The more I study Aeschylus the more clearly I perceive how much he tells us of his characters. The exhibition of character is not his main purpose, and he spends less space upon it than Sophocles or Euripides, not to mention more modern dramatists, but his touches are so sure that the final picture is surprisingly complete. In one case this is generally admitted. Few will dispute that Clytaemnestra is one of the most vivid and striking figures in all tragic drama. But she is an exception, and Aeschylus shows her to us more fully than any of his figures except the still enigmatic Prometheus. (Eteocles in the Septem makes as many speeches as Clytaemnestra, but they are less revealing.) In most of his plays the speeches allotted to the characters are so scanty, and so much dictated by the requirements of the action, that one has to know the play very well before one perceives how much the spare touches of character reveal. That point was only impressed on me when I started to learn the Agamemnon by heart. Then I really grasped it and will try to illustrate it.

Agamemnon himself is the best illustration to begin with, for he is less complex than his wife. He conforms to a well-known type, which most of us have met. He combines an imposing façade with inner weakness. Aeschylus, it is true, does not directly mention his appearance. That we learn from Homer (Iliad iii. 166 f.); and it is noteworthy how close Aeschylus keeps to Homer in depicting Agamemnon.