The House of Atreus | ONC 2023 Shortlist

afterword

For this story, I borrowed from multiple sources. One of them, of course, being the Iliad. But though being mentioned, none of the female characters actually appear in the play by Homer.  So I turned to other ancient plays for reference.

Euripides and Aeschylus have both covered the Mycenaen royal family in multiple plays, as does Sophocles. And those were my main source for constructing a general plot for my own story. The Flies by Jean-Paul Sartre, a modern play, gave some interesting insights into themes revolving around free will, as that is a big part of Sartre's own philosophical theories. Unfortunately, due to the tight schedule of the ONC, I was unable to read all of these sources in full and had to solely rely on summaries and excerpts, but I plan to do so at some point when I start to revise my novella and possibly expand it.

One thing that I noticed pretty early on, is that even when plays were named after Elektra or Iphigenia (like e.g. Electra by both Euripides and Sophocles and Iphigenia in Aulis by Euripides), they seem to be mostly about their brother Orestes, their father, or Achilles instead and you barely seem to learn anything substantial about either of these women. This is pretty obvious also given the fact, that this particular myth is commonly referred to as the Oresteia. There is, however, an interesting characterisation of Klytemnestra in Aeschylus' Agamemnon. Both she and her husband have dark and light sides, so none of them makes a clear-cut hero or villain.

Another point worth noting is that all of these plays were written by men. There has been a surge of retellings of mythological stories written by female authors and centring around overlooked or villainized female characters from mythology in the last couple of years and that was definitely my main motivation for wanting to write this story. Of those, there are multiple ones, that centre around the women of the Atreus family. I have held off reading them so far so I could write my own story without being influenced by them, but I might've ended up being close to some of these, they all retell the same myths after all. I'd still like to list some of the books I've come across, in case someone might be interested in reading more about these characters:

- Elektra by Jennifer Saint

- Clytemnestra by Costanza Casati

- Daughters of Sparta by Claire Heywater

- A Spartan's Sorrow by Hannah M. Lynn

Madeline Miller's Circe, which I have read, was of course also a great inspiration for this story, even though it focuses on a character from a completely different myth. Apart from that, The Handmaid's Tale by Magaret Atwood and the show based on the book, that I was watching while I was writing this, inspired not the mythological, but some of the feminist aspects of the story. And last, but not least, one of my biggest influences was Kassandra by German writer Christa Wolf. This story focuses on the Trojan seer and princess and retells the Iliad from her perspective. I read this book a long time ago for school but it still has a huge impact on me years later. The way it's written is unlike anything I've ever read. It's a little bit challenging as the writing style and structure are quite unique and the plot is not delayed chronologically, but if you're interested in feminist retellings, you might want to check it out. I believe there is an English translation of it available.

I would've also liked to dedicate more time to both Helen and Kassandra as I have changed both their fates in this story to something that, in my opinion, seemed a little more deserving for them but the tight word count prevented me from diving into more backstories, so they remain side characters. Interestingly enough, I first wanted my trio of women to be Helen – Kassandra – Klytemnestra but the existence of another ONC entry that was about those three had me change my plan and so I ended up writing about Klytemnestra and her two daughters instead.

The Helen in this story wasn't stolen by Paris, she also didn't run away with him because she was madly in love. She did because she saw a way out, because she saw a choice for once when so much of her life had been dictated by others. She did leave behind her daughter though but I didn't say she was likeable or didn't make egotistical choices. I never felt that it was right to have her be reunited with Menelaus at the end of the Iliad, like it was all just a marital fight and not a war that lasted a whole decade.

Kassandra though... She's such a tragic figure and honestly, everything about her life sucks. She was given the gift of prophecy by Apollo but he was expecting a certain proof of her devotion to him in return. When she refused to have sex with him, he cursed her so that no one would believe her, even though she told the truth. It just didn't feel right to have Klytemnestra bash her head in like it goes in the stories, so I let her live. Maybe she and Helen can meet up again and live somewhere together.

Another figure that I am very interested in is Hecate. She's one of the more obscure and mysterious Goddesses. I'm not saying 'Greek' here as she doesn't originally seem to belong to the ancient Greeks. The idea to have Iphigenia become the Goddess Hecate came to me from a mention in one of the articles I read when I researched these myths. Apparently, Hesiod wrote something about her turning into the Goddess. But how that happened remains a mystery. How a mortal princess can be turned into a deity that has the status of a Titan in the Greek Pantheon and existed before the Olympians, remains unknown. There seem to be only mentions of a text that he wrote, but the text itself is sadly lost.

During the research and writing process of this story, I decided to deviate a little from historical accuracy for the sake of general aesthetics to fit better the vision I had of my story. Ultimately I created my own version of ancient Greece, which might not align with the actual Greece of this period in time. I want to clarify that I am in no way a historian, I merely have an interest in these topics but I still usually shy away from writing historical fiction because I'm afraid of not being accurate or realistic enough.

I have not mentioned the period my story is set in, one anchor point here is the mention of the Trojan War. Now, the Iliad is ultimately fiction, so there is a great debate about whether the war even took place at all. Though there are archaeological finds of a city that is most likely to have been Troy or Illion, in what is Turkey today. This city is also actually a bunch of cities built on top of each other because they have been destroyed and rebuilt multiple times. Historians think one of those might've been the Troy from the play. Long story short, if we assume the Iliad is based on true events (and it does look like Homer might've been inspired by a real military conflict between two tribes), the Trojan War would be placed sometime around 1000-800 BC.

Another anchor point is Mycenae itself. In the Iliad and in this story you've just read, it's a powerful kingdom, however, Mycenae collapsed around 1200 BC and the palace was destroyed. This mighty dynasty thrived during the Bronze Age, which, like the Trojan War, predates the 'classic' ancient Greece as we mostly know it today. There was a theatre built during the Hellenistic period, but ultimately, the place was abandoned.

Why am I mentioning this? For one, as you can see, even Homer's Iliad might not totally be historically accurate, with Mycenae being destroyed as early as 1200 BC and the Trojan War possibly taking place around 200 years later. As I said though, his play is fiction. But what I'm getting at is, that in my story, I choose to portray society more in line with how we picture the classic Hellenistic period as opposed to what it might've actually looked like in the Bronze Age.

The women in my story wear peplos, a garment that wasn't worn until around 500 BC, so much later in time. Mycenaen fashion apparently was inspired a lot by the Minoan one and women there might've worn garments that would've exposed their breasts. This aesthetic however seemed at odds with how women and their status in society are presented in my story so I choose the more restrictive and 'traditional' fashion of the Hellenistic period as the female characters in my story are also based on works that originated in that era (e.g. the plays by Euripides, Sophocles etc.). That is ultimately also what we usually picture when we think of ancient Greece when it comes to clothing.

In the end, this is just a story though, and more so, a fantastical work. This version of Greece that I created is a fictional one. And even though I tried to create an illusion of historical accuracy so readers could be immersed in the story, it is not an account of real historical occurrences.