0;has had a change of heart that is impure, sacrilegious: he is prepared to dare anything, his mind is made up…He dares to become the sacrificer of his own daughter in order to help an army recapture a woman and to open up the sea to his ships” (Aeschylus). The fact that Agamemnon willingly sacrifices his daughter so quickly, shows that her life meant nothing to him once it began to infringe upon his military progress. In tradition with other works by Aeschylus, the corruption of sacrifice taints all interaction. The tragedy resolves itself through further acts of immoral sacrifice motivated by vengeance. Agamenmnon’s own wife, Clytemnestra, becomes his murderer due to orders from the gods as well as out of her own hatred for him. Thus, the play ends morally reversed, resulting in the triumph of corruption.Yet the remaining trilogy in the Oresteia resolves the issues of ‘perverted-sacrifice,’ once again establishing order. This play conveys the degree by which the social order in Ancient Greece was constructed by sacrifice. The irrevocable acts in Agamemnon produce a series of consequential events that essentially aid in stabilizing the city’s foundation. The strength of a city in Greek literature was typically attributed to the blessings or vengeance inflicted by the gods. Strong discipline, in Ancient Greece, prevented chaos and disorder as can be seen in Agamemnon. Failure to observe and respect the absolute power of a god eventually overturned his entire life. The punishments typically given out by gods were not set to any scale or limit—a spiteful mood might provoke a decree of death for no particular offense at all. But alongside rites of sacrifice, gods often punished by means of metamorphosis or definitive sentences of torture. Regardless of the actual consequences surrounding the sentence, the primary means of compensation and communication between gods and mortals, further ...
