#house has a draw to him befitting his main character status

[marc--chilton]

(mgv) house's suppression of his omega urges leads to them getting silly when he's older btw. that's kind of why he returned chase's imprint eventually. it's not uncommon for younger omegas to look up to the older ones but chase's view on house is more extreme (adoption basically. ur my dad now :3c ) thanks in part to his own issues. and because house has deprived his own instincts, willingly or not, for companionship (or pack, even, if you wanna get neolithic with it) he ends up surrendering to this role over time (okay guess i'm your dad now)

of course they're both grown men at that point so it's not like they're having lessons of Life Skills or whatever. the only changes in their relationship are just giving tokens (99% of the time are just vending machine snacks; little treats to tell each other they're still there) and chase getting a little clingy around his heats.

[clodiuspulcher]

I’ve talked before how Seneca’s Take on the Agamemnon expands the characters of both Aegisthus and Clytemnestra, and I love that he spends roughly a third of the play on Clytemnestra’s emotional turmoil, on the pain and fear and desperation that have hardened her over these 10 years, that drove her to this point, but I haven’t specifically talked about his development of Aegisthus. So Here:

Seneca’s Agamemnon includes a fascinating expansion of Aegisthus’s character, and is almost closer to 20th-century interpretations than the Greek tragedians’ characterization, which is basically minimal. Aegisthus, too, is more complex and conflicted, and Seneca emphasizes how, like Clytemnestra, he really doesn’t have much of a choice. He’s locked in to this role, so to speak, just as she is, and his actions are circumscribed by fate, like Clytemnestra, but also by his birth, and despite the fact that said fate defines the course of his life, he’s painfully aware that he’s not even the primary actor in his own destiny! The play starts with the ghost of Thyestes lamenting his own fate but also anticipating Aegisthus’s revenge; indeed he calls this the “reason for [his] birth”, but clearly Aegisthus isn’t as eager, and we get this agonizing paragraph As Thyestes(’ ghost) castigates the indecision and cowardice of his son. “Why is your face heavy with shame? Why does your hand tremble and falter, unsure of its purpose? Why do you consult yourself, torment yourself, ask yourself whether this befits you? Look to your mother: it befits you”.  So in act 1, Aegisthus is actually the first character whose indecision is clearly depicted. He struggles with the weight of his destiny, he’s scared and torn and tormented but later it becomes evident despite this deliberation he clearly feels this is the only choice he has. This isn’t the last time Aegisthus’s ah. parentage is discussed, but Thyestes is very direct here: just like when he had Atreus say Agamemnon and Menelaus were Born Evil in Thyestes, here again Seneca asserts that Aegisthus’s specific birth and his place in the House of Atreus as a whole have assigned him a role in ‘overtopping crime with crime’. To Thyestes, and even to Aegisthus himself, This is all he is, and all he ever could be,  despite his own doubts and hesitation. And most of the doubt/hesitation is... self-doubt, stemming from the fact that he clearly internalized this + assoc. Atreus House trauma, and has defined himself by it. Aegisthus in the Greek plays occasionally comes across as pathetic but never quite sympathetic (A few moments in Euripides’ Electra notwithstanding).  Seneca’s Aegisthus is both, because just as he shows how Aegisthus also got to this point, his Aegisthus doesn’t necessarily want or care about this- but it is what he Must do because of who, or What, he is.  The next time he’s mentioned is when Clytemnestra is struggling w/ whether or not she should kill Agamemnon- its About to go down, and Aegisthus calls this moment, “the time I have always feared in mind and spirit”. This isn’t an opportunity to avenge his own father, but a burden, and a lifelong fear. From this first speech his self-loathing is evident; this clearly isn’t the destiny he wants but it’s the one he thinks he deserves by virtue of his birth. He criticizes his own cowardice (”Why turn aside, my spirit?” Why lay down arms at the first onslaught?”), he takes for granted the certain cruelty of whatever fate has been prescribed for him (”Be sure the cruel gods are engineering destruction and a dire fate for you”) because he sees it as his birthright, as a member of the House of Atreus (Good things never last / bad things never die etc etc) and as a consequence of his very existence; he is the physical manifestation of the House’s crimes, the product of horrific incest, he represents, and in some sense, he IS, the evil for which his House is continually punished. He describes his “worthless life” as fit to “confront all sufferings”, he claims “for one of such birth, death is no hardship”, the only way for his life to have meaning is if he fulfills the task for which he was created, he has managed to convince himself that he deserves nothing else.

He also recognizes the extent to which his fulfilling this fate, seemingly the only thing he has to live for despite the fact that it clearly horrifies him, relies on Clytemnestra: “If you will only keep me company”, they’ll succeed, but he needs her to act alongside him. She, aware of this herself, also condemns Aegisthus for his status as exile and for his parentage, and although he tells Clytemnestra in their argument that he isn’t ashamed of his birth, it’s clear from his own thought processes as previously shown that this is a front, it absolutely isn’t true. Aegisthus’s attempt to convince her to kill Agamemnon relies on invoking pity, and his words echo those he thought to himself previously: “Exile is nothing new to me, I am used to suffering”, and they also again place Clytemnestra in the position of main actor, with Aegisthus as her subordinate: “I am ready at your bidding to use the sword to open this breast, so heavy with troubles”. The inevitability of Aegisthus’s fate, the horror of his birth as deciding and even justifying it, and his reliance on Clytemnestra to “fulfill” his destiny all combine to create a rather pitiable depiction of Aegisthus, whose very existence is a crime, as every character he interacts with is eager to point out. Finally when Cassandra describes the actual murder, she refers to Aegisthus as “The half-man”, likely speaking to both his bastardry and his cowardice (ie, lack of masculinity, reliance on Clytemnestra). But Aegisthus’s fear and self-doubt are out in full force during the climax of the play, Aegisthus “gouges his side with a trembling hand- but he has not thrust deep, he freezes in the very act of wounding”. His view of himself as worthless, powerless, deserving of death, etc. has rendered him incapable of fulfilling his destiny/his fate/etc., especially when combined with the inner mental conflict that characterized his first speech. In the end, Aegisthus is the secondary actor in his own destiny, Aegisthus merely coerced her, or pushed her to act, and there’s something especially pathetic and almost heartbreaking in the fact that his hand was shaking too badly for him to actually fatally wound Agamemnon: it emphasizes how much this fate was forced upon Aegisthus against will, and the extent to which his perception of himself was shaped by this predetermined role that horrified him, that, ironically, reducing his worth as a person to this singular moment made him unable to perform it. Seneca’s Aegisthus is shaped by his past, he is not entirely his own person, the ghost of his father urges him on but this is a role he’s forced into, and one that, despite supposedly being the culmination of his life, the purpose of his birth, as Thyestes says, he is ultimately unable to fulfill: his hands shake, and it is Clytemnestra who must deliver the final blow. 

Seneca actually sat down and thought about how the circumstances of Aegisthus’s birth might determine the kind of person he becomes, his behavior, his thought processes, his self-worth and identity. Expanding on this aspect of his character ties Aegisthus in to the broader themes of the Cursèd House of Atreus Circle and how one’s character is decided by their birth is especially relevant to this family. Aegisthus’s self-loathing and weakness are a natural consequence of the events of his life, and Seneca’s decision to elaborate on this, to draw and highlight that line, gives Aegisthus an interesting degree of complexity. In addition, Aegisthus knows he relies more on Clytemnestra than the other way around, and I really like how the expansion of his character mirrors that of Clytemnestra’s: they’re both doubting themselves and are torn about decisions they’ve made and could still make, but they both realize they really have no other choice or recourse. The difference is that, for Aegisthus, this was decided the moment he was born.