Klytaimnestra, from The Oresteia, read by Wren Ross

Dokimasia Painter, Mixing bowl (calyx krater) with the killing of Agamemnon, Greek, Early Classical Period, about 460 BC

This great wine bowl shows the murder of the ruler Agamemnon by his wife Klytaimnestra and her lover—the crucial event in Aeschylus’s dramatic trilogy The Oresteia. Listen to Klytaimnestra describe the deed in the translation by Sir Hugh Lloyd-Jones, read by Wren Ross.

And I so acted. I will not deny it.

That he could neither escape nor ward off death.

A covering inextricable, like a net for fish, I threw around him, an evil wealth of raiment.

I struck him twice, [and while uttering two cries, he let go where was his legs,] and after he had fallen, I added a third stroke, a votive offering for the Zeus below the earth, the savior of corpses.

So did he fall, and quickly breathed away his life.

And spouting out a sharp jet of blood, he struck me with a dark shower of gory dew.