The Gift And The Refusal

Aeschylus gives her the exchange in her own words, and it is startlingly direct. Apollo wanted her. She promised and then did not keep the promise. He had already given her the sight. Later writers explain that a god's gift could not be taken back — so he added to it instead. She would see truly and persuade no one. It is a punishment built with precision: not blindness, not silence, but accuracy stripped of every consequence accuracy normally has. She keeps the whole gift. She simply loses the only thing it was for. In the Agamemnon she explains this to a chorus that believes her story of the curse, and still cannot take in what she says is about to happen.