The HOUSE OF ATREUS IMAGES

Indentification	Image	Description
Agamemnon
Caption: The Death of Agamemnon Creator: Dokimasia Painter Material: Red-figure calyx krater Date: c. 470-460 BC Place Made: Athens Current Location: Boston, Museum of Fine Arts 63.1246		Description: Aegisthus kills Agamemnon who is enveloped in some sort of fabric, blood is already pouring from a wound on his right side. The woman with the axe behind Aegisthus must be Clytemnestra, who plays only a secondary role in this version. The other side of this krater shows the next killing in the cycle: the death of Aegisthus at the hands of Orestes. In this scene again there is an axe-bearing woman behind the killer - either Clytemnestra coming to her lover's defence, as she wishes to do in the Oresteia, or Electra helping her brother. This vase painting corresponds to Aeschylus' Oresteia in the detail of the fabric used to trap Agamemnon but differs in assigning the major role to Aegisthus. The conventional dating of this vase (which can only ever be an approximation) places it before the production of the Oresteia in 456 BC. We may therefore be seeing a reflection of an earlier version of the myth.