Return to Mycenae

Once again, I traverse through time. I return to Mycenae. Questions lingered unanswered. I seek answers for them. Here and now, I will not find them. I must embark on the journey once again, to where the past remains unchanged, untouched by knowledge and fashion. There, I want to see and hear the people whose fate I can only imagine at best. Names come to mind: Clytemnestra - murderer of her husband, adulteress! Other names follow: Iphigenia, Electra, Orestes, and Agamemnon as well. We have heard their stories, and fragments are readily available, eager to be dismissed. These stories are old. They are often and repeatedly told in the same way: the axe murderer, her lover, and the daughter in inconsolable grief. Why is it so? Why do we not know them differently? Here and now, I want to tell their stories, perhaps more faithfully to reality. I cannot be certain. I must hope. Excerpt from: “Clytemnestra ” “I did not act without consideration and not without consideration. What Iphigenia awakened in me and what he threatened me for forced me to make a decision. What I fought for, not without resistance, had to be protected. I took away the children's father, that's true. But what kind of father was he? What kind of man was Agamemnon and what kind of husband was he to me? Nobody asks about it anymore. Nobody wants to know what and how he really was. They made him my victim and even if it is true, it remains only part of the truth. Nobody, it seems, still wants to know how he ruled us and Mycenae. I was later accused of blind anger and baseless hatred. Time keeps silent about his part. At best, she allows me to be a grieving mother, avenging her child. Half truths are also half lies. Nothing bad should be said about dead people. Don't talk to those who can no longer answer. Those who journeyed to the realm of shadows should be safe from evil speech forever. But what about me? When did I lose this right?”