endured what no man yet on earth has done— I pressed my mouth into the hand of him who killed my son.”
A kiss for his son's killer.
Clytemnestra would have had to do more than kiss the hands of her daughter's killer, Agamemnon; so she kills him.
A footnote from John Ciardi's translation of Dante's Purgatorio VI:
17–18. the Pisan . . . Marzucco: Farinata, son of Marzucco degli Scornigiani (Score-nih-JAH-nee) of Pisa. Farinata was killed in Pisa and Marzucco, who had become a minor friar, went to bury his body. In one account, he preached a funeral sermon of forgiveness and ended by kissing the hand that had murdered his son, thus “shining so true” in Christian charity.
