At Home with the Schleimanns

Posted on April 9, 2004 in Anthropology Fact-Dropping Humor?

Heinrich Schleimann, excavator of Mycenae and Troy, perversely named his children after characters in Aeschylus’s Oresteia. Wicked me has often thought of the family life, particularly what Mrs. Schleimann said to her brood:

• Agamemnon! I’ve been looking all over for you! Where have you been all this time?
  
• Cassandra, stop your complaining! I don’t want to hear it!
  
• Clytemnestra! Stop beating on your brother Agamemnon like that! You’re going to kill him!
  
• I don’t know what your problem is Electra. You’re so selfish. Look at your sister Iphigenia. She’d give her life for her mother and father.

And finally, my favorite (to be declaimed from the back porch as a maternal call to supper):

Orrrrrreeeeeeeesteeeeeeeees!