ABSTRACT
The description of Iphigenia in the Agamemnon suggests how wise restraint may be expressed: by keeping the head gently bent toward the ground, one exhibits the aidos required of a suppliant. The “robes” in particular, which first make her aidos visible and then trap her, are the focal image of a series of metaphors that play upon the connotations of aidos in relationship to dike and tie her killing both to the capture of Troy and to the murder of Agamemnon. There is at least one other instance, in the stasimon of the Agamemnon, 764-71, where the metaphor involving ate remains opaque, unless one keeps in mind the image of the storm. There is something that vivid metaphors and riddles share, in that both entail an element of surprise and need to be worked through. The metaphor of just revenge as dawning light is key to the very staging of the murder of Agamemnon, which happens at daybreak.
