALLOWED HER TO DO SO. In Aeschylus, no event ever happens that was not the will of Zeus. Zeus is the guarantor of destiny, the protector of supplicants, the guardian of hospitality… And he is also Zeus the Avenger, in charge of making sure that everyone pays for their crimes in due time. And Agamemnon has a long list of crimes to carry out, not just Iphigenia; as leader of the expedition against Troy, he has allowed the army to destroy everything during the siege, including the altars of the gods… the refuge for the supplicants.

"The altars and temples of their gods have disappeared; the entire race of a people has been annihilated."

Zeus, as guardian of hospitality, sent Agamemnon and Menelaus against Troy for the abduction of Helen:

"Paris, who, having been welcomed into the home of the Atreids, dishonoured the table of hospitality by the abduction of a wife."

But Agamemnon allows his army to GO TO OVER THE TOP IN REVENGE

"Paris will never boast, nor the city that was his accomplice, that the deed outweighed the punishment… he lost the stolen garment, and ruined the house of his parents along with his own country. WITH DOUBLE PUNISHMENT the sons of Priam PAID FOR THEIR GUILT."

So now it is Zeus, Suppliant and Avenger, who must again balance the scales.

"Now those who conquered my country are in turn sentenced by the gods."

As a second point in favor, Clytemnestra, at least in the first work of the trilogy, is more than just a woman, she seems more like she is possessed by a divinity:

"…say not that I am the wife of Agamemnon. That ancient and fierce spirit of vengeance that garnished the cruel feast of Atreus, that is he who, taking the appearance of the wife of him who lies there, avenged on a man the sacrifice of two children."

This was part of archaic thought, the idea of ​​demons or minor divinities that influence the thought or behavior or actions of human beings and also that the crimes of parents must be paid for by their children if they are not avenged. One of the most interesting posts I read is one that commented that, in archaic literature, one never knows exactly where human freedom begins and where divine will ends. BUT THIS DOES NOT MEAN THAT FREE WILL DOES NOT EXIST AND THEREFORE THAT HUMAN BEINGS ARE EXEMPT FROM RESPONSIBILITY FOR THEIR ACTIONS.

And this is where Clytemnestra also becomes guilty. First, because she murders Cassandra, a Trojan princess, a priestess, a slave who has no say.

"I am forced to suffer the yoke of slavery"

She treats her as if she were Agamemnon's lover, which highlights 1) Clytemnestra's hypocrisy, because she had also taken Aegisthus as a lover, and 2) this is more important, THE LACK OF COMPASSION. Greek tragedy must generate terror and compassion because they are the two emotions that make us human. Only the person who is authentically compassionate, that is, literally feels the suffering of others as their own, as a shared experience and inheritance, can be called an authentic human being in the highest spiritual sense of the word. Clytemnestra HAS NO PITY, on the contrary, she delights in the very violence she commits:

"She, after singing her funeral dirges like a swan, fell too, and lies there beside her lover. Delicious contentment that satisfies the pleasures of my loves!"

Clytemnestra triumphs as Iphigenia's mother, but fails as a queen, just as Agamemnon triumphs as a king but fails as Iphigenia's father. Clytemnestra does not care about the opinion of the chorus of elders, she does not care that Aegisthus establishes a tyranny and that the respect for majesty that Agamemnon did have for his subjects is transformed into fear, into threats of hunger and deprivation for those who oppose her.

It is true that Clytemnestra is justified (Justice in the most archaic sense of the word) in her revenge in the first act, but that does not give her the right to laugh, or even to feel proud of what she has just done. "For my own part, I boast of my work. If it were lawful to pour libations on a corpse, they would be just, most just on this occasion." Not even Odysseus, who murdered 108 people in his own house despite having received the approval of Zeus and Athena, takes delight in the slaughter, because "it is not godly to rejoice over the death of these men."

In the end, Clytemnestra does not seem to die for killing Agamemnon (that is Aegisthus). She dies for having killed Cassandra, as she herself prophesies:

"… when a woman pays for my life with her life, and a man atones with his blood for the blood of the unhappy husband of a bad wife… I ask you that my hateful murderers receive from my avengers the payment for the easy death of a defenseless slave."

And that is what leads Orestes to be one step closer to absolution than Clytemnestra will ever be. Orestes obeys Apollo's orders, but against his will, forced by fate, he finds neither pleasure nor satisfaction in matricide. It is the first step that will later lead him to be absolved by Athena. While Clytemnestra, even in death, has no compassion, she cannot forgive even her own son when he sees himself subjected to an unwanted fate.

[iphigenia-thewronged]

~ In her hands, she’s holding one of those jewelry making kits with the plastic beads. Her hands are full, which must be why she “kicked” the door to knock. ~

I hope I didn’t wake you, I just wanted to know if you wanted to make bracelets with me, Bownes got me this kit and I made one with him already!

~ She extends her wrist, showing a bracelet with pink beads and very obviously fake pearls, as well as a seashell pendant. ~

~ There’s a gentle, rhythmic knock on Elias’s bedroom’s door. It sounds almost like how Bownes would knock, but like it’s coming from someone who’s,, kicking the door? ~

May I come in?

- @iphigenia-thewronged

[Elias jolts awake, doing a very poor job of pretending to be well-rested when as he opens the door.]

hey, uh, what's up, kid?

[potionwine]

Resigned to the fact that I am probably the only Anabella Rosfield-Lesage simp in the whole world, but just in case I’m not, could any comrades make yourself known at the front desk please

[meekmedea]

field trip to District (1)1

alt. field trips gone wrong

Yet another field trip, however, our trio (Clemensia/Felix/Iphigenia) end up at D11 instead of D1. Oops 

They can play the blame game all day long, but what really matters is they didn’t realize they got onto the wrong train (It was Felix’s fault)  

Meanwhile back on the proper train they should have gone on…well, nobody has noticed just yet

Their teacher did say that the train wasn’t going to wait for any late stragglers

Sejanus: it’s too bad that Clemmie didn’t make it today 

Coriolanus: *internally seething that Clemmie has allowed Sejanus to call her that*

Coriolanus in the calmest voice ever: yeah, too bad

To his chagrin, Sejanus and Livia are on semi-friendly terms now 

Clemmie is thrilled that Sejanus has more friends because then he won't depend on Coryo as much 

Coryo, not so much because it's Livia 

Imagine being in his shoes: first he has to 'share' Clemmie with Livia, now Sejanus? Good grief

Livia has ulterior motives for befriending Sejanus: more time with Clemmie (+ getting brownie points with her) AND she gets to annoy Coryo - like what more could a girl ask for?

~~~~

So off to 11, our trio goes!

Status: currently undetected

They're baffled when they arrive and they’re like: umm… I don’t remember District 1 looking this rundown

The trio don’t make it far off the train station when the Peacekeepers there are like: aren’t you kids supposed to be at school? 

They get hustled off to a school despite protests that they’re not from around these parts 

Felix attempts to use his family name to get out of this, it doesn't work → like sure, kid. And I’m President Ravinstill

Welcome to the world’s most miserable playground (at least in the trio’s eyes)

It’s not actually that bad, there’s just a stark difference in playgrounds built in the Capitol vs the Districts 

Felix: okay, we need to figure out how to get back to the Capitol

Iphigenia: where’s Clemmie? 

Felix:

`

Clemensia, who’s wandered off and staring at the boy who’s staring back at her: Hello?

Unknown district boy: You’re not from around here

Clemensia: Who are you? (in the back of her mind - why does he seem familiar?)

Surprise! It's Reaper

~~~~

Reaper wants to know how he got roped into helping these Capitol kids get home, he still has no idea 

He blames the girl with the pretty smile. (Clemmie’s smile strikes again. Womp, womp)

The trio’s current plan is to call up one of the adults from the Capitol. Easy, right? 

This isn’t the Capitol, there aren’t many places where they can have easy access to phones. Only certain places have one: the local peacekeeper base, the mayor’s house, government owned buildings, etc. 

And because people don’t believe they’re from the Capitol (the peacekeepers from earlier) and they heard anti-capitol sentiments in D11, our trio is in a tough spot 

These kids are like: should we use fake names?? 

So instead of Felix, Iphigenia and Clemensia; we get Fennel, Zinnia and Clementine (Felix came up with them, Iphigenia said the names were stupid, Clemmie was just along for the ride)

Reaper is the same age as them and doesn't believe their fake names for a second - also Felix cannot keep a secret to save his life so their fake names are very short-lived haha

Iphigenia: What if we caused a disturbance? If they drag us off to the peacekeepers, we could probably explain our situation 

Reaper: you’d probably get a public whipping instead

Horrified looks from the trio: HUH?

Because face it, there’s definitely a disconnect between the districts and the Capitol. Information they have about one another is definitely out-dated

There’s probably some attempt at grilling Reaper on the state of things because this is NOT what they were learning at school

Plan-wise 

They eventually settle on something safer, there’s a phone in the principal’s office and it’s a matter of how to get access to it 

Reaper agrees to help distract the principal long enough that one of them can use the phone to make a call

After some quick debate - Clemmie is chosen to make the call because Felix prefers causing the distraction & Iphigenia doesn't care so long as someone gets them home 

Reaper thinks our trio is a little weird, especially when Clemmie only agrees to the plan once he confirms that he won’t get into trouble for helping them

Reaper won’t admit it out loud, but he’s oddly touched that she’s so vehement on that point 

There’s a bit of trouble with the calls:

The first few calls don’t go through - the line is busy or they aren’t there 

Felix is running out of ideas and they’re running out of time. 

Then Felix suggests: What if we called the President? He knows his great uncle’s private number and there’s no way he’d leave them in the Districts 

Except the call goes to voicemail, the line is busy - the President is probably on call with someone at the moment 

This is where future knowledge comes in clutch:

To reach the President without delay, there’s a specific extension code to reach the President or any phone in the Presidential mansion in case of emergencies - Clemmie knows it, Felix does not

Prior to their horrible falling out Coriolanus and Clemensia (as adults) were close enough that she would have known it. 

Alt. in the future, Felix was the one to have told her about it

Regardless, Felix, at his current age, is deemed too young to need to know it.  

So to dial the extension, Clemensia needs Felix dial the private number first

Because there’s no reasonable way for kid!Clemmie would know the extension code - it’s shared amongst close acquaintances and family (though Clemmie and Felix are close, this doesn’t extend to her father and President Ravinstill)

So Felix dials the President's private number again and when he’s distracted, peeking out the room to make sure nobody’s coming by, she dials the extension

It works and when it goes through, she immediately passes the phone over to Felix to explain things 

~~~~

Back at the Capitol:

President Ravinstill is relieved to hear Felix’s voice 

Because by this point, the field trip has concluded and as the kids are getting picked up, it gets awkward when there’s adults waiting around for children who never went on said field trip

Panic is at an all-time high. People are connecting the dots that our trio got onto a train, just not the right one

People are being threatened, camera feeds are being scoured, the works 

Let it be said, President Ravinstill has a strong sense of family loyalty. Also his great nephew’s a child lost somewhere in Panem, he has good reason to worry. In the Capitol, the Ravinstill name protects Felix. But in the Districts? It could be very well a death sentence  

So the phone call is a relief  

It’s a mad dash to District 11 - the adults are expecting the worst

To their relief, they come across their children in one piece and very much in good spirits 

Maybe even playing with the District children? - they’re all young enough that the prejudices haven’t entirely set in 

Clemmie is trying to befriend Reaper (it’s working, shhh don’t tell him) and the longer she talks to him, the more guilty she feels for not doing enough in her original timeline 

Reaper: You’re a strange girl

Clemmie: Thank you :)

Reaper: That’s not a compliment

~~~~

Our trio doesn’t get in trouble for their antics, but their parents do have a serious conversation about paying better attention to their surroundings

Felix also learns the phone extension a lot earlier, just in case

And of course he teaches Clemmie and Iphigenia

Two weeks later, his parents tell him, the extension isn’t for him to give to his friends so that they can call him to get him out of talking to his relatives during family gatherings. It’s only for emergencies. Whoops

President Ravinstill thinks it’s a little funny that Felix doesn’t like talking to his aunts so much that he considers it an emergency to have his friends call him up, but in the face of Felix’s parents he definitely does ‘scold’ Felix for irresponsible use 

It slips his mind to ask how Felix had been able to contact him, since he'd been on a different call before Clemmie's extension made theirs take priority. He eventually chalks it up to a coincidence - bad electricity that week in the Capitol, D5 had some maintenance issues. Everyone's calls were getting cut off abruptly

~~~~

Masterlist of other hcs and rambles that are part of this AU

[iphigenia-thewronged]

~ Iphigenia knocks on Odessa’s door. ~

Ms. Pa- I mean, Ms. Odessa?

[iphigenia-thewronged]

~ Iphigenia is standing by the still glowing fig tree, looking up at it. She’s begun picking at her fingers a bit. She needs this to work. She knows Elias needs this to work too. And so does Scare. As much as she tries to hide it, she’s very visibly distressed, now more then ever. She watches as Elias and Altair enter the lush garden carrying Bownes’s corpse. She still can’t bring herself to look at it. ~

|| @thatconfusedanon ||

[An aggressive knock is at the door.]

Amadeus!

[Oh, great. It's Altair's best friend.]

[Quiet mumbling can be heard outside the door. It seems Elias isn't alone.]

((@dream-of-elias @iphigenia-thewronged))

| It's a good while before Altair comes up to greet Elias and Iphigenia at the door. He comes up looking like he had just come from someone's funeral, hair pulled back and in formal attire. Key to note he was smiling until he saw the dearly hated Elias. For just a moment there was some kind of glare but it mellowed out... Somewhat. |

Oh, hello you.... and Iphigenia. What brings you two..? Found anything?

| He moves aside for the two to come on inside with only the slightest gesture to beckon the both

[longagoitwastuesday]

me: u Gh Agamemnon

me reading in Dictys Cretensis that Ulysses scammed Clytemnestra and the rest to get Iphigenia for the sacrifice, and that "when Agamemnon knew what had happened, he wanted to flee, either because of his love for his daughter or because he wanted no part in so criminal a sacrifice": You go, Odysseus ✨💕🥺

[0ghostwatcher]

Clytemnestra

Queen of Mycenae

"He had it coming"

the half sister of Helen,she had a husband and a newborn baby both Killed by Agamemnon then made Clytemnestra his wife.Agamemnon sacrificed their daughter Iphigenia to the goddess Artemis for favorable wind and cause he pissed of the goddess by killing her fawn .During period of Agamemnon's long absence in Trojan war, Clytemnestra began a love affair with Aegisthus, her husband's cousin,plotting Agamemnon's demise. Agamemnon, having arrived at his palace with his war prize, the Trojan princess Cassandra, in tow and being greeted by his wife, entered the palace for a banquet while Cassandra remained in the chariot. Clytemnestra waited until he was in the bath, and then entangled him in a cloth net and stabbed him. She after years will die in the hands of her kids

[agnesandhilda]

do you think the time my actual irl father held me at knifepoint is evident in how insane I get about iphigenia's sacrifice and the binding of isaac

[iphigenia-thewronged]

Please, I must stay. I promise, we’re gonna bring him back, he’ll still be able to look after me.

~ Poor girl is bawling her eyes out. She doesn’t want to leave. ~

~ It seems like Artemis has entered Bownes’s… Ribs’s? Scare’s? Home. Hunt stands before Iphigenia, who seems to be praying to the huntress. ~

Come on. You can’t stay here anymore.

[michaelectras]

and what if i pulled out a special type of choice of object made by men and theory of psychoanalysis and made electra complex lucifer real. what then.