The Marriage of Cassandra and the Oresteia: Text, Image, Performance

In this paper I seek, first, to re-examine the bridal imagery surrounding Cassandra in Aeschylus's Agamemnon, and, second, to suggest how iconography, and its relationship to performance, can connect this scene's concerns more thoroughly with the two successive dramas of the Oresteia. Cassandra's language casts her as the bride of Apollo, in contrast to the staging of her entrance as Agamemnon's bride. Other aspects of staging, moreover, cast Cassandra as a surrogate for Iphigenia. Attention to language and performance also suggests that Cassandra's cries to Apollo Agyiates are initiated by her perception not of an aniconic stone block, but of a statue of Apollo. My main concern throughout the argument will be the effect of Cassandra's relationship with Apollo on the action of the Oresteia as a whole.