“Now I’ve no hope to unwind, The clew of Heart’s desire. To think is pain when thought is blind, The smoke of a soul on fire.”
~ ‘Agamemnon’ by Aeschylus (G. M. Cookson translation. p63. line 1043)
Though Agamemnon is ashamed at the lavish entry his wife set up, he yields, and walks on the purple robes laid out and goes into the palace. Clytemnestra asks Cassandra to come out, but she doesn’t. She doesn’t even talk. Clytemnestra grows impatient and leaves. The Chorus sympathizes with Cassandra, thinking that she is sad for being brought in as a slave and tries to talk to her. Cassandra cries out to Apollo.
In the long exchange that follows between the Chorus and Cassandra, we get to know some backstory of Agamemnon’s father, Atreus and Cassandra herself. Cassandra calls the house a horrible dungeon, a house of sin with stones drenched in the blood of kin. She says that an infant was killed and fed to the father. Later, she says it was because of incest. Atreus’s brother had slept with his wife, and as a punishment, he killed his brother’s infant son. She describes the bloodshed and the horrors of the past and the future vividly, but the Chorus is not able to comprehend the gravity of the situation fully. About her own backstory, Cassandra says Apollo wooed her, and she agreed if she got a gift, but after getting the gift of prophecy, she went back on her promise. Apollo got upset and cursed her saying that even if she prophesied no one would understand her.