Note:

Written 1900, unpublished.

The poem is taken from the prologue of Aeschylus's Agamemnon (458 B.C.E.), the first play of the Oresteia trilogy. King Atreus is the father of Agamemnon and Menelaus. The watchman sees the symbolic fire on Mount Arachnaion, which signifies the end of the Trojan War and Agamemnon's return. Upon his homecoming, he will be murdered by his wife Clytemnestra for having sacrificed their daughter, Iphigenia, to the goddess Artemis. The omen of the light also signals the next tragedy that will befall the cursed House of Atreus.

(Back to "When the Watchman Saw the Light")