In Lee: The Last Years, Flood quotes one of the "KA Five" as saying of Lee that "We likened him unto Agamemnon." I always found that strange because things didn't end well for Agamemnon.
For a white Southerner, college-educated in the nineteenth century, it's not at all surprising that they read and studied the Illiad. Agamemnon, drawing the Greeks together for this great cultural and political, and military adventure, probably did remind him of his service under Lee, both as a soldier and as a student.
Apparently, whoever taught Greek literature, at Washington College, after the war, didn't include the Orestian Trilogy in their lessons. Agamemnon's life may have been the origin of the Greek State, but his death was the origin of Greek justice. Their professor only told them half the story.
Unlike Robert E Lee, who I'm absolutely certain was real, I'm not at all convinced that Agamemnon was ever a real person. If he was, I can't imagine his real story matching up to the myth at all. That's not what myths are for.
Myths create stories that explain societies. Sometimes they build up over many years, and disparate stories are combined and remade to fit the narrative the culture builds.
Every culture needs two creation stories. The first is a metaphysical story. The earth was a woman, and the sky was her husband. The gods came as horses rising from the foam of the sea. The Greek stories of metaphysical creation are fascinating and beautiful.
They also need a myth about their political creation. In Judaic culture, that's Joseph and Abraham, and Moses. These are stories about what sets our people apart from other people. They are vital in creating a cultural identity. For the Greeks, the Illiad serves this purpose. The Greek culture created itself with a story about defeating Troy, fighting over their ideas about the honor of a woman.
There are other very important myths, though. Myths about where our cultural values come from. In the bible, you have stories about Cain and Abel sewing the seeds of ideas about justice. That's what the death of Agamemnon and his son's quest for redemption does for the Greeks. It creates and describes in them the idea of Justice and just redemption.
It's entirely possible that the myth about Agamamemnon's life and Agamemnon's death was originally two entirely different people that were merged together into one story. I think that happened a lot.
Lee's political campaign might have created the political culture of the South, even though he lost the war, but there's been a much longer struggle for justice to come out of the Civil War, one that we're still fighting today. I can't really say that Lee was part of that battle. His purpose after the war was to get these boys, who had been his soldiers, prepared to be productive citizens again. The question of Justice in the South would not be answered in their generation. I'm very much starting to doubt that it will be answered in mine.
Education is a funny thing. You can't ever really fit a complete understanding of any subject into any one lifetime, even if what you're trying to understand happened thousands of years ago. Whoever taught the KA five about the Illiad didn't mention what happened to Agamemnon when he got home. That was a pretty serious omission.
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