Abstract

Agamemnon returns victorious from Troy; the Argive Elders who form the chorus of the play greet and praise him. On a first reading the praise seems lukewarm, the passage as a whole rambling and uninteresting.1 Is the address unimportant because our eyes are intent upon Agamemnon and his retinue? If so, the tone of these anapaests would still be puzzling, in giving the king's arrival the effect of an anticlimax, particularly considering the duration and nature of the dramatic preparation for it.